Herbert Marcuse’s An Essay on Liberation

One of the honors for ‘greatest theories’ in contemporary civilization has to be awarded to Marxism. Invented in late 19th century by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Marxism has had great influences on the development of modern society. Despite its eventual failure, Marxism once led to numerous revolutions that working classes raised against the ruling parties in different countries. Consequently, it paved the way for the erection of the Berlin Wall, the formation of the Warsaw Treaties—communist camp confronting NATO, and the establishment of a world super power, the Soviet Union at the dawn of this century. Even decades later, after all those Marxist milestones

Division of labour is also credited with the rise of trade between different areas, the rise of capitalism, and increasingly complex manufacturing and industrialization. For Karl Marx, the production portion of Capitalism signalled great trouble. He believed production in Capitalist society worked in a way that the rich factory owner benefited and the poor factory workers lost. In his manner of reasoning, the Capitalist system was inherently meant to benefit the rich and exploit the poor: “All the bourgeois economists are aware of is that production can be carried on better under the modern police than on the principle of might makes right. They forget only that this principle is also a legal relation, and that the right of the stronger prevails in their ‘constitutional republics’ as well, only in another form.”[ii] Marx’s view of society and the world lead him to believe that humans create change in their lives and in their environment through practical activity in the practical world.

In the following section, I will define terms that Karl Marx used in his works. The term bourgeois is defined as the owners of the means of production. In oppose to bourgeoisie, the proletarian or the wage-earner is defined as “a class of labourers who live only as long as they find work, and who find work only as long as their labour increases capital” (I. Craib, Classical Social Theory, 99). Economic is defined as relating to the process or system by which goods and services are produced, sold, and bought (Merriam-Webster, 2016). The economic process that we will mainly focus on is capitalism. In a capitalist society, the main goal of any firms is simply to make profits for the owner. In the following essay, I will attempt to explain why do

For example, it shapes the nature of religion, law, education, the state and so on. According to Marx, capitalism sows the seeds of its own destruction. For example, by polarising the classes, bringing the proletariat together in ever-increasing numbers, and driving down their wages, capitalism creates the conditions under which the working class can develop a consciousness (or awareness) of its own economic and political interests in opposition to those of its exploiters. As a result, the proletariat moves from merely being a class-in-itself (whose members share the same economic position) to becoming a class-foritself, whose members are class conscious – aware of the need to overthrow capitalism. The means of production would then be put in the hands of the state and run in the interests of everyone, not just of the bourgeoisie. A new type of society – socialism developing into communism – would be created, which would be without exploitation, without classes and without class conflict. Marx’s work has been subjected to a number of criticisms. First, Marx’s predictions have not come true. Far from society becoming polarised and the working class becoming poorer, almost everyone in western societies enjoys a far higher standard of living than ever before. The collapse of so-called ‘communist’ regimes like the former Soviet Union, and growing private ownership and capitalist growth in China, cast some doubt on the viability of the practical implementation

The Communist Manifesto left a tremendous impact on a society that was rapidly becoming industrialized, and its effects can even be seen on the dominating economic system of the twenty-first century. In the later nineteenth century, however, industrial capitalism was on the brink of ruin. “On many occasions during the past century, Marxists have thought that capitalism was down for the count . . . Yet it has always come back with renewed strength.” Industrial capitalism succeeded in the face of communism, despite numerous economic disasters. As the capitalist economists hopefully noted at the time, these economic earthquakes, temporary in character, soon cured themselves and left capitalism unscathed. Karl Marx sought to create

The Industrial Revolution (1750-1850) had brought about significant changes in agriculture, mining, manufacturing, transportation and technology and subsequently established an era of unprecedented economic growth in capitalist economies. It was within this era that Karl Marx had observed the deprivation and inequality experienced by men of the proletariat, the working class, who had laboured excessively for hours under inhumane conditions to earn a minimum wage while the bourgeoisie, the capitalist class, reaped the benefits. For Marx it was this fundamental inequality within the social and economic hierarchy that had enabled capitalist societies to function. While Marx’s theories, in many instances have been falsified and predictions

