I undertook my Sociology course at Sim University in the year 2006. It was divine intervention that made me take up Sociology.
Sociology has always been a subject close to my heart. I first cross roads with the subject when I was taking a Diploma in Economics in 2001 at Stansfield. At first, I was baffled with the subject. I did not understand anything that was going on. Even the debates that my fellow classmates were indulged in were Greek to me. I found myself in a Labyrinth.
I searched for somebody to help me understand the subject. I found help in a retired Sociologist lecturer. She opened my eyes to social happenings occurring in society that I had never noticed before. The seed of interest in Sociology was planted in me on that very day. However, I think the seed was planted long time ago but I never knew it, it was when I was around 6 years old. Whenever my dad took me out, he would always ask me to look around me and ask me to describe the behavior of people. I read my dad's psychology books. Actually, I preferred to looked at people’s behaviour collectively and not as an individual. I regarded studying an individual's behaviour to subjective.
I knew what I wanted to be in the future. Class did not become a bore anymore. On the record, I am the only one that passed the subject. I searched for a course that only catered to Sociology. Unfortunately, the only courses that catered to Sociology were conducted only at NUS and NTU. I was not eligible to go to these institutions.
Therefore, I gave up the idea of studying Sociology and took other courses. In 2005, my life hit a crises. I was at a total lost but the only person that made me carry on was Our Lady. Somehow she was making me live through my life eventhough I was facing many obstacles.
On one faithful Sunday, a course on being a youth leader was announced in church. At once something in me told me to join the course. I was very reluctant. However, a voice kept disturbing me by telling me to join the course. It went on for a week until I could not take it anymore and decided to join. Only then did the voice stop disturbing me.
I never regretted joining the course because it was at the course that I found my life back and the life I was suppose to lead. An aspiring and powerful priest helped me to find my life back. During the prays, God spoke to me. He told me that my purpose on earth was to make known the inequalities and sufferings that society was facing. I asked him how in heaven’s name am I suppose to accomplish the task he asked me to do.
The answer came to me when I went home. Strangely, a sociology textbook which I have not read for 4 years laid on my bed. I opened the book and started reading it. I could not put the book down. Suddenly, my interest in Sociology was rekindled. I knew how to go about accomplishing the task he asked me to do, however, there was another question. How am I going to specialize in Sociology? If anybody was to publish my writings, I needed to be somebody who had good Sociology credentials. I decided to search on the internet to see whether there were any schools that were conducting Sociology courses besides NUS and NTU. Truth behold, SIM University was going to conduct a degree course in Sociology. I instantly jumped at the opportunity.
It has already been three years since I have been studying the subject. I totally immersed myself in the subject as a result I have become the subject itself. It actually changed my life because nowadays whenever people speak to me or whenever I view my surroundings, I start to analyze and evaluate them. I wonder whether it is a blessing or a curse. I have yet to find the answer.
This behavior of mine has not met with favorable response. People have told me that I have stopped being a human. Not everything in life needs analyzing and evaluating. That I have to separate what I have been trained for in order to communicate with other people. That I always impose my will on others and never listen to them. I am trying to correct these problems but find it very difficult to do so because I cannot see the problems myself. For all I know, I do listen to people and try to understand where they are coming from and then I give my opinion. Maybe it is because I refuse to bulge from my opinion but then again I do give in also. I am really at a crossroads because I really do want to interact with people and improve relationships with them.
I am still not giving up hope in improving my relationships with others. I am also very determine to accomplish the task God set for me. I can only now pray to Our lady to help me have a better life and also help me to be more human and understanding. On this note, I wish everybody Happy Easter!!!
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Karl Marx : Biographical Sketch ( A Tribute to Karl Marx – 127th death anniversary )
Karl Marx was born on the 5th of May, 1818 in Tier. Tier was a commercial city in Southwestern Germany Rhineland.
