Marx and Historical Materialism
Karl Marx rejected the philosophical Idealism of Hegel and the utopianism of the early socialists in favor of a theory of history thoroughly grounded in materialism. For Marx, ideas, cultures, political systems were all part of the superstructure of society while economics and the social relations of classes represented the base that truly drove history forward. Economic forces were the motor of history, not ideas, philosophies or ideologies, much less spiritual or supernatural forces. Capitalism had already broken up the old feudal order in Western Europe, and the Protestant Reformation, the great peasant rebellions, the English, French and American Revolutions were all signs indicating that a new capitalist political economy was coming into being, and that the bourgeoisie was seizing political power from the landed aristocracy. Capitalism was destroying the old culture of honor, chivalry and paternalism, replacing it with bourgeois values of free trade, the cash nexus and "egotistical calculation" (Marx and Engels 9). Even the American Civil War and the defeat of the planter class of the South was part of this bourgeois-capitalist revolution that was sweeping the world. As the entire planet became a single marketplace, the capitalists created large-scale industries to meet the demand, battering down all "Chinese Walls" of protectionism and isolationism as it did so (Marx and Engels 11). In fact, all of history was based on class struggle, but the socialist revolution would be the final one since for the first time the overwhelming majority of people would be in control of society.
Under capitalism, Marx predicted (incorrectly) that only two classes would exist in the end, the bourgeoisie and the proletarians. As the old feudal system decayed, peasants, small farmers and artisans were transformed into wage laborers for the capitalists, and work once done by hand was now done by machinery. Proletarian wage laborers were part of this machinery, no longer having any control over the product of their labor or working conditions and therefore highly alienated...
Geology was one of the sources of Marx's views about social system and it's structure (the idea of formation). Among the biological discoveries that influenced on Marx's sociological views were the discovery of cell, cell theory of the organism's structure and the most important was evolutionary teaching of Darwin that was stated in work "The origins of species." Marx saw biological analogue of his theories in Darwin's work and
Both of them also realized the necessity of fighting poverty and economic want and did not believe that the mythical 'invisible hand' of the free market economy would do so on its own. They were also common critics of at least some of the aspects of 'Classical Economics' such as the Say's Law. There, perhaps, the similarity between the two ends. Being a conscious opponent of Trotskyism, Keynes was by
Voice, however, is usually political and confrontational. In communist societies, it is impossible to get all people to conform to an ideal without using some type of force. People view freedom as the ability to do what they want with their time and control their resources. If the state forces you to work only for its benefit and the benefit of the community, individual freedom will always be limited. This
Marx cries out that in Capitalism, "That culture... is, for the enormous majority, a mere training to act as a machine." It is this exploitation which persists today and which is far worse than the mere depression of living standards. Capitalism is intrinsically linked with consumerism, and both replace a sacred connection to one's vocation and one's art with a profane connection to one's paycheck and the throw-away products
Gift giving creates a bond between the giver and the receiver. Mauss felt that to reject a gift, was to reject the social bond attached to it. Likewise, to fail to reciprocate is viewed as a dishonorable act in some cultures. Gift giving is a means to create social cohesion among the group. What Distinctive contributions did Weber make to social theory? Weber used his work to attempt to understand the
The economy is society's base structure. This does not mean, however, that everything that occurs in history stems from the economy. Finally, the "materialism" of "historical materialism" is rooted in the idea that the capitalist mode of production is largely contingent on the behavior of participants in the market economy. To sum up, historical materialism is based on a series of principles. The first of these is how humans interact
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