Society is a broken hierarchy of social order awaiting its impeding destruction. The system in which man has placed itself is nothing more than a waiting game of when the bottom peasants will rise up against the wealthy few and take control of the state. Society is separated into groups such as the mass, the bourgeois, the proletariats, the middle class, and the wealthy upper class. These groups are nothing more than the natural psychodynamic order that man creates within itself. Society is a relentless cycle of class order and revolutions. This cycle is proven through social order theories such as Marx’s Communist Manifesto and Gasset’s Revolt of the Masses.
Society places constraints on itself to create classes. Gasset describes the majority of people as the mass which “come into the world in order to be directed, influenced, represented, organized”; the only purpose of the mass is to be put into a social order and controlled (90). After the mass gains enough momentum they develop the state, which in Gasset’s theory is merely an idea controlled by the mass; however, the state is actually controlled by a wealthy upper class. This idea of a wealthy upper class controlling the state is supported by Marx’s social theory that “the bourgeoisie has at last conquered for itself, the modern representation of the state” (Marx 364). The bourgeoisie has complete control of the nation, the mass, and the state. The state is no longer an idea that is held together by the people of the nation, but it is the force of a wealthy few developing laws and keeping the lower classes below them. The lower classes can be broken down into two different groups, the mass and the proletariats. The mass is a middle class group of people who attem...
... middle of paper ...
...essed they feel as if they are not. The proletariats work for everyone above them and know that they have no say in what happens in the government. The proletariats eventually realize that they have more power in numbers than the bourgeoisie and revolt against them, creating a new order of social structure. Eventually the original proletariats forget the oppression they strived to change and begin to enforce oppression on the original bourgeoisie. This begins the social cycle again and another revolution occurs. Social order is a relentless cycle of revolutions.
Works Cited
Marx, Karl. The Communiest Manifesto. A World of Ideas. Ed. Lee A. Jacobus. New York: Bedford St. Martin’s, 2010. 362-383. Print.
Ortega Y Gasset, Jose´. “The Greatest Danger, the State.” A World of Ideas. Ed. Lee A. Jacobus. New York: Bedord St. Martin’s, 2010. 90-97. Print.
The rapid development of global economy with the opening of new markets worldwide gave way to the development of new means of production and also to the change of ideologies across the world. Alongside with that, the division between different groups or classes within societies became more apparent as some people got richer and other poorer. These two phenomena, the worldwide development of industries and consequent class struggles, have been analyzed by two major thinkers of their times, Karl Marx and Robert Reich. Their essays have been influential and are similar in sense that they analyze existing conditions of societies and give projections on future fates of people, or more specifically, fates of classes. In this paper, the main focus will be on the fate of the wealthiest people; these are the bourgeois for Marx and symbolic analysts for Reich. More specifically, it will be argued that the rich people will be in the worst position according to Marx and this position will cover two aspects: material aspect, which is how well the rich will eventually manage their properties, and the inherent antagonism of classes and its consequences for the wealthy.
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 need of a constantly expanding market for its products (…) chases the bourgeois over the whole surface of the globe” (Marx, 212) and creates a world that cannot exist without the separation of workers and owners and competition for the lowest price. The struggle between the
The decline of aristocracy in The Communist Manifesto began with Karl Marx’s statement, “The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles.”1 Marx recognized the ideals of the social rank, which has influenced every society throughout history. The two social classes described by Marx were the Bourgeoisie, or the upper class, and the Proletariats, or the lower class. Before the Bourgeoisie came to social power, landowners and corporate organizations ran the society. Marx believed that the severe separation of the two classes greatly troubled society and that the two classes must coexist as one with each other.2
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
The way society can attain this outcome is by identifying the powers in Nature and truly grasping how they function (Engels 305). Engels declares that if society does not learn to become aware of these forces within Nature, the capitalists will undeniably take advantage of the proletarians, controlling the means of production and persisting to operate against the majority (Engels 305). Should the proletarians understand Nature, they can reconstruct their once triumphant masters into fellow servants, taming the anarchy that was once present and replacing it with social regulation (Engels 306). The continuous conversion of the population into majority proletarians will overthrow the capitalists and acquaint power to the proletarians (Engels 306). Initially, society will seize social production and put an end to commodity manufacturing, men will have a strong dominance and full consciousness of the modes of production and exchange (Engels
As the modern societies developed, the division of labor created a separation of powers. According to Marx, there is a division into the upper class and the lower class. The upper class, or dominate class maintains and expresses the ideals of the dominant ruling class. While the lower class, or working members are passive within society. By creating this power differential, ownership is possessed by the ruling class. However, when conflict arises, the revolutionary class which represents the majority of society will overthrow the ruling class at that time, thus taking their place and presenting their own dominate ideals. So in short there is an upper class and lower class, until the lower class realizes the ongoing conflict between classes causing a revolution and this continues on throughout history.
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.
The modern bourgeois society […] has established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in the place of old ones. Our epoch has simplified the class antagonisms: Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, two great camps facing each other: Bourgeois and Proletariat (Cohen and Fermon, 448-449).
The wealth, power, and prestige of the bourgeoisie, acquired mostly from their control of institutions, industries, and means of production, enabled them to force upon the proletariat their economic, political, and religious ideologies. These are the same ideologies "used to maintain certain social relations" (Eagleton 466). These very ideologies are what "make the masses loyal to the very institutions that are the source of their exploitation" (Tischler 16). Once the proletariat ceases to believe in or abide by those ideologies, revolt is inevitable, and the moment it occurs, so does the destruction or alteration of a single controlling and tyrannical power altogether. Thus, it can be said that "the bourgeoisie reign is doomed when economic conditions are ripe and when a working class united by solidarity, aware of its common interests and energized by an appropriate system of ideas, confronts its disunited antagonists" (Rideneir).
The bourgeoisie class was the class in control in the Gilded Age, yet Marx's views exposed the flaws in their social system and gave the proletariats a new social order. As the Gilded Age progressed, the bourgeoisie became more ...
Bender, Frederic L. Karl Marx: The Communist Manifesto. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. ed. 1988.
Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. 1st Signic Classic print. ed. New York, NY: Signic Classic, 1998.
Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. "The Communist Manifesto." The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York: Norton, 2001. 769-773.
Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. "The Communist Manifesto." The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York: Norton, 2001. 769-773.