There were many great intellectuals and scientists in the modern times. However two figures emerged, who influenced deeply the events of the time they lived in and shaped a lot the future. Those two men were Luther and Marx. One was religious and the other atheist, one was obsessed by the question of salvation and the other was hostile to religions, saying that it was the ‘opium of the people’. Both of them were at the same time great intellectuals, thinkers and revolutionaries. This article will try to compare these two figures, show their great differences but also their quite numerous common grounds.
Their differences are extremely important to the extend they are engaging for extremely different causes. Luther fought against a Church marked by the notion of hierarchy, and thought that individualism was a major word. For him everyone had the ability to interpret properly the Bible, and don’t need anyone to do that for him. The Pastor is only a teacher and a theologian, who is giving his expertise but is not “above” the believer. This individualism is quite close to classical liberalism, which values singularity ; to this extend Luther is one father of modern capitalism. On the contrary, Marx is promoting a very strong hierarchy and is promoting a “scientifical” approach of history. To this extend he is said to be the heir of Plato, who was promoting to give power to the philosophers who were the real “knowledgeable” people. It is a reason why he is a total opponent of classical liberalism, which wants to take into account the chaotic nature of reality and is a heir of the Greek holistic ideas, which are giving no real logic to reality. It is probable that, if they have lived in the same time, they would have been opponents or enemies. However, in my opinion, they would have occupied a similar position in their two opposite camps.
However, paradoxically, they have many common grounds. They are linked to their methods. Both are at the same time great readers and revolutionaries at the same time. They also spent a lot of time in their lives in libraries, and were greatly inspirational without being men of power. Both of them succeeded to shake their opponents, Luther with the Catholic church and Marx with modern capitalism. Another common ground was the importance they gave to languages. Luther wrote that “languages are the scabbard where the human spirit is put” and Marx told that “a spoken foreign language is a weapon in the fight for life”. Luther studied a lot grammar and translated the Bible in German; he had as well an in depth knowledge of Biblical Hebrew, and even if he was antisemitic, he studied deeply the commentary of the Bible by the Talmudist Rashi. On the other hand, Marx was a great internationalist, a reason why he gave importance to languages, and thought (in my opinion very rightly) that an ideology can be successful if is promoted beyond borders. Both were also very perseverant in their values and great workers. A great time of their lives they spent in libraries and studying languages, which are “out of the box” places and activities, gave them the ability to defend their ideas a greatly accurate way.
In my opinion, Luther was a great reformist in many ways: he promoted education for the population at a large scale, he was a great feminist because he was the first person in History to alphabetize and educate massively women and the fact he married a woman while being a monk was revolutionary at his time. On the other hand Marx was of course the great figure of revolutionaries in modern time: no one like him has been able to shake capitalism as much as he did; in my opinion, for instance, Marx outcompeted Hegel in his way to defend his ideas by his internationalist approach: the fact Hegel stayed in Germany made him more dependent on the ambitions of politicians and men of power. It is the reason why, for these reasons, only Luther and Marx, in modern times, have been able being great intellectuals and at the same time to shake deeply the times they lived in. Only both of them, until now, will stay as great figures in the modern era.
The observer 