How Karl Marx Accounts for the Industrialization of Society
Sociology has been classified as the last in a long line of emerging
scientific disciplines which people have developed and explored in
order to make sense of their world. Early theories such as the
positivist approach of Comte, the functionalist views and the conflict
perspectives of Karl Marx have offered a view of why human beings
behave as they do and how they fit together in society.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth century European societies
experienced major
changes due to the industrial revolution. These changes included a
radical change in the economy, and many changes to aspects of
society. Although it can be argued that these changes were important
for society, these changes led to mass confusion. People begun to
feel insecure about the future of social order and thus many early
sociologists felt compelled to explain and understand these changes.
One of the many early sociologists who attempted to explain how the
industrialisation of society occurred was Karl Marx.
Karl Marx was born in 1818 and died in 1883. During his life Marx
wrote and contributed too many writings. Although the roots of these
writings lay in the eighteenth century, which was a time of major
social and political change that stemmed form the revolution of 1789
in France, they have had their greatest influence in the political
sphere and possibly the intellectual world in the twentieth century.
Marx’s writings are a true outcome of the times that he was writing in
and thus focus on the economy, and class struggle. Due to this Marx’s
account of the industrial revolution mainly fo...
... middle of paper ...
...owever,
his view is heavily criticised as shown in this essay and therefore it
is somewhat difficult to assert that the industrialisation of society
occurred in the manner that Marx ascertains.
Bibliography
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Giddens. A, (2001). Sociology, forth edition, Polity press, Oxford.
Craib, I (1997) Classical social Theory: An Introduction to the
Thought of Marx, Weber, Durkheim and Simmel
Giddens. A, (1992). Capitalism and modern social theory, an analysis
of the writings of Marx, Durkheim and Max Weber, University press
Cambridge, Great Britain.
Davis. H, and Scase. R, (1985). Western capitalism and state
socialism, an introduction, Basic Blackwell limited, Oxford and New
York.
www.ukc.ac.uk/secl/philosophy/SS/MARXAZ.HTM
http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html
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.
Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Émile Durkheim (1858-1917) were sociologists who both existed throughout similar time periods of the 19th and early 20th centuries, resulting in both Marx, and Durkheim to be concerned about similar effects and impacts among society (Appelrouth and Edles: 20, 77). Marx’s main focus was on class distinctions among the bourgeoisie and proletariat, forces and relations of production, capital, surplus value, alienation, labour theory of value, exploitation and class consciousness (Appelrouth and Edles: 20). Whereas Durkheim’s main focus was on social facts, social solidarity – mechanical solidarity and organic solidarity, anomie, collective conscience, ritual, symbol, and collective representations (Appelrouth and Edles: 77). For the purpose of this essay, we will be focusing on the concerns that arised among Karl Marx and Émile Durkheim towards the benefits and dangers of modern capitalism. Marx and Durkheim’s concepts are comparable in the sense that Marx focuses on alienation and classes, which is similar to Durkheim’s concepts of anomie and the division of labour. The beginning of the Industrial Revolution and technological advances can be seen as a key factor that gave emergence to modern capitalism, as the economic system was based on private ownership, mass production, and increased profits, resulting in people to be separated based on class and the division of labour, later giving rise to alienation and anomie. In this essay, I will explore Karl Marx’s and Émile Durkheim’s evaluation of the benefits and dangers that came about with the rise of modern capitalism. Through these two theorists and sociologists, we can analyze, discuss, compare, critique, and come to understand how modern cap...
Marx believed that society was beginning to break away from nature as a source of economical support. In the past, humans had relied heavily on agriculture to support themselves but with the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, new technology began to replace old farming techniques and created new factory jobs in cities. Marx had rather extreme views on the extent to which nature in his time had become humanized as a result of human labor.[1] He commented that, “ Even the objects of the simplest “ sensuous certainty” are only given him through social development, industry and commercial intercourse.”[2] "Throughout their labor, humans shape their own material environment, thereby transforming the very nature of human existence in the process.”[3]
In Das Kapital, Karl Marx explains alienation, or Entfremdung, a tool of cultural hegemony: the idea that capitalism has caused workers to be alienated from the product of their work, the act of working, their “species-essence” or Gattungswesen, and other workers. America’s public education system was built around the Prussian Industrial-Model, a way of mass producing a docile proletariat labor force through public education, and as such it should not be surprising that capitalist alienation is experienced in schools. Whether through memorization or testing, American schools are teaching the wrong thing: capitalist cultural hegemony.
Karl Marx (1818-1883) is a German philosopher and revolutionary socialist. Karl Marx born in Prussia on May 5, 1818. He began exploring sociopolitical theories at university among the Young Hegelians after that he became a journalist and his socialist writings expelled him from Germany and France. In 1848, he published The Communist Manifesto with Friedrich Engels and then he was exiled to London, where he wrote his first volume of Das Kapital.
