Marxist Analysis of Social Dynamics and Capitalism
Marx’s Conception of Humanity
According to Marx, humanity is viewed as a concrete being within its social environment. Human nature is inherently practical, with work as its primary activity. However, in capitalist society, the essence of humanity is dispossessed. Individuals become alienated from the product of their labor, losing ownership of the objects they produce. Their own activity is no longer their own, and they become estranged from nature and other people. This transforms their world into a dehumanized one, where human values are supplanted by the value of things.
The Bourgeoisie: Capitalist Class
The bourgeoisie is the class of capitalists who own the social means of production and exploit wage labor. Far from abolishing class contradictions, the bourgeoisie has merely replaced old classes, conditions of oppression, and forms of struggle with new ones. Its origins can be traced back to the serfs of the Middle Ages. The discovery of America, for instance, significantly benefited the bourgeoisie, opening new fields of activity and free trade. This class has created degraded forms of life, defining a naked, shameless, direct, and brutal reality. It has destroyed feudal, patriarchal, and idyllic relations, and the modern bourgeois stands at the head of entire industrial armies.
The Proletariat: Wage Laborers
The proletariat is the class of modern wage laborers who, possessing no means of production themselves, depend on selling their labor power to survive. Marx viewed the proletariat as both the heir and the executioner of the bourgeoisie. It is an organic part of the bourgeois system, forming the great, disciplined, and organized army of the dispossessed. Marx believed that the exploitative and oppressive relations between the owners (bourgeoisie) and the proletariat would lead to the unprotected workers achieving class consciousness. This would, in turn, result in the institution of a dictatorship of the proletariat, which Marx theorized would ultimately lead to communism.
Understanding Social Classes
Social classes are antagonistic social groups. One group appropriates the labor of another due to the different positions they occupy within the economic structure of a given mode of production. This position is primarily determined by their specific relationship to the means of production, which can be of two types: ownership or non-ownership. Marx asserted that antagonistic social groups have always existed throughout history, citing examples such as:
- Slave society: masters and slaves
- Feudal society: lords and serfs
- Capitalist society: bourgeoisie and proletariat
The Dynamics of Class Struggle
Class struggle is the confrontation that occurs between two antagonistic social classes as they contend for their long-term strategic interests. For example, the long-term strategic interest of a ruling class is to perpetuate its rule, while that of a dominated class is to destroy the system of domination. This inherent confrontation between classes is a central tenet of Marxism. As Marx and Engels famously assert in The Communist Manifesto, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
Religious and Political Illusions
Marx believed that previous religious illusions (such as religion and the concept of God) that once sustained the human spirit, along with previously gained freedoms in the political sphere (like those championed during the Enlightenment and the French Revolution), are lost with the rise of the bourgeoisie. This class, he argued, has radically overturned humanity in a prominent, direct, and brutal manner. The bourgeoisie alienates and subjugates humans by transforming everything into mere trade and production.