Alex De Tocqueville Analysis
Question One:
How would Marx analyze the information contained in the article? Karl Marx and Frederick Engels are well known for their contributions to socio-economics which was displayed in their writing of The Communist Manifesto. Marx and Engels wanted society to establish a classless system in which the proletariat would rise up over the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie represented the ruling class which had been established as a result of the failed system of feudalism in the 1800s. Marx believed that the bourgeoisie could rule only so long as it best represented the economically productive forces of society and that when it ceased to do so it would be destroyed and replaced and eventually this cycle would continue until there was a virtually classless society. In his writing Marx argues that the proletariat needs to overtake the bourgeoisie by means of a social revolution. He believes that due to Industrialism the proletariats have learned how to work together and will thus untie to overthrow the bourgeoisie. The proletariats had become the productive class, even though they …show more content…
worked in harsh conditions and were very exploited by the bourgeoisie, and thus Marx truly felt that they would ban together as a result of being maltreated and overthrow the bourgeoisie. In today’s society there are numerous social issues that occur and can be examined under the lens of Marxism. One of the most important issues is that the rich are getting richer while the middle class continues to struggle and unemployment rates continue to rise. In an article printed in the New York Times author Annie Lowrey sheds light on the fact that the top 10% of society continues to do well and profit through the recovery of our economy while the middle class continues to feel the struggle. This fact is something Karl Marx feared would happen and why he assumed the middle class would rise up and rebel against the capitalistic bourgeoisie. Annie Lowrey’s article, “The Rich get Richer through the Recovery,” uncovers the fact that the top ten percent of society continues to flourish even in our time of recession. “The top 10 percent of earners took more than half of the country’s total income in 2012, the highest level recorded since the government began collecting the relevant data a century ago” (Lowrey 2013). Marx would argue that this has occurred because the capitalists have truly “simplified class antagonisms” (Marx and Engels 1848). The idea of a simplified class that Marx was referring to was that when the capitalist, whom he called bourgeoisie, replaced the feudal society they did not fix the class struggles that exist in society, rather the bourgeoisie created a society that was split into “two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other—bourgeoisie and proletariat.” Marx would argue after seeing the economy today and what is presented in Lowrey’s article that this hostility still remains today. The rich get richer while the middle class and poor continue to struggle.
Another point Lowrey brings to attention is that “the economy remains depressed for most wage-earning families. With sustained, relatively high rates of unemployment, businesses are under no pressure to raise their employees’ incomes because both workers and employers know that many people without jobs would be willing to work for less. The share of Americans working or looking for work is at its lowest in 35 years” (Lowrey 2013). This high rise in unemployment is devastating to most Americans living in today’s society and often forces people to accept jobs that are often low-paying and led them to become overworked. Marx would say this is a result of the fact that the bourgeoisie “stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage laborers” (Marx and Engels 1848). He would also argue that the bourgeoisie has enslaved the working class, forcing them to do work for increasingly lower wages. Marx felt that the individual was dependent on the bourgeoisie and thus has no individuality. Marx would say that the capitalist society we live in today is one in which the minority, the top 1% of society, continues to grow while the masses continue to struggle and be oppressed and exploited by the minority. He would further argue that the worth of mankind is diminishing at the hands of the capitalistic giants. This painting of society is not too far off the idea that Marx portrays of the society of Europe at the time of which his Manifesto is written, the only difference is that he projected that the working class would rebel against the capitalist and over throw this form of society. He states, “all that is solid melts into air , all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real condition of life and his relations with his kind” (Marx and Engel 1848). The idea that the working class would rebel stems from the fact that the workers will unite together to overthrow their oppressors.
