Free Essay On Marxism

English

In his ‘Manifesto for the Communist Party’, Karl Marx extols the revolutionary character of the bourgeoisie, while at the same time calling for their fall at the hands of the proletariat. The praise for the bourgeoisie is due to the bourgeoisie upending age-old customs and stifling social structures, while the call for their fall arises due to the new socio-economic frameworks set up by the bourgeoisie across the globe that puts the working class in fetters (Marx and Engels).
The bourgeoisie are the product of the industrial revolution. The bourgeoisie needs to constantly revolutionize the instruments of production to create more efficient manners of production. While the bourgeoisie grew out of the means of production fashioned out of feudal society, the latter became a liability as the means of production rapidly agglomerated in size and integrated across borders. The bourgeoisie, therefore, became the vanguard of revolution to upend all existing social structures that were statist : kingdoms, countries and family structures broke down as the markets became global and interconnected. Thus, Marx credits the industrial revolution and its catalysts, the bourgeoisie, to usher in revolution in society (Marx and Engels).
With increased industrialization and unbridled competition, however, a new class of people has emerged as the oppressed class. This is the proletariat, the working class, which has to perforce subsist for low wages to do inane jobs in factories. As machines become more competent, the jobs of workers become lesser paying and more emotionally deadening. The workers also bear the brunt of rapid realignments in industry and capital markets due to the free flowing nature of capital. Therefore, according to Marx, the proletariats have no option other than to band together on a global scale to oppose unbridled capitalism ushered in by the bourgeoisie, who for all practical purposes are the new masters in the industrialized world (Marx and Engels).

Work Cited

Marx, Karl, and Engels, Friedrich. Manifesto of the Communist Party. Trans. Samuel Moore. Ed. James Gifford. Vancouver: Fairleigh Dickinson University, 2013. Print.