Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Karl Marx



Karl Marx was born in Germany but spent much of his professional life in London, working and writing in collaboration with Friedrich Engels. Two of Marx and Engels’s most influential treatises are Das Kapial and The Communist Manifesto. Das Kapital, a massive multivolume work published in 1867, 1885, and 1894, is critical of the capitalist system and predicts its defeat by a more humane and more cooperative economic system:socialism. 

The Communist Manifesto is a 23-page pamphlet that was issued in 1848 and has since been translated into more than 30 languages . The Manifesto includes these famous lines: “The workers have nothing to lose but their chains; they have a whole world to gain. Workers of all countries, unite.” 

Marx sought to analyze and explain conflict, the major force that drives social change. The character of conflict is shaped directly and profoundly by the means of production, the resources (land, tools, equipment, factories, transportation, and labor) essential to the production and distribution of goods and services. Marx viewed every historical period as characterized by a system of production that gave rise to specific types of confrontation between an exploiting class and an exploited class. For Marx, class conflict was the vehicle that propelled people from one historical epoch to another.

From Marx’s perspective, the Industrial Revolution was accompanied by the rise of two distinct classes, creating a fundamental divide: the bourgeoisie, the owners of the means of production, and the proletariat, those individuals who must sell their labor to the bourgeoisie.


Karl Marx believed that the pursuit of profit was behind the explosion of technological innovation and the never- before-seen increase in the amount of goods and services produced during the Industrial Revolution. In a capitalist system, profit is the most important measure of success. Marx described class conflict as an antagonism that grows out of the opposing interests held by these two parties. The bourgeoisie’s interest lies with making a profit and the proletariat’s with increasing wages. To maximize profit, the bourgeoisie work to cut labor costs with labor-saving technologies, employ the lowest-cost workers, and find the cheapest materials to make products.

Marx believed that capitalism was the first eco- nomic system capable of maximizing the immense productive potential of human labor and ingenuity. He also felt, however, that capitalism ignored too many human needs and that too many people could not afford to buy the products of their labor.

In the Class Struggles of France 1848–1850, Marx named another class, the finance aristocracy, who lived in obvious luxury among masses of starving, low-paid, and unem-ployed workers.According to Marx the financial aristocracy appropriate to themselves“public funds or private funds without giving anythingequivalent in exchange; it is the cancer of production, the plague of society and of states.”

No comments:

Labels

Aboriginal (1) Acheulian tool (1) Age-Groups (1) Alliance (1) Animatism (1) anthropology (1) Anthropology of Art (1) Ashrama system (1) Associations (1) Attributes of Culture (1) autochthony (1) avoidance (1) Basics (1) bio ethics (1) biological adaptation (1) Birsa Movement (1) Bongaism (1) branches of anthropology (1) Bride Wealth (1) Cargo Cults (1) Castes among Muslims (1) Catholics (1) civilization (1) Clifford Geertz (2) Cognitive Anthropology (1) Compadrazgo (1) Cope's law (1) Cross Cousin (1) cultural anthrology (1) Cultural Borrowings (1) cultural citizenship (1) Cultural Ecology (1) Cultural imperialism (1) Cultural Materialism (1) cultural rights (1) culture (2) Culture and Motive (1) Darwinism (1) Demographic Transition (1) Derek Freeman (1) descent (2) Deviance (1) Diffusionism (1) DNA (1) DNA Technology (1) dollo's law (1) Dormitories (1) Dowry (1) Durkheim (1) Early Human Ancestors (1) Eco System Concept (1) Ecological Anthropology (1) Edward Sapir (1) emic/etic (1) Endogamy (1) Environment (1) Eskimo System of Kinship (1) Ethnicity (1) Ethnocentric (1) ethnoecology (1) Ethnographic Monographs (1) ethnography (1) Evans Pritchard (2) Evolutionism (1) Exogamy (1) Extended family (1) family (2) Female Genital Mutilation (1) Feminism (1) field studies (1) fieldwork (1) Flake Culture (1) folklore (1) fossil (1) Functional Theories on Primitive Religion (1) Gause's law (1) gender bias (1) Gender expectations (1) Generalized Exchange (1) Genetic Adaptation (1) Genetic Change (1) Genetic Screening (1) Genetics (1) Genetics and its Relevance to Physical Anthropology (1) George Peter Murdock (1) Hardy-Weinberg Law of Equilibrium (1) Hawaiian System of Kinship (1) Hominids (1) Homo Erectus (1) Homo Habilis (1) Homo Hierarchies (1) honor killing (1) Human Evolution (1) human rights (1) Incest prohibition (1) Independent Invention (1) indian anthropology (1) Indigenous People (1) Indus Valley Civilization (1) Intellectual Property Rights (1) Iroquois System of Kinship (1) J.C Frazer (1) jajmani system (1) Jean Baudrillard (1) Jean Dreze (1) Joint Family (1) Joking Relationship (1) Julian Steward (1) kin (1) Kin Behaviour (1) kindred (1) law (1) Leslie White (1) Levirate (1) Lucy Mair (1) magic science (1) Mandelbaum (1) Marcel Mauss (1) Marett (1) Margaret Mead (1) Marxism and Anthropology (1) Mendelian Principle (1) Michel Foucault (1) Microliths (1) Middle Palaeolithic Culture (1) Migration and tribal communities (1) modernization (1) multiculturalism (1) Mysore (1) myth (1) Nadel (1) Neanderthal Man (1) Non Unilineal or Cognatic Systems (1) Notes and Queries (1) Nuclear Family (1) Nuer (1) Organic evolution (2) origin of state (1) origins (1) Oscar Lewis (1) Paleo River (1) Parallel Cousin (1) Participatory Rapid Assessment (1) Patterns of Culture (1) Pedigree Analysis (1) Polyandry (1) Polygyny (1) Population Genetics (1) Pre-history (1) PreHarrapan settlements (1) primitive (1) profane (1) Proto- history (1) Purushartha (1) Race (2) racism (1) Radcliffe-Brown (1) Recombinant DNA Technology (1) Reflexivity (1) Reinventing Anthropology (1) Religion (2) Religion and science (1) religious beliefs (1) research (1) Restricted Exchange (1) Rhina (1) rig vedic society (1) Robert Redfield (1) Rules of Residence (1) Ruth Benedict (3) sacred (1) Sacred Complex (1) Sacrifice (1) San hunter-gatherers (1) sanction (1) Scheduled Areas (1) scope of anthropology (1) Secret Societies (1) sex-gender (1) Sir James George Frazer (1) Social Institutions (1) Social Network (1) Social-Psychological Perspectives (1) society (1) sorcery (1) Sororate (1) state (1) Status (1) Status of women in tribal society (1) Stebbins (1) stone age communities (1) stone tools (1) Style of Life (1) symbolic culture (1) Symbolism (1) Syncretism (1) Synthetic Perspectives (1) Taboo (1) Teknonymy (1) terraces (1) Textual Approach and Contextual Approach (1) The Golden Bough (1) Thomas Malthus (1) tobacco (1) Totem (1) Trade and Barter (1) Tradition (1) Transactionalism (1) Tribal Religion (1) Tribal Sub plan (1) tribe (1) Upper Palaeolithic (1) Upper Palaeolithic Period (1) urban revolution (1) Urbanization (1) witchcraft (1) world's population 2012 (1)

Popular Posts

Subscribe Now: bloglines

Subscribe in Bloglines

Top Education Sites
anthropology,anthropologyguide
Flipkart.com