As the philosopher Karl Marx once said “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” Briefly, this means that all of the conflicts in the world revolve around the struggle between the two social classes. The Bourgeoisie, known as the rich, are able to sit back and employ struggling Proletarians, the working class. Today the Bourgeoisie have money to go around. Yet they can’t support the working class.
The Industrial Revolution cast its shadow upon European cities and towns. Some enjoyed this shade while others suffered tremendously because of it. Those who enjoyed the luxuries and wealth that the Industrial Revolution provided, the bourgeoisie, depended on the needs of the poor, the proletarians, to increase the size of their monstrous factories and ultimately their wealth and influence. In “The Communist Manifesto” Karl Marx discusses the effects of the Industrial Revolution in further dividing society by creating new social and economic hierarchies. In addition to his observation of the division of labor, Karl Marx believed, that due to the technological shift from craftsmanship to machinery this also caused division of labor and the appreciation of proletarian handmade goods was disregarded.
So Marx wrote that classes should be leveled out and everyone be kept in the same social class. However, there would need to be major changes in government for this to occur. The Manifesto is broken up into four sections that all talk about the relationships between classes and the flaws that are a present in
The Petty- Bourgeois Socialists were a class that saw it would eventually lose its separate status and become part of the proletariat. Marx concedes that the Petty- Bourgeois publications successfully showed the contradictions of the conditions of modern
“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
Marxism divided society into two parts the bourgeoisie and the proletariats. The bourgeoisie were those who controlled the worlds natural, economic and natural resources and depend on the proletariat for survival. Whereas the proletariats form the majority of the world’s population, living in substandard conditions, while performing all the manual labor that pay for the luxury enjoyed by the rich. But unfortunately they are also the last to recognize this class
He argues that with all the pressures of class conflict and the imbalance of capitalism there is no way that this pattern can continue without a major revolution. Marx compares capitalism to anarchy, in the sense that there is no organization within which only causes chaos. The common pattern of capitalism is a boom followed by a bust, and that bust leads to recession and social unrest. This sort of fickle economy, Marx believes, will furthermore contribute to the downfall of capitalism. This socialist revolution would, “abolish private ownership of key elements of economy and change nature of relationships from ones based on marriage and property.”
For Marx, he considered class in relation to the means to production. He saw a shift from a feudal society on agriculture, where the land owning classes are classified from the peasant class. Scribes, information dealers, intelligencia and civil servants, who did not contribute to the production in the economy, are considered of no use and ar classless. On the other hand, Weber saw class on several layers (Bartle, 2007). Such differences can be understood in a sociological perspective.
Modes of production shape historical epochs. Marx claims, “The premise from which we begin are not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real premises… they are real individuals, their activity and the material conditions under which they live, both those which they find already existing and those produced by their activity.” Human nature is therefore determined by the modes of production, which also shapes material conditions. There are definite material limits, presuppositions, and existing conditions that define what an individual will be born into. Marx does believe there is a sort of human essence always present.
Ultimately the production market reaches a snapping point as it becomes swamped by commodities that will not be able to be sold in the production market; which is why over production is a seed of destruction of capitalism. Throughout Karl Marx writings he describes the mode of production called capitalism. In his writings, Marx is fascinated with capitalism. He asserts that some vital parts of capitalism are money, labor and commodities.
Karl Marx talks about the role of communism and his conjecture of underlying this type of revolution. He speaks of two different class struggles, the "Bourgeoisie and Proletarians". Bourgeoisie are the people with authority, the ones who own production and are bosses of wage labor while the proletariat are the individuals with no authority, no ownership and are giving up their own power to the Bourgeoisie in order to survive. Societies began to separate and became hostile and aggressive classes. It all became about social ranking because of the increase and need of production.
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.
Marx understood capitalism to be founded upon a class division between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. He believed society goes through five changes; Primitive, Ancient Slave owning, Feudal society, Capitalist and Communism being the final stage. A Capitalist society was considered to be the modern society where there will be conflict due to people striving for things that will benefit themselves, hence persons are self-interested. The devaluation of the human world increases in direct relation with the increase to the value of the world of things. Thus there is the alienation of the worker in the capitalist economy; the worker lacks control over the' disposal of his products, since what he produces is appropriated by others, so that he does not benefit from it.
Karl Marx has come up with the “Law of Motion” of capitalist development theory including six major tenets in order to identify the negative effects of capitalism. Even though the stages of the Law of Motion are continuously linked together and are influenced by one another, the Canadian government should apply two of them in the policies and other actions, which are the theories of Worker Exploitation and the Capital Accumulation and “Inevitable” Falling Rate of Profit. These two ideas highlight the problems of capitalism that only benefit the powerful elites and suppress the lower working class. This creates inequality, unemployment, which further hinder economic growth, prosperity and social stability. The theory of Worker
Class conflict, Marx believed, was what encouraged the evolution of society. To quote Marx himself, The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one