Marx critical reveiw

Within this extract the authors are trying to address the theoretical problems surrounding class relationships between the bourgeois and the proletariat highlighting their inequalities and how the bourgeoisie creates this inequality for their own material gain. The extract also attempts to address the origins of capitalism and that the evolution of capitalism and any development or change from one form of society to another has as its direct cause conflict over the system of production. As well as bringing forward the concept of revolution as a force for social change.

In this extract Marx and Engels state that throughout history we see arrangements of social rank giving the example that ‘in ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs, in almost all these classes,

Marx and Engels also write that the bourgeoisie have also removed the power and importance of those who had honoured and respected occupations such as the doctor, the lawyer and the priest and merely turned them into their paid wage labourer. They assume that every member of society becomes part of a simple two class model of society and those members on the fringe of the ruling bourgeoisie class are either absorbed into the bourgeoisie or more typically prolaterialised.

subordinate gradations’. This statement can be viewed as being a simple and obvious historical observation of social systems. However, Marx and Engels use this observation to give the concept that bourgeois society has developed from feudal origins and although the inequalities of the previous ancient and feudal societies have been abolished. The new bourgeois society has not made class conflict redundant but has instead established new classes and forms of oppression. These new forms of oppression have been put in place by the bourgeois who have ended the patriarchal idyllic relationships of feudal society and removed the feudal ties of man and his superiors and there is now remaining no relationship between man and man other than self interest and cash payments. A criticism of Marx and Engels theory of the history of social change is that they see each stage of history as having a conflict between classes and through this conflict there is an ascension to the next social order, however, this pattern does not fit the historical record as history cannot be simplified to a set of ind

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