1. How did the development of modern societies through the division of labor lead to various forms of ownership, and what are some examples Marx and Engels give of the various stages of ownership? a. As the modern societies developed, the division of labor created a separation of powers. According to Marx, there is a division into the upper class and the lower class. The upper class, or dominate class maintains and expresses the ideals of the dominant ruling class. While the lower class, or working members are passive within society. By creating this power differential, ownership is possessed by the ruling class. However, when conflict arises, the revolutionary class which represents the majority of society will overthrow the ruling class at that time, thus taking their place and presenting their own dominate ideals. So in short there is an upper class and lower class, until the lower class realizes the ongoing conflict between classes causing a revolution and this continues on throughout history. 2. What do Marx and Engels mean when they write: “The social structure and the State are continually evolving out of the life process of definite individuals, but of individuals, not as they may appear in their own or other people’s imaginations, but as they really are … ”? a. …show more content…
Honestly, I think that Marx and Engels are referring to Marx ideas that society is based off of the material things. In other words, it is not the idea of someone but their actual environment that sparks the ideas and societal norms around them. Marx’s thinking was that ideas are not preexisting, but it is the material world that creates ideas. Instead of starting as an ideal translated to real men, you begin with real working men and that forms the ideal of their life-process. So essentially, how people collectively work together to produce society. 3. Pick an example of something that you consider to be a ruling idea in modern society. If you were Marx or Engels, how would you explain where this ruling idea came from? a. A ruling idea in modern society is this concept of the American dream. That if you work really hard, and go to college, and do everything right you will eventually become a part of the upper class. Marx would argue that it is a façade that the upper class wants you believe. To further your education means to bring yourself further into debt thus reinforcing the upper classes hold and dominancy. You cannot become the upper class when you are paying 30,000 dollars in debt, if not more. The ruling class are responsible for carrying out its interest to the whole society. Basically stabilizing the inequality that separates the different classes. 4. How is Marx’s vision of the division of labor different from Durkheim’s? Which do you feel is more convincing and why? a.
Marx vison of the division of labor consists of this struggle between classes. That all of the ideas that we use as our own are really originated by the upper class to sustain and uphold their power over the lower class. The ideas of the ruling class are used simply to justify their procession of material stuff while you have nothing. Durkheim’s primary view of the division of labor was that of interdependence and social solidarity. I feel that both are generally convincing, but Marx makes a better argument. It is clear to see there has and will most likely always be class struggle. Our society is made up of hierarchical ladders, someone will always think they are better and need to be in
power.
Marx sees history as a struggle between classes: “Oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes” (Marx and Engles 14).
Society as a whole, has an interest in categorizing people and groups. Some of these categories are made of people from different social classes. Certain people are similar in the way they live and the amount of money they make so they become categorized together as a certain group. During the Industrial Revolution Karl Marx provided the idea of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie as different social classes. The bourgeoisie being the owners and the rulers and the proletariat being made of the workers and the laborers. From this idea of different social classes, there
The bourgeoisie rule the material forces of society, they have access to material production and control the means of mental production. “The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas;...” (p.173). Being in control of production allows the bourgeoisie’s the power to construct ideas and have the proletarians follow them. This means generation after generation continue to follow these ideas and keeps individuals in the social class they belong according to the bourgeoisie 's. This historical method humans followed allowed division of labor to
According to Marx, capitalist system has another damage rather than class differentiation and low source of income. This damage is basically alienation of labor. Labors are being fundamentally alienated from production, production process, man’s species being and also from other men. Those are the alienation steps of workers in capitalist world. According to communist theory Marx believes that in such system society divides into two different classes; on one hand there are property owners so called bourgeoisie and on the other hand property less workers so called proletariats. For Marx the class stratification that driven from private ownership causes to alienate workers from the existence world. It begins that property less workers become alienated from the product that they produce. Worker relates to...
In the Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engels. The authors make sure that it’s very well known that proletarians (the working class), are being oppressed by the Bourgeois, and they also make sure every one knows that it is not the first time in history when there is a minority that rules over the majority, and that this ends up in class conflict, that leads to a revolution where the powerful are overthrown. The way that the Marx, and Engels demonstrate that the Bourgeois are inherently oppressive is by talking about the way their private land is giving them increase of power over the proletarians, and that the proletarians are being in a way enslaved by their labor (job). Instead of feeling enslaved by their job they should (in a ideal society) happy about their labor, but are instead, in the contrary, being exploited to mass produce, and not being paid enough for their labor; demonstrating that Bourgeois are benefiting from the
Before expounding upon these ideas, it is necessary to establish a baseline from which to view these topics. It is important to realize that we as humans view everything from our own cultural perspective. Marx speaks of this saying, "Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class made into a law for all, a will, whose essential character and direction are determined by the economical conditions of existence of your class."