Marx’s father was a secularly educated lawyer so was Marx. When France ceded Rhineland to Prussia after defeating Napolean, Jews were faced with a repel of the civil rights granted under French Rule. In order to continue his practice, Marx’s father converted to Lutheranism in 1817.
Karl lived in a middle class home, he studied as a law student at the University of Bonn ( 1835 ) and at University of Berlin ( 1836 – 1838 ). He also studied history and philosophy.
In Berlin, Marx joined the Young Hegelians. It was a group of radical thinkers who followed the teachings of Georg W.F Hegal. They developed a powerful critique of Georg W.F Hegal. Georg W.F Hegal ( 1770 – 1831 ) was a dominant German Intellectual figure of day and one of the most influential thinkers of the 19th century.
Marx constructed the basis of his theoretical system, historical materialism, by inverting Hegal’s philosophy of social change. In 1841, Marx earned a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Jena. However, Berlin Ministry of Education black listed him due to his radical views. As a result this circumstance, he could not continue his education.
Marx accepted an offer to write for the Rheinische Zeitang, a liberal newspaper published in Cologue. He became an editor of the newspaper. He wrote on the social conditions of Prussia. He criticized the government’s treatment of the poor and exposed the harsh conditions of peasants working in Moselle wine producing region.
However his reports brought censors and condemnation by the Prussia government. He was forced to resign from his post.
He married his childhood sweetheart, Jenny Von Westphalen ( daughter of a Prussian baron ). They moved to Paris during the fall of 1843. Paris was the centre of European Intellectual and Political movements.
Marx became acquainted with a number of leading socialist writers and revolutionaries. One of them was Heri de Saint – Simon. Heri de Saint – Simon ( 1760 – 1825 ) ideas lead to the creation of Christian Socialism.
Christian Socialism is a movement that sought to organize modern industrial society according to the social principles espoused by Christianity.
To counter the exploitation and egoistic competition that accompanied industrial capitalism, Saint – Simonians advocated that industry and commerce be guided according to an ethic of brotherhood and cooperation.
By instituting common ownership of society’s productivity forces and an end to rights of inheritance, they believed that the powers of science and industry can be marshaled to create a more just society free from poverty.
Adam Smith believed that any and all are free to enter and compete in the market place of goods and services. Under the guiding force of the “invisible hand”, the best products at the lowest price will prevail.
Consumers will dictate what will be produced and bought. In the process, the potentially destructive drive for selfishly bettering one’s lot is checked by a rationally controlled competition for markets.
A system of perfect liberty is thus created that both generates greater wealth and promotes the general well being of society.
Marx shared much of Smith’s analysis of economics but Marx insisted that from establishing a system of perfect liberty, private ownership of the means of production will bring about alienation of workers ( more on that later ).
David Ricardo ( 1772 – 1823 ) wrote on a number of subjects including the condition of wages, the source of value, taxation, and the production and distribution of goods.
A leading economists in his day, his writing’s were influential in shaping England’s economic policies. It was from his critique of these writers that Marx would develop his humanist philosophy and economists theories.
Marx also began what would become a lifelong collaboration and friendship with Friedrich Engel’s, whom he met while serving as an editor of the Zeitung.
Marx stay in France was short-lived as his journalism inherited the irked of the government. He was expelled in January 1845 from the country at the request of the Prussian government for his antiroyalist articles.
Unable to return, he renounced his Prussian citizenship and settled in Brussels with his family until 1848. Marx extended his ties to revolutionary working – class movements through associations with members if the League of the Just and the Communist League.
In Brussels Marx and Engles produced two of their most important early works, The German Ideology and the Communist Manifesto.
1848, workers and peasants began staging revolts throughout much of Europe. As the revolution spread, Marx and Engels left Brussels and headed to Cologue to serve as co-editors of the radical Neve Rheinische Zeitung, a paper devoted to furthering the revolutionary course.
For his part in the protests, Marx was charged with inciting rebellions and defaming the Prussian royal family. Marx was forced to leave the country. He returned to Paris but soon was pressured by the French government to leave the country as well.
