Marx's Vision of History

In The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx lays out his vision of history. According to Marx, "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles" (Marx). The divisions and struggles between classes, and the fundamental inequality that underpins these divisions and struggles, are the lynchpins to Marx's analysis of capitalism. In Marx's stirring call to arms, inequality is the mother's milk that feeds social change, and social change occurs when the proletariat becomes aware of its power and shakes off the chains of oppression. For Marx, classes are basically defined by a series of relationships that are inherently tied to economic reality: who owns and possesses the property and the factories or means of production, and who provides their labor to actually produce the goods that are sold. Out of these divisions, or classes, arise the social relationships that define labor and the working class. In The Communist Manifesto, Marx argues that these economic divisions are starker under the capitalist system than ever before, and that it is time for the workers to unite against their oppressors. This essay will briefly analyze Marx's conception of social change and inequality as laid out in The Communist Manifesto, using writings by Weber and others, as well as through study of Marx himself.

The Manifesto at heart lays out Marx's vision of class struggle. The reader is taken on a brief tour of history as presented by Marx. This history is primari

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rather than the system itself such as localized labor strikes, or a Luddite attack on a factory or plant. The initial phase of proletarian resistance is not focused on the bourgeoisie, but rather on the means of production themselves (Reynolds 1997). When profit becomes the over-riding goal, the worker becomes less important and his work product becomes more important. Eventually, the worker and his product seem to become two separate things because the worker has no personal interest in the work product (Marx 1980). This alienation means the worker no longer feels human because, for Marx, "the productive life is the life of the species" (Marx 1980, p. 76). The worker becomes "self-conscious" when he becomes aware of this alienation. Then, only when they have become "self-conscious" of their deprivations would the working classes begin to agitate for more (Coser 2003). On the other hand, Marx believed the inherent competitiveness among capitalists would prevent them from ever truly joining together for their collective interests (Coser 2003). Max Weber, although viewing it in similar fashion, took a more detailed stance as to the reasons why things happened. Weber serves as a critique of Karl Marx's sociological theory beca

Category: Economics - M