Marx would completely miss the mark on the idea that workers would unite to overthrow the powerful capitalistic bourgeoisie. In fact, history had proven that workers continue to work in poor conditions, with poor wages but continue to work as a means to provide for their families and themselves. Although workers have united and some unions prove to be very strong the economy still is struggling to overcome a severe recession. It is not hard to explain why the rich benefit even in a time of economic crisis but it does not explain why the working class has not stood up to the oppression they feel by capitalism. Perhaps it is a result of the failed efforts of Communism and Marxism as these models of society proved to be a failure. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engel argue that “society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other ways its existence is no longer compatible with society.” Marx would have a lot of evidence based on the economy of today for his argument that the notion of capitalism is no longer working for today’s society. He would argue that the amount of debt that the nation has accrued in the past few years and the steady increasing of unemployment sheds light on the fact that our society is not working under the present system. However, it is well known that communism or socialism does not alleviate the problems that the working class has felt in the recent years. It is well known that the rich do get richer at the price of the poor, so if capitalism is not working and neither does Marxism, how can the flaws in society be fixed to ensure the masses benefit rather than the minority?
Karl Marx truly believed that true freedom would arise out of a classless society in which the working class would overthrow the bourgeois. He felt that by creating a system in which all workers united to rule themselves that it would put an end to hostility not only among workers but also amongst nations. Marx would argue that the state of today’s society is a result of the working class not rising above and rebelling against the bourgeoisie thus continuing the viscous cycle of a few years of depression followed by brief prosperity. However as we know, the rebellion that Marx proposes did not led to a classless society in Russia but rather places power in the hands of a small party and enslaves people more than capitalism does. Stripping people of the right to own land and rights to inheritance and allowing the state to own everything one does, places a heavy enslavement on individuals and would led to a dark period in our history. In the end, a fix to the present economic issues needs to be uncovered as this system is clearly not working yet it is not as easy a fix as Marx would argue that it is. The economy continues to decline and working class individuals continue to watch the country slip further and further into economic peril with no tangible plan at hand.
Question Two:
Part A- Boyer in his article, “The Historical Background of the Communist Manifesto” has a definite thesis (argument) regarding the Manifesto. Using both relevant quotations and your own analysis identify Boyer’s thesis. George Boyer’s article, “The Historical Background of the Communist Manifesto”, paints the Manifesto as a piece that was written for the time in which it was published. The Communist Manifesto, written by Frederick Engels and Karl Marx is a book that attempts to solve socio-economic issues that were occurring in the 1840s in Britain. During this time, workers were suffering at the hands of the ruling class known as the bourgeoisie. The Proletarians, working class citizens, according to Marx were being exploited by the bourgeoisie in order to make the bourgeoisie richer. Boyer’s main argument in his article is that Engels and Marx wrote their Manifesto based on the development of the cotton textile industry in south Lancashire and of social and political conditions in Manchester in the 1840s and that had they lived in a different part of the country and in a different decade that they might not have written the Communist Manifesto in the way it was written. The decade of the 1840s is referred to by Boyer as the “hungry 40s” because wages were very low for the cotton industry during this time (1998:164).
In his article, Boyer speculates that if Engels had “lived not in Manchester but in Birmingham, his conception of class and his theories of the roles of class in history might have been very different. In this case, Marx might have been not a Communist but a currency reformer.” (Boyer 1998: 157) Boyer draws on Alexis de Tocqueville who visited Both Manchester and Birmingham in the 1840s and allows one to see insight on the vast differences of social classes in the two cities. In Birmingham there was “few large industries, many small industrialists,” while in Manchester, “workmen are counted by the thousand, two or three thousand in the factories.” He continues on by saying how the workers in Birmingham seem healthier and better off than those in Manchester. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote their book on the perspective of being members of society in Manchester and Boyer contends that if they had lived in Birmingham the Manifesto would be completely revised. One can see from the Manifesto that Marx is describing the society in Manchester “modern industry had converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of labourers, crowded in the factory, are organized like soldiers. Ironically, the condition of the proletariat deteriorated as capitalism progressed: “the modern labourer…becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth.” (Marx and Engels, 1848: 15) Boyer argues that the “document could not have been written in any other decade of the 19th Century” (1998). He contends that it is a piece of the time and place in which it was written. Boyer sees the text as a consequence of coincidence and nothing more and supports this claim as the reason to which Engels and Marx were not successful. The proletariat was not ready for a political rebellion because working conditions were not terrible everywhere and things got better and wages rose.