Marx and his family moved to London in 1849. In London, Marx turned his attention more fully to the study of economics. Spending some 60 hours per week in British Museum. Marx produced a number of important works including ( 1867 ), considered a masterpiece critique of capitalist economic principles and their human cost.
From 1851 o 1862, he was a regular contributor to the New York Daily Tribune, writing on such issues as political upheavals in France, the Civil War in the United States, Britain colonization of India and the hidden causes of war.
In 1864, Marx helped found and direct International Working men’s association, a socialist movement committed to ending the inequalities and alienation or “loss of self” experienced under capitalism.
The foundation had branches across the European Continent and the United States and Marx’s popular writing and activism gave him an international audience for his ideas.
In 1876, the Foundation disintegrated. Marx could not support himself. His health worsen. His family health was also worsening. Marx’s wife died in 1881, his daughter died of starvation a year later and Marx himself died on March 14, 1883.
His Intellectual and Core Ideas
By mid19th century, the industrial revolution that began in Britain 100 years earlier was spreading throughout Western Europe. Technology advances in transportation, communication and manufacturing spurred an explosion in the commercial markets for goods.
It resulted in the birth of capitalism and the middle class owners, better known as the bourgeoisie, to economic and political power. The size of the manufacturing force soon rivaled and then surpassed those working in the agriculture industry.
The change from Agriculture to Industrial was more prominent in Manchester, England. In Manchester England, its population exploded to 1000%. The extremely growing fast rates meant that families had to live in make shift housing without heat or light and in dismal conditions that fueled the spread of diseases. Conditions in the mechanized factories were no better.
The factories were poorly ventilated and lit. The environment was hazardous to one’s well being and factor owners disciplined workers to monotonous rhythms of mass production.
A 70 hour work week was not common for men and women. Children as young as six often worked as much as 50 hours a week. Yet the wages earned by laborers left families on the blink of beggary. The appalling living and work standards lead Engels to describe Manchester as “ Hell On Earth”
It was in reaction to such dire consequences the Marx sought to forge a theoretical model intended not only to interpret the world but also to change it.
He centered his analysis on the middle class. For Marx, classes are group of individuals who share a common position in relation to the means or forces of production. These refer to the raw materials, technology, machines, factories and land that are necessary in the production of goods.
Each class is distinguished by what it owns with regard to the means of production. Wage labourers, capitalists and landowners constitute three big classes of modern society based on the capitalist mode of production.
Under capitalism, there are “ the owners merely of labour power, owners of capital and landowners where respective sources of income are wages, profit and gound-cent
While wage owners are free to quit or refuse a particular job , the nevertheless must sell their labour power to someone in the capitalist class in order to live. Labourers have only their ability to work to exchange for money that can be used to purchase the goods necessary for survival.
However, the salary earned is far exceeded by the profits reaped by those who control the productive forces. As a result, classes are pitted against each other in a struggle to control the means of production, the distribution of resources and the profits. For Marx, this class struggle is the catalyst for social change and the prime mover of history.
This is because any mode of production based on private property bears the seeds of its own destruction by igniting ongoing economic conflicts that inevitably will sweep away existing social arrangements and give birth to new classes of oppressors and the oppressed. Indeed, as Marx states in one of the most famous passages in “ The Communist Manifesto”, “The history of all hitherto existing society, is the history of class struggles.”
Marx developed his theory in reaction to lassie – faire capitalism, an economic system based on individual competitors fro markets. It emerged out of from the destruction of feudalism in which peasant agricultural production was based on subsistence standards in the service to lords and the collapse of merchant and craft guilds, where all aspects of commerce and industry were tightly controlled by monopolistic professional organistions.
Labourers sell not only their labour power but also their souls ( alienation ). They have no control over the product they are producing while their work is devoid of any redeeming human qualities.
Although capitalism produces self-betterment for owners of capital, it necessarily prevents workers from realizing their essential human capacity to engage in creative labour.
