In 1867 Karl Marx predicted the demise of capitalism. He didn't say just when capitalism would expire, but he did explain why and how. According to Marx, capitalism had to be replaced because the evolution of society's institutions is a natural and inevitable process of history. This evolution takes place as a result of class struggle--the struggle of lower socioeconomic classes over the material fruits of production.
According to Marx, all history can be explained by the conflict between opposing forces, thesis and antithesis. Out of this conflict change emerges through synthesis. Marx contended that the direction of social change is determined by such concrete things as machinery This philosophy of the inevitability of change resulting from the struggle of opposites and determined by concrete realities rather than ideas is called dialectical materialism. It is the basic philosophy of communism.
Capitalism itself is the product of the struggle between lords and serfs in feudal society and between guild masters and journeymen in pre-capitalistic society. The evolution into capitalism, instead of some other form of social contract, was due to the arrival of machines and the factory system. This synthesis in turn created two new contending forces: the capitalist class or bourgeoisie, which owns the means of production, and the wage workers or proletariat class, which has to sell its labor to survive.
Marx seized on the labor theory of value to explain why labor is the source of all surplus value (profit) which is appropriated by the capitalists and invested in more machinery. This increasing accumulation of capital equipment, according to Marx, results in increasing output with a smaller labor force. As a result, the workers do not have enough purchasing power to remove from the market all of the goods produced by the increasing stock of capital, and cyclical depressions of increasing severity will eventually lead to a revolution.
Marx expected the new synthesis to be socialism. He believed that its organizations would grow out of the conditions of the time. He predicted that there would be two phases during the transition from capitalism to a new synthesis. In the first phase, there would be a 'dictatorship of the proletariat' in which the workers would assume power in order to eliminate class differences through reeducation. This government by the working class would subsequently give way to a communal society operating under the slogan: "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need."
| KARL MARX |
The German philosopher, radical economist and revolutionary
leader Karl Marx (1818-1883) founded modern 'scientific' socialism. His basic ideas--known
as Marxism or Dialectical Materialism--form the foundation of socialist and communist
movements throughout the world today.
"THE HISTORY OF ALL HITHERTO EXISTING SOCIETY IS THE HISTORY OF CLASS STRUGGLE."
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Principle Ideas Advanced | ||
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I. NATURE
D.
EXPLOITATION: SURPLUS VALUE
II. DIALECTICAL
MATERIALISM III. SOCIALISM IV. COMMUNISM |
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