ipl-logo

Marx Human Nature

738 Words3 Pages

On page 150 of The German Ideology, Marx states “As individuals express their life, so they are.” This essay will explain how Marx did not believe in a single trans-historical human nature. His conception of an unstable state of human nature, combined with the modes of production, produces a cycle of tools and needs in which our lives and the lives of future generations are continually changed and shaped. In order to understand the cyclical process posed by Marx, one must first understand how we express our life. According to Marx, we express our life and ourselves through modes of production. The position of individuals and groups is determined by the type of production, which are “the methods employed in agriculture, industry and commerce.” …show more content…

Modes of production shape historical epochs. Marx claims, “The premise from which we begin are not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real premises… they are real individuals, their activity and the material conditions under which they live, both those which they find already existing and those produced by their activity.” Human nature is therefore determined by the modes of production, which also shapes material conditions. There are definite material limits, presuppositions, and existing conditions that define what an individual will be born into. Marx does believe there is a sort of human essence always present. Throughout each phase, humans’ modes of production are shaped and impacted by the previous generation’s contributions. But despite this, Marx rejects the notion of a fixed human nature, arguing that “we do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive… We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life-process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process” If human nature echoes an individual’s life-process, we can determine that there is not a single human nature that could be applied to all human beings in different times. One generation’s human nature cannot be applied to another since human nature is constantly modified my presupposed factors. In fact, a person’s human nature varies and fluctuates according to the socioeconomic status of the previous generations. Their struggles will be different. Humans within the same generations will be born into different social

Show More
Related

  • Conservatism Of Today's US White Working Class

    1062 Words  | 5 Pages

    Men want to be “free and conscious producers.” (“The German Ideology”) By impeding man’s ability to realize his true desires, capitalism incentivizes the proletariat to demand change and make it happen. According to Marx and Engels, it is people’s ability to produce not solely to meet their needs, but as an end in and of itself that makes us truly human, and people will not rest until they reach their human potential.

    Read More

  • Marx And Durkheim: A Comparative Analysis

    908 Words  | 4 Pages

    Marx, through his communist manifesto, believed that “modern industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist”, taking society from one epoch of social stratification and forced labour to Capitalism, under which the inequality between the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat grew and became more evident. On the other hand, Durkheim saw industrialisation as a mainly positive occurrence which, along with the division of labour, provided the necessary institutions are in place to maintain it, as it causes society to change and develop and thus “civilization develops because it cannot fail to develop” (Durkheim: 1933: 337). Yet despite differences in their views of the effect, both Marx and Durkheim used the process of industrialisation to explain how society progresses and how society is held together or broken, with Durkheim, in particular, looking at just how much the structure of society changes as the division of labour progresses (Morrison:

    Read More

  • What Is The Effect Of The Industrial Revolution In The Communist Manifesto By Karl Marx

    1337 Words  | 6 Pages

    The Industrial Revolution cast its shadow upon European cities and towns. Some enjoyed this shade while others suffered tremendously because of it. Those who enjoyed the luxuries and wealth that the Industrial Revolution provided, the bourgeoisie, depended on the needs of the poor, the proletarians, to increase the size of their monstrous factories and ultimately their wealth and influence. In “The Communist Manifesto” Karl Marx discusses the effects of the Industrial Revolution in further dividing society by creating new social and economic hierarchies. In addition to his observation of the division of labor, Karl Marx believed, that due to the technological shift from craftsmanship to machinery this also caused division of labor and the appreciation of proletarian handmade goods was disregarded.

    Read More

  • Communist Manifesto Rhetorical Analysis

    354 Words  | 2 Pages

    Karl Marx discusses in the first section of the The Communist Manifesto about how history mainly consists of class struggles. He explains how there will always be an oppressor and oppressed, where there is an ongoing battle that always ends in ruins or in revolt. He also claims that if there continues to be different classes, the wealthy and ones in poverty, there will never been an end to this conflict over power. Marx believes that if were no classes, there will no longer be strife and everyone would share equal power and wealth. In this prompt, Marx uses allusion, periodic sentences, and cause and effect to support his claim and to apply emphasis to the points he uses.

    Read More

  • Romanticism In American Life Today

    813 Words  | 4 Pages

    We too are dealing with our own America tension issues from women’s equality, to gun laws, to technology, to questioning our political leader's choices, to poverty, and affordable health care as the Romanticism period did. The fifth and final reason The Romanticism period also reflects towards American life today is looking Hegel dialectical idealism, Karl Marx took his ideas of dialectical idealism and moved it a materialist dialectic. Marx's did this by taking into an account of how Hegel took away from a world through movement and change. Marx's thought that change could be taken away from idealism, but more an of a materialist look at how the world worked. Marx believed in a world rooted in a materialist, he took Hegel look at the class order from aristocrats to peasants, that instead of the shift in concession, but where the peasant comes to a sense of pride and self-worth.

