Bourgeois Society as a Stage in Social Evolution
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In the perspective of Karl Marx, the bourgeois society in which he lived and which persists to this day in the developed West was a system of class conflict and the domination of the bourgeois class over the proletarian class. Marx described the nature of this society not as an aberration but as a stage in social evolution, succeeding the feudal period and preceding the era of the dictatorship of the proletariat. His view was based on the idea that these stages were inevitable and that the only way for the proletariat to gain a better position in life was through revolution, through the violent overthrow of bourgeois society. Yet, as we have seen in subsequent history, this is not the case, and while we have not produced a classless society, the classes are not in conflict to the degree Marx saw as inevitable and inescapable. Marx ascribed the social inequalities of society to class differences based on material inequalities separating the working class from the mode of production and from the product of their work in a form of social alienation. For Karl Marx, the force that determines social relations is economic and is identified by the relationship of the human being to labor. Marx has a conception of human history based on dialectical materialism, a perspective which includes the idea that the determining factors in the development, relations, and institutions of mankind are not mystical or ideological but economic. Human motivations are rooted in the labor activ
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cal step in economic and social development, following from the social and economic relations that have gone before. Marx's conception of civil society explained the history of economic development to his time and offered as well a predictive approach to the future. Marx could see all around him evidence of the domination of the bourgeois class over the rest of society, and he believed that the tensions and antagonisms of such an arrangement would lead to revolution and revolutionary change. Marx could also see clearly that society was becoming more simplified as the number of social classes and gradations within classes was diminished, with this reduction coming specifically because of changes in productive relations. Marx makes a strong case for the historical determinism that is the basis of his view, though it was not clear that the future developments he envisioned were inevitable based on what had gone before.
Heilbroner (1980) notes that the focal problem for Marx and his followers has been the analysis of capitalism. Marx wanted to penetrate the surface of the system and to discover its concealed essence. Marx determined that the concealed essence of capitalism could be found in its history, and that this essence an
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2557
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)
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