Marxism: A Deep Dive into Class Struggle and Historical Materialism
Marxism is undoubtedly the most influential philosophical trend of our time. The interpretation of history and analysis of the capitalist system carried out by Marx and Engels provided a blueprint for the great revolutions of S.XX. Although it is true the ultimate failure of the Marxist political systems, implemented in many countries, sowed serious doubts about the validity of the theses of Marx and Engels.
Marx was German and his philosophy is strongly influenced by three social phenomena of the nineteenth century: the Second Industrial Revolution that led to the emergence of a proletariat as a class, the liberal revolutions in which the proletariat and the bourgeoisie are joining forces to demand their political rights, and has as background to classical economics, which features Adam Smith (precursor of capitalism)
. It also receives the influence of Feuerbach and concepts of alignment, of utopian socialism and the Hegelian German philosophy.
The main theme of the play is the class struggle.
It also stresses the dialectical development of history and the influence of infrastructure in the superstructure.
In this excerpt from his thesis communist states. According to Marx, the attitude of the bourgeoisie as a result of that he got what he wanted in the liberal revolutions in 1848 happened to be revolutionary to conservative. Once he got what he wanted (political power) fight because the situation does not change and betray the proletariat.
For Marx, the bourgeoisie always has invented a number of methods to continue dominating and alienating the man, ie, stealing their essence.
Engels uses the term idealistic to say that the spirit creates matter. Marx, by contrast, argues that the spirit creates matter, is materialistic. Marx advocates a dialectical materialism in theory and practice of historical materialism.
To Marx, philosophy is something practical, something that transforms society. Therefore apply historical materialism. Historical materialism means the science of history, a history, which is determined by the economic relations of production.
To explain the historical materialism, it will stick to the process of Hegel’s dialectic, with three concepts: thesis-antithesis-synthesis.
Before explaining this process, Marx defines a new concept, the infrastructure (which are measures of production) and superstructure (the ideology)
Well, for Marx infrastructure critical influence on the superstructure, less to economics all cases, ie all comes down to what Marx called production which is what gives happiness to man. As society comes down to money, according to Marx, history will do the same, this is explained in historical materialism based on the dialectic method of Hegel.
Throughout history there have been and there are opposing elements (negation), all this based as I said earlier in economic relationships: master-slave, peasant-lord … Really rich and poor. The confrontation between the two classes, by defending their rights and profits, resulting in the so-called class struggle. According to Marx, class struggle is the capitalist system, where the money goes to a few and others are disadvantaged. To end the class struggle is necessary to abolish all social classes and the basic tenets of capitalism and reach the defending Marx communist paradise.
Marx argues that human nature is labor. The man when working is transforming society, humanized and naturalized interacting with other men. However, due to the mercantilist and capitalist system of the nineteenth century, the essence of man’s work is becoming a commodity, and therefore money.This is because the man owns the factories, bourgeoisie, is stealing all its essence, or what is the same thing is occurring economic alienation of man. All this is because of the surplus, ie the bourgeois takeover of all production carried out by the proletariat. The concept of alienation, making it Feuerbach, who attended a religious alienation. This alienation takes place in four areas: the product, the work of man, the nature of this and in alignment with other men. According to Marx, the fault is that private property. When an end to private property, end up with this situation, reaching communism advocated by Marx.
Finally, to get to this communist paradise need one condition: that there is a social class, the proletariat, a class industrialized. For this reason, the Communist paradise can not be carried out in agriculture because there is no alienation or private property.
The Marxist position was not well received in Germany but was born in London where the labor movement.