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industrial revolution impact
industrial revolution impact
Effects of industrial revolution
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Changes in Class and the Labor Force within Society
Introduction:
Though the Industrial Revolution changed the course of modern history, the consequences that accompanied it divided society. The radical change in the division of class and labor within society because of industrialization disgusted many who witnessed it, including Karl Marx. Their contempt for the new composition of class and labor led to intellectuals proposing improvements and reversing changes, through their writings to the masses, introduced by the Industrial Revolution. The Communist Manifesto and writings by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels are specific in their views on the class and labor structure in Europe and abroad.
Class Structure
Marx saw three classes emerge from Capitalist industrial society: labor power, ones who possessed the means of production, and those who owned the land. Their incomes consisting of wages, profit from industry, and rent collected from their land. Industry created by the Bourgeois revitalized society into two separate classes, the bourgeois and the proletariat. Communism offered the opposite, no division of labor or class. Marx believed that by eliminating personal gain from society, the class structure of Capitalism would be broken. Marx proposed the individual would receive from the greater society an equal amount of the shared commodities in comparison to his production of work benefiting the whole. There is an exchange of equal values. Each person receives equal share in the possessions of the whole for equal work. The bourgeois dissolves as personal profit is eliminated. Thus, granting rule over society to the proletariat. Class disappears because everyone is the same. Everyone is a worker.
Free economic markets separates the means of production and the labor force. The result is the formation of an economically ruling class. The ruling class finds that labor equals only the means of production. Thus, the bourgeois pays the workers only the amount needed to sustain life. The proletariat is reduced to a life whose sole purpose is to find work. They only find work if their labor increases capital.
Communism's Answer to Class Structure
Communism offered the opposite, no division of labor or class. Marx believed that by eliminating personal gain from society, the class structure of Capitalism would be broken. Marx proposed the individual would receive from the greater society an equal amount of the shared commodities in comparison to his production of work benefiting the whole.
In The Communist Manifesto written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the two German philosophers saw history as the struggle between the working class and the Bourgeois, or middle class (textbook 708). The Communist Manifesto was written in 1848, during the peak of the Industrial Revolution, a time when the Bourgeois made huge profits in manufacturing at the expense of the working class. According to Marx and Engels, the fruits of the Industrial Revolution created a new class of the oppressed modern working class, the Proletariat, which had never before existed because it was neither like serfdom or slave hood in that it was dependent on the Bourgeois to hire them for wage labor. This was the class the two philosophers envisioned would set off a revolution that would overthrow capitalism to end the perpetual class struggle and create a fair society known as Communism.
Marx begins explaining the inevitable fall of the bourgeoisie by claiming that once the peasants overthrow the feudalist society and transform into a capitalist society they [the bourgeoisie] will create a ruthless industry in which the proletariat are treated as slaves. Marx describes this industry as one of “the epidemic of overproduction,” (Marx). This overproduction of the proletariat will allow for the success of the capitalist society bourgeoisie. By creating a capitalist industry, the bourgeoisie ultimately brought about their own downfall, “...created their own grave-diggers” (Marx). As the market quickly grows in size and wealth, the bourgeois becomes insensitive and unable to adapt to the increase of wealth they’ve created, “too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them,” (Marx). This will result in a period of disorganization and chaos. This period will be the period in which the proletariat will be able to revolt against the bourgeoisie, overthrow the capitalist system. Once the capitalist system is overthrown. They will eventually transition it to a communist system through socialism. Once a communist system is established, all the social classes will fall and become one equal class. The once troubled industry which brought the fall of the bourgeoisie will become a communist industry which will distribute its profit equally among its workers as long as they work and private property will not be
The end of 19th century, Western Society was changing physically, philosophically, economically, and politically. It was an influential and critical time in that the Industrial Revolution created a new class. Many contemporary observers realized the dramatic changes in society. Among these were Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels who observed the conditions of the working man, or the proletariat, and saw a change in how goods and wealth were distributed. In their Communist Manifesto, they described their observations of the inequalities between the emerging wealthy middle class and the proletariat as well as the condition of the proletariat. They argued that the proletariat was at the mercy of the new emerging middle class, or bourgeoisie, and could only be rescued by Communism: a new economic form.
According to Marx, capitalist system has another damage rather than class differentiation and low source of income. This damage is basically alienation of labor. Labors are being fundamentally alienated from production, production process, man’s species being and also from other men. Those are the alienation steps of workers in capitalist world. According to communist theory Marx believes that in such system society divides into two different classes; on one hand there are property owners so called bourgeoisie and on the other hand property less workers so called proletariats. For Marx the class stratification that driven from private ownership causes to alienate workers from the existence world. It begins that property less workers become alienated from the product that they produce. Worker relates to...
Both Bastiat and Marx believe that every person has individual rights and that every person should have an equal opportunity to lead a successful life. They believe that people should have the right to lead whatever life they chose to. Class structure and how individuals are placed into these classes is the biggest concept that Marx speaks about in Communist Manifesto. Marx believes that there should not be different social classes of people. During his time, there were two main classes of people; the bourgeois and the proletariat. The bourgeois were the modern Capitalist’s, who owned means of production and would employ wage-workers to operate these machines, generating huge profits for themselves. The proletariats were the wage-workers, who could not afford their own means of production, therefore relied on the bourgeois for work and income. The bourgeois had all the power in society. Marx believed that centralizing the means of production would take away the social power that the bourgeois had over the proletariats. He believed in the abolition of private property ...
