Stages of Socioeconomic Development in Marxism

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Karl Marx was a social and political philosopher best known for his critique of capitalism. Marx said that "history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle". He believed that capitalism would eventually be destroyed by its own internal conflicts and be replaced by a classless egalitarian society called communism.

Society was an evolutionary process to Marx and had gone through several stages before arriving at capitalism. This wasn't an original idea of his own. Marx was familiar with the work of German philosopher Georg Hegel. Hegel used the philosophical concept of the dialectic to explain how he saw society advancing. He conceptualized an ascending staircase that represented the advancement of thought through a "zeitgeist" or spirit of the age. During each step, there would be two competing ideas, the thesis and the antithesis. The conflict between the thesis and the antithesis would produce a new idea called the synthesis. The synthesis would sweep the old order away and become the new thesis, bringing the cycle back to its beginning. Hegel believed that the advancement of thought peaked with German society during his life. Marx took this concept and applied it to the material world of economics. Marx disagreed with Hegel's opinion that humanity had reached it's zenith of existence.

For Marx, economics was the base of a society's structure, and all social institutions grew out of each society's particular economic system. This economic system, or "mode of production" shaped all other social institutions which were subordinate to it. He felt that even when a political system was changed or a government was overthrown, this would do nothing to change society because the underlyi...

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...o Marx. The revolution needed to be not only international, but completely global. Only when the entire world had thrown off the shackles of capitalist society, could they begin to transition into communism.

When this happened capitalism would be replaced by a classless society without personal property. Everything would be owned communally, therefore it was called communism. Communism was Marx's zenith of social advancement. It would be a completely egalitarian society where there would be a division of labor. As Marx himself put it, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need". While Marx believed this was inevitable, he doesn't go into detail about what communism would look like, or exactly what steps would be taken to transition from socialism to communism once the proletariat seized the means of production from the bourgeoisie.

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