karl marx Essay

Words: 2411
Pages: 10

Karl Marx is one of the most reputed philosophers of the 19th Century. Born in 1818 in a middle class family, Marx studied law in Bonn and Berlin and later plunged deeper into the ideas of Hegel and Feurbach (Wheen, 2007). It is after receiving his doctorate in philosophy in 1841 from the University of Jena that he moved with his family to Paris where he became a radical revolutionary communist and teamed up with Friedrich Engels, another radical philosopher of his time. They collectively authored the pamphlet “The Communist Manifesto” which was later published in 1848. In this pamphlet, Marx passionately asserted that all human history was dominated by class struggles. Furthermore, he predicted that they would culminate into the fall of …show more content…
These three different classes, in the understanding of Karl Marx, have different interests which pit them against each other (Wood, 2004). For example, the bourgeoisie are interested in safeguarding their investment in the industries, maximizing profits and minimizing costs. This makes them engage the proletariats as laborers in the farms to achieve this objective at relatively minimal wages.

The proletariats on the other hand, organize and mobilize themselves to collectively push for better wages, conditions of work and strive to overcome the repressive and exploitative forces of their masters in the industries and factories. Thus, they struggle to join hands and, through revolutionary movements, overthrow the bourgeoisies and control the industries and factories (Wood, 2004). These conflicting interests are what pit the social classes against each other. Conflicts, and not consensus, therefore, characterize the society as noted by Marx who had envisaged such a society founded on constant conflicts.

The struggle between the classes is likely to widen with time as the conditions of the laborers deteriorate further. This is likely leads to disintegration of the social structure. Collins and Sanderson (2008) asserted that conflicts between proletariats and bourgeoisies would translate into an industrial revolution. This would mark the triumph of the proletariats over the bourgeoisies,