From the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century major historical events such as the Industrial revolution had occurred. During this period of time Europe was switching into an economy that is focused mostly in the industrial field. From this emerged two social-economic classes, the rich bourgeoisie and the poor proletariats. Furthermore tension brewed from the two groups since the bourgeoisie source of wealth was from the exploitation of the proletariats. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ book The Communist Manifesto responded to the situation and created a vision of an equal communist society. The Communist Manifesto was defined by the abolishment of the bourgeois sovereign rule that followed to a revolution against capitalism
money they need to survive and support their families. In this scenario, proletariats work extremely hard and do practically everything the business needs yet they receive little pay while their capitalist counter part do very little and reap most of the rewards and, otherwise known as exploitation. Marx also felt that workers were subject to alienation which is when a job forces machine-like, thoughtless activities onto a person, like repetitively doing that same task while completely taking out the human elements such as thinking freely and working alongside others, alienating them and making them feel like robots. Marx predicted that the gap between the two classes would expand greatly and proletarians would have no more hope for improving their lives and revolt against the capitalists once they understood capitalism. This revolution would then create a communist society.
Marx believed that the class system was the main problem and should be demolished. He believed that everyone should be equal and should work together in order to create. In his thoughts in The Communist Manifesto, he tells of all the benefits due to the many changes that will be made in his classless society. Socially everyone will be looked upon as equal, and everyone will contribute to their society. Intellectually, the people will not be selfish and will all come together to combine their ideas. Politically things will be different since there will be no government. Also, religions will be abolished and there will be no higher beings. Economically, property will not be privately owned and everything will be shared by all. In this society, there are many problems and this seems like a great way to bring about change.
In western capitalist societies, communism is portrayed as a system that practices wealth distribution where everyone makes the same amount of money and own the same exact things with no competition. In reality Marx’s idea of communism gives people the chance to develop their skills and advance their potential to the fullest extent, that is actually denied under the capitalist class system. Marx agrees with rousseau that political and civil rights are important and gives the people more power but he takes it further and argues that in order for people to be truly free they must have control on their labor and their production by democratizing the economic and labor system.
Karl Marx, a German philosopher, saw this inequality growing between what he called "the bourgeoisie" and "the proletariat" classes. The bourgeoisie was the middle/upper class which was growing in due to the industrial revolution, and the proletariats were the working class, the poor. These two classes set themselves apart by many different factors. Marx saw five big problems that set the proletariat and the bourgeoisie aside from each other. These five problems were: The dominance of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat, the ownership of private property, the set-up of the family, the level of education, and their influence in government. Marx, in The Communist Manifesto, exposes these five factors which the bourgeoisie had against the communist, and deals with each one fairly. As for the proletariat class, Marx proposes a different economic system where inequality between social classes would not exist.
Society became divided into different social classes. The two biggest, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie were in conflict with each other. The bourgeoisie controlled the means of production, which were the tools and capital needed to create a successful economy. The proletariat owned nothing. All they could do was work in their difficult factory jobs. Marx and Engels believed that the struggle between the controlling and the non-controlling classes had been taking place throughout all of human history. The goals of communism were mainly about class structure. Marx and Engels wanted to end class conflict, especially between the proletariat and the...
Karl Marx noted that society was highly stratified in that most of the individuals in society, those who worked the hardest, were also the ones who received the least from the benefits of their labor. In reaction to this observation, Karl Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto where he described a new society, a more perfect society, a communist society. Marx envisioned a society, in which all property is held in common, that is a society in which one individual did not receive more than another, but in which all individuals shared in the benefits of collective labor (Marx #11, p. 262). In order to accomplish such a task Marx needed to find a relationship between the individual and society that accounted for social change. For Marx such relationship was from the historical mode of production, through the exploits of wage labor, and thus the individual’s relationship to the mode of production (Marx #11, p. 256).
He saw communism as a way for all people to be truly free and equal. There would be no more class discrimination and everyone would have resourced based on what is needed. He exclaimed that communism would give individuals the freedoms that the bourgeoisie denied them. While this is what Karl Marx predicted and believed would be successful, the reality over time has taken a much different path proving that Marx’s ideas cannot be accurately applied
According to Marx class is determined by property associations not by revenue or status. It is determined by allocation and utilization, which represent the production and power relations of class. Marx’s differentiate one class from another rooted on two criteria: possession of the means of production and control of the labor power of others. The major class groups are the capitalist also known as bourgeoisie and the workers or proletariat. The capitalist own the means of production and purchase the labor power of others. Proletariat is the laboring lower class. They are the ones who sell their own labor power. Class conflict to possess power over the means of production is the powerful force behind social growth.
Karl Marx was a philosopher, a sociologist, economist, and a journalist. His work in economics laid a foundation for the modern understanding of distribution of labor, and its relation to wealth generation. His theories about the society, economic structure and politics, which is known as Marxism led to him developing social classes. He later on showed how social classes were determined by an individual’s position in relation to the production process, and how they determine his or her political views. According to Karl Marx, capitalism was a result of the industrial revolution. Capitalism is a system that has been founded on the production of commodities for the purpose of sale. Marx defined the