Marx and Human History
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Marx had a conception of human history based on dialectical materialism, which includes the sense that the determining factors in the development, relations, and institutions of mankind are not mystical or ideological but economic. Human actions are rooted in men's labor activities. Human beings have to secure a livelihood, and to accomplish this they organize their productive forces to operate throughout the economic spectrum. Everything else in life rests on this economic foundation. The society that results is made up of social classes, with one class dominant at a given time based on the control of the means of production. Human nature is expressed in the way individuals relate to class and the way they are controlled by that relationship. The workers sell their labor and are alienated from the product of their labor because of it. They do not own the means of production, while the capitalist who does sells the product of the labor of the workers. This exploitation of one class by another produces class hostilities which are constant and which are based on material inequalities. The class struggle is the defining fact of societal life and leads in time to the violent overthrow of the capitalist class by the working class, producing the dictatorship of the proletariate for a certain period until a completely classless society is produced. Marx's sense of human nature is seen in his concept of the force of history, in his theory of revolution and of the class st
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the bourgeois class over the proletarian class, and this was an evolutionary development from the earlier stage of feudalism. The bourgeoisie thus came into being through a revolution in the instruments of production and the relations of production, and this also meant a revolution in terms of the whole relations of society. Marx described the nature of bourgeois society as a stage in social evolution, and it was considered by him to precede the coming era of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Marx believed that these stages were inevitable and that the only way for the proletariat to gain a better position in life was through the violent overthrow of bourgeois society. The bourgeoisie will want to protect itself and protect its power base, and so it must constantly revolutionize the instruments of production and the relations of production in order to shift the center of relations between itself and the proletariat, to keep the proletariat off balance, and to strengthen its economic position. However, it is also evident that Marx sees the capitalist system as one in which everyone takes advantage of everyone else in order to gain monetary advantage, regardless of class.
Marx ascribed the general social inequalities of s
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1517
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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