The Working Class

1282 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Karl Marx views on religion

Karl Marx once said “Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the more, the more labor is sucks” (Karl Marx Quotes). Marx is well known as the Father of Communism, but now that the cold war is over and Communism is but a theory of government for a few countries, we can study Karl Marx as a visionary of his time, who foresaw how capitalism would grow out of control. With the used of religion, government laws and capitalism the wealthy will always reach out to control the masses.

Karl Marx defined history through economic class struggle. He argued that society was divided between the bourgeoisie (middle class, business owners, and capitalists) and the proletariat (wage workers). His belief was that the bourgeoisie grew wealthier and the wealthier by exploiting the proletariat. He also believed that wage workers were always paid less than the true value of their work, defining the difference between the value of the wage and the value of the goods produced. Over time the frustration over exploitation would result in class wars between the proletariat who believed the surplus value belonged to them and the bourgeoisie who were not willing to give up their profits. In the end revolution was the inevitable result by the endless exploitation of the workers by the capitalists. Karl Marks was talking about his time in age, but we are starting to see some of these ideas come to light in our own era. An example is “Occupy Wall Street” which is a protest against social and economic inequality. This protest highlights the high unemployment, greed, corruption, and the undue influence of corporations that mainly deal with financial services, and their ties with the government. The wor...

... middle of paper ...

...s time, and his works were used in the building of Communist countries, his visions of needing a balance of Socialism and Capitalism with the removal of religion from government were brilliant. The capitalistic government that we are practicing in the world today has led us to a massive disparity in wealth and power and like Karl Marx I argue for a fairer distribution of wealth and poverty.

Works Cited

Ambani, P. (2012, 01 02). U.S.Congress Worth Over $2 Billion: Wealthy Law Makers Mostly the Top 1%. Retrieved 01 05, 2012, from Ecoprneurist: http://ecopreneurist.com

Karl Marx Quotes. (n.d.). Retrieved 01 05, 2012, from http:/www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/subject/quotes/index.htm

Patterson, T. C. (2009). Karl Marx, Anthropologist. Oxford: Berg Publishers.

Seed, J. (2010). Marx: The Guides for the Perplexed. London: Continuum International Publishing.

Show More
Related

  • The Struggle Between The Working Class And Communism In The Communist Manifesto?

    724 Words  | 2 Pages

    In The Communist Manifesto written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the two German philosophers saw history as the struggle between the working class and the Bourgeois, or middle class (textbook 708). The Communist Manifesto was written in 1848, during the peak of the Industrial Revolution, a time when the Bourgeois made huge profits in manufacturing at the expense of the working class. According to Marx and Engels, the fruits of the Industrial Revolution created a new class of the oppressed modern working class, the Proletariat, which had never before existed because it was neither like serfdom or slave hood in that it was dependent on the Bourgeois to hire them for wage labor. This was the class the two philosophers envisioned would set off a revolution that would overthrow capitalism to end the perpetual class struggle and create a fair society known as Communism.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Karl Marx's Writing Of The Communist Manifesto

    2472 Words  | 5 Pages

    Karl Marx 's writing of ‘The Communist Manifesto’ in 1848 has been documented by a vast number of academics as one of the most influential pieces of political texts written in the modern era. Its ideologically driven ideas formed the solid foundation of the Communist movement throughout the 20th century, offering a greater alternative for those who were rapidly becoming disillusioned and frustrated with the growing wealth and social divisions created by capitalism. A feeling not just felt in by a couple of individuals in one society, but a feeling that was spreading throughout various societies worldwide. As Toma highlights in his work, Marx felt that ‘capitalism would produce a crisis-ridden, polarized society destined to be taken over by

    Read More

  • Marx And Marx's History Of Class Conflict In Society

    643 Words  | 2 Pages

    For Marx, the society history of class was a history of class conflict. He observed the successful rise of the bourgeoisie, and the essential of revolutionary violence. He says that the heightened form of class conflict securing the bourgeoisie rights that supported the capitalist economy. Marx believed that the poverty inherent in capitalism were a pre-existing form of class conflict. He assumed those wage laborers are in need to revolt to bring about a more equitable distribution of wealth and political power.

    Read More

  • An Analysis Of Karl Marx And Communist Manifesto

    846 Words  | 2 Pages

    Karl Marx was a German/Prussian philosopher, economist, sociologist, author, and revolutionary socialist. His economic ideas were the basis for communism, which can be seen around the world today. Marx was very popular due to his predictions of the fall of capitalism and the rise of the working class via revolution presented in his book, Communist Manifesto, written in 1848. Marx was very committed to his idea that history has always been affected by class struggles, which he touches base on in his book. His ideas are often found very controversial, and in Communist Manifesto, there is a lot to make controversy about.

    Read More

  • Extreme Pacifism Essay

    1357 Words  | 3 Pages

    Karl Marx does not agree with capitalism and views it as a system that incapacitates workers and places them in a category that will almost never attain the wealth that their owners/employers have. Capitalism oppresses its citizens and makes them believe that a capitalist society is best. Society has been able to benefit greatly from capitalism but a major fault in capitalism is the dependency that exists between capitalism and us. The disproportion of wealth amongst the rich and poor in America creates and maintains a group of Americans that will either have too much money and another group that struggles to ascertain a piece of that wealth but will almost never reach the same level of wealth.

