Roles of philosophy and history in Marx's thought?

There can be little doubt that Karl Marx is one of the most important and influential political thinkers that has lived. However, Marx was not simply just a political thinker and he would often like to consider himself as a political scientist, methodical in approach and calculation. Yet is often very difficult to simply classify Marx in this way as he would often delve in many other fields and therefore he can be categorised as a historian, philosopher, sociologist or even a controversialist. Marx’s most important works, “The Communist Manifesto” (1848) and “Das Capital” (1867), incorporate aspects from many of these areas.

In terms of history, Marx was greatly influenced by Friedrich Hegel, with whom he had had the chance to study with whilst at university in Germany. Hegel was considered the authority on philosophy at this period and consequently Marx’s views on history were shaped by Hegel’s works. Nevertheless their views on history were crucially different....