Marx, Revolution and Capitalism

Marx's theory of social class and social change as written in the Manifesto of the Communist Party states that the essential condition for the existence of the bourgeois class is economic. The bourgeoisie involuntarily promotes industry. This promotion of industry forces laborers into competition. This conflict creates revolution. The development of modern industry destroys the foundation on which the bourgeoisie owns and produces goods. The fall of the bourgeoisie and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable under the capitalist system (Goldstone, 1994, p. 29).

According to Marx, ownership or non-ownership determines one's economic status and, thereby, one's entire existence in the society. Marx believed that socialism would replace capitalism, just as capitalism had replaced feudalism. Class conflict was a certainty as long as private ownership of property and

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eform attempts and causing the disintegration of the centralized repressive controls over the lower classes. By comparison, the landed nobility in Russia were not politically powerful. Russia's ability to prepare for modern warfare was limited by Russia's agrarian class. As a result, the Tsarist state was overwhelmed and destroyed in World War I (Goldstone, 1994, pp. 67-68). When these countries came under pressure from the external capitalist world, their attempts to mobilize their resources to fight off foreign domination failed. Their inability to survive resulted in the revolution from above in Japan and Turkey and a complete breakdown of the old regimes in Russia, China, and France. The break-up of the old state governments in Russia, China and France made revolution from below by the lower classes possible. A single theoretical framework for Marx's theory has not been reached by Marxist supportors or detractors. The relationships between political and economic factors and class structure that exist in societies are interconnected. The forces which create and contribute to revolutionary upheaval are more complex than a single focus on class struggle. References Bottomore, T. (1993). Political Sociology. Mi
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