    Read More

  • Comparing Marx and Freud

    901 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Marx, Weber, Durkheim, and Simmel: The Relationship between Society and the Individual

    3473 Words  | 7 Pages

    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 ...

    Read More

  • How Class Influences Identities

    393 Words  | 1 Pages

    Karl Marx (1818 - 1883) and Max Weber (1864 - 1920) both recognised that economic categories played a large part in social class structure. Nineteenth Century history plays an important part in understanding how class influenced identities. The Industrial revolution was changing the structure of the communities, the rich or landowners having a far better standard of living with better education, health care, property ownership and power than the poor. The working class would have a daily struggle to survive. The change in Trade Unions meant that the working class had a voice, helping to push their needs forward, looking for better standards of living and working conditions. Marx's concept of class was based around the production of goods. The emerging owners of these goods, or capital, were known as the ruling class. Marxism would define only two classes, the ruling class and the working class. The influence on identity of these two class structures would be very relevant in those days. The working class would earn a wage from the production of the goods but the ruling class would sell these for a profit and exploit the workers. The two classes were on two different levels of wealth, property ownership and social standing and they would struggle to mix, they were dependent on each other but the rewards would be unevenly matched.

    Read More

  • Economic Systems: Capitalism

    1104 Words  | 3 Pages

    Karl Marx was born middle-class in 1818 at Trier, Germany (Weber 39). He was more communistic than capitalistic; he saw many flaws in the system. Marx believed that everybody should have equal wealth. In his eyes, capitalism split people into two main classes, the bourgeoisie and proletariats. The bourgeoisie was the wealthy class that owned the factories and businesses. The proletariats were the wageworkers that could only sell their labor (Weber 14). Capitalism made the gap between to two classes even larger by making the rich richer and the poor poorer. In 1867, Das Kapital was published arguing about the unfair society capitalism creates. The bourgeoisie has the power to control who works when and for how much. They also control the media, government, and other social powers which give them more influence over the workers. The proletaria...

    Read More

  • Communist Manifesto Analysis

    970 Words  | 2 Pages

    Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ The Communist Manifesto explores class struggles and their resulting revolutions. They first present their theory of class struggle by explaining that “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” (Marx 14), meaning that history is a repeated class struggle that only ends with a revolution. Marx and Engels’ message in The Communist Manifesto is that it is inevitable for class struggles to result in revolutions, ultimately these revolutions will result in society’s transition to communism.

    Read More

  • Karl Marx and Capitalism

    893 Words  | 2 Pages

    Karl Marx, in the Capital, developed his critique of capitalism by analyzing its characteristics and its development throughout history. The critique contains Marx’s most developed economic analysis and philosophical insight. Although it was written in 1850s, its values still serve an important purpose in the globalized world and maintains extremely relevant in the twenty-first century.

    Read More

  • A Comparison of Karl Marx and Max Weber

    568 Words  | 2 Pages

    Marx’s perspective was not based on the conflict of ideas, but rather on the conflict of classes. This conflict is the results of a new mode of production. According to Marx, history would consist of epochs of modes of production. He states that these modes of production are: primitive communism, slave society, feudalism, capitalism, and then socialism and communism.

    Read More

  • Karl Marx's Advantages And Disadvantages Of Capitalism

    1200 Words  | 3 Pages

    Karl Marx was a philosopher, a sociologist, economist, and a journalist. His work in economics laid a foundation for the modern understanding of distribution of labor, and its relation to wealth generation. His theories about the society, economic structure and politics, which is known as Marxism led to him developing social classes. He later on showed how social classes were determined by an individual’s position in relation to the production process, and how they determine his or her political views. According to Karl Marx, capitalism was a result of the industrial revolution. Capitalism is a system that has been founded on the production of commodities for the purpose of sale. Marx defined the

    Read More

  • Marxism And Marxism

    1266 Words  | 3 Pages

    He saw communism as a way for all people to be truly free and equal. There would be no more class discrimination and everyone would have resourced based on what is needed. He exclaimed that communism would give individuals the freedoms that the bourgeoisie denied them. While this is what Karl Marx predicted and believed would be successful, the reality over time has taken a much different path proving that Marx’s ideas cannot be accurately applied

    Read More

  • The Political Philosophy of Karl Marx

    2291 Words  | 5 Pages

    Karl Marx was a German philosopher and political theorist. He developed the socio-political theory of Marxism. One of his most famous works is The Communist Manifesto that he co-wrote with Friedrich Engels. In The Communist Manifesto, Marx discusses his theories on society, economics and politics. He believed that “all societies progress through the dialectic of class struggle”. He criticized capitalism, and referred to it as the "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie". Marx believed that capitalism was unfair because the rich middle and upper class people manipulated the system and used it for their own benefit while we get the short end of the stick. We, being average Americans— like myself— who go to college full-time, juggle a job, and yet are constantly struggling just to make ends meet: the unappreciated, exploited and underpaid every day h...

    Read More

More about The Working Class

Open Document