Part B- Boyer uses several sources of data to support his thesis. Identify and summarize the data sources he uses using relevant quotes and your own words. Boyer draws on many sources to support his thesis that the Communist Manifesto is a product of time and location. He even goes as far to argue that Marx and Engels may not have been the Communists they were had they lived in a different locale and at a different time period. He further develops this theory by including the fat that Engels realized during his time in Manchester that, “it was forcibly brought to my notice the economic factors, hitherto ignored or at least underestimated by historians, play a decisive role in the development of the modern world.” (Boyer 1998:157) It is Boyer’s contention that society is driven by economics which is driven by location and time. Boyer also look to Alexis de Tocqueville’s as a means to analyze and explain the writings of Marx and Engels.
As mentioned before, Alex de Tocqueville visited both Birmingham and Manchester and saw numerous differences in the two cities which he believes led Engels to falsely assume that all of England was living under the same intolerable conditions that were occurring in Manchester. Boyer also draws on Briggs to further prove his theory and Briggs says “if Engels had lived not in Manchester, but in Birmingham, his conception of class and his theories of the role of class in history might have been very different.”(1998; 157) Manchester at this time is painted to be a sort of hell and detestable place to live by numerous people including Charles Dickenson, Tocqueville, and Napier. Napier even referred to it as “the chimney of the world…the entrance to hell realized” (1998;
158). The city of Manchester seemed to be a place of disease, poor working conditions and misery. Boyer pulls on Edward Chadwick’s influential Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain in which Chadwick presented evidence that the “average age of death of mechanics, labourers, and their families in Manchester was 17, as compared to 38 in rural Rutlandshire; this despite the fact that laborers’ wages were at least twice as high in Manchester as in Rutlandshire.” (Boyer, 1998; 159) Manchester was facing extremely and increasingly difficult times during the 1840s and anyone who was likely to see the conditions in this city would be compelled to call for reform. So when Engels arrived to Manchester in 1842 and saw workers on strike in order to achieve a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work, he assumed that this strike was the beginning of a planned proletariat political revolution. (Boyer, 1998: 161) Boyer points out that Marx and Engels were not alone in the feelings of the working conditions in Manchester, numerous books were printed at the time that also shed light on the conditions. Some of these works include the famous Mary Barton written by Elizabeth Gaskell in which she shows the true conditions of life in Manchester and explains why poor men learn to hate the rich. Although, many saw that conditions were not ideal for workers during this time period and even though many predicted that this would result in a revolution and that a revolution would be inevitable, as we know this revolution did not occur. The most plausible explanation given by Boyer is that there was improvement in the economic environment and the adoption of various social policies by Parliament and also the fact that Marx and Engels did not give an accurate representation of the working class as a whole. (Boyer, 1998; 163) Marx and Engels envision for a revolution against the bourgeoisie did not come to fruition in Britain perhaps due to Boyer’s opinion that Marx and Engel only looked at a small portion of the inequalities in society and thus did not accurately display the working class in Britain at the time. Eventually, one group did rebel and there was a communist revolution in Russia, however it was very unsuccessful and led to a dark time period in history. There still exist many problems with the way society is run in today’s day and age yet no solution has been devised that will work to fix the economic crisis that this country is facing. Solutions of the past have proven to be unsuccessful yet conditions continue to worsen.
Work Cited:
Boyer, George R. 1998. “The Historical Background of the Communist Manifesto.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 34(4):151-174.
Engels, Frederick, Karl Marx. 1848. Manifesto of the Communist Party. London, England
Lowrey, Anne. 2013. “The Rich get Richer through the Recovery.” New York Times. Retrieved September 4, 2013(http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/10/the-rich-get-richer-through-the-recovery/?emc=eta1&pagewanted=print).
