Karl Marx 's Theories During The Industrial Revolution

In the first half of the 19th century the processes known as Industrialization and Urbanization started to transform Europe. It affected and changed every aspect of life of every citizen of every European nation. The notorious results of these changes were the horrible living and working conditions of the working class, who made up the majority of the society. Great Britain was involved most profoundly in this Industrial Revolution as it led the way in the development of railroads and factories. We find a lot of documents from that time period describing working conditions in Britain during that era. As a response to those changes created by Industrial Revolution many sought reforms to confront those social problems. Karl Marx was

Karl Marx witnessed first hand the rise of the industrial revolution and the beginning of capitalism. He also became one of capitalisms biggest critics. Marx believed that society needed a better way of distrusting wealth but also a better way a finding people’s full human potential or what he called “species-essence”. Marx believed that what we do connects to who we are, for example, work is what makes us human. It fulfills our species essence, as he puts it. Work allows us to be creative and flourish. However, in the 19th century Europe work did the quit opposite, it destroyed workers, particularly those who had nothing to sell but their labor. To the mill and factory owners a worker was simply an abstract idea with a stomach that needed to be filled. The workers had no choice but to work for long hours for a pathetic wage. Even worse, their labor alienated them. Alienation is a disorienting sense of exclusion and separation. Factory labor, under capitalism, alienated the workers from the product of their labor. They made stuff they couldn’t afford to buy themselves. The products they made were shipped out to other places far way to make money

Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto was most appealing to and revolutionary for the industrial workers of 1848 (and those to come after that time). The call for unification of the proletariat and abolishment of the Bourgeoisie was an urgent one during a time of rapid progress in all aspects of industrial life. This urgency of The Communist Manifesto and the desire for change of political ideologies (to match the exponential rate of progress of wealth and industry) created not only a spate of revolutions, but a long lasting change in political ideas for industrialized European nations. The Communist Manifesto created a sense of unity and class awareness throughout the

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.

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

-- the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of modern industry and of the

While some look at the United States of America as the land of free, the proverbial, land of milk and honey. Others argue that our nation is a corrupt land that is where only the affluent capitalists thrive while the rest of the country 's workforce are heard through like cattle, only kept alive enough to keep them working to be the slaves of maintaining the gigantic corporations and business that they work for. This bleak look at the America’s foundation is conducted by Karl Marx, who saw capitalism as a dangerous and unstable economic system.

The later half of the 19th century was characterized by the rise of labor unions, strikes, protests and uprisings. Starting in the 1960s, workers started to feel strongly the presence and pressure of instability in social mobility. “The truth could hardly be denied. Class, as defined in terms of dignity, was increasingly insecure” [Isenberg[8]] The gap between the rich and the poor became wider and the working class erroneously placed in-between began to question their identity and in the process seek to define and defend this new identity Capitalist America was witnessing a boom in production as industrialism became more and more prominent. The gap between the rich and the poor continued to widen and eventually would evolve to create a new class. The Marxism theory identified the rise of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat; the bourgeoisie consisted of those who owned capital and supplied the means of production while the proletariat were the laborers who owned only their labor and offered it up to the bourgeoisie in return for wages. According to the Marxism theory, the definition of the working class was simply made up of people who simply offered up work. The inclusion of the Marxism theory above serves to clearly and simply define who the stakeholders were in the Industrial labor system. At the extreme ends of the labor spectrum, both the elites who owned the means of production and the laborers who owned only their labor will offer the lens from which we will view

Marx stated that, “ Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes” (Pg. 1). Whether viewed as the struggle of races or as the struggle of classes, Darwinism is clearly a predominant idea in Marx’s theory of social and political life in the late nineteenth-century. In his theory, Marx started with the great political revolution that gave Europe the aspect it had, the French Revolution. This era was known to everyone at the time to have been a struggle for supremacy, waged by the bourgeois against nobility and royalty. After this struggle, new class struggles originated. The struggle carried on in England by the manufacturing capitalists against the landowners dominated politics; at the same time the working class revolted against the bourgeoisie. Marx goes on to prove that these class distinctions were owing to the various functions each one played in the productive process. Production is the social labor process by which men obtain their means of subsistence from nature. It is the production

During the late 1800s, the eminent German philosopher, Karl Marx sought to create an equilibrium between the social strata. His doctrine, Marxism, is based on the idea that the means of production is the foundation of society, and ownership of this dictates the identity of the civilization. Marx attempted to place the means of production, such as factories, into control of the people who oversaw the production(proletariat), and not just the owners of the companies (bourgeois). In Marx’s vision, society is driven not by spirituality, but by material objects. The proletariat and bourgeois may have ambivalent views on the division of wealth, but ultimately, the owners of the means of production make the decision. The bourgeois conducts the proletariat

Both men were unique in that they addressed the effects of the Industrial Revolution and Globalization on the socioeconomic, religious and governing policies of their time. Marx’s importance rested on his focus on how progress affected economics. The Industrial Revolution replaced feudalism and serfdom with capitalism and the bourgeois; thus, Marx points out that drastic changes in economic structure are possible. Marx’s primary opposition with Capitalism regards the

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.

From the beginning of the nation, Americans have endorsed the belief that technology is the key for pushing forward progress. Today, the world is living in an era of increasing automation, that is, characterized by “technical developments which are replacing human labor by machinery in factories and workshop” (Pollock 3). Karl Marx made some remarks about this issue that’s taking over the manufacturing industry since the start of the Industrial Revolution, which also relate to his conflict theory. Even though certain aspects of his theories can be considered obsolete in the present era, his main argument on the struggle of classes and the competition over resources in society is still relevant today.

Karl Marx observed the effects of the Industrial Revolution and formed opinions contrasting those of capitalist thinkers. Marx stated that capitalist societies, like contemporary America, create inequality amongst different classes of workers. While the modern American economy is different from the economies Marx observed during the the Industrial Revolution, Marx would still passionately criticize the American economy because it has reproduced inequality by giving the means of production to additional members of the working class and therefore preventing revolution.

Karl Marx’s philosophy defines specific characteristics that came to be known as the Marxist approach. In this critical approach, whoever holds the power and controls the factories or means of production, consequently controlled the whole society. Marx’s opinion states that the laborers running the factories and thus holding the means of production should be the ones holding the power. However, this idea rarely holds true in practical society. Frequently, Marx notes, that the powerful people hire other people to carry out the labor. This decision of power is a reflection of culture. Two main classes or divisions of people exist, the bourgeoisie and proletariat. The bourgeoisie are the powerful or those who in charge or production