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Marxism

Decent Essays

Marxism

5.) Discuss the main tenets of Marxism. In what ways was this ideology an extension of the thought of the Enlightenment? In what ways did it deviate from those ideals?

Socialism granted a powerful language for the working-class to express their interests. Many workers, who were enfranchised in the latter portion of the century joined political parties espousing this doctrine. Socialism existed before Karl Marx presented himself to the scene. In fact, Marx drew from the theories of the foremost prophets of socialism: Henri de Saint-Simon and Charles Fourier in France, and Robert Owen in Great Britain. However, he gave these theories his own style, and in the end his form became the dominant idea of socialism. Karl Marx, …show more content…

The style it was written in is obscure, difficult to penetrate. But throughout there are certain basic concepts that shine, which were understood and embraced by Marx's followers. As Hegel believed that the goal of human history was the realization of the world spirit; Marx embraced the theory and believed it was the abolition of capitalism, the victory of the proletariat, the disappearance of the state, and the ultimate liberation of all humankind. Marx insisted that material conditions determined the governance of the world. Following Hegel, who said that truth evolves by a "dialectic method," Marx called his own philosophy "dialectic materialism." He posited a world of change but stated that it was embedded in material conditions, not in a clash of ideas. To Marx, ideas were merely a reflection of the material world. Based on their relationship to factories and machines (the means of production), Marx grouped human beings into classes. Capitalists were one class, because they owned the means of production. Workers were a separate class, the proletariat, because they did not own any of the means of production and their income came only from their own hands. Because these two classes had differing relationships to the means of production, they had antagonistic interests and were destined to engage in class struggle, according to Marx. Unlike his contemporaries, who lamented the increasing hostility between workers

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