Marxism And The Industrial Revolution

Industrialism, Capitalism, and Socialism all have pro’s and con’s, positives and negatives. Industrialism is the economy were inventions reduce the labor needed to produce goods, and this is one of the positives of the Industrial Revolution. However, there were also some negatives. For instance, dangerous work conditions, child labor, loss of farm jobs, as well as the workers being paid poorly. Although the negatives are bad, the positives include faster and more production, more profits for industrialists, and more material goods.

The Industrial Revolution was period of rapid economic and social growth during the mid 18th and early 19th centuries. The new found power of coal and iron made for many new innovations in machinery. Not all of the Industrial Revolution’s changes were physical. A new ideology arose from the sweat of the working class: socialism. Socialism is a political theory advocating state or collective ownership of property and industry opposed to private ownership. To fully understand the relationship between the Industrial Revolution and socialism, one must first be comfortable with the Revolution and its changes, socialism itself, and the fine line of events linking the two together.

During the Industrial revolution many people started to believe in the idea of Liberalism. At times it was difficult. People were imprisoned or persecuted because of their ideas. Riots even occurred because the government and some of the upper class would not stand for the Liberalists’ new ways to improve society. Aristocrats refused to change their ways. But through it all, liberalists persevered and brought about one of the largest changes in society that we are still experiencing even today.

The Industrial revolution started in Britain around 1750 and by 1850 it will make Great Britain the wealthiest country in the world. The revolution also spread to other European countries and the New World. Both Germany and United States will surpass Britain in the next fifty years. What was the effect of The Industrial Revolution on the working class?

Analyzing the Bolshevik State compared to Marxism can be difficult because Marx, Engels and their followers gave relatively little thought to what the state would look like after a socialist revolution. Engels famously wrote, “the state is not ‘abolished,’ it withers away,” which highlights the hazy and unfixed nature of Marx and Engle’s writings on the ultimate, classless society they envisioned. Further, what they did write is subject to the differing interpretations by numerous socialist parties all claiming to be Marxist. As discussed earlier, Lenin claimed he simply reshaped Marxism to fit the conditions of Russia. Others argue his interpretation was not true Marxism at all. However, the basic principles of a socialist state in the eyes of Marx’s are outlined in the Communist Manifesto as follows:

How useful are classical sociological accounts for understanding the rise of compulsory education in nineteenth and twentieth century Britain? Discuss with particular reference to Durkheimian and Marxist ideas.

The Industrial Revolution was an era that consisted of trading your own labor for the means of production. Machines had become more dominant in work fields, and people were selling their labor just to survive. In works such as Engels, he describes the conditions of the working class in England and the effects it had on the proletarian class. In Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto he outlines the class struggle of the Industrial Revolution between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. The bourgeois people ultimately have control over the means of productions in this society. Within the Industrial Revolution, the concept of communism was inspired by the class struggle of the proletariats against the bourgeoisie.

Marxism is a clear-cut view of the French revolution. It gives a central role to the Bourgeoisie for being the main inspirators for its cause. This is due to the fact that it was widely believed to be them who stood to gain the most. Lefebvre was the main and most revered of all Marxist historians. His belief is that the year 1789 was the one in which the Bourgeoisie took power. They had been waiting for centuries in order to do this, according to Lefebvre, and when they had finally reached sufficient numbers and wealth they took the initiative. They owed most of their success to a shift of what was considered important in society. In medieval society, the landed Aristocracy had dominated. They owed much of their success and wealth to the land. This is not the case in the eighteenth century when the impetus changed and economic power, personal abilities and confidence became more desirable than land.1Although the Bourgeoisie was growing in vast numbers, the Nobility had one thing over on them, Social Status.

Communism, a system of a social and a political organization that dominated much of the history of the 20th century. Communism is where all classes are equal, and all properties are owned by the community. All people enjoy equal social and economic status, as if they are in a perfect world, where everyone has food and a shelter. Communism is the true utopia where there is no racism and other forms of oppression. Social changes made the way for ideas like Communism.

The Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was arguably the most important turning point in history. It transformed the manufacture of goods from craftsmanship to commercialism, exponentially increasing output and decreasing production cost leading to prosperity and an unprecedented supply of goods for the markets of the world. Industrialization and mass production was the fuel which ignited the flame of capitalism which was already established creating bringing sweeping changes in wealth and its distribution. Within a few generations the very fabric of society was virtually remade as millions left the farms and villages of the countryside for jobs in the cities. This monumental change did not immediately sweep

Many political movements take root or are further developed during the Victorian Era in England. For example, industrialization leads to workers’ unions and the outcry

Karl Marx is the first in a series of 19th and 20th century theorists who started the call for an empirical approach to social science. Theorizing about the rise of modernity accompanied by the decline in traditional societies and advocating for a change in the means of production in order to enable social justice. Marx’s theories on modernity reveals his beliefs of modern society as being influenced by the advancement of productive forces of modern industry and the relationships of production between the capitalist and the wage laborers. The concept of modernity refers to a post-feudal historical period that is characterized by the move away from feudalism and toward capitalism. Modernity focuses on the affects that the rise of capitalism has had on social relations, and notes Karl Marx and Max Weber as influential theorists commenting on this. The quick advancement of major innovations after the Enlightenment period known as modernity stood in stark contrast to the incremental development of even the most complex pre-modern societies, which saw productive forces developing at a much slower pace, over hundreds or thousands of years as compared to modern times, with swift growth and change. This alarming contrast fascinated Marx who traced the spawning of modern capitalism in the Communist Manifesto, citing this record speed as the heat which generated the creation of the global division of labor and a greater variety of productive forces than anytime before. Ultimately,

The Industrial Revolution brought about great changes in how goods were produced and consumed, but it also brought about social and political changes. Some were positive, such as machines relieving much of the toil previously placed on worker’s muscles. But there were also negative changes.

During the 19th century, Europe underwent political and economic change resulting in a shift from craft production to factory work. This was a time known as the Industrial Revolution, in which class division and wage labor were the most foregrounded aspects of society (Poynton). Karl Marx’s theories during this time gave way to new perspectives and different ways of viewing oneself in class positions. Comparisons between social and political structures in the 19th century and the 21st century expose the similarities that have yet to be modified. Marxist theory proved to offer a framework for society to undergo evolutionary change that would put an end to the capitalist mode of production that developed during the Industrial Revolution in Europe (Connelley). Marxism greatly outlines the struggle between different classes and groups belonging to the political world and how this class struggle affects the means of production. Broadly speaking, capitalism is a structure of political inequality and once overcome will lead to communism, inevitably weakening the boundary between classes. Although beneficial for the workers who want to live as free men, the upper class will be placed on that same wavelength. The greater political structure will form into a realm that will abolish the exploitation and oppression of workers, thus placing power in the hands of those who do not benefit from the unequal distribution of wealth. It involves a combination of political and economic factors

The major purpose of Marxism is to deliver a theoretical framework for assessing the world and providing the necessary changes. Such a policy has a precise and narrow-focused meaning. It also implies that Marxism pursues a specific sort of knowledge that is able to highlight the principles of historical movement and develop the points through which political actions could be introduced in the most effective way. In this respect, Wood has argued that the purpose of Marxist theory is to highlight the dimension of political action that considers historical context and provides the politics of capitalism, explaining the division between the political and economic in terms of distribution of power, production control and development of social resources and labor. Hence, regardless of the Marxism’s diverse strengths of Marxism theory in terms of the possibility of isolated analysis of economic and political issues, the paradigm promotes ahistorical conception of the capitalism, which is more close to bourgeois economics, which results in the formal approach to the mode of production, presenting the isolation between theory and practice.