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Bourgeoisie Vs Proletariat Essay

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The point that Marx and Engels are trying to make in this source is that the capitalist system is only serving to divide the classes more than ever and increase the antagonism already existent between them. In addition, Marx and Engels believed that society is actually a history of class struggles and that all class systems either lead to reconstruction of society through revolution or the ruin of all classes involved. Therefore, Marx and Engels believed that the struggle between the bourgeoisie and proletariat, which under the capitalist system grew ever more severe, would either lead to ruin for the world at large or more likely a reconstructing of society through the inevitable rise to power of the proletariat. The information the source …show more content…

Essentially, the bourgeoisie make a profit at the expense of the working class, a class that only survives as long as they are able to find work, and are only able to find work as long as their work produces profit. Therefore, the proletariat are only useful, and able to provide for themselves and their family, if they can generate capital for the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie have no other use for the proletariat other than to further their own gain. Furthermore, the bourgeoisie use the technology of the industrial revolution, which simplifies most tasks, to enable them to pay the workers less for longer hours. In short, the bourgeoisie are able to use the capitalist system to increase their profits at the worker’s expense. However, in this source Marx and Engel make the assumption that it is the capitalist system that encourages this injustice against the working class without taking into consideration that it might just be the bourgeoisie that are exploiting an unregulated system. As can be seen today, many laws have been put in place to regulate the system to insure that the working class is treated fairly and without

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Wealthy elites or the bourgeoisie continued to earn high profits while the poor proletarians continued to take part in labor intensive work in factories. Marx and Smiles both saw this as a major problem in their society. In Marx’s Communist Manifesto, he wrote, “ not only are they [the proletarians] slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois state; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overlooker, and above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself…” What Marx means is that the bourgeoisie is looking down at the proletariats and using them as merely a way to earn profit. In contrast to Marx, Smiles said, “...they [the proletarians] resemble the savage tribes, who know no better, and do no worse.”

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The upper class, the bourgeoisie, were exploiting the lower class, the proletarians. Marx and Engel’s main argument is that the perfect society would have no class and everything would be shared. Both men looked at the Industrial Revolution in Europe and watched the owners of businesses keep wages high enough “to keep the labourer in bare existence as a labourer” (Marx, 28). Defeating the social system requires the working class to rise up and revolt against the bourgeoisie. Without the upper class, the workers would own the businesses, and could equally share the profit between themselves.

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This essay will show that Marx and Engels were only somewhat justified in their conclusion, in the Communist Manifesto, that the proletariat group, which included majority of the working class and later incorporated the likes of tradespeople, shopkeepers etc., could ultimately overthrow the Bourgeoisie, which generally included the upper class, and replace them as the dominant class in society. The essay will look at the arguments, that Marx made, which could possibly provide the basis for proletariat uprising against the bourgeoisie, however it will also review the aspects of the immense power that the bourgeoisie possessed. Finally, the essay will show, to back-up it’s claim that the Marx and Engels were wrong, that Marx and Engels were

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The idea of the bourgeoisie versus the proletarians brings us back to the distinction that Marx made between two social classes, those who are property owners and those who are propertyless workers. The bourgeoisie are the capitalists who own the properties and gain from the labors of those who work for them and the proletarians are those who are in the working class. These terms were first used in The Communist Manifesto where Marx spoke out about communism and what it would entail. A big concept that Marx was pushing to try and get across was that the proletarians outnumber the bourgeoisie, meaning that they could very well seize the means of production. He wanted to spark a revolution in these people by pointing out the flaws in the working

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Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat” (Marx, Engels, 1888, p.80) Marx had identified that the proletariat and the bourgeoisie had both different and opposing objectives. He concluded that the bourgeoisie oppressed the proletariat in their desire to create surplus value through control of the mode of production. In order to generate profit, the ‘oppressive’ employers attack the ‘oppressed’ workers by keeping wages low in order to reduce deficit. This is an example of how class conflict is created, as the proletariat’s objective to earn a sustainable wage is severely affected by the bourgeoisie’s need for surplus value.

