Title: A Brief Summary of Marx's 5 Epochs in Human History

Course: Political Philosophy/ Marxism

In an attempt to understand this historic struggle, Karl Marx discovered and defined five specific
historic phases with which Marx claimed the class struggle is intertwined. The five Epochs were the
names given to these periods. These epochs were: primitive communal, slave, feudal, capitalist and,
socialist and communist phases. There is a class war in these epochs, which sets them in action to go
from one stage to the next. The history of society and life is written by this conflict movement. The
essential goal of Marx's rule of motion is to figure out not only how history has produced these epochs,
but also why they have unfolded in the way they have.

PRIMITIVE COMMUNAL

The first period is primitive communal. Everything was free at this time, and mankind was
together. There was also a peaceful coexistence as well as interdependency among men. However, the
battle of a few to become the Lords resulted in the establishment of class, which led to the birth of the
following epoch - slavery.

Tribal civilization has no social classes and is organized around kinship relationships, with men
doing hunting and women doing domestic duties. According to Marx and Engels, the tribe form is fairly
primitive at this point, a continuation of the family's natural division of labor. During this time, a slave
culture may emerge, especially as the population grows, leading to the expansion of needs and the
development of relationships with other civilizations (through war or barter). The beginning of class
society can be seen in slave culture.

SLAVE

The Lords (aristocrats) and the Serfs (slaves) had a connection during the slave era. For the
owner to reward them, the slaves must demonstrate devotion and hard work. They must be humiliated
before their masters in order for the land (factor of production) that has been provided to them to not
be taken away in order to improve their living conditions. The history of the feudal system continues
with the same dialectic battle that began among the lords due to dissatisfaction, power struggles,
education, economics, and politics. The concept of private property begins to evolve at this point: With
the development of the private property, we discover here for the first time the identical conditions that
we would find again, only on a larger scale, with modern private property. The concentration of private
property on the one hand, and the transformation of the plebeian small peasantry into a proletariat on
the other.
FEUDALISM

From the historical perspective of Marxism; the process by which human creation and
interdependence are interconnected and influenced by each other, through the various parts of society:
economic, political, legal, education, the family. The effects on people can only be understood as such.
The economy is the main source of feudalism and mostly impacts people, who shape the other elements
of society.

The process of human nature has evolved via tension and conflict that trigger societal
transformation. This transformation is not voluntary but is accompanied by conflict - the source of stress
and conflict. The social agreement between the lords (burghers) and the servants existed under
feudalism (proletariat). The only special aspect here is that, through the efficacy and humility of the
servants towards their lords, the production component has not been purchased with money.

The owner and at the conclusion of the day, those other members who do not own the
production factors; the fruit of their effort is divided into a particular amount, which favors the worker.
The land will be returned to the owner later - the land has not been sold. It is again a community that is
built on tribe and community ownership; yet the class that directly produces is against it, not slaves, but
the serving little farming community, as in the case of the ancient community. The feudal framework
was expressed through commercial guilds in the city. The organization of the country and the city was
based on limited production conditions—the modest, basic farming of the land and the art of craft
industries.

CAPITALISM

The utter difference and destruction of society is capitalism according to Marx. It begins right
from infancy. It brought the individual nature of Capitalism, namely how parents raise up children to live
alone and how to deal with their lives so that they might become somebody in the future. By contrast,
the servant (employees) sells his labor for money on the route to capitalism. Thus, the servant only
receives little money for his work, which opens the road for alienation. Marx's concept of history is
commonly referred to here as dialectical materialism as ideas are largely a reflection of economic
production's social relations. Karl Marx was trying to explain in his Communist Manifesto. Marx's
concept of history is commonly referred to here as dialectical materialism as ideas are largely a
reflection of economic production's social relations.

SOCIALIST AND COMMUNIST

With the development of commerce (and the population) in the future, feudal society started to
accumulate capital, which eventually led to the English Revolution of 1640 and the French Revolution of
1789 along with increased debt incurred by the aristocracy, and which paved the way for the creation of
a society structured in commodities and profit. The proletariat in such a society is deceived in the belief
that it is free because it is compensated for its work. In fact, it leads to the exploitation of the proleTariat
that the translation of labor into an abstract quantity that can be bought and sold on the market
benefits a small proportion of the population that controls capital. This means that the working class is
alienated because the members of this class feel that they do not control the circumstances that drive
them into certain employment. This is because someone else is the owner of production facilities, which
are treated as private property.

Position:

Five progression phases of human socio-economic groups were supposed to have been outlined
by Marx: primitive classless communism, classical Slave society, the feudal serfdom-based society, the
capital-based modern bourgeois society, and, in the end, the forward 'classless' society of future, i.e.
communist society. This unilinear scheme was considered a historical progression of human social
existence as well as a logical growth. In the now undeveloped world, it permitted the Soviets, unknown
to those bourgeois modernization theorists, to pursue an interventionist approach to social
transformation in such cultures. Soviet and Bourgeois thinkers both believed it might be a lesson to the
present and the future of the still poor, as were the principles and generalizations formed from the
previous experience of the rich nations of nowhere.

The initial phases of mankind were times when very few people knew this fact, but more and
more people come to this realization as history progresses. Political groups were characterized by the
absolute dominance of a very small number of people in the early phases of human existence. With the
passage of history, we have built more intricate systems of political organizations, which might be
characterized as mankind develop. Marx also believes that freedom is the end of history. The end of
man-to-man exploitation. At last, the world is divided into haves and have-nots, exploiters and exploited
people. A period where individuals are not forced to sell their workforce because they have it all. The
society of his time was seen as separated into two primary groups: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
The bourgeoisie is the one that controls the means of production and thus the one that controls the
political power. There is no property in the proletariat and it is compelled to sell it to the bourgeois to
exist. Capitalism is called this structuring of the economy. The proletariat is in control of the production
media and he calls it Socialism, Marx predicted that the next phase in history will be. The concept of the
property remains in socialism. In a time when each person contributes according to his abilities and
consumes according to his/her needs, the third and final stage of his evolution will be communism. The
proletariat must be raised to dominate the means of production. Because the bourgeoisie benefits from
and has no interest in reforming the intrinsically unjust capitalist system.