In highly mechanized factories, a worker’s task might be so mundane and repetitive that she seems to become part of the machine itself. Here is the concept of alienation.
For example, a student once said she worked in a job in which she had a scanner attached to her arm. Her job was simply to stand by a conveyer belt in which boxes of various sizes came by. She stuck her arm out and “read” the boxes with her scanner arm.
Her individual human potential was completely irrelevant to her job. She was just a “cog in a wheel” of mechanization. Marx maintained that when human actions are no different than those of a machine, the individual is dehumanized.
Capitalism is inherently exploitative. It is the labour power of workers that produces the products to be sold by the owners of businesses. Workers mine the raw materials, tend to the machines and assemble the products.
Yet, it is the owner who takes for himself the profits generated by the sale of goods. Meanwhile, worker salaries hover around subsistence levels, allowing them to purchase only the necessities sold at a profit by capitalists – that will ensure their return to work the next day.
From the point of view of the businesses owner, capitalism is a “dog eat dog” system in which business owners must always watch the “ bottom line” in order to compete for market dominance.
Business owners can never rest on their laurels – for someone can always come along and create either a better or newer product or the same product at a lower price.
Business owner must constantly think strategically and work to improve her product or reduce her costs. Cutting costs can increase a business owner’s profit either directly or in-directly. Directly ( as she keeps more money for herself ). Indirectly ( enabling the businesses owner to lower the price and sell more of her products ).
Competition between capitalist may lead to greater levels of productivity, it also results in a concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands.
One of the basic truths of capitalism is that it takes money to make money, and the more money a business owner has at his or her disposal, the more ability he or her has to generate profit-making schemes.
For instance, a wealthy capitalist might temporarily underprice his product in order to force his competitors out of business. Once the competition is eliminated and a monopoly is established, the product can be priced as high as the market will bear.
The business owners who are unable to compete successfully for a share of the market find themselves joining the swelling ranks of property less wage earners or the “proletariat”
This brings not only economic consequences such as those just mention, but political consequences as well. Marx points out that the former capitalists bring with them a level of education not possessed by typical wage labourers. This adds to the revolutionary potential of the working – class movement in two ways.
First, the proletariat is transformed into an overwhelming majority of the population, making it class interests an irresistible force for change.
Second, those former members of the bourgeois class translate their resentment into a radicalization of the proletariat by further educating the workers with regard to both the nature of capitalist accumulation and the workers’ role in overthrowing the system of their oppression.
He sought to generate class consciousness – an awareness of the part of the working class of their common relationship to the means of production. Marx felt that this awareness would be the first step in instituting social change. More specifically, the development of class consciousness was a vital key in the evolution of society toward an ultimate, utopian end : communism. He believed that the epoch of capitalism was a necessary stage in this evolution – and the last historical period rooted in class conflict.
The class antagonism between bourgeois capitalist and the wage earning, property – less proletariat would climax in a communist revolution that would transform the proletariat in to the ruling class.
Using the power of the state to further its own class interest, the proletariat would wrest control of society’s productive forces from the hands of the bourgeoisie and create a centralized, socialist economy.
Socialism, however, would be but a temporary phase, as classes and class conflict would soon disappear. Capitalism would create the capital and technology needed to sustain a communist society, the final stage in history.
In this utopian society, the production of goods will be controlled collectively and not by private business elites. Without the private ownership of the means of production, society would longer be divided along class lines; and without antagonistic class interests, the social conditions that produce conflict, exploitation and alienation would no longer exist. Finally, without class conflict, the fuel that ignites social change, the dialectical progression of human history comes to an end, leaving individuals to cultivate their natural talents and actualize their full potential.
Many consider Marx’s theory as obsolete as the internal contradictions of capitalism has been checked by a number of practices and ongoing government interventions in the economy. None other the less, Marx theory on communism still does spark interest various intellectuals and it still holds certain truths.
