Karl Marx Theory Essay Examples

According to Karl Marx, the human being society is made up of two distinct parts; the substructure and the superstructure. He described the substructure as the production forces and relations. These forces and relations include the working conditions of the employer-employee, relations brought by property, and the technicalities in labor division.These production forces and relations are the determinants of the other ideas and relationships in the society which in other terms can reffered as the superstructure. The superstructure consists of the culture, rituals, and political structures of power, the state and institutions. The substructure determines the superstructure while the superstructure usually influences the substructure. The superstructure emanates from the substructure and is a reflection of the ruling class who control the substructure. Karl Marx constructed the bourgeoisie social and political theory. The bourgeoisie is a social order, which the middle-class people in the society dominate. According to Marxist theory, the bourgeoisie are responsible for industry revolutionization and society modernization. However, the bourgeoisie also seeks to create revolutionary tensions by monopolizing the benefits accrued from modernization. They monopolize these benefits by exploiting the proletariat, who are usually property less. The proletariat is the wage earner in the society usually they own no property. According to Marx, the proletariat and bourgeoisie conflict in that the proletariat wishes for their wage to be at the highest possible amount while the bourgeoisie wants that the proletariat wages be at the lowest possible amount (Evans and Geraint 144).Marx predicted that the proletariat population will increase and at one time they will be above the bourgeoisie and come up with the revolt against them. The proletarians will base their revolt on the reason that the bourgeoisie subject them to poor working conditions and low pay while the larger part of the benefits of the proletarians work goes to the bourgeoisie. Karl Marx hoped for a revolution of the working class but one problem he figured out was the fact that the workers never viewed themselves as one block. The working class considered themselves as individuals and used the terms “I” and “me”. Marx referred this as false consciousness. False consciousness can be described as an attitude among members of a particular class where the attitude is a wrong reflection of their objective position.Marx wanted the working class to stop living under false consciousness so that they would be able to bring about a revolution. He wanted the working class to say “Our boss is exploiting us," instead of the common saying among them, “my boss is exploiting me”.In his hopes for a working class revolution, Marx wanted the working class to develop something referred to as class-consciousness. He wanted the workers to start viewing themselves as one block so that they could revolt and fight for a change in their working conditions.If the working class developed class consciousness, they would aware of the common vested welfare and the necessity for a collective political action with the intention of bringing social change. The workers were supposed to use their exploitation by the middle class as a catalyst for change. According to Karl Marx, alienation was the transformation of the people’s labor into a supernatural force that rules them. He developed this idea in 1844.Alienation is believed to have originated from commodity fetishism that is a belief that commodities (inanimate things) possess human powers and are able to rule over human beings by governing their activities.

Work Cited

Evans, Michael, and Geraint Parry. Karl Marx. , 2004. Internet resource.