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. His most well-known
writing is The Communist Manifesto, a 23-page pamphlet
issued in 1848 and translated into more than 30 languages
(Marcus 1998). Upon reading it today, one is “struck by the
eerie way in which its 1848 description of capitalism
resembles the restless, anxious and competitive world of
today’s global economy” (Lewis 1998, p. A17).
• According to Marx, the sociologist’s task is to analyze and
explain conflict, the major force that drives social change.
Specifically, Marx saw class conflict as the vehicle that
propelled society from one historical epoch to another.
He described class conflict as an antagonism growing out
of the opposing interests held by exploiting and exploited
classes. The nature of that conflict is shaped by the
means of production, the resources such as land, tools,
equipment, factories, transportation, and labor that are
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 class
conflicts. 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. The bourgeoisie’s interest lies
with making a profit and the proletariat’s with increasing
wages.
• To maximize profit, the bourgeoisie search for
labor-saving technologies, employ the lowest-cost
workers, and find the cheapest materials to make
products.
Marx believed that the pursuit of profit drove the explosion of
technological innovation and the unprecedented levels of
production during the Industrial Revolution. He believed that
capitalism was the first economic system capable of maximizing
human ingenuity and productive potential. He also believed that
capitalism ignored too many human needs, that too many workers
could not afford to buy the products of their labor, and that
relentless efforts to reduce the costs of labor left the worker
vulnerable and insecure. Marx called the drive for profit a
“boundless thirst—a werewolf-like hunger—that takes no account of
the health and the length of life of the worker unless society forces it
to do so” (Marx 1887, p. 142). Marx believed that if this economic
system were in the hands of the workers, or the proletariat––public
wealth would be abundant and distributed according to need.