Marx’s Concept of History
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Marx’s Concept of HistoryMarx’s history exploration is centered on his discrepancy concerning the means of production for example land, technology as well as natural resources that are crucial for the manufacture of substantial goods. Moreover, it encompasses the social relations of manufacture that is the social interactions through which individuals arrive into as they attain besides using the available means of production and organized together they entail the method of production. According to Marx, in any specified society the method of production typically changes, and as a result, the European cultures had advanced from the outdated method of production to a capitalist way of production. Therefore, this regarded as Marx’s theory of revolution (Marx & Engels, 2002). The capitalist mode of production is adept of remarkable growth since the capitalist has the capability and the inducement to, reinvest profits in the new technologies.
Therefore, Marx regarded the capitalist class as the utmost revolutionary in history since it was able to revolutionize the means of production continually. Generally, Marx held that the means of production transforms more swiftly compared to the relations of production. Therefore according to him the mismatch amid base plus superstructure is a significant source of social conflicts besides disruptions. Individuals incline to sell their labor-power once they consent to reimbursement in return for whatsoever task or work they accomplish in a specified period. Thus after vending their labor power, they get some money for survival.
The individuals who sell their labor power for survivability are termed “proletarians,” while those who buy it are the individuals who own some land and technology for production and are referred to as capitalists. Exploitation is evident in this aspect as the capitalist took advantage of the livelihoods of the poorer, working class to work for them for hourly wages in the factories or on the land (Cohen, 2000). The wealthy in the society were the individuals who possessed factories and land, and thus they would then control all the components of the society. In his thought what Marx wanted to comprehend better was how a lot of individuals could be in abject poverty in a world where wealth was abundant, and thus his answer was straightforward: capitalism.
The members of the aristocracy, as well as the church, are the one who possessed these means of production, and in the industrial society, the aristocracy was replaced by the capitalists who were moreover recognized as the “bourgeoisie.” These individuals owned businesses with the goalmouth of making some profit, and the working class was thus supplanted by the proletariat, who are the individuals who labored for wages. Marx thought that this structure was intrinsically unfair and under capitalism, he held that the workers would become destitute and more impoverished and after that, they would experience alienation (Cohen, 2002). Consequently, isolation is evident as the workers becoming more dissociated from, or secluded from their work, and this resulted in a sensation of powerlessness. In replacing this alienation besides the thrilling social class organization, Marx supposed that capitalism had to end and after that be replaced by a socialist system that would make all individuals equal and thus have all the individuals needs to be covered.
In Marx’s work with Engels, “the Communist Manifesto,” Marx elaborated that, “the proletarians had zero to lose but their cuffs for they have a world to win” (Marx & Engels, 2002). Through his utterances, he had called for a workers’ revolution whereby the proletarians would stand up against the bourgeoisie and hence ousting capitalism. However, to his despair, such revolutions happened in various countries, for example, China and Russia but it never occurred in the more industrialized countries of that period like Germany and Britain.
References
Cohen, G. A. (2000). Karl Marx’s theory of history: a defence. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Marx, K., & Engels, F. (2002). The communist manifesto. Penguin.
