Utopian socialism

Marx’s basic ontological assumptions about humans and the nature of society Ontology relates to the questions of being and reality. Marx ontologically assumed that humans are altruistic, material creatures and are creative in nature. He explains that humans meet fundamental requirements by creating necessities such as food and shelter out of the environment. Producing these items and structures expand the human capabilities and can be seen as a mode of self-expression. Marx elaborates on these…

The French and Industrial Revolution are considered to be the catalysts that lead to the west becoming modernized. The French Revolution, which happened from 1789 to the late 1790s, was the battle of reactionaries and radicals (Pavlac 254). King Louis XVI when given the throne was too young and inexperienced to make the necessary reforms that France needed. He was unable to solve the debt caused by the previous kings, and therefore made the French people angry. Influenced by the American…

KARL POLANYI: The Great Transformation In the 19th century, economy was still “embedded” (Polanyi, 1992) in the society, that is economic activities were influenced by social, religious and political relationships existing between people. Earlier, market exchange of commodities depended on trust, barter system and mutual understanding. Polanyi distinguishes commodities into real and fictitious commodities. Real commodities are commodities that are produced for sale in market. Polanyi,…

Capitalism is the dominant economic system of the West by which production is privately owned and income is distributed through free markets. This exists in contrast to many Eastern countries that believe that production of good is best controlled by the state. The idea that the state and not the individual should be the one controlling production comes from the roots of the philosopher Karl Marx. Marx foresaw a world without the use of money, without a modern caste system with class divisions,…

Their system of administration combined both their own as well as Roman elements. The new social order saw the dominance of the military commander, who became the monarch & a new nobility, drawn from warriors and an educated, Romanised elite. Peasants, who constituted their armies, became impoverished due to continual warfare. This led to their enserfment to feudal lords. There existed 2 kinds of groupings in feudal Europe- serfs and lords in villages and craftsmen & journeymen or apprenti who…

The PSI being inspired by Bolshevik party’s seizure of power in Russia adopted this policy of revolution and made the decision to join the Comintern (the communist international, a Moscow-based organisation, its aims were to co-ordinate and control the activities of national communist parties). Now not committed to a socialist republic and the dictatorship of the proletariat, the socialist party organised numerous strikes, protests and demonstrations in Italy. It attracted massive publicity too,…

Karl Marx, unlike Durkheim, was not a sociologist by profession . He was a journalist but first and foremost a political activist around the time of the Industrial Revolution (Scott & Marshall, 2009:443). His political ideas were often rejected, but his work often had real sociological insight as his writing was based in the economics within society its’ social institutions (Giddens, 2009:18). His work as a whole was focused on conflict, centered around class divisions and relations, and as…

Karl Marx saw himself as the, “Newton of social science” (Seidman, 34) and described his book, Capital, as being ”to the social sciences what Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was to the natural sciences” (Seidman, 34). Marx was correct about his work because even today, he is seen as one of the most influential social science writers. The readings discussed Germany during the life of Marx as well as his theories created through the observation of capitalism and class structure. Born in 1818…

Marx uses these points to explain how free market capitalism causes this estranged labor. He says that this type of economical and political system causes people to be alienated from “the product…from species-being…from other human beings…in productivity work” (Wolf 2003). He uses this theory to show us the effects that a capitalist society could have on all aspects of a human, his physical ability, his mental capacity, his social life and the obvious economic life. Marx adds to this bashes…

The individualism of a person is defined within his/her social class. In the book Brave New World, Aldous Huxley creates a utopian society that is constructed within social classes that gives an individual all the power or none at all. Huxley then presents the theory of Marxism, where the class struggle is nothing less, but the backbone of an individual’s social status and where they stand in society. Huxley’s text clearly is based on the realism of social class structure and ideology where the…