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Modern Day Communism: Karl Marx

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Karl Marx (1818-1883) credited as the founder of modern day communism, saw the economic class as the biggest conflict facing the society as one between the bourgeoisie (winners of power) and the proletariats (powerless). His theory sharply demonstrates the vast differences in classes based on a socially unbalanced relationship of the capitalists, or bourgeoisie, who own the means of production, and the workers, or proletariat, who must sell their labor to survive. Marx’s viewed this unequal social structure as the central conflict in society and the source inequality in both power and wealth. Conversely, the main perspective being a macro approach as the fall of a capitalist system would produce a void for communism to fill and thrive.
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Looking at Karl Marx, his contributions attempting to explain social changes arising from the industrial revolution linger in current developments and the working class are still very prevalent today. The conflict within the economy, or capitalism, was Marx’s main focus in his theories as he described the two main groups in our economy, the working class and the ruling class. The working class were simply proletariats under the power of the ruling class. These citizens would sell their labor power in exchange for money as they simply operated production equipment, they did not own it. The ruling, or capitalist, class were the more powerful people in the economy that owned these means of production.

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According to Marx society was divided into two classes that were in eternal conflict in the battle for resources, or as Marx coined; “the means of production”. The first class were the bourgeoisie, which Marx described as the sole owners of the means of production as well as the media. The bourgeoisie used their power and influence to exploit the second class, which Marx called the proletariat which consisted of all the workers of the world. Marx rejected the idea that the wealthy pulled themselves from their own bootstraps, which he called “false consciousness” and in return coined the term “class consciousness”, which referred to a persons awareness of their own social status, especially in terms of class conflict. Overall, Marx concluded that social order is created maintained by domination and power.

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Bourgeoisie, also known as the oppressor or capitalist class, consisted of the minority group but having the most wealth, power and authority in control of the production and labour; whereas the Proletariat, which consisted of the masses lacking in wealth, power and authority are mainly addressed as the working class or the oppressed. As a result, this differences in the classes led to exploitation, unfairness, inequality, and alienation. In Marx’s dialectical materialism perspective, he views class conflict as the catalyst for social development, and society is composed of dynamic processes which could be prominently seen through the technology advancement in historical economic production systems leading to an increase in scale of production and more effective production methods by the usage of complex machinery. Marx went on to explain capitalism as a system of private property and ownership, where it is a free trade society involving the commodification of material goods and human labour, ultimately to gain profits. Marx reinforced his theory of capitalism by the fundamental influence of the superstructure of society, which is religion and the German Ideology.

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Karl Marx, who now symbolizes communism, called for the rejection of capitalism’s essence, private property, and the rise of the workers over the capitalists. Despite his criticism

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In Marx’s theory the bourgeois own private property; however, the poor does not have as much. Marx had a distinction between private property and personal property. The private property has caused an unequal distribution of means. Factories, corporations, and companies are all owned by rulers that seek their own best interest. It is important to abolish this is to achieve equality.

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Karl Marx, most well known as the author of “The Communist Manifesto”, shaped the political and economic theory known as Marxism, which is the most well-known and practiced variation of Communism, around the theories of others. Aspects of his theory came primarily from Hegel and British political economy. Hegel is a writer of French socialist utopia and was the hopeful result from how he saw the current environment (Hegel). This being that up until this point, progress of society and mankind had been driven by class conflict.

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Communism has been around for a long time the earliest known type of communism could be seen in the 4th century. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels originally used the word in the 19th century. They met after Marx had moved to Paris. They decided on the same ideas. Like being disgusted by the division of classes in their economy.

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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.”

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According to Marx the theory of communism can be summed up in one sentence which is “abolition of private property” (https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm). By abolishment of private property, there was no more antagonism as there was no need for a social class. Marx says “middle class owner must be made impossible”, by saying this he simply means that society must be reorganized so that no one is allowed to own large masses of productive property (communist manifesto by Karl Marx). By doing this no conflict can occur as no one is in power, this is why Marx agrees with the idea of

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Do you see the world in terms of groups where one is privileged and one is underprivileged? If you do, then you probably share a perspective or two with Karl Marx, a German economist whose works and ideas are, even to this day, studied and used by many different philosophers, economists, sociologists, historians, and politicians. Marx view the world as groups who were either advantaged or disadvantaged, with nothing in the in between of them. In his time, Marx’s ideas were seen as so drastic that he was viewed as a motivation to revolutionists as well as a threat by the leaders of state governments. As Karl Marx is one of the most influential figures of the twentieth century, although he lived in the nineteenth century, his legacy lived

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The great philosopher Karl Marx Started his book “Manifesto of the Communist Party” by arguing the history of the class struggle in the society, he stated that, “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”. He also stated that every rich men and every worker is in a relation through mass of production. In the initial part of Manifesto Marx goes into how society began communal, yet became more unequal as the time went on. Systems, for example, feudalism, mercantilism at last capitalism profited from the use of exploitation.

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Karl Marx’s class theory lies upon the premise that "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." He meant by this that ever since the inception of modern human society, people have been always divided into classes which are in conflict with each other due to class interests. An argument against class interests is that they are not given ab initio, they arise out of exposure of people occupying different social positions in varying social contexts. Karl Marx and Engels divided the masses into three broad classes, the proletariats, the petty bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie.

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Marx saw capital and liberal democracies as the fundamental reasons for the low standards of living and the low social conditions of workers. Karl Marx in particular is especially concerned with the political assumptions behind these two ideologies. According to him, these two types of government should be replaced by communism, since communism would provide a more equal and socially just society. Although this statement may seem unusual, since we tend to associate communism with Stalin and China, the type of communism implemented in these countries is different from the communism that Marx and Engels envisaged in their Communist Manifesto. Marx and Engels’ vision of communism is based on the principle of equality among the people and freedom

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Karl Marx had an idea of a classless happy society without poverty, greed or any private ownership. This idea of a utopian system was labelled Communism. He theorized that in such system all would be equal and all would give as much as they would and take as much as they would require. But that was all theoretical. There is not and never was a real Communist country in the world.

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Karl Marx (1818-1883) considered himself not to be a sociologist but a political activist. However, many would disagree and in the view of Hughes (1986), he was ‘both – and a philosopher, historian, economist, and a political scientist as well.’ Much of the work of Marx was political and economic but his main focus was on class conflict and how this led to the rise of capitalism. While nowadays, when people hear the word “communism”, they think of the dictatorial rule of Stalin and the horrific stories of life in a communist state such as the Soviet Union, it is important not to accuse Marx of the deeds carried out in his name.

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