Marx Vs Spencer

Karl Marx and Herbert Spencer are both regarded as revolutionary thinkers. Marx, the father of reevaluating social constructs through the communist revolution believed everyone should have equal access to basic needs. On the other hand, Spencer believed society functioned like a living organism, where everyone performs a function much in the same way an organ performs specific functions in higher order living organisms. Although Marx and Spencer differ significantly on the role of people in a society, they do have a common view that it is the people who are critical to sustaining a society. First, Spencer and Marx had vastly differing perspectives on the role people play in a society. Spencer viewed people as essentially parts inside an organism.

The relationship between the people within a society is one where people have their own distinct jobs, but each rely on the other groups to do their part in order to keep the society going. For example, farmers do their part to provide the food to feed everyone. The miner and factory workers do their part to provide raw materials or merchandise for everyone. Craftsmen do their part to make any tool, buildings, or products necessary to the society. In this way, “each aids all, and all aid each” to create a more efficient and beneficial civilization

In contrast, Marx offered the perspective that the development of class and industry was due to the way men “[produced] their means of subsistence” (3). The rise of industrialism directly resulted from the ways men obtained their means for living. For example, some men could own property and industries, while others could not. As a result, those who don’t own property or industries have to work for those who do. In addition, with the development of individual families also comes the development of “unequal distribution [of] labor and its products” which creates a society with a more dominate or superior class and a lower class. According to Marx, “the natural division of labor in the family and the separation of society into individual families…” is what caused the rise of an industrial type of society (10). Marx proposed communism as a means to create a classless society. A society in which everyone is considered equal. He believed everyone should have equal access to land and resources, regardless of the amount of effort they put into their work. Marx saw the relationship between groups in a society as a continuous struggle between the “haves” and the “have nots”. To resolve this struggle, Marx proposed the concept of