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Carl Marx and Frederic Engels

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ZoeScott
Carl Marx and Frederic Engels

To begin with, Carl Marx (1818-1883) and Frederic Engels (1820-1895) are among the most famous social theorists and political activists, ideological inspirers and founders of international movement of communists in the 19th century. Furthermore, their activities had a significant impact on development of social thoughts and sociology as a separate science. Moreover, one of the most important problems of humanity both activists saw in struggle of social classes during the whole history and in all processes of the development of the world. Marx and Engels, in their Manifesto of Communist Party, stated that struggles of classes formed the history of the currently existing society (Tucker, 473). More by token in his early activities, Marx designed and described a few examples of alienation of workers, which can be observed in the modern community, and considered it as one of the most significant issues of the global society. These prominent political activists and philosophers proclaimed the equity of all the classes and struggled for the rights of laborers, who, as they thought, formed one of the fairest classes. As a result, considering the political device of the world according to Marx, it could be highlighted that working classes struggle shaped the history of the modern society. However, the newest community contributed to the development and maintained a few types of laborers alienation. Finally, these ideas of a permanently suffering working class had become a basis for almost all the researches and investigations of Carl Marx and Frederic Engels in the 19th century.

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Firstly, Carl Marx considered the history of the entire humanity as a permanent struggle of classes. Moreover, this philosopher claimed that the community as it is structured now is obliged to this struggle of working class. It means that although the society has significantly changed since the first human appeared, the nature of the peoples relationships has not changed significantly because of the social differentiation. There is abundance of examples of classes fighting with each other such as slaves struggled against freemen, plebeians with patricians, oppressed against oppressors. These instances show how different was classes differentiation during all the humanitys history beginning form the ancient times and ending with the modern world, where Marx and Engels lived. All these processes are permanent, and even if they cannot be seen clearly now, they are continuing in various open and hidden fights. These expressions of classes differentiation are shown through the division of population into burgers and proletariat (Tucker, 474). Unfortunately, all of these fights have always ended either with drastic changes of the societies structure though the revolution methods or with total destruction of the existing classes. For example, the French Revolution of 1789-1799 contributed to the downfall of monarchy political system and to the expansion of new country of the French Empire. Besides, the constant rearrangements of social structure can be observed during the whole history of the humanity, where all the communities had their clearly ordered social ranks. For example, in Ancient Rome, there were slaves, patricians, soldiers and plebeians, all of whom had their own traditions, rights benefits, and obligations to each other.

Moreover, in his work Manifesto of Community Party, Marx stated that the problems mentioned above are common even for his current society, where an accurate differentiation was established. For instance, the new bourgeois system created and developed its new classes, new forms of oppressions and struggle, which successfully replaced the old ones. Nevertheless, there was a gradual division of all the society structure into two hostile camps such as bourgeoisie and proletariat, according to the Marxs theory. However, burghers was gradually developing since the Middle Ages (Tucker, 474). It must be said that the discovery of America was one of the most important factors for the development of this class, according to Marxs claims. Furthermore, the development of various industries such as manufacturing systems and trading contributed to the development of exchange, which, in its turn, made a contribution to the classes differentiation. Besides, since the manufacturing system was developing in those times, the new middle class of manufacturers appeared, which was also similar with feudal system of the Middle Ages (Tucker, 474). Notwithstanding these facts, the modern bourgeois were the leaders of the Marx and Engels times manufacturing class, which consisted of millions of people, who were working hard day by day for many years. As a result, even the modern society has its leaders, who are governing all of the communitys processes and a labor force, which is executing all the orders of the bourgeois, who are the major representatives of the leaders.

Secondly, Carl Marx created a special term called people alienation and even developed a special theory about the main concepts and types of the phenomenon. Alienation theory of the political activist claims that alienation is caused by being of a human a part of social class, which contributes to differentiation of this particular person. This approach is based on the statement that, on the one hand, a worker loses his or her own right for thinking and is not allowed to determine own destiny and communication with the surrounding people. Furthermore, this laborer cannot participate in the profit distribution brought by the sale of manufactured production, and his or her life steps are determined by the bourgeoisie (Marx, 73). On the other hand, the bourgeoisie is a privileged class, which owns all the manufacturing means, which help them to use the working class in order to achieve the highest revenues comparing with their competitors at the sales market. It is obvious from the Marxs theory that he provided to his readers an accurate template of social differentiation, which existed in community, where he lived. He tried to show that there were two major classes, one of which was suffering from authority of the other, and that all the resources were unequally distributed between these two classes. Unfortunately, the policy of the leading class of bourgeoisie contributes to the creation of people alienation, which cannot be eliminated in the modern community because of unequal distribution of all the resources and revenues.

Finally, there are four types of alienation, which could be identified in the work of Marx Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, and which are caused by the system of capitalistic industrial manufacturing. The first of them is called alienation of the workers from their product, which can be determined as ignoring the laborers interests during manufacturing of different goods. For example, neither manufacturers nor buyers are able to define the design and the production process of the good, but the class of capitalists has to do it. Furthermore, the bourgeoisie class owns the intellectual labor of the engineers and designers. They shape the final model of the product in order to accommodate the product to the tastes of customers and, as a result, to maximize the revenues of the bourgeoisie. The other type is alienation of the worker from the act of production, which states that the main process of manufacturing in capitalistic system is an endless sequence of monotonous movements. Furthermore, these movements give the laborer only physiological satisfaction for the high quality of the executed work. Moreover, the wage of the worker defines his or her working force, and, as a result, he or she experiences psychological estrangement from the working process. Alienation of the worker from their Gattungswesen (species-essence) is the following statement of the Marxs theory, which says that the people of working class are alienated from their personal potential. The phenomenon of species-essence claims that all the people are able to feel their human nature, to define their own purposes consciously, what is needed to achieve this goal, and how they are going to achieve it (Marx, 78). Unfortunately, all the people, who represent the working class, are alienated from their nature because of subjection of all their decisions and actions to the leaders class. Alienation of the worker from other workers is the last type of alienation defined by Marx, which says that a laborer loses his or her uniqueness, when is sold at the labor market as an object (Marx, 78). It is a pity that capitalism transforms the labor of a worker into a commercial good, which is, in its turn, an object of sales. Nevertheless, labor of all the people should be considered individually, and should be a part of the common forces aimed at the development of the community. Hence, there are four major types of the working-class alienation, which were investigated by Marx in his work, and that were actual in his times.

To round the essay off, Carl Marx and Frederic Engels contributed to the development of the most significant political phenomenon of the 19th century for the whole worldwide society, which is known now as the communists movement. It must be said that these eminent political activists and philosophers improved the structure of sciences that existed in those times, because they greatly influenced the extension of social thoughts and accelerated the development of sociology. Furthermore, working class was considered as one of the most important classes for the developments of the human historys. Nevertheless, these scientists claimed that this class had suffered a lot for all the history of development of the humanity. Hence, the researches stated that the modern community came to its existence only because of permanent struggle of classes. Moreover, Marx and Engels said that there was a plethora of expressions of alienation of workers amongst the members of various classes of the society. Finally, these problems of working class were among the most important issues of the modern community for both political and social investigators, which they tried to explain and to show in all their works.

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