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BEST IELTS General Reading Test 480
IELTS GENERAL READING TEST 480 – PASSAGE – 3
IELTS GENERAL READING TEST – 480
READING PASSAGE – 3
Karl Heinrich Marx
A. Karl Heinrich Marx (5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German theorist, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, columnist, and socialist revolutionary. Born in Trier, Germany, Marx studied law and philosophy at university. He married Jenny von Westphalen in 1843. Owing to his political publications, Marx became nationless and lived in exile with his wife and children in London for eras, where he sustained to develop his thought in teamwork with German thinker Friedrich Engels and publish his writings, researching in the reading room of the British Museum.
His best-known titles are the 1848 pamphlet, The Communist Manifesto, and the three-volume Das Kapital. His political and philosophical thought had vast effect on succeeding intellectual, economic, and political history, and his name has been used as an adjective, a noun, and a school of social theory.
IELTS General Reading Test
B. Marx’s critical theories about society, economics, and politics jointly understood as Marxism. It holds that human societies develop through class conflict. In capitalism, this displays itself in the conflict among the ruling classes (known as the bourgeoisie) that control the means of production and the working classes (known as the proletariat) that allow these means by selling their labour power in return for wages. Engaging a critical approach known as historical materialism, Marx foretold that, like previous socio- economic systems, capitalism produced internal tensions which would lead to its self- destruction and replacement by a new system known as socialism.
C. For Marx, class antagonisms under capitalism, owing in part to its unpredictability and crisis-prone nature, would eventuate the working class’s development of class consciousness, leading to their downfall of political power and ultimately the formation of a classless, communist society founded by a free association of producers. Marx actively pushed for its implementation, quarrelling that the working class should carry out organised revolutionary action to collapse capitalism and bring about socio- economic emancipation.
IELTS General Reading Test
D. Marx has been labelled as one of the most powerful figures in human history, and his work has been both praised and criticised. His work in economics put the basis for much of the current understanding of labour and its relation to capital and following economic thought. Many intellectuals, labour unions, artists and political parties globally have been influenced by Marx’s work, with many modifying or adapting his ideas. Marx is characteristically quoted as one of the principal architects of modern social science.
E. Marx was born on 5 May 1818 to Heinrich Marx (1777-1838) and Henriette Pressburg (1788-1863). He was born at Brückengasse 664 in Trier, a town then part of the Kingdom of Prussia’s Province of the Lower Rhine. Marx was not religiously but ethnologically Jewish. His maternal grandfather was a Dutch rabbi, while his paternal line had supplied Trier’s rabbis since 1723, a role taken by his grandfather Meier Halevi Marx. His father, as a child recognized as Herschel, was the first in the line to obtain a secular education.
IELTS General Reading Test
He became a lawyer with a securely Upper middle-class income; in addition to his income as an attorney, the family retained several Moselle vineyards. Prior to his son’s birth, and after the retraction of Jewish emancipation in the Rhineland, Herschel converted from Judaism to join the state Evangelical Church of Prussia, taking on the German forename Heinrich over the Yiddish Herschel.
F. Largely non-religious, Heinrich was a man of the Enlightenment, absorbed in the ideas of the philosophers Immanuel Kant and Voltaire. A classical liberal, he took part in agitation for a constitution and improvements in Prussia, at that time being an absolute monarchy. In 1815, Heinrich Marx started working as an attorney and in 1819 moved his family to a ten-room property near the Porta Nigra.
IELTS General Reading Test
His wife, Henriette Pressburg, was a Dutch Jewish woman from a wealthy business family that later instituted the company Philips Electronics. Her sister Sophie Pressburg (1797-1854) married Lion Philips (1794-1866) and was the grandmother of both Gerard and Anton Philips and great-grandmother to Frits Philips. Lion Philips was a well-off Dutch tobacco manufacturer and industrialist, upon whom Karl and Jenny Marx would later frequently come to rely for loans while they were banished in London.
G. Little is known of Marx’s childhood. The third of nine children, he turns out to be the eldest son when his brother Moritz died in 1819. Marx and his persisting siblings, Sophie, Hermann, Henriette, Louise, Emilie, and Caroline were baptised into the Lutheran Church in August 1824 and their mother in November 1825.
IELTS General Reading Test
Marx was confidentially educated by his father until 1830, when he entered Trier High School, whose headmaster, Hugo Wyttenbach, was a friend of his father. By engaging many liberal humanists as teachers, Wyttenbach suffered the anger of the local conservative government. Later, police raided the school in 1832 and discovered that literature backing political liberalism was being distributed among the students. Seeing the distribution of such material a seditious act, the authorities instituted reforms and substituted several staff during Marx’s attendance.
H. In October 1835 at the age of 17, Marx travelled to the University of Bonn wishing to study philosophy and literature, but his father asserted on law as a more practical field. Due to a condition denoted to as a “weak chest”, Marx was exempted from military duty when he turned 18. While at the University at Bonn, Marx merged the Poets’ Club, a group covering political radicals that were monitored by the police.
Marx also joined the Trier Tavern Club drinking society, at one point serving as club co-president. Moreover, Marx was involved in certain arguments, some of which became serious: in August 1836 he took part in a duel with a member of the university’s Borussian Korps. Though his grades in the first term were good, they soon worsened, leading his father to force a transfer to the more serious and academic University of Berlin.
IELTS General Reading Test
Questions 26-33
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write correct letter A-H in your answer sheet.
NB you may use any letter more than once.
26. Marx vigorously advocating for the application of working-class power.
27. Marx’s patriarch and his learning.
28. Marx was released from the armed forces due to a medical ailment.
29. Heinrich’s viewpoint and work life.
30. Karl and his family living in refuge and Marx publishing his work.
31. Karl Marx and his siblings.
32. Karl Marx’s hypotheses.
33. Political groups inspired by Karl Marx in today’s era.
IELTS General Reading Test
Questions 34-40
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the Reading Passage?
YES – If the statement agrees with the claims of the writer.
NO – If the statement contradicts the claims of the writer.
NOT GIVEN – If it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
34. Das Kapital is identified as Marxism.
35. Bourgeoisie persuade people to buy their labour power in return of wages.
36. Marx’s work has been both hailed and condemned.
37. Many governmental organizations have made Karl Marx their commander around the world.
38. Marx’s father was a barrister.
39. Marx’s father was atheist.
40. Karl Marx was the eldest son of his parents.
IELTS General Reading Test
IELTS General Reading Test
ANSWERS
26. C
27. E
28. H
29. F
30. A
31. G
32. B
33. D
34. NOT GIVEN
35. NO
36. YES
37. NOT GIVEN
38. YES
39. YES
40. NO
IELTS General Reading Test