The Marx-Engels Reader By Robert Tucker

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The Marx-Engels Reader by Robert C. Tucker is an anthology containing essential writings of German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Major writing selections are to understand Marx perspective about history and society, such as The German Ideology. Marx introduces his historical materialism philosophy in the German Ideology: Part 1 of this book, where he proposes communism. Although I agree with a few points Marx gives, I cannot accept his overall conclusion that communism is the only way to become truly free. Marx suggest abolishing private property ownership and remove economic power from the hands of privileged people to accomplish freedom. To understand Marx point of view, lets learn some background on him. Marx and Engels …show more content…

The bourgeoisie rule the material forces of society, they have access to material production and control the means of mental production. “The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas;...” (p.173). Being in control of production allows the bourgeoisie’s the power to construct ideas and have the proletarians follow them. This means generation after generation continue to follow these ideas and keeps individuals in the social class they belong according to the bourgeoisie 's. This historical method humans followed allowed division of labor to …show more content…

Division of labor created alienation for the proletarians, this is why Marx suggest abolishing the private property. The lower class stop living for themselves and live to make their owners rich. This is a problem because everyone that does not belong to the upper class suffer economically and mentally. If this pattern does not change then it will continue to be passed generation after generation. “... by the overthrow of the existing state of society by the communist revolution and the abolition of private property which is identical with it, this power, which so baffles the German theoreticians, will be accomplished in the measure in which history becomes transformed into world history” (p.163). Abolishing private property will set the lower class free and bring desire to live once again and thrive. To break this barrier economic power needs to be removed from the hands of privileged

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