How would Marx analyze the information contained in the article? Karl Marx and Frederick Engels are well known for their contributions to socio-economics which was displayed in their writing of The Communist Manifesto. Marx and Engels wanted society to establish a classless system in which the proletariat would rise up over the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie represented the ruling class which had been established as a result of the failed system of feudalism in the 1800s. Marx believed that the bourgeoisie could rule only so long as it best represented the economically productive forces of society and that when it ceased to do so it would be destroyed and replaced and eventually this cycle would continue until there was a virtually classless society. In his writing Marx argues that the proletariat needs to overtake the bourgeoisie by means of a social revolution. He believes that due to Industrialism the proletariats have learned how to work together and will thus untie to overthrow the bourgeoisie. The proletariats had become the productive class, even though they …show more content…
worked in harsh conditions and were very exploited by the bourgeoisie, and thus Marx truly felt that they would ban together as a result of being maltreated and overthrow the bourgeoisie. In today’s society there are numerous social issues that occur and can be examined under the lens of Marxism. One of the most important issues is that the rich are getting richer while the middle class continues to struggle and unemployment rates continue to rise. In an article printed in the New York Times author Annie Lowrey sheds light on the fact that the top 10% of society continues to do well and profit through the recovery of our economy while the middle class continues to feel the struggle. This fact is something Karl Marx feared would happen and why he assumed the middle class would rise up and rebel against the capitalistic bourgeoisie. Annie Lowrey’s article, “The Rich get Richer through the Recovery,” uncovers the fact that the top ten percent of society continues to flourish even in our time of recession. “The top 10 percent of earners took more than half of the country’s total income in 2012, the highest level recorded since the government began collecting the relevant data a century ago” (Lowrey 2013). Marx would argue that this has occurred because the capitalists have truly “simplified class antagonisms” (Marx and Engels 1848). The idea of a simplified class that Marx was referring to was that when the capitalist, whom he called bourgeoisie, replaced the feudal society they did not fix the class struggles that exist in society, rather the bourgeoisie created a society that was split into “two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other—bourgeoisie and proletariat.” Marx would argue after seeing the economy today and what is presented in Lowrey’s article that this hostility still remains today. The rich get richer while the middle class and poor continue to struggle.
Another point Lowrey brings to attention is that “the economy remains depressed for most wage-earning families. With sustained, relatively high rates of unemployment, businesses are under no pressure to raise their employees’ incomes because both workers and employers know that many people without jobs would be willing to work for less. The share of Americans working or looking for work is at its lowest in 35 years” (Lowrey 2013). This high rise in unemployment is devastating to most Americans living in today’s society and often forces people to accept jobs that are often low-paying and led them to become overworked. Marx would say this is a result of the fact that the bourgeoisie “stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage laborers” (Marx and Engels 1848). He would also argue that the bourgeoisie has enslaved the working class, forcing them to do work for increasingly lower wages. Marx felt that the individual was dependent on the bourgeoisie and thus has no individuality. Marx would say that the capitalist society we live in today is one in which the minority, the top 1% of society, continues to grow while the masses continue to struggle and be oppressed and exploited by the minority. He would further argue that the worth of mankind is diminishing at the hands of the capitalistic giants. This painting of society is not too far off the idea that Marx portrays of the society of Europe at the time of which his Manifesto is written, the only difference is that he projected that the working class would rebel against the capitalist and over throw this form of society. He states, “all that is solid melts into air , all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real condition of life and his relations with his kind” (Marx and Engel 1848). The idea that the working class would rebel stems from the fact that the workers will unite together to overthrow their oppressors.
