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textual analysis ideas
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Throughout this class, the main goal was to analyze these texts as though we were scholars, and to make connections and identify common themes amongst them. By doing so, we were supposed to be able to more deeply understand each text and the argument each was making. Throughout the readings, the most prominent themes were that of struggle and division, though it is certainly more prevalent and obvious in certain texts than others. Though all the texts depict division and struggle, they focus on different societal divisions. These texts allow the reader to perhaps see these struggles through another lens, though perhaps a more subjective one. This depiction of struggle first became clear during the reading of Plato 's Republic in book I, where The struggle between the Proletariat or working class and the Bourgeoisie or the wealthy. According to Marx, this struggle, and the mistreatment of the powerless by the powerful, is the main flaw of capitalism and that this will cause the eventual evolution to communism. Marx begins the book with "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles" (Marx and Engels 1). Throughout history, according to Marx, the constant struggle of the Bourgeoisie to remain in power over the Proletariat has been the primary force driving history. Hence, there becomes an obvious division between the Proletariat, who are described as the laborers or working class, and the bourgeoisie, who control the means of production. Whilst all of the above texts depict struggle in one form or another, they also have another, more specific commonality. This is that they all depict a type of class struggle/division. Marx depicts struggle between the Proletariat and the Bourgeoisie. In Anzaldua, there is a struggle between multiple ethnic and social groups. Wollstonecraft writes of the struggle for equality between men and women (in certain areas at least). Plato, like Marx, depicts division of
Explain how the conflict arises and go on to discuss in detail how the writer uses it to explore an important theme.
Prompt #3: “Most often, literary works have both internal conflict (individual v. self) and external conflict (individual v. individual, society, nature, or technology)”.
2. How does classifying the three types of resistance to oppression help him to develop his thesis?
Marx sees history as a struggle between classes: “Oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes” (Marx and Engles 14).
Marx believes there is a true human nature, that of a free species being, but our social environment can alienate us from it. To describe this nature, he first describes the class conflict between the bourgeois and the proletariats. Coined by Marx, the bourgeois are “the exploiting and ruling class.”, and the proletariats are “the exploited and oppressed class” (Marx, 207). These two classes are separated because of the machine we call capitalism. Capitalism arises from private property, specialization of labor, wage labor, and inevitably causes competition.
The Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, is a short publication that contains Marx’s and Engel’s theories on the nature of society and politics, as well as class struggle, problems with capitalism, and how to slowly change the government from capitalist to socialist and finally communist. The start of the first chapter in the essay, "Bourgeois and Proletarians", states ‘The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles’ (...
In these two texts there are different people who posses different forms of power in society. There are those who force ideas upon others, and who only wish to benefit themselves, and seek absolute power, but there are also those who have power because they are able to communicate to the core of other people, and they are able to give people the courage to stand up for what they believe. These are the people who have the true power, and who, in these two texts, eventually, in one way or another succeed.
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.
2) What is the main conflict in the book? Is it external or internal? How is this conflict resolved throughout the course of the book?
In Marx’s opinion, the cause of poverty has always been due to the struggle between social classes, with one class keeping its power by suppressing the other classes. He claims the opposing forces of the Industrial Age are the bourgeois and the proletarians. Marx describes the bourgeois as a middle class drunk on power. The bourgeois are the controllers of industrialization, the owners of the factories that abuse their workers and strip all human dignity away from them for pennies. Industry, Marx says, has made the proletariat working class only a tool for increasing the wealth of the bourgeoisie. Because the aim of the bourgeoisie is to increase their trade and wealth, it is necessary to exploit the worker to maximize profit. This, according to Marx, is why the labor of the proletariat continued to steadily increase while the wages of the proletariat continued to steadily decrease.
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 and Friedrich Engels’ The Communist Manifesto explores class struggles and their resulting revolutions. They first present their theory of class struggle by explaining that “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” (Marx 14), meaning that history is a repeated class struggle that only ends with a revolution. Marx and Engels’ message in The Communist Manifesto is that it is inevitable for class struggles to result in revolutions, ultimately these revolutions will result in society’s transition to communism.
"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles" (Marx and Engels 2). This excerpt, taken from Karl Marx's and Friedrich Engels' The Communist Manifesto, explains the two primary classes found throughout most of Europe during the era of the Industrial Revolution. These classes were the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The former were known as the "exploiters" and the latter as the "exploited".
Marx and Engels turn to history to understand the world and argue that "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles" (Manifesto 65). These class struggles, based on who owns the capital, are the Marxists ' way of reading history. According to Marx and Engels, the current bourgeoisie, with their power and the growing industrial city, is "itself the product of a long course of development" and the final bourgeoisie to exist before the proletariat revolution (Manifesto 67). By stating this they illustrate the understanding that material possessions are what have driven history, ideas, and progress. They see the end result as a place where "class distinctions have disappeared" (Manifesto 84). By this the authors mean that private property, and any other type of personal material wealth will disappear, leading to the best society. The entire premise behind the ideas of the Marxists is that it is the wealth - the capital - that directs society and these class struggles. While these ideas describe the power wealth has on the ideas and history of a society, the impact that Marxist philosophy even further solidifies the relationship of the two seemingly separate
In conclusion, the three poems share the same theme throughout them. The theme of strength and unity can be seen as a commonality between three different poems. Written by prominent black writers, these poems can be seen as a message for garnering a unification through the strength of black