Marx’s father was a secularly educated lawyer so was Marx. When France ceded Rhineland to Prussia after defeating Napolean, Jews were faced with a repel of the civil rights granted under French Rule. In order to continue his practice, Marx’s father converted to Lutheranism in 1817.
Karl lived in a middle class home, he studied as a law student at the University of Bonn ( 1835 ) and at University of Berlin ( 1836 – 1838 ). He also studied history and philosophy.
In Berlin, Marx joined the Young Hegelians. It was a group of radical thinkers who followed the teachings of Georg W.F Hegal. They developed a powerful critique of Georg W.F Hegal. Georg W.F Hegal ( 1770 – 1831 ) was a dominant German Intellectual figure of day and one of the most influential thinkers of the 19th century.
Marx constructed the basis of his theoretical system, historical materialism, by inverting Hegal’s philosophy of social change. In 1841, Marx earned a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Jena. However, Berlin Ministry of Education black listed him due to his radical views. As a result this circumstance, he could not continue his education.
Marx accepted an offer to write for the Rheinische Zeitang, a liberal newspaper published in Cologue. He became an editor of the newspaper. He wrote on the social conditions of Prussia. He criticized the government’s treatment of the poor and exposed the harsh conditions of peasants working in Moselle wine producing region.
However his reports brought censors and condemnation by the Prussia government. He was forced to resign from his post.
He married his childhood sweetheart, Jenny Von Westphalen ( daughter of a Prussian baron ). They moved to Paris during the fall of 1843. Paris was the centre of European Intellectual and Political movements.
Marx became acquainted with a number of leading socialist writers and revolutionaries. One of them was Heri de Saint – Simon. Heri de Saint – Simon ( 1760 – 1825 ) ideas lead to the creation of Christian Socialism.
Christian Socialism is a movement that sought to organize modern industrial society according to the social principles espoused by Christianity.
To counter the exploitation and egoistic competition that accompanied industrial capitalism, Saint – Simonians advocated that industry and commerce be guided according to an ethic of brotherhood and cooperation.
By instituting common ownership of society’s productivity forces and an end to rights of inheritance, they believed that the powers of science and industry can be marshaled to create a more just society free from poverty.
Adam Smith believed that any and all are free to enter and compete in the market place of goods and services. Under the guiding force of the “invisible hand”, the best products at the lowest price will prevail.
Consumers will dictate what will be produced and bought. In the process, the potentially destructive drive for selfishly bettering one’s lot is checked by a rationally controlled competition for markets.
A system of perfect liberty is thus created that both generates greater wealth and promotes the general well being of society.
Marx shared much of Smith’s analysis of economics but Marx insisted that from establishing a system of perfect liberty, private ownership of the means of production will bring about alienation of workers ( more on that later ).
David Ricardo ( 1772 – 1823 ) wrote on a number of subjects including the condition of wages, the source of value, taxation, and the production and distribution of goods.
A leading economists in his day, his writing’s were influential in shaping England’s economic policies. It was from his critique of these writers that Marx would develop his humanist philosophy and economists theories.
Marx also began what would become a lifelong collaboration and friendship with Friedrich Engel’s, whom he met while serving as an editor of the Zeitung.
Marx stay in France was short-lived as his journalism inherited the irked of the government. He was expelled in January 1845 from the country at the request of the Prussian government for his antiroyalist articles.
Unable to return, he renounced his Prussian citizenship and settled in Brussels with his family until 1848. Marx extended his ties to revolutionary working – class movements through associations with members if the League of the Just and the Communist League.
In Brussels Marx and Engles produced two of their most important early works, The German Ideology and the Communist Manifesto.
1848, workers and peasants began staging revolts throughout much of Europe. As the revolution spread, Marx and Engels left Brussels and headed to Cologue to serve as co-editors of the radical Neve Rheinische Zeitung, a paper devoted to furthering the revolutionary course.
For his part in the protests, Marx was charged with inciting rebellions and defaming the Prussian royal family. Marx was forced to leave the country. He returned to Paris but soon was pressured by the French government to leave the country as well.
