Karl Marx's Five Stages Of Communism

CRITICAL REVIEW

Karl Marx (1818-1883) was a German philosopher, political activist and scholar of nineteenth century. In the mid-nineteenth century the capitalists (bourgeoisie) were making many advances and establishing their rule in many dominant parts of the world. Thus, from a very young age Marx had witnessed the exploitation of the working class (proletariats) at the hands of the capitalists. He was against the antagonism of the classes that existed in society. Marx had worked in combination with Fredrick Engels and presented Communist Manifesto in 1848.He believed “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”. His idea of dialectic materialism further elaborated the view that only materialistic factors

In this book, Marx presented the idea of Communism and described its five stages. According to Marx, “Communism is a social and economic system in which whole property and resources are equally shared by a classless society”. The first stage he discussed was Primitive Communism, which stated that, men lived in previous time as hunters and gatherers. There was no concept of private property and the society was totally classless. The second stage discussed in Communist Manifesto was, Feudalism, acknowledging that, feudal lords exploited the Peasantry and emerged as a political division. Third stage was, Capitalism, which was comprised of rich merchants and capitalists. The rich merchants appeared as a powerful class and oppressed the Proletariats. Marx also predicted that, these Proletariats would aware themselves of the exploitation and would rise against the Bourgeoisie Class. The fourth stage of Communism was Socialism, which suggested that, there would be equality in all the classes, i-e all the resources would be equally shared by all. The final stage presented by Karl Marx was, Communism. In this he speculated a class-less society in which no private ownership would ever be gained by

Social scientists find this theory very helpful when it comes to study the changes brought about by the economic factors within the society.

Besides this, Marxism also carried with it a future insight with the view of both Marx and Engels that, “proletariat has to emerge as the most revolutionary class and a motive force for social development.” Moreover, the theory also prognosticated that proletariat would release the whole society from exploitation and manipulation and progress towards a classless society. This speculation of Marx would only be fulfilled by the last stage of Communism in which it was predicted that there would be a class-less society.

It would be more appropriate to call Marxism a biased approach of Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels because they had criticized the Bourgeoisie and capitalism. They focused entirely on their negative aspects irrespective of the positives done by the Capitalist group. This could probably because Marx and Engels were asked to write Communist Manifesto to spread the communist ideas to the