Karl Marx And Frederich Engels Essay, Research Paper

In their Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels applied the term communism to the final part of socialism in which all

class differences would end and people would live in peace. Marx and Engels were said to have found a scientific approach to socialism based

on the laws of history. They said that the course of history was resolved by the conflict of opposite forces based on the economic system and

the ownership of property. The class conflict would be between the bourgeoisie, who were the capitalist employers, and the proletariat, who

were the workers. The battle would end, according to Marx, in the socialist revolution and the achievement of full communism.

Marx and Engels observed the social and economic changes that were occurring in Britain. England was the major world power

and had the largest industrialized economy during the 1800’s. The development of the factory and the establishment of the assembly line

created a large demand for workers. This demand was satisfied by moving peasants from the rural areas in England and Ireland to

developing cities. As these cities grew, a large number of factory workers were gathered to operate the machinery in terrible conditions.

These workers, were now the working class or proletariat. They entered cities with hopes of bettering their lives. Though revolution never

took place in England during this time, it allowed Marx to study industrialization, urbanization and imperialism.

Marxism had its main origins in German philosophy, English political economy, and French utopian socialism. Marx learned a way

of thinking about the world called “dialectics.” from G. W. F. Hegel. Adam Smith’s and David Ricardo’s view that the values of stock express

the amount of labor time that go into their production underlay Marx’s own labor theory of value. From the French utopians, especially

Charles Fourier and the Comte de Saint-Simon, Marx saw a happier future that lay beyond capitalism. With the dilemma of an Industrial

Revolution that produced a lot poverty as well as wealth, these were the main ideas that went into the creation of Marxism. Marx’s study of

capitalism was based on a philosophy that was both dialectical and materialist. With dialectics, the changes and connection that anything

experiences are brought into view and marked, and special attention is given to whatever patterns rise. This process allowed Marx, when

viewing a particular problem within capitalism, to keep in view both the larger contacts that made up the whole development of present events.

In this way, capitalism as it expanded as a system in history becomes the main object of his study. The restless pressure of the historical

forces marketing change was captured in the idea of “contradiction,” understood as a growing apart of what is clearly united.

In conclusion, Marxism is a body of social, political, and economic thought derived from the writings of Karl Marx and his associate,

Friedrich Engels. A Marxist doctrine is what extended the worker movements and called for social and political change in the late nineteenth

century. Marx’s materialism puts ideas back into the heads of people and treats it as part of a world that is always being changed through

human activities, especially in production. In the dialectical process, ideas also affected the social conditions and behavior that more commonly

form them.