Taeyoon Song

  

Volume 9 | Issue III | September 2025

Brighton College ’26

East Sussex, United Kingdom

  

Growing up in South Korea, where “communism” is often used as a buzzword for many different—and often irrelevant—concepts because of our Northern counterparts, Marxism is often not studied. This only allured me to study more about the ideology, as everyone seemed to be critical of it, yet not necessarily able to explain clearly why. Almost all discussions surrounding Marx ultimately converged to a messy quibble over preliminary definitions, i.e., what Marxism “actually means.” Throughout my freshman year, along with other studies in philosophy, I focused on understanding the basics of Marxist theory. By summer, I was still left with many questions, but one stood out: Why is it named Marxism, not (Marxism-) Engelsism? Nearly every important Marxist work was co-authored, and yet only Marx seemed to be at the center of the spotlight. This led me to conduct more extensive reading on Engels specifically, which ultimately evolved into a research project by the end of my sophomore year. The paper took me slightly over a year to complete, after which I submitted it to The Schola. During the process, examining Engels as a person also proved to be extremely helpful—his interests weren’t just confined to philosophy, but expanded to other fields such as the natural sciences, which resembled me in many ways. Outside of research, I have a strong passion for physics, competitive debate, and music.