In the first section of Communist Manifesto, Marx explains the class struggles of the modern society, most notably found between the bourgeoisie and the proletariats. He also points out that in today’s modern society, all of the exploitive relationships that were covered by ideology (i.e. religion) have all been uncovered and revealed to be only in self-interest. Finally, he explains that the bourgeoisie need to continually change their way of leadership if they want to stay in power. The proletariats, in Marx’s opinion, go to great lengths as to how the modern laborers seem to be seen as part of the machinery and are only good for what labor they produce. Marx reveals that the proletariats are a unique class, and that they are connected by the miserable existence they share in common. He believes that they have nothing to lose, and that by being proletariats they have no powers or privileges to defend; rather, to help themselves they must destroy the entire class system. Because of this, when they have the revolution they destroy everything.
Karl Marx believed class was a matter of economics, that is, how the individual fits into the pattern of modern capitalist society. Marx argued that the whole of capitalist society was constructed in order to support this idea including the society’s infrastructure. Marx believed that social classes arise when a group gains control of the means of production. This group also has the power to maintain or increase its wealth by taking advantage of the surplus value of labor. Many people question why a worker would labor under such conditions. The reason is quite simple according to Marx. The reason is political and social representation. Members of this class elect representatives who pass laws that serve their interests. Landlords and factory owners were able to use their control of resources to exploit the unlanded laborers in the newly emerging factories.
Marx views history as being determined by economics, which for him is the source of class differences. History is describe in The Communist Manifesto as a series of conflicts between oppressing classes and oppressed classes. According to this view of history, massive changes occur in a society when new technological capabilities allow a portion of the oppressed class to destroy the power of the oppressing class. Marx briefly traces the development of this through different periods, mentioning some of the various oppressed and oppressing classes, but points out that in earlier societies there were many differentiations of social classes. Marx sees the modern age as being distinguished from earlier periods by the simplifications of the class conflict, splitting up society into two great hostile groups: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
Karl Marx, a German philosopher, saw this inequality growing between what he called "the bourgeoisie" and "the proletariat" classes. The bourgeoisie was the middle/upper class which was growing in due to the industrial revolution, and the proletariats were the working class, the poor. These two classes set themselves apart by many different factors. Marx saw five big problems that set the proletariat and the bourgeoisie apart from each other. These five problems were: The dominance of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat, the ownership of private property, the set-up of the family, the level of education, and their influence in government.
In the Communist Manifesto it is very clear that Marx is concerned with the organization of society. He sees that the majority individuals in society, the proletariat, live in sub-standard living conditions while the minority of society, the bourgeoisie, have all that life has to offer. However, his most acute observation was that the bourgeoisie control the means of production that separate the two classes (Marx #11 p. 250). Marx notes that this is not just a recent development rather a historical process between the two classes and the individuals that compose it. “It [the bourgeois] has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, and new forms of struggle in place of the old ones. Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie ...
In The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, a set of rules, much like we consider the Ten Commandments to be, is established for what a “advanced country” would abide by. A few of these ideas to follow include abolition of all right to inheritance, a heavy progressive or graduated income tax, equal obligation of all to work, and combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries.
Marx and Engels saw both the proletariat and the bourgeoisie as an outgrowth of feudal society. They argued that the bourgeoisie emerged as a result of exploration and discovery of new land, ...
The changes accompany the transition from one epoch to another. In the late nineteenth century labor has become a commodity to the merchants, and the formation of a new mode of production has risen which gave rise to a capitalist society. There is a new class distinction between the laborer and those who owned the means of production.
According to Marx class is determined by property associations not by revenue or status. It is determined by allocation and utilization, which represent the production and power relations of class. Marx’s differentiate one class from another rooted on two criteria: possession of the means of production and control of the labor power of others. The major class groups are the capitalist also known as bourgeoisie and the workers or proletariat. The capitalist own the means of production and purchase the labor power of others. Proletariat is the laboring lower class. They are the ones who sell their own labor power. Class conflict to possess power over the means of production is the powerful force behind social growth.