    Read More

  • Ideas From The Communist Manifesto By Karl Marx And Friedrich Engels

    1079 Words  | 5 Pages

    The idea behind this according to Marx is that history is a series of stages, defined by their mode of production and the struggle between classes: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. " According to Marx, the current historical stage is the capitalist historical stage. This is the conflict between the bourgeoisie (middle class) and the proletariat (working class). This theory is supported by the historical stages preceding the capitalist historical stage which can easily be defined by their modes of production and class struggle, or lack thereof.

    Read More

  • Disengagement Theory

    838 Words  | 4 Pages

    A lot of difference can happen over the years. While no two people have the same life experience, the generation born at the same time can still share of lot of characteristics if they were exposed to a lot around the same things at the same

    Read More

  • Adam Smith Social Inequality Essay

    1169 Words  | 5 Pages

    To begin with, Marx mentioned “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” (Marx, 1978, p. 473). Marx understood the history of mankind as a chain of different eras brought about

    Read More

  • Marx And Engels: The Three Main Ideas

    759 Words  | 4 Pages

    He argues that with all the pressures of class conflict and the imbalance of capitalism there is no way that this pattern can continue without a major revolution. Marx compares capitalism to anarchy, in the sense that there is no organization within which only causes chaos. The common pattern of capitalism is a boom followed by a bust, and that bust leads to recession and social unrest. This sort of fickle economy, Marx believes, will furthermore contribute to the downfall of capitalism. This socialist revolution would, “abolish private ownership of key elements of economy and change nature of relationships from ones based on marriage and property.”

    Read More

  • The Themes Of Alienation In Estranged Labor By Karl Marx

    1297 Words  | 6 Pages

    The premises presented by Karl Marx on his manuscript were genuinely with accord to the ordeal of the workers as they lose themselves in the hands of the capitalists. But, as we stated in the first part of this paper, we think there is a flaw in his second premise, the estrangement of the worker from the activity production. We believe that labor done by workers - explicitly those who take pleasure in doing their job- doesn’t necessarily imply that everything that they do is not out of their essential being primarily because they love what they do, and any work that is done out of passion and love comes from the essential being of a

    Read More

  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau's A Discourse On Inequality

    140 Words  | 1 Pages

    In “A Discourse on Inequality,” Jean-Jacques Rousseau strongly critiques human nature and modernity. He exposes in his writing his notion of what he believes the state of human nature to be. Rousseau presents this state in a philosophical fiction, he also develops a depiction of what human perfection would be. He expresses many times how human development may represent the rise of man, yet, the rise of man leads the moral and psychological decline of mankind in a whole. Comparatively, man was born nothing but an animal.

    Read More

  • Karl Marx And Capitalism Essay

    1269 Words  | 6 Pages

    Marx (1844) argued that humans are naturally sociable and that work emboldens meaning and satisfaction in life, but that capitalism

    Read More

  • Karl Marx And Class Conflict

    1486 Words  | 6 Pages

    Karl Marx (1818-1883) considered himself not to be a sociologist but a political activist. However, many would disagree and in the view of Hughes (1986), he was ‘both – and a philosopher, historian, economist, and a political scientist as well.’ Much of the work of Marx was political and economic but his main focus was on class conflict and how this led to the rise of capitalism. While nowadays, when people hear the word “communism”, they think of the dictatorial rule of Stalin and the horrific stories of life in a communist state such as the Soviet Union, it is important not to accuse Marx of the deeds carried out in his name.

    Read More

  • Karl Marx's Contributions To Sociology Case Study

    741 Words  | 3 Pages

    His ambition for universal equality, collective justice, and classless society transfixed me. I never thought that a classless society could be possible; however, my understanding of his work leads me to envisage the possibilities of a classless society. Marx’ work demonstrates a man who genuinely wants societal change. “The goal of sociology would not simply be to scientifically analyze or objectively describe society, but to use a rigorous scientific analysis as a basis to change it” (Little & McGivern, 2013,

    Read More

  • Marx's Class Struggle

    1177 Words  | 5 Pages

    Marx’s use of this method, the dialectical materialism, to analyze the general development of historical events and it is a large outline of the principal stages through which history has moved. The materialist view to history shows that humanity has the capability to survive, as

    Read More

More about Marx Human Nature

Open Document