Essay on "Karl Marx and Class From the Perspective"

Essay 5 pages (1298 words) Sources: 5

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Karl Marx and Class

From the perspective of Karl Marx, modern society is comprised of two distinct classes that are historically pitted against each other, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The bourgeoisie consists of the owners of production while the rest of the downtrodden masses make up the proletariat who provide the actual work needed by modern society. Although some societies are intentionally class-less, such as the United States, Marx maintained that such class divisions were the inevitable consequence of capitalism where the bourgeoisie get richer and the proletariat, of course, just get poorer. To determine if Marx's perspective concerning class remains relevant in the early 21st century, this paper provides a review of the relevant literature, followed by a summary of the research and important findings in the conclusion.

Review and Discussion

In his seminal work, Das Kapital (1867), Karl Marx introduced the world to communism and influenced the paths that would be taken by a number of countries in their pursuit of equitable distributions of wealth for the next century (Manton & English, 2008). While the precise circumstances differed from place to place and time to time, Karl Marx believed that by and large, modern society was controlled by a group of "haves" who inevitably come together to control and exploit the "have-nots." In this regard, Szporluk (1999) reports that, "In Marx's view, modern society consisted of two classes that were engaged in an irreconcilable conflict: the ruling class of the bourgeoisie or the capitalists and the exploited class of the proletariat, i.e., the industrial workers" (p. 3). This class arrangement, though, did not just fall out of the sky, but was rather the result of a lengthy series of historical events, with the most recent being the Industrial and French Revolutions (Szporluk, 1999). These historical events were all part of a larger process that was leading to the development of capitalism (Szporluk, 1999). Indeed, in the opening remarks of the Communist Manifesto, Marx argues that all history is "the history of class struggle" (pp. 4-5).

This inevitable struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is based on irreconcilable and mutually exclusive human needs and objectives. In this regard, Fischman (1991) reports that, "That is because each class, in accordance with its place in the mode of production, seizes on certain powers, needs, and ways of appropriating the world. Each class fights to reorganize society so as to emancipate its particular human capacities" (p. 64). Thus far, Marx appears to be on solid ground in his reasoning because after all, everyone acts in their own self-interest, but his reasoning quickly becomes muddied by references to nebulous but innate human desires that compel people to instinctively act in a certain fashion. For example, Fischman (1991) reports that, "We can read Marx's theory of alienation as an attempt to capture in words the plight of an exiled group in a society without purpose: namely, the workers under capitalism. The reality of the proletariat, Marx argues, is structured by its members' deep and abiding need for creative work" (p. 106). Moreover, although his own personal life was marked by a series of bad debts, financial failures and troubled family relationships (he engaged in a scandalous affair and was a terrible provider and most of his children died or committed suicide), Marx was not scared of being labeled hypocritical when he applied his theoretical views concerning class to others. In this regard, Jennings (1999) reports that, "Marx held the British working class in very low regard because of its bourgeois habits, political reformism, and lack of militancy" (p. 162).

In a perfect world, then, Marx believes that everyone would be allowed to pursue whatever creative activities that best suited their individual preferences at the time like a global Montessori school for grown-ups irrespective of their economic needs. For Marx, the desire for creative work is universal but the downtrodden proletariat class… READ MORE

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