Marx explains that society needs to be understood by studying real, existing human beings. We think about individuals historically to gain an understanding of reality. Physical survival is the key component; moreover, individuals need to survive to create history in which Marx studied to create explanations. Social production is a fundamental part of Marx’s theory of historical materialism. He asserts that individuals need to organize themselves and create some sort of order to survive.
Marx states that labor “not only produces commodities. It also produces itself and the worker as a commodity, and indeed in the same proportion as it produces
Throughout his life, Karl Marx has altered the way that he views labor and what labor means to society as well as the individual. We can see how in The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof Karl Marx is still concerned about the laborers but is more focused on scientific notions and ideology as well as the economic components compared to what how he focuses on social aspects in The Alienation of Labor. The Alienation of Labor was written first, in 1844. The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof was written in 1867. Over the course of these twenty three years Marx began to shift his focus from what labor means to the individual to a more abstract distanced look at the capitalist system.
This is because despite the energy of labor and the being of the labor which are put into the product, that product itself doesn’t belong to the laborer nor do they receive any benefits from the product i.e., ‘the fruits of their labor’. In a sense, the laborer loses something of himself during the time spent creating this estranged object, as it doesn 't identify with it as a meaningful part of its own presence as a person, yet simply as an independent entity alienated to itself. Marx states that the “worker puts his life into the object; but now his life no longer belongs to him but to the object” (29). Therefore, the more labor one puts into a product the more powerful and estranged the world of products becomes of them. This estrangement can become so acute that the bare necessities of living are taken from the laborer as the more products they produce, the less they possess.
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.
According to Diamond, archaeological evidence suggests that our transformation from hunter-gatherers to farmers was a disaster whose impact can still be seen today. The transformation brought along unpleasant changes, such as social and sexual inequality, disease, and tyranny. Most people would not believe in this negative view of our transformation from hunter-gatherers to farmers because we are better off than the people of the Middle Ages and cavemen in terms of the availability of food, advanced technology, and longevity. From the progressivist view, hunter-gatherers adopted agriculture because it was a productive way for them to produce more food for less work. The progressivist also believe that agriculture gave us more free time since we don’t have to constantly move around looking for food.
Karl Marx viewed society as a complex entity shaped by historical forces and characterized by the struggle between classes. He analyzed the capitalist mode of production, criticizing it for exploiting workers and generating social inequality. In "The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844," Marx wrote about the alienation of labor under capitalism, arguing that workers were reduced to mere instruments of production, and stripped of their creativity and autonomy. One way in which workers are alienated from the products of their labor is that they do not own or control the means of production, such as the factories or machinery they work with.
Social stratification is a particular form of social inequality. It is a system of interaction or differentiation whereby some people get fewer or more rewards than others. Power, wealth and prestige are the bases of stratification. Other than these, race, ethnic, gender, human rights, religion, social forces have also been counted on affecting the social stratification. How do these construct, maintenance and change the social stratification?
For example, before the existence of civil society, there were no class struggles. Humans worked together for their collective good. Marx refers to this mode of production as ‘’primitive communism’’. The reason there were no class struggles during this mode of production was there were no surplus goods or labour
Communist thought acknowledges the technological achievements that have been made possible through liberal thought and capitalism, but argue that the conditions produced have been more enslaving than freeing. Marx himself notes the significance of the industrial revolution, with its “productive forces” (Marx & Engels, 1848, p. 15) in the “subjugation of nature” (p. 15) as greatest ever observed in human history. Marx however pessimistically downplays the significance of the ‘freeing’ aspects of liberalism. Instead, through his theory of historical materialism, he views societal relations in the industrial age similarly to other epochs in a past, a history of mankind marked by “class struggle” (p. 14).
Marx, through his communist manifesto, believed that “modern industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist”, taking society from one epoch of social stratification and forced labour to Capitalism, under which the inequality between the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat grew and became more evident. On the other hand, Durkheim saw industrialisation as a mainly positive occurrence which, along with the division of labour, provided the necessary institutions are in place to maintain it, as it causes society to change and develop and thus “civilization develops because it cannot fail to develop” (Durkheim: 1933: 337). Yet despite differences in their views of the effect, both Marx and Durkheim used the process of industrialisation to explain how society progresses and how society is held together or broken, with Durkheim, in particular, looking at just how much the structure of society changes as the division of labour progresses (Morrison:
Pro-Choice vs. Pro-Life Abortion. The word alone has the power to make a room go still. The popular debate topic has a reputation of provoking aggression no matter where it is mentioned due to its strong relation to people’s rights and ethics, but does it really need further deliberation? Abortions should be kept legal across the United States for a multitude of reasons: they allow people to stay in school and work, largely lessen likelihood of would-be-parents falling into economic depressions, prevent overload of responsibilities to the unprepared, protect women’s rights to privacy, help reduce the number of parentless children, conserve resources, give options, decrease maternal injuries, lower crime rates, and maintain the amount of federal spending on welfare.
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
Marx believed that the current capitalist society is separated into two classes, the Proletariat society, and Bourgeois society. The Proletarians, as perceived by Marx, are part of the working class that only possess one significant material value, that is the ability to work, or labour power. The Bourgeoise, on the other hand, is the societal class that owns the means of production and hence rule over the Proletarians. As I quote from Marx’s book, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” (Marx and Engels, 1988, p. 473)
Marx’s theory on exploitation is related to his earlier writings on the theory of alienation. They are both similar in that they are both highly critical of the capitalist system. Grint,(2005) emphasises that before Karl Marx nobody had ever confronted the idea of exploitive wage labour, many great thinkers of Marx’s time like Locke and Ricardo thought that the value of the wage labour was exactly equivalent to the labour expended while producing a product. Watson,T.J (2008) states that “ capitalist employment is exploitive in attempting to take from working people the value which they create through their labour and which is properly their own. ”P.62.