Marx and his family moved to London in 1849. In London, Marx turned his attention more fully to the study of economics. Spending some 60 hours per week in British Museum. Marx produced a number of important works including ( 1867 ), considered a masterpiece critique of capitalist economic principles and their human cost.
From 1851 o 1862, he was a regular contributor to the New York Daily Tribune, writing on such issues as political upheavals in France, the Civil War in the United States, Britain colonization of India and the hidden causes of war.
In 1864, Marx helped found and direct International Working men’s association, a socialist movement committed to ending the inequalities and alienation or “loss of self” experienced under capitalism.
The foundation had branches across the European Continent and the United States and Marx’s popular writing and activism gave him an international audience for his ideas.
In 1876, the Foundation disintegrated. Marx could not support himself. His health worsen. His family health was also worsening. Marx’s wife died in 1881, his daughter died of starvation a year later and Marx himself died on March 14, 1883.
His Intellectual and Core Ideas
By mid19th century, the industrial revolution that began in Britain 100 years earlier was spreading throughout Western Europe. Technology advances in transportation, communication and manufacturing spurred an explosion in the commercial markets for goods.
It resulted in the birth of capitalism and the middle class owners, better known as the bourgeoisie, to economic and political power. The size of the manufacturing force soon rivaled and then surpassed those working in the agriculture industry.
The change from Agriculture to Industrial was more prominent in Manchester, England. In Manchester England, its population exploded to 1000%. The extremely growing fast rates meant that families had to live in make shift housing without heat or light and in dismal conditions that fueled the spread of diseases. Conditions in the mechanized factories were no better.
The factories were poorly ventilated and lit. The environment was hazardous to one’s well being and factor owners disciplined workers to monotonous rhythms of mass production.
A 70 hour work week was not common for men and women. Children as young as six often worked as much as 50 hours a week. Yet the wages earned by laborers left families on the blink of beggary. The appalling living and work standards lead Engels to describe Manchester as “ Hell On Earth”
It was in reaction to such dire consequences the Marx sought to forge a theoretical model intended not only to interpret the world but also to change it.
He centered his analysis on the middle class. For Marx, classes are group of individuals who share a common position in relation to the means or forces of production. These refer to the raw materials, technology, machines, factories and land that are necessary in the production of goods.
Each class is distinguished by what it owns with regard to the means of production. Wage labourers, capitalists and landowners constitute three big classes of modern society based on the capitalist mode of production.
Under capitalism, there are “ the owners merely of labour power, owners of capital and landowners where respective sources of income are wages, profit and gound-cent
While wage owners are free to quit or refuse a particular job , the nevertheless must sell their labour power to someone in the capitalist class in order to live. Labourers have only their ability to work to exchange for money that can be used to purchase the goods necessary for survival.
However, the salary earned is far exceeded by the profits reaped by those who control the productive forces. As a result, classes are pitted against each other in a struggle to control the means of production, the distribution of resources and the profits. For Marx, this class struggle is the catalyst for social change and the prime mover of history.
This is because any mode of production based on private property bears the seeds of its own destruction by igniting ongoing economic conflicts that inevitably will sweep away existing social arrangements and give birth to new classes of oppressors and the oppressed. Indeed, as Marx states in one of the most famous passages in “ The Communist Manifesto”, “The history of all hitherto existing society, is the history of class struggles.”
Marx developed his theory in reaction to lassie – faire capitalism, an economic system based on individual competitors fro markets. It emerged out of from the destruction of feudalism in which peasant agricultural production was based on subsistence standards in the service to lords and the collapse of merchant and craft guilds, where all aspects of commerce and industry were tightly controlled by monopolistic professional organistions.
Labourers sell not only their labour power but also their souls ( alienation ). They have no control over the product they are producing while their work is devoid of any redeeming human qualities.
Although capitalism produces self-betterment for owners of capital, it necessarily prevents workers from realizing their essential human capacity to engage in creative labour.
