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The Marxian model of society

The Marxian model of society is based on the concept of historical materialism, which gives rise eventually to a capitalist society of starkly divided classes and alienated individuals whose relationships are based on the mode of production. Marx sees society as a material entity which evolves from crude to more refined means of production, with ever greater gaps of wealth and power between the owner and worker classes, and individuals suffering from greater alienation as they become commodities themselves in the means of production. The alienation and class conflict eventually becomes so severe that violent revolution occurs, led by enlightened workers, and resulting in the dictatorship of the proletariat, which gives way to the ideal socialist society.

Marx focuses more on his critique of capitalistic society than on the socialist utopia. Among his most important ideas was that "existence determines consciousness." Most fundamentally, this phrase means that Marx believed that human individual and social consciousness was shaped by the conditions of the environment, the class conflicts, the means of production, the forces of alienation at work in capitalism.

In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production....

The sum total of these . . . constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness (Tucker 4).

Marx leaves no doubt that man's consciousness is simply another element of the inexorable march of historical materialism and the social, economic and political evolution which creates an increasingly distressed reality for all:

Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man's ideas, views and conceptions, in one word, man's consciousness, changes with every change in the cond...

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The Marxian model of society. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 02:48, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1700579.html