Take home essay

Tom Jarry

Doctor Fulton

Western Civilizations II

11/19/17

Karl Marx was born on May 5, 1818 in Trier, Rhineland, and died on March 14, 1883 in London. He is a historian, journalist, philosopher, economist, sociologist, essayist and theoretician of the German socialist and communist revolution. Therefore, Karl Marx is known for many different things and, among other things, for his materialist conception of history commonly called historical materialism. Thus, the materialist conception of history is a Marxist method for analyzing history from a materialist perspective. It induces the idea, present in the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, that historical events are influenced by social relations, in particular relations between social classes and, therefore, by the situation that human beings actually experience. . This design gives an essential part to the economy in the transformations of the world.

Thus, the Marxist vision of history is based on the following principles: the motor of history is the evolution of the material productive forces, the "economic structure" of society. Each situation of the productive forces corresponds to a certain situation of the relations of production, that is, of the mode of ownership, or of the distribution of ownership of the instruments of production (land, raw materials, machinery, means of transport and communication). that is, the existence of a class of owners / operators and a class of the exploited. In each situation of the relations of production corresponds a "legal and economic superstructure" to which certain forms of social conscience correspond. These are established by the ruling class to legitimize their domination. While the material productive forces constantly evolve under the effect of technical progress, the relations of production, as well as the superstructure, tend towards conservation. The maintenance of these relationships becomes an "obstacle" to the natural course of history. The contradiction between the evolution of the productive forces and the maintenance of the relations of production and of an unaltered superstructure can only be resolved through the class struggle and more precisely the conscious action of the class that should benefit from the new production report. This voluntarist action does not necessarily imply a degree of violence, although it is in this way that Marx was interpreted with respect to the necessity of the Revolution. The Revolution allows to adapt the relations of production and the superstructures of society to the state of the material productive forces.

In prehistory, considered as the period of primitive communism, work is done in common, which leads to the common ownership of the means of production and the fruits of production. Then there are no social classes.

Second, the emergence of the patriarchal mode of production, however, soon reveals a definite form of production) and a differentiation of function and class (domination of men, authority of the patriarch or father of a family).

Then, technical progress allows the accumulation of wealth in the hands of some people and, therefore, the emergence of a social class of owners. These become masters of the main force of production, men, in the form of slavery. It is the antiquity, or "regime of slavery", under which a class of teachers is formed.

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