Karl Marx’s critique of political economy provides a scientific understanding of the history of capitalism. Through Marx’s critique, the history of society is revealed. Capitalism is not just an economic system in Marx’s analysis. It’s a “specific social form of labor” that is strongly related to society. Marx’s critique of capitalism provides us a deep

Marx's ideas on labor value are very much alive for many organizations working for social change. In addition, it is apparent that the gap between the rich and poor is widening on a consistent basis. According to Marx, the course of human history takes a very specific form which is class struggle. The engine of change in history is class opposition. Historical epochs are defined by the relationship between different classes at different points in time. It is this model that Marx fleshes out in his account of feudalism's passing in favor of bourgeois capitalism and his prognostication of bourgeois capitalism's passing in favor of proletarian rule. These changes are not the reliant results of random social, economic, and political events; each follows the other in predictable succession. Marx responds to a lot of criticism from an imagined bourgeois interlocutor. He considers the charge that by wishing to abolish private property, the communist is destroying the "ground work of all personal freedom, activity, and independence". Marx responds by saying that wage labor does not properly create any property for the laborer. It only creates capital, a property which works only to augment the exploitation of the worker. This property, this capital, is based on class antagonism. Having linked private property to class hostility, Marx

Though Karl Marx and Alexis de Tocqueville differ, they both contributed greatly to revolutionary concepts of their era. To better understand the analyses between politics, social, and economic changes Marx and Tocqueville discuss, we must first understand the shift of their time and the need for sociological analysis. The 19th century was a time of change and adaptation for everyone and few scholars were capable and willing to understand the impacts these changes would have on society and its entities. Both industrial and democratic revolutions affected their times and created shifts in society. The industrialization affected many aspects of society. It created a structural change in the economy shifting from agrarian income to industrial and commercial income. Technology impacted labour force and production shifting to large-scale manufacturing creating new types of investments. These changes affected class structure, migration, and workers which in turn affected economy and a shift in politics.

As the bourgeois advanced financially, they also gained political influence. They progressed from a once oppressed class to an independent urban republic. As their political influence increased, certain changes became clear. The bourgeois had “torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation (Marx).” This force eventually grew to the point that it was able to force other nations to conform to its values and methods or suffer extinction. As the bourgeois became richer, the proletarians began to suffer more. The balance of property began to shift even more rapidly than before leaving property “concentrated…in a few hands (Marx).” Eventually, the super-efficient production of the manufacturing economy began to take its toll on the bourgeois as well as the proletarians. More goods were produced due to the cheaper costs and ease of manufacture leading to an over-production of goods (Marxism). Over-production became a serious problem, resulting with widespread unemployment of the proletarians, and threats of a revolution on the horizons.

Because are so many different kinds of revolutions with their own theoretical frameworks, I will analyze the merits of Marxism as it unfolds in the various authors. Because the writers speak of a particular time and place, all examinations will limit itself to the Europe in the lifetimes of the authors, drawing from V for Vendetta and modernity mostly as counterexamples. Therefore, this paper will focus on Marxist revolutions in mid-19th century to early 20th century Europe.

As capitalist societies expanded, Marx argued that exploitation amongst workers became more apparent. Marx believed that the only way to get rid of the exploitation, oppression and alienation was for a revolution amongst the proletariat workers. Marx suggests that it is only when the means of production are communally owned, that class divisions among the masses will disappear.

The theorists use Marxism as the central pillar to ‘fix’ and develop the orthodox approach into Neo-Marxist though. However, as Karl Marx saw alienation of the working class by the bourgeois in the growing industrialized west and uprising of the former class against the latter as a remedy to the problem of the capitalist state, the proponents of the Frankfurt school essentially sought emancipation and transformation from the oppressing and alienating capitalism into a ‘real democracy”

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

This development of false needs results in one-dimensional thought and behaviour where the ability for individuals to think critically is compromised. This lack of critical thinking results in a flattening of discussion, critic and independence. What Marcuse is ultimately saying is that the capacity for independent thought is becoming blurred with the influence of consumer culture. The ability for those within an advanced industrial society to reason between ‘two dimensions’ (Marcuse, H. 1968), in other words, to look at an industrial society characterised by labour and waste while still acknowledging technological progress, and to imagine a form of living that uses technology to aid nature rather than perpetuate poverty and oppression within the society.