Karl Marx is the revolutionary founding father of communism and Marxism, while Niccolo Machiavelli expounded the concept of realism through his work The Prince. These two concepts have been the foundations that various countries and governments have attempted to use in hopes of building a utopian society. Karl Marx was born in 1818 in Trier, Germany, studying history, philosophy and law at the universities of Berlin, Jena and Bonn. Karl Marx did not like the production part of capitalism; he found it to be a sign of a big problem. Marx believed that the production stage of capitalism worked in such a way that the wealthy owners of these businesses benefited, while the poor workers did not. So the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer. (Marx 1994, p. 119-142) Marx believed that the need to meet the desires of individuals in society leads to production, that practical activity in a practical world leads to the desire to meet the needs of people in society . This economic philosophy is linked to Marxism; the concept that any given political development was the result of class conflict, in which the exploiting class was made up of the rich and powerful who would eventually come into conflict with the exploited, thereby creating revolutionary change. From this revolutionary change would emerge a new set of exploiters and exploited, where the cycle would continue over and over until there were no more classes but all were equal, creating a utopian communism where everyone benefits. equally from the results of his hard work. (Taylor 2011, p. 104) Karl Marx believed that the determining factor that would allow Marxism to work was the fact that each individual played a vital role in maintaining society. If one piece was missing then everything would be in the middle of paper......we have human flaws that lead to the corruption that power brings. I believe there is no perfect government; just one whose benefits exceed the costs.ReferencesCropsey, Joseph and Strauss, 1987. History of Political Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hausman, Daniel. 2007. The Philosophy of Economics. Cambridge University Press. “Karl Marx”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (summer 2011 edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2011/entries/marx/. (accessed March 3, 2014). Marx, Karl, “Ideology and Method in Political Economy,” in The Philosophy of Economics, 2nd ed., ed. Daniel M. Hausman (New York: Cambridge UP, 1994), 119-142. Political realism. International Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://www.iep.utm.edu/polreal/ (accessed March 3, 2014). Taylor, Steven. 30 second policy. New York: subway books, 2011