In highly mechanized factories, a worker’s task might be so mundane and repetitive that she seems to become part of the machine itself. Here is the concept of alienation.
For example, a student once said she worked in a job in which she had a scanner attached to her arm. Her job was simply to stand by a conveyer belt in which boxes of various sizes came by. She stuck her arm out and “read” the boxes with her scanner arm.
Her individual human potential was completely irrelevant to her job. She was just a “cog in a wheel” of mechanization. Marx maintained that when human actions are no different than those of a machine, the individual is dehumanized.
Capitalism is inherently exploitative. It is the labour power of workers that produces the products to be sold by the owners of businesses. Workers mine the raw materials, tend to the machines and assemble the products.
Yet, it is the owner who takes for himself the profits generated by the sale of goods. Meanwhile, worker salaries hover around subsistence levels, allowing them to purchase only the necessities sold at a profit by capitalists – that will ensure their return to work the next day.
From the point of view of the businesses owner, capitalism is a “dog eat dog” system in which business owners must always watch the “ bottom line” in order to compete for market dominance.
Business owners can never rest on their laurels – for someone can always come along and create either a better or newer product or the same product at a lower price.
Business owner must constantly think strategically and work to improve her product or reduce her costs. Cutting costs can increase a business owner’s profit either directly or in-directly. Directly ( as she keeps more money for herself ). Indirectly ( enabling the businesses owner to lower the price and sell more of her products ).
Competition between capitalist may lead to greater levels of productivity, it also results in a concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands.
One of the basic truths of capitalism is that it takes money to make money, and the more money a business owner has at his or her disposal, the more ability he or her has to generate profit-making schemes.
For instance, a wealthy capitalist might temporarily underprice his product in order to force his competitors out of business. Once the competition is eliminated and a monopoly is established, the product can be priced as high as the market will bear.
The business owners who are unable to compete successfully for a share of the market find themselves joining the swelling ranks of property less wage earners or the “proletariat”
This brings not only economic consequences such as those just mention, but political consequences as well. Marx points out that the former capitalists bring with them a level of education not possessed by typical wage labourers. This adds to the revolutionary potential of the working – class movement in two ways.
First, the proletariat is transformed into an overwhelming majority of the population, making it class interests an irresistible force for change.
Second, those former members of the bourgeois class translate their resentment into a radicalization of the proletariat by further educating the workers with regard to both the nature of capitalist accumulation and the workers’ role in overthrowing the system of their oppression.
He sought to generate class consciousness – an awareness of the part of the working class of their common relationship to the means of production. Marx felt that this awareness would be the first step in instituting social change. More specifically, the development of class consciousness was a vital key in the evolution of society toward an ultimate, utopian end : communism. He believed that the epoch of capitalism was a necessary stage in this evolution – and the last historical period rooted in class conflict.
The class antagonism between bourgeois capitalist and the wage earning, property – less proletariat would climax in a communist revolution that would transform the proletariat in to the ruling class.
Using the power of the state to further its own class interest, the proletariat would wrest control of society’s productive forces from the hands of the bourgeoisie and create a centralized, socialist economy.
Socialism, however, would be but a temporary phase, as classes and class conflict would soon disappear. Capitalism would create the capital and technology needed to sustain a communist society, the final stage in history.
In this utopian society, the production of goods will be controlled collectively and not by private business elites. Without the private ownership of the means of production, society would longer be divided along class lines; and without antagonistic class interests, the social conditions that produce conflict, exploitation and alienation would no longer exist. Finally, without class conflict, the fuel that ignites social change, the dialectical progression of human history comes to an end, leaving individuals to cultivate their natural talents and actualize their full potential.
Many consider Marx’s theory as obsolete as the internal contradictions of capitalism has been checked by a number of practices and ongoing government interventions in the economy. None other the less, Marx theory on communism still does spark interest various intellectuals and it still holds certain truths.
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