When large production and technological innovation arose, change was created in social and economic lives. Before industrialization began, there were only two classes know, the rich and the poor. However, after industrialization, there were the middle working class and the rich. The rich were mainly factory owners and the middle workers were people from farms who migrated to the city to gain a better life and better work. Economically, industrialization made production increase. There was more than one source where people can go buy their goods and therefore, an increase in competition for the better product began. Then came the development of railroads and trains that helped workers get job opportunities. That is why industrialization has been and would be an important part of history.
The Industrial Revolution was the result of many interrelated changes that transformed society from agricultural communities into industrial ones. The most immediate changes on society because of this revolution were on the products that were produced, where, and how. Goods that were traditionally made in homes or small workshops began to be manufactured in large industrial factories. As a result, productivity and efficiency increased dramatically, thereby causing a radical shift in the long-established economies that existed at the time. The Industrial Revolution led to the growth of cities as people moved from rural areas to the city in order to find work. Marx believed that the changes brought on by the Industrial Revolution overturned not only the traditional economies, but also society in general.
In his Manifesto of the Communist Party Karl Marx created a radical theory revolving not around the man made institution of government itself, but around the ever present guiding vice of man that is materialism and the economic classes that stemmed from it. By unfolding the relat...
The latter part of the nineteenth century was teeming with evolved social and economical ideas. These views of the social structure of urban society came about through the development of ideals taken from past revolutions and the present clash of individuals and organized assemblies. As the Industrial Revolution steamed ahead paving the way for growing commerce, so did the widening gap between the class structure which so predominantly grasped the populace and their rights within the community. The development of a capitalist society was a very favorable goal in the eyes of the bourgeoisie. Using advancing methods of production within a system of free trade, the ruling middle class were strategically able to earn a substantial surplus of funds and maintain their present class of life. Thus, with the advancement of industry and the bourgeoisie's gain of wealth, a counter-action was undoubtably taking place. The resultant was the degradation of the working-class, of the proletarians whom provided labour to a middle-class only to be exploited in doing so. Exploitation is a quarrel between social groups that has been around since the dawn of mankind itself. The persecution of one class by another has historically allowed the advancement of mankind to continue. These clashes, whether ending with positive or negative results, allow Man to evolve as a species, defining Himself within the social structure of nature. Man's rivalry amongst one another allows for this evolution! through the production of something which is different, not necessarily productive, but differing from the present norm and untried through previous epochs.
Through out history money, wealth and capital have dictated a way of life to the masses. Wealth dictated the lives that the rich lived and the lives of the poor that worked for and surrounded them. In some cultures your class could never be escaped in life, you had to wait for your next incarnation, while in other cultures the idea of wealth transcended a life and allowed for growth from one class to another. This is the reality of a capitalist society that was first discussed by Karl Marx in the 19th century.
The German thinker, Karl Marx (1818-1883), wanted to understand and explain the changes that occurred in society at the time of the Industrial Revolution in Europe. (ibid) In 1843 Marx met Engels in Paris. It marked the beginning of a lifelong of friendship and professional collaboration. In 1848 Marx and Engels published “The Communist Manifesto”. The Manifesto outlined the struggles between classes. From then onwards it has become apparent that Marx was not an economist. His theories are a combination of economics, history, sociology and politics. Marx moved to London in 1849 where he spent the rest of his life.
Karl Marx was born in Trier, Germany in 1818 to a Hirschel and Henrietta Marx. Due to much anti-Semitism, Hirschel changed his name to Heinrich and left his Jewish faith to become Protestant. Later on, while Marx attended Bonn University to study Law, he mainly socialized and increased his debts. When Heinrich found out about Marx’s debt, he agreed to pay off his debt on the condition that he transfers to Berlin University. After Marx transferred to Berlin University he became serious and dedicated to working hard on his studies. A lecturer known as Brüno Bauer, a strong atheist whose radical political ideas made him a well-known figure with the police. Bauer first introduced Marx to G.W.F. Hegel, a well-known author and philosopher at the University of Berlin. Marx inevitably became infatuated with Hegel’s theories thus, becoming radically political. After Heinrich passed, Marx had to become independent and earn his own living by becoming a university lecturer. When Marx finished his doctoral thesis at the University of Jena, he hoped Brüno Bauer would be able to aid him in obtaining a teaching post; however, Bauer was dismissed in 1842 for being an outspoken atheist and couldn’t help Marx.
Karl Marx, in the Capital, developed his critique of capitalism by analyzing its characteristics and its development throughout history. The critique contains Marx’s most developed economic analysis and philosophical insight. Although it was written in 1850s, its values still serve an important purpose in the globalized world and maintains extremely relevant in the twenty-first century.
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).
A free-market gives way to power and control to a certain group of individuals at the top of economic system, which results in inequality. The inequality sets the working class at a disadvantage because there is minimal to no intervention in protecting the workers. Karl Marx claimed that capitalism exploited the working class, which would eventually alienate the individual in a work setting, from himself, and humanity. In order to deter further alienation and exploitation of workers, Marx figured that the working class had to think alike in ordinance to the problem of a capitalist system to agree that social change was necessary.