Historical And Dialectical Materialist Approaches

One very complex issue of today is the idea of social change. This paper will introduce the lives of Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim and how they both use different theories to introduce the structure of modern society. Each special theory explains how society stays stable and what

Marx begins by writing, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. (Jones, 219)” The existing society was divided between the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat, as I stated before. The Bourgeoisie consisted of the social class who owns the means of production. The Proletariat consisted of wage-laborers who have no means of production of their own and they are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live (Jones 219). As you can see the bourgeoisie had the upper hand because they were the people who were mainly in charge of the proletariat. Marx believed that the

Karl Marx is most known for proposing the class struggle. Marx’s definition of class was defined by the ownership of property. “Such ownership vests a person with the power to exclude from the property and to use it for personal purposes. There were three classes in society for property. The three classes are called bourgeoisie, the class that makes a production of items such as machinery and factory buildings. The bourgeoisie class made its income from its profit. The second class was landowners. Landowners made their income from property they owned and rented out to others. The third and final class was the proletariats. Proletariats made money by labor. They sold their labor for a fee. The one thing that all the classes had in common was that they all were determined by their property, not by the earnings made or ranking. It is all determined by handing out and “consumption” (Rummel).

Two names that are repeatedly mentioned in sociological theory are Karl Marx and Max Weber. In some ways these two intellectuals were similar in the way they looked at society. There are also some striking differences. In order to compare and contrast these two individuals it is necessary to look at each of their ideas. Then a comparison of their views can be illustrated followed by examples of how their perspectives differ from each other.

In this essay I will discuss three of the main ideas from Karl Marx’s “Communist Manifesto”. I have chosen to look at class struggles, the abolishment of private property and the idea that states look after the dominant classes in societies. I chose these as I found them to be the three main ideas that stood out to me most after reading the book. I have delved into each one and shown why I think they are the three main ideas. I found them to be very interesting ideas which Marx has communicated very well.

Marx’s view on social change is due to the struggle between different classes within society who are constantly competing with each other to improve their way of life and the condition that they are in. Marxists analysis leads to the conclusion that capitalism; the currently dominant form of economic management, leads to the oppression of the proletariat; who not only make up the majority of the world 's population, but who also spend their lives working for the benefit of the bourgeoisie or the wealthy ruling class in society. Since the death of Karl Marx in 1883 his viewpoints have not been viewed not to be relevant. Many times since his death his viewpoints have come up as every new generation challenges the unequal, unjust and the people who support every capitalism system and each new generation looks for ideas and a method to change the world we live in. People who are classed as

This class struggle itself became an engine for social change in his understanding of history. History for Marx was a dialectical materialist process: dialectical because it consisted of opposing forces, materialist in its emphasis on economics and politics. Through his conception of history, he believed one could then understand the nature of social change and how to effect it. Although his belief was only partially and unsuccessfully realised, this conception of production and its role in creating haves and have-nots was to have a lasting impact on economics and development studies. Many branches have drawn upon aspects of his ideas (and later Marxists) while rejecting some aspects. Clearly the formulation of class may have had applicability in the 19th century, but is a much more complicated matter today. At the same time, the identification of exploiter and exploited has helped to understand aspects of inequality that we find today.

Karl Marx was a communist researcher and coordinator, a key character in the historical locale of economic and hypothetical idea, and an awesome societal prophet. But it is as a sociological theorist that he commands our interest. Society, according to Marx, involved a moving equalization of contradictory powers that create social change by their strain and battle. Marx's vision depended on a transformative purpose of flight. For him, battle instead of quiet development was the motor of advance; strife was the father of all things, and social conflict the principal of historic process. This reasoning was in opposition with the greater part of the teachings of his eighteenth century antecedents, however tweaked in to much nineteenth century thought. To Marx the propelling power in history was the way in which men classify each other in their consistent battle to seize their work from nature. "The first historical act is . . . the production of material life itself. This is indeed a historical act, a fundamental condition of all history" (Bancroft and Rogers, 2010). A communist state would have the laborers possess the methods for generation and all would share the benefits similarly. The laborers would be working for themselves, not for the advantage of the business people. All types of government would gradually vanish, as the laborers comprehended the advantage of working for the benefit of each other. When this model situation happened, his optimal society that he called

The first part of the Communist Manifesto focuses on the bourgeoisie and the proletariats. Throughout the text Marx focuses on the divide between the two classes, and the impact it had on society. Marx “the history all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” Before the bourgeoisie rose to power, Feudal society was the dominant social system in which the upper class provided land and protection for the working class. Eventually the feudal society could not keep up with the growing demand of the market and the bourgeoisie arose from the remnants of the feudal society. As the bourgeoisie rise to power this divide of the social class was known as the oppressor vs the oppressed.

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

     Quite clearly, Marx is concerned with the organization of society. He sees that the majority of society, more specifically, the proletariat, are living in sub-human conditions. Marx also sees that the bourgeoisie have a disproportionate amount of property and power, and because of that, they abuse it. He writes of how the current situation with the bourgeoisie and proletariat developed. "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." There has always been struggles the between two classes, an upper and lower class. However, Marx speaks of the current order saying,

Marx’s idea of historical materialism states that material conditions or economic factors affect the structure and development of society. His theory is the materialistic understanding of the history of societies. To do this Marx traced the evolution of human societies from one stage to another then interpreted the evolution of societies in relation of their material or economic bases. He discovered

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

     In the Communist Manifesto Karl Marx explains his historical vision of a revolutionary class struggle between Bourgeois and Proletarians. His views are highlighted from the very beginning “The History of all hitherto societies has been the history of class struggles” (50). Focusing on the development and eventual destruction of the bourgeoisie, which was the dominant class of his day, and the rise of the working class, that of the Proletarians.

Human societies have been class based in some way and the class factor has been the most basic dividing or differentiating factor between broad social groups. In the economic sphere that Marx’s theory focuses on, there is a class that own and control means of economic production which could be referred to as the upper class, and there is the class that maybe own nothing, but their ability to sell their labor power in return for wages which could be referred to as the middle or low class. From that understanding, and based on the conflict theory, one might argue that unequal distribution of resources and access