Communist Manifesto And Abraham Kuyper 's The Problem Of Poverty

     Marx describes the problem in great detail in the first chapter. He feels there is a problem between the bourgeoisie and the proletarians. The bourgeoisie were the oppressed class before the French Revolution and he argues that they are now the oppressors. The proletarians are the new working class, which works in the large factory and industries. He says that through mass industry they have sacrificed everything from the old way of religion, employment, to a man’s self worth and replaced it with monetary value. He is mad that the people of ole that use to be upper class such as skills man, trades people, & shopkeepers, are now slipping into the proletarians or working class. He

During the nineteenth century, Karl Marx and Andrew Carnegie had definite opinions about the affects of industrialization on society. A greater understanding of their views on history and humanity can be gained by comparing and contrasting two written artifacts: The Communist Manifesto and “Wealth.”

The nineteenth century was a time of wide-spread changes across Europe and America. Two great seminal thinkers, Karl Marx and Abraham Kuyper, examined the issue of poverty during this time through their books The Communist Manifesto and The Problem of Poverty respectively. Both philosophers exposed economic, political, and social problems of this period. The ideas and reforms of Marx and Kuyper proved to be so tectonic that they resulted in the greatest political upheaval of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. While Marx wrote his book to rally society against capitalism for a socioeconomic change, Kuyper viewed poverty through a Christian lens and weighed the effect of society in regards to this issue.

In order to discuss the different ways in which economists considered societies could resolve the economic calculation problem and the implications of the economic calculation debate it is important to consider different view points of influential economists from all over the world.

The Industrial Age brought much hunger, poverty, and despair with its many technological innovations aimed to make man’s life better. Although Kuyper and Marx agreed that social conditions in the Industrial Age were not acceptable, they differed on the cause and solution to the poverty and despair in the modern world. Kuyper’s approach to the problem of poverty is like minimally invasive surgery, less damaging but more time-intensive. Marx’s approach, however, is like amputation with no cauterization, quick but with little chance of recovery. Marx seeks to heal a wound by creating another; Kuyper seeks to heal through correcting the heart of his age.

The Communist Manifesto, originally drafted as, “Manifesto of the Communist Party”, is a pamphlet written by Karl Marx, that in essence reflects an attempt to explain the goals and objectives of Communism, while also explaining the concrete theories about the nature of society in relation to the political ideology. The Communist Manifesto breaks down the relationship of socio-economic classes and specifically identifies the friction between those classes. Karl Marx essentially presents a well analyzed understanding of class struggles and the issues concerning capitalism, the means and modes of production and how those means affect the classes as a whole.

Marxism is a critical perspective based off of the ideas of Karl Marx, with Marx’s most famous work being the Communist Manifesto. This book illustrates a social theory in which all class and need

     The Communist Manifesto was written by two world renowned philosophers, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. This book was produced in an era of great suffering and anguish of all workers in a socially distressed system. In a time when revolutions were spreading through Europe like wildfire, Marx organized his thoughts and views to produce the critical pamphlet “The Communist Manifesto”. Marx’s scrutiny illustrates his belief that unless change is to occur the constant outcome will repeatedly remain uniform. This is a novel that displays the differentiation between the Bourgeois and the Proletariat. Class relationships are defined by an era's means of production. Marx’s

Throughout history there have bene several attempts at creating us government standards around the world. We saw a rise of socialism, where everyone is supposed to work towards a better economy for as little as possible. Then communist governments where government has all full and total control, like Russia all those years ago. Now a rise in democracy has flown to the top government in the world, the one most nations use. Karl Marx’s communist manifesto vs. Robert B. Reich’s “The Poor are getting Poorer and the Rich are getting Richer.”

Generally, Marx’s position on religion is drawn up in an entirely negative manner. In his writings, he expresses his belief that religion is a set of doctrines intended to stabilize, while at the same time bring into servitude the working class people. In addition to that, he argues that the society’s inclination towards religious excitement serves to represent a reaction to disaffection. Also, Marx contends that, since religion causes human beings to feel delusive happiness it makes an erroneous mental representation in as well as of itself. Indeed to him, it is an instrument utilized to sustain cultural systems together with ideologies that in most cases encourages oppression in the society (Parsons 38-46).

As industry was booming, the mass immigration into the cities proved to be hurtful for some parishes that did not have the space to hold many parishioners. Money from the upper class, however, erected new churches and places of worship, large enough and accommodating for most, but now discriminatory against the lower class. Religious leaders thought that lucrative churches would solve the economic problems of the time, but all it really did is widen the gap between social classes even more.[4] Religion was no longer about faith, but rather it became a business, aiding to the rich, taking from the poor. Karl Marx saw a need for equality without religious interference, and he expressed it in the Communist Manifesto, stating, “Society could no longer live under this bourgeois.”[5]

Marx’s (1987) “materialist conception of history” (p. 146) provides an outline through which he presents the intimate connection between society and the provision of material need through the ages. His theory begins with the pre-modern individual, whose existence consists only of productive actions vital to only his own survival, such as gathering food and building shelter. Marx considers this

Karl Marx describes “Society as a whole [as being] more and more [split] up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other-bourgeoisie and proletariat” (Marx 124).  As Marx made his distinction between upper class, bourgeoisie, and lower class, proletariats, it is important to keep in mind the societal structure at the time.  To understand how classes were created and the disparity between the rich and poor, or, bourgeoisie and proletariat, it is necessary to examine how people came to be rich and poor.  Exploring a time before money existed will help us to process and understand reasons why the binary between rich and poor exists and how it is reflective of low and high art distinctions.

Karl Marx, also a philosopher was popularly known for his theories that best explained society, its social structure, as well as the social relationships. Karl Marx placed so much emphasis on the economic structure and how it influenced the rest of the social structure from a materialistic point of view. Human societies progress through a dialectic of class struggle, this means that the three aspects that make up the dialectic come into play, which are the thesis, antithesis and the synthesis (Avineri, 1980: 66-69). As a result of these, Marx suggests that in order for change to come about, a class struggle has to first take place. That is, the struggle between the proletariat and the capitalist class, the class that controls

Though Marx views the communist revolution as an unavoidable outcome of capitalism, his theory stipulates that the proletariat must first develop class consciousness, or an understanding of its place within the economic superstructure. If this universal character of the proletariat does not take shape, then the revolution cannot be accomplished (1846: 192). This necessary condition does not pose a problem within Marx’s theoretical framework, as the formation of class consciousness is inevitable in Marx’s model of society. His writings focus on the idea that economic production determines the social and political structure (1846, 1859). For Marx, social class represents a person’s relation to the means of production, a relation that he believes is independent of