Marx
Karl Marx took the Hegelian concept of a class which might act in the interests of all. For Marx, the opportunities for further human progress could be realized or lost, depending on the extent to which the universal class of the moment directed social developments.
For example, the opportunities opened up by the surplus of labor in the Middle Ages could not be exploited by the feudal lords, with their system of tithes extracted from peasants in limited territories. Entrepreneurs (or, 'bourgeoisie') were able to find productive uses for that labor in towns. Feudal lords gained or lost social power according to how well they accommodated this new class of people into their domains and 'courts'. Eventually, as European economies flourished under the social organization of the market, the entrepreneurs gradually or violently took formal control of their societies from the old class of aristocrats. In doing this the bourgeoisie sought to further its own interests, which inevitably furthered the interests of society as a whole. So, for a period, Marx characterizes the bourgeoisie as the universal class.
Marx considered the universal class in his time to be the proletariat - roughly speaking, the class of persons contributing their labor to society in exchange for subsistence wages. At around the time of the various rebellions which took place across Europe in 1848, the bourgeoisie lost their position as society's avant-garde, by Marx's analysis. They had become more interested in consolidating their own social power than in revolutionizing society. The revolutionary baton had passed to the proletariat, which had both the means and the incentive to take human progress further.
The moment of this transition is significant for Marxist thought in another way. As a historical materialist analysis, Marxism ought to be able to account for its own appearance at a certain moment in history, by reference to material, historical processes. The proletariat's succession to the throne of universal class provides a plausible candidate, at least within the terms of Marxist thought. It marks a new material stage, which would permit or perhaps even require there to be a Karl Marx at the level of ideas.
Read more about this topic: Universal Class
Famous quotes containing the word marx:
“Whilst Marx turned the Hegelian dialectic outwards, making it an instrument with which he could interpret the facts of history and so arrive at an objective science which insists on the translation of theory into action, Kierkegaard, on the other hand, turned the same instruments inwards, for the examination of his own soul or psychology, arriving at a subjective philosophy which involved him in the deepest pessimism and despair of action.”
—Sir Herbert Read (1893–1968)
“There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.”
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“Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries, unite!”
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