Priyamvada Ashok MhaddalkarAIR 13 · CSE 2021 · 266 wordsTheir whole copy
Opening
The seminal contribution of Karl Marx to the understanding of society is through his concepts of class struggle and alienation.
Marx traces historical evolution of society through below stages:
Body · points and prose
- Primitive communism
- Ancient society
- Feudal society
- Industrial society and predicts next stages as socialism and communism which will be the end of history.
At each stage of society, the relationship between forces of production (technology) and relations of production gave rise to a mode of production and different classes accordingly.
Primitive communism was a classless society, means of production were communally owned, no private property hence no alienation. As society progressed, new forces of production emerged, thus surplus was created → which gave rise to private property and as producer got detached from his product, alienation increased.
classes Ancient society - Master-slave Feudal society - Barons-serfs Capitalist society - Bourgeoisie-Proletariat
As technology developed, new forces of production emerged and these were inconsistent with existing old relations of production. This contradiction gave rise to class struggle. Eg: From feudal to capitalist
struggle between Barons and Bourgeoisie (new class) Minority vs minority. from capitalist to communist - however → internal contradiction between bourgeoisie and proletariats which would lead to proletariat revolution. Thus history of mankind is history of class struggle. In the industrial society, a worker experiences alienation on four dimensions: -
- Alienation from product
- Alienation from process
- Alienation from human being
- Alienation from species being
Close
As a worker has no control over product produced due to increasing division of labour, also lack of leisure leads to alienation from species being.