Marx's Integration of Hegel's Ideas

Philosophers are constantly in the process of stealing ideas from one another and subsequently their ideas are many times a collaboration of their predecessors, an adaptation, or even a dichotomy of their own ideas and those of other thinkers. The process leads to the progress and accumulation of more and more works, and in the realm of philosophy, more philosophies for societies and individuals to gain access to and insulate into their ways of life. In the case of Hegel and Marx, Marx adopted concepts from the works of Hegel and adapted them into his theory with a bit of adjustment and supplementation, and the philosophy created from this courtship of ideas lead to one of the most influential revolutions of all time – Communism. 

Hegel’s concept and opinion of the State was greatly borrowed from by Marx in the creation of his Socialist philosophy on the State and its economy. Hegel pointed to the existence of a conflict between the individual of a society and the society that it served and contributed to – the individual’s spirit was enslaved by the schemata that controlled it. The political economy of the State forces humanity, to become the slave of his master, (the master being the State), and the work of the slave benefits that of the Master more so than it benefits the slave him/herself. The relationship between the Master and the Slave in a society is one in which the Slave works for the Master, and since the Slave’s life revolves around this work for the Master, the spirit of the Slave and his identity becomes defined by the work that he accomplishes for the Master, while the Master, according to Hegel lives life trying to find his identity in vain, as he becomes alienated from himself while trying to organize his community.