Marx would completely miss the mark on the idea that workers would unite to overthrow the powerful capitalistic bourgeoisie. In fact, history had proven that workers continue to work in poor conditions, with poor wages but continue to work as a means to provide for their families and themselves. Although workers have united and some unions prove to be very strong the economy still is struggling to overcome a severe recession. It is not hard to explain why the rich benefit even in a time of economic crisis but it does not explain why the working class has not stood up to the oppression they feel by capitalism. Perhaps it is a result of the failed efforts of Communism and Marxism as these models of society proved to be a failure. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engel argue that “society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other ways its existence is no longer compatible with society.” Marx would have a lot of evidence based on the economy of today for his argument that the notion of capitalism is no longer working for today’s society. He would argue that the amount of debt that the nation has accrued in the past few years and the steady increasing of unemployment sheds light on the fact that our society is not working under the present system. However, it is well known that communism or socialism does not alleviate the problems that the working class has felt in the recent years. It is well known that the rich do get richer at the price of the poor, so if capitalism is not working and neither does Marxism, how can the flaws in society be fixed to ensure the masses benefit rather than the minority?
Karl Marx truly believed that true freedom would arise out of a classless society in which the working class would overthrow the bourgeois. He felt that by creating a system in which all workers united to rule themselves that it would put an end to hostility not only among workers but also amongst nations. Marx would argue that the state of today’s society is a result of the working class not rising above and rebelling against the bourgeoisie thus continuing the viscous cycle of a few years of depression followed by brief prosperity. However as we know, the rebellion that Marx proposes did not led to a classless society in Russia but rather places power in the hands of a small party and enslaves people more than capitalism does. Stripping people of the right to own land and rights to inheritance and allowing the state to own everything one does, places a heavy enslavement on individuals and would led to a dark period in our history. In the end, a fix to the present economic issues needs to be uncovered as this system is clearly not working yet it is not as easy a fix as Marx would argue that it is. The economy continues to decline and working class individuals continue to watch the country slip further and further into economic peril with no tangible plan at hand.
Question Two:
Part A- Boyer in his article, “The Historical Background of the Communist Manifesto” has a definite thesis (argument) regarding the Manifesto. Using both relevant quotations and your own analysis identify Boyer’s thesis. George Boyer’s article, “The Historical Background of the Communist Manifesto”, paints the Manifesto as a piece that was written for the time in which it was published. The Communist Manifesto, written by Frederick Engels and Karl Marx is a book that attempts to solve socio-economic issues that were occurring in the 1840s in Britain. During this time, workers were suffering at the hands of the ruling class known as the bourgeoisie. The Proletarians, working class citizens, according to Marx were being exploited by the bourgeoisie in order to make the bourgeoisie richer. Boyer’s main argument in his article is that Engels and Marx wrote their Manifesto based on the development of the cotton textile industry in south Lancashire and of social and political conditions in Manchester in the 1840s and that had they lived in a different part of the country and in a different decade that they might not have written the Communist Manifesto in the way it was written. The decade of the 1840s is referred to by Boyer as the “hungry 40s” because wages were very low for the cotton industry during this time (1998:164).
In his article, Boyer speculates that if Engels had “lived not in Manchester but in Birmingham, his conception of class and his theories of the roles of class in history might have been very different. In this case, Marx might have been not a Communist but a currency reformer.” (Boyer 1998: 157) Boyer draws on Alexis de Tocqueville who visited Both Manchester and Birmingham in the 1840s and allows one to see insight on the vast differences of social classes in the two cities. In Birmingham there was “few large industries, many small industrialists,” while in Manchester, “workmen are counted by the thousand, two or three thousand in the factories.” He continues on by saying how the workers in Birmingham seem healthier and better off than those in Manchester. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote their book on the perspective of being members of society in Manchester and Boyer contends that if they had lived in Birmingham the Manifesto would be completely revised. One can see from the Manifesto that Marx is describing the society in Manchester “modern industry had converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of labourers, crowded in the factory, are organized like soldiers. Ironically, the condition of the proletariat deteriorated as capitalism progressed: “the modern labourer…becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth.” (Marx and Engels, 1848: 15) Boyer argues that the “document could not have been written in any other decade of the 19th Century” (1998). He contends that it is a piece of the time and place in which it was written. Boyer sees the text as a consequence of coincidence and nothing more and supports this claim as the reason to which Engels and Marx were not successful. The proletariat was not ready for a political rebellion because working conditions were not terrible everywhere and things got better and wages rose.