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In Karl Marx The Communist Manifesto he states “Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat” (pg.457). There are two types of groups the bourgeoisie who are the middle class and the proletariats that are the working class. Marx is against the exploitation of the majority who are the proletariats by the minority who are the bourgeoisie that own the means of production. Since there was an increase in the demand for products it caused the markets to grow.

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In the beginning of the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution caused a massive economic spike from small-scale production to large factories and mass production. Capitalism became the prevalent mode of the economy, which put all means of production in the hands of the bourgeoisie, or the upper class. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels argue that capitalism centralizes all the wealth and power in the bourgeoisie, despite the proletariat, or the working class, being the overwhelming majority of the population. The manufacturers would exploit the common proletariat and force them to would work in abysmal conditions and receive low wages, furthering the working class poverty. “The Communist Manifesto” predicts that as a result of the mistreatment

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this idea through the creation of “religious and political illusions” to keep the working classes below them. Through the creation of these religious ideas and political ideologies the bourgeois formed the proletariat class, which happens to be the majority of the world. The proletariat class is viewed by the bourgeois as a group of inferiors laboring to gain a small percentage of capital to survive within the unfair society built by the bourgeois. Since the proletariat are forced to work for the bourgeois in order to survive they are only aiding the bourgeois in their quest of self-interest to expand their wealth, land ownership and political power. But as the modern bourgeois continue to modernize ways of producing goods through machines the pay wages of the proletariat workers will decrease because manual labor is no longer needed.

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Marx and Engel focused on class conflict as the driving force for their argument. Throughout history, there is a common theme of a caste society lasting for so long until the mistreated lower class attempt to break the cycle; but that system is only replaced with a new

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Marx argued that this type of labour that the Proletariats performed, always involved exploitation because they earned less for their labour in order for the Bourgeoisie to make profit. For Marx, exploitation is a requirement for a capitalist system, which is why he argues that the system was flawed as it resulted in inequalities between people. This is why he believed that a socialist state would be a better system as people would work together and there would be no class struggles. Exploitation of workers is something we see occurring in the world today. AS companies move their modes of production overseas because of cheaper labour.

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Though they may have many critiques of capitalism, Engels and Marx have two major ones that they have revealed throughout their writings. Engel’s and Marx’s major critiques of capitalism are:

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In bourgeoisie society, there is living labor, but it is used to increase collected labour but in a communist society, collected labour exists but it is broadened, improved and shows appreciation and encouragement to the existence of the laborer. Communist robs no man of the authority to apposite the products of civilization. Mark speaks about different divisions of communist and literature. He mentions the reactionary socialism which includes the bourgeois socialists which are individuals who fight against the bourgeoisie society and their development of production. They are against the bourgeoisie because they see their approach of life as a hazard.

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The proletariats are the wage earners or the labour class, in a capitalist society the proletarians don’t have much wealth, and their main asset is their labour power. The bourgeoisie is the class that owns the means of production, their class interest lies in the value of property and the preservation of capital, and this ensures their perpetual economic supremacy in society. According to Marx, in the capitalist mode of production, a worker slowly loses the power to decide upon his or her life and destiny, they lose their Gattungswesen (“species-essence”), and this is a consequence of living in a socially stratified society, where human beings become a mechanistic part of a social class. Even though human beings are self-conscious and autonomous, in a capitalist society they are nothing but an economic entity whose acts are dictated by the bourgeoisie, with the aim

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According to Edwards et al. (2006) Marx thought that within capitalism there would be an increased divide between the bourgeoisie class and the proletariat class in the future. The proletariats are lower of the two classes, the people who have to work for wages in order to survive. The bourgeoisie are the people in society who controlled and owned the means of production in a capitalist system.

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Bourgeoisie, which gains the power, defines superstructure “including all social and legal institution, all political and educational systems, all religions and all art” (Bressler, 162), and articulate the ideology which is based on profits of bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie ideology leads to alienation of individuals, especially proletariats. This bourgeoisie ideology creates the clash between the two classes. Marx supported the working class and their victory over dominant class. Marxism believes in providing equal opportunity to the working class as that are available to the

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