Marx

10 Pages 2412 Words

Marxism was formulated in the 19th century. Carl Marx and his
associate Frederick Engels observed the socio-economic changes that were
transpiring in Britain. England was the dominant world power and had
the largest industrialized economy during the 1800's. The development
of the factory and the institution of the assembly line created a large
demand for workers. This demand was satiated by migrating peasant from
the rural areas in England and Ireland to developing urban centers. As
these urban centers or cities evolved using industry as the economic
backbone for the population, a large number of factory workers were
accumulated to operate the machinery in horrid conditions. These
workers, which would be termed as the peasantry under a feudal system,
were now the working class or proletariat. They entered cities with
hopes of bettering their lives and survival. Though revolution never
took place in England during this period, it allowed Marx to study
industrialization, urbanization and imperialism.
The theory of Marxism has three basic concepts: historic
materialism, forces of production and relations of production. Historic
materialism is defined as a society's past performance and present
capabilities of satisfying the basic means of life. Humankind's basic
needs of eating, drinking and shelter need to be met properly. The
forces of production (technology, capital, the infrastructure of
society, etc.) are important for the simple fact of who ever controls
them controls the society. The last aspect of Marxism, the relations of
production, deals directly with the relationships between classes of
people (the aristocracy, the middle-class and the working class).2
Marxism includes a predictive analysis of socio-economic
structures. Using history, logic and the dynamic nature of humankind as
guidelines, Carl Marx attempts to map out a sequence of events w...