Importance Of The Views Of Karl Marx And Abraham Kuyper

According to Marx and the Communist Manifesto, history is the rich battling with the poor, also history has always been a history of class struggle. The Communist Manifesto calls for equality among all classes, therefore there would be no classes. Workers are paid different salaries according to the quality and the training of their work. "Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes, directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat."[iii] As Marx’s states here, he feels that society is splitting more and more in to classes, which is feels is wrong. He thinks that society should be one and everyone should belong to one class. Marx did not deny the close connection between personal freedom and property rights. "In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property."[iv] Marx thought that the role of every individual was for everyone to be a worker and to make an equal amount of money as everyone else. Marx even stated that having a capitalist society would therefore make that society fall, all because of the ongoing struggle between the rich and the poor. The Communist Manifesto states that communism would change a person’s role in life from being decided on the basis

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

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.

The skies are an eternal grey, the sun is hardly seen, and people hurriedly rush to a meaningless job only to stumble back to a home in squalor. The grey of the skies is a perfect match for the people’s spirits. Hope, like the sun, becomes shrouded in a smoky cloud as the jobs provided to these people offer little in wages and even less in purpose. This is the life facing the proletariat, wage-labor social class or working poor. In contrast, the employers of the poor caste live rather lavish lives of wealth and stature. The bourgeois, upper middle-class consisting of business owners, shop owners, landlords, otherwise known as the wealthy employers. It is this contrast of social struggle that produced Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto and Abraham Kuyper’s The Problem of Poverty. Both Marx and Kuyper’s writings focus on the social struggle between the privileged, wealthy, and unprivileged, poor; however, Marx presents the struggle and his solution from an economic viewpoint while Kuyper presents the struggle and his solution from a religious viewpoint. Marx begins his presentation with a defining of both socio-economic groups then presents the political movement of Communism as a solution to the contrast. Kuyper, on the other hand, focuses his presentation on the idolization of monetary wealth over the sovereignty of God beginning at the conclusion of the French Revolution. Kuyper’s writing not only presents a religious solution to class struggle, but is also a response of

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.

Marx’s issue with society was that people felt alienated and estranged, mostly from their work. Marx saw the entire capitalist economic system, though a necessary stage in human development, as unjust. He blamed capitalism for the alienation people felt, identifying their need to sell their labor and work in unfulfilling jobs as the root of their dissatisfaction. He took issue with the dehumanization capitalism causes, as people are seen as a commodity and their individuality is sacrificed for industry and the success of their

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.

Karl Marx (1818-1883) was one of the most influential thinkers and writers of modern times. Although it was only until after his death when his doctrine became world know and was titled Marxism. Marx is best known for his publication, The Communist Manifesto that he wrote with Engels; it became a very influential for future ideologies. A German political philosopher and revolutionary, Karl Marx was widely known for his radical concepts of society. This paper give an analysis of “The Manifesto” which is a series of writings to advocate Marx ‘s theory of struggles between classes. I will be writing on The Communist Manifesto, published in 1848, which lays down his theories on socialism and Communism.

Marx advocated social reform for the proletariat (workers).The focus of Marx’s conflict theory is that by eliminating privilege, the overall welfare of the society can be increased. This would then create a true equality

Marx understanding of society shift into modernism lead to develop a form of communism that would come to be known as Marxism, communism is the economic thought of Marxism. Marx understands that Modernism calls for society to embrace equality for the betterment of society. Part of the problem with Capitalism comes from its exploitation of the working class; Marx understands this problem to be a vein of Pre-modernism and not a pillar of Modernism. Marx calls for the working class to rise up over their bourgeoisie oppressors and seize the equality that rightfully belongs to them. “Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other – bourgeoisie and proletariat. (Communist pg. 9)” If society wants to embrace modernism, then society needs to shift its focus from fighting each other and one exploiting another to a classless society. Marx highly criticizes the bourgeoisie in The Communist Manifesto, and this stems from the problems they created for themselves and for the rest of society. In their attempt to gain more power, land, and resources, their material conditions, upon the prominence which their families had been formed, were dissipating due to the lack of foresight and selfish greed. If the Bourgeoisie continues to exploit the proletariat then society will head to conflict, as is expected of Pre-modernism, but if the Bourgeoisie cease its exploitation and relinquish its power for the group,

     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,

Karl Marx in his Communist Manifesto takes a communism approach at the Nature vs Nurture conflict. Marx uses the class conflict between the bourgeoisie and proletarians in the beginning of the Communist Manifesto to explain whether its Nature vs Nurture that defines us. The class struggle between the bourgeoisie and proletarians as marx’s states is and has been throughout history a struggle of, “Free man and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed” (Marx 209). In other words, there always have to be those who are oppressed in order for there to be that one oppressor which gains from oppressing others. In the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and proletarians we see that the bourgeoisie the

Karl Marx came up later with a theory of a classless society to help the working class fight back. Marx came up with many radical ideas to change the way society was proceeding socially which, caused him to be banished from his native land in Germany and then from France, eventually he ended up in England. (Compton's Encyclopedia, 121) Karl Marx believed that social conflict was needed for society to function. He showed people not to be scared of conflict but rather to except it as a way of life. Karl Marx believes that people have a "class consciousness" which means that people are aware of differences between one another and that it causes a separation between groups of people. People mostly look at material objects for a sense of class status. If you are wealthy in life then you have many material objects and if you are poor then you have very little. People need to be educated in order to move up in society, which is why the working class people rarely have a chance to be very successful. Karl Marx realized that the working class deserved more then they were receiving and he tried to help the situation. Marx wanted the wealthy people and the poor to become more economically equal in status. Karl Marx also discusses the economic issues that the working class faces with change. With capitalism growing there is a greater need for production in the factories. More products need to be produced and at

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

Marxism regards the social, political, and economic theory that regards history evolving. Marx claimed to have discovered a “progressive pattern controlling human evolution'', which would eventually have society reach a point in the future where it would be a communist classless society. Marx said that people would no longer be oppressed, and the oppression of society would disappear when humans had reached the final stage of human evolution. Since Marx believed that ''law was an instrument of class domination'' he recognised that if society was ''classless'', the laws as a whole would have to be abolished. He thought that law stemed from class conflicts and the laws would have to be abolished to fully reach it's full potential as a classless communist society. (Augusto Zimmermann, 2009).