Was Karl Marx a realist or an idealist?

In so much as "idealism" is defined as sticking to an idea above all, Marx could be termed as an "idealist" who wanted to improve the world through observed practical realities of life, and hence a realist. In a way, you have to look at this as a dialectical sublation of a "Realist" idealist in Marx. read more

Marx was no idealist: see his and Engels' repeated attacks on utopian socialists. He was a realist who thought that socialism had to be based on a thoroughgoing understanding of the realities of capitalism and on a political strategy centered on the agency of a class (the proletariat) without which capitalism could not function and which had a vital interest in superseding capitalism. read more

THE WORD "idealism" is usually used to describe a utopian view of change. Idealists, we're told, are people with unrealistic goals. "Materialism" is used to refer to people who value possessions--as in "Bill Gates is a materialist." But when we say that Karl Marx was a materialist, we don't mean that he hankered after possessions. read more

Karl Marx, economist and visionary, German scholar and international revolutionary, contemptuous as he was of revolutionary phrasemakers and conspirational play-acting, was yet himself a powerful rhetorician and prophet of doom and regeneration, a romantic realist, a man of many faces. read more