A Comparison Of Wells’ And Marx’s Ideas On Class Struggles And The Future

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A Comparison of Wells’ and Marx’s Ideas on Class Struggles and the Future

We grow up envisioning the future through television programming such as the Jetsons and Star Trek. Through optimistic eyes, we see the future as merely a further advancement of our technology, society, and comforts of living. Inversely, because of natural fear, we never portray the future as a continuation or development of the problems we face today: Diseases will always have cures, wars will always end, and social struggles will always be resolved. H. G. Wells and Karl Marx challenged these sanguinely views of the advancement of human society and identify the faults that would lead to our destruction. Wells, through the Time Machine, illustrates how the increasing wealth gap and the industrial revolution diminish our capabilities as humans. Though Marx is confident about the future, through The Communist Manifesto and dialectical materialism, he describes how the introduction of unskilled labor and capitalism is a step backwards in our development. Their ideas share the common theme of identifying and facing our problem; however, they disagree of whether the downfall is as a class oriented problem.
Karl Marx defined history as acting in a dialectical manner. He thought that there was always a thesis (advancement), antithesis (setback), and synthesis (further advancement). He thought that in 1848 we were in the antithesis that is capitalism. Factories, industry, and large businesses impeded the advancement process. Before those, people were creative, manufacturing people who made products from start to finish and enjoyed all the profits that their efforts allowed them to. Now, people worked numerously more hours and inputted much more strength and effort into their work. They only produced part of a product and were paid a wage. Their salary was a small fraction of the profits made by the finished product. Someone who inputted no effort into the produ...