Part B- Boyer uses several sources of data to support his thesis. Identify and summarize the data sources he uses using relevant quotes and your own words. Boyer draws on many sources to support his thesis that the Communist Manifesto is a product of time and location. He even goes as far to argue that Marx and Engels may not have been the Communists they were had they lived in a different locale and at a different time period. He further develops this theory by including the fat that Engels realized during his time in Manchester that, “it was forcibly brought to my notice the economic factors, hitherto ignored or at least underestimated by historians, play a decisive role in the development of the modern world.” (Boyer 1998:157) It is Boyer’s contention that society is driven by economics which is driven by location and time. Boyer also look to Alexis de Tocqueville’s as a means to analyze and explain the writings of Marx and Engels.
As mentioned before, Alex de Tocqueville visited both Birmingham and Manchester and saw numerous differences in the two cities which he believes led Engels to falsely assume that all of England was living under the same intolerable conditions that were occurring in Manchester. Boyer also draws on Briggs to further prove his theory and Briggs says “if Engels had lived not in Manchester, but in Birmingham, his conception of class and his theories of the role of class in history might have been very different.”(1998; 157) Manchester at this time is painted to be a sort of hell and detestable place to live by numerous people including Charles Dickenson, Tocqueville, and Napier. Napier even referred to it as “the chimney of the world…the entrance to hell realized” (1998;
158). The city of Manchester seemed to be a place of disease, poor working conditions and misery. Boyer pulls on Edward Chadwick’s influential Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain in which Chadwick presented evidence that the “average age of death of mechanics, labourers, and their families in Manchester was 17, as compared to 38 in rural Rutlandshire; this despite the fact that laborers’ wages were at least twice as high in Manchester as in Rutlandshire.” (Boyer, 1998; 159) Manchester was facing extremely and increasingly difficult times during the 1840s and anyone who was likely to see the conditions in this city would be compelled to call for reform. So when Engels arrived to Manchester in 1842 and saw workers on strike in order to achieve a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work, he assumed that this strike was the beginning of a planned proletariat political revolution. (Boyer, 1998: 161) Boyer points out that Marx and Engels were not alone in the feelings of the working conditions in Manchester, numerous books were printed at the time that also shed light on the conditions. Some of these works include the famous Mary Barton written by Elizabeth Gaskell in which she shows the true conditions of life in Manchester and explains why poor men learn to hate the rich. Although, many saw that conditions were not ideal for workers during this time period and even though many predicted that this would result in a revolution and that a revolution would be inevitable, as we know this revolution did not occur. The most plausible explanation given by Boyer is that there was improvement in the economic environment and the adoption of various social policies by Parliament and also the fact that Marx and Engels did not give an accurate representation of the working class as a whole. (Boyer, 1998; 163) Marx and Engels envision for a revolution against the bourgeoisie did not come to fruition in Britain perhaps due to Boyer’s opinion that Marx and Engel only looked at a small portion of the inequalities in society and thus did not accurately display the working class in Britain at the time. Eventually, one group did rebel and there was a communist revolution in Russia, however it was very unsuccessful and led to a dark time period in history. There still exist many problems with the way society is run in today’s day and age yet no solution has been devised that will work to fix the economic crisis that this country is facing. Solutions of the past have proven to be unsuccessful yet conditions continue to worsen.
Work Cited:
Boyer, George R. 1998. “The Historical Background of the Communist Manifesto.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 34(4):151-174.
Engels, Frederick, Karl Marx. 1848. Manifesto of the Communist Party. London, England
Lowrey, Anne. 2013. “The Rich get Richer through the Recovery.” New York Times. Retrieved September 4, 2013(http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/10/the-rich-get-richer-through-the-recovery/?emc=eta1&pagewanted=print).