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Marxism In Brave New World

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During the late 1800s, the eminent German philosopher, Karl Marx sought to create an equilibrium between the social strata by abolishing social classes. His doctrine, Marxism, is based on the idea that the means of production is the foundation of society, and ownership of this dictates the fate of the civilization. Marx attempted to place the means of production, including factories, into control of the people who operated the means of production(proletariat), and not just the owners of it (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 …show more content…

In Brave New World, the World State is governed by ten World Controllers. They dictate the norms of the World State and establish protocols on how life should take place. Also, the World Controllers control the roles each of the World State is supposed to assume. Also, the World Controllers oversee the production of workers not through sexual reproduction but synthetic ‘decanting.'“We decant our babies as socialized human beings, as Alphas or Epsilons, or future sewage workers. The Controllers realized that force was no good. The slower but infinitely surer methods of ectogenesis, neo-Pavlovian conditioning, and hypnopaedia…” (Huxley)The World Controllers condition citizens at birth to conform to their preestablished role, and to accept their place in society. Their role in society is further ingrained into the psyche of the civilization through hypnotic subliminal messages to encourage conformity, and …show more content…

Every member of society is ‘socially pre-destined’ to conform to their set of norms and expectations. The World Controllers state “For Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons had been to some extent conditioned to associate corporeal mass with social superiority. Wheels must turn steadily but cannot turn untended. There must be men to tend to them, men as steady as the wheels upon their axles, sane men, obedient men, stable in contentment”(Huxley). Every member of each of the social classes know their position in society and look down unfavorably on members of the classes lower than theirs, as a result of the Pavlovian conditioning everyone in the World State receives. “And if they cannot tend the wheels…The corpses of a thousand thousand thousand men and women would be hard to bury or burn” (Huxley)., this quote demonstrates the expendability of members of society, they are mere commodities to benefit society. In spite of this, Marx affirms “The same men who establish their social relations in conformity with their material productivity, also produce principles, ideas, and categories, in conformity with their social relations. Thus, these ideas, these categories, are as eternal as the relations they express. They are historical and transitory products”

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