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Karl Marx's View On Social Power

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Stephanie Feinberg SOC2019S Final Essay Karl Marx viewed social power by focusing on economics and capital. He explained that capital is a social product in a social system, therefore capital is not personal, but rather a social power. Because of this idea, Marx believed that society is split into two classes: the bourgeoisie and the proletarians. Personal worth was measured by someone’s exchange value, or capital they had. Therefore, social power was given to the bourgeoisie, who owned the most capital in society. The bourgeoisie was a result of development, in which they “destroyed all relations that were feudal, patriarchal, and idyllic” (??).Through each development, there was a specific political advancement, earning them the social power they had. The bourgeoisie focused more on their monetary values, rather than values of people in society. The bourgeoisie continued to gain its capital and power by rapidly transforming the means of production. “In scarcely one hundred years of class rule the bourgeoisie has created more massive and more colossal forces of production than have all preceding generations put together” (Marx 17). These changes allowed the bourgeoisie to dominate the world by creating a world market in which all nations, regardless of their level of development, participated in. National industries were forced to become international; goods were not made just for their own country, but was used all over the world. As a result, nations were no longer
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