Why and What society - Karl Marx

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels explain why and what the society is based on a materialistic approach. The cornerstone of Marx’s idea is the historical materialism which highlighted the importance of economic life so that people produce their own means of subsistence to satisfy their own material needs. Besides, Marx believed that the driving force of the historical change was the dialectic, which is a process of interaction between competing forces. Historical change is the result of internal contradictions caused by class antagonism within the mode of production.

According to Marx, the central contradiction is the existence of private property. Since there are wide range of needs, there are different roles to satisfy those needs, and thus division of labour is needed and this causes the emergence of private property. This creates a division between the bourgeoisie who are the owners of the mode of production and the proletariat who do not own property and thus subsist through selling their labour force. Under capitalism, labour is merely a commodity and work becomes a depersonalized activity. Therefore, workers are alienated.

There is a conflict between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat because capitalist profit is ultimately derived from the exploitation of the worker. Capitalism is therefore inherently unstable due to the proletariat cannot be permanent reconciled to exploitation and oppression. Thus, Marx predicted that workers would overthrow the rule of capitalist and establish a classless society.

Marx’s idea is useful to explain the proceeding historical process through the modes of production and characterized by class struggle. Besides, it is useful to explain the current phenomenon in Hong Kong which is the hostility towards the rich and class polarization. It is unavoidable and inescapable that the means to subsistence, from electricity to telecommunications, from real estate to retail, from shipping to the Internet, are closely related to the developers’ business in Hong Kong, The developer lower their wages which never rise far above the subsistence level. The wealth gap between capitalists and workers is widening. As a result, there is a tendency for the poor to increase in size and to experience relative poverty and for the rich to experience more proportion of wealth.

Under Marx’s prediction, Hong Kong people seems no longer tolerate and thus overthrow capitalism. But, it never happens in the reality. I think Marx underestimated the power of capitalist ideology. The capitalist using powerful ideological state apparatus such as schools, media, and legal institutions to shape people’s mentality, values and beliefs. The bourgeoisie not only possess economic power through the ownership of wealth, but also exercise the political power through the agency of the state.

Besides, the rise of stockholding companies makes everyone can be an owner theoretically by holding stocks of a company and the emergence of collective bargaining can be regarded as the compromise solution to the class conflicts between workers and capitalists. Under the rationale of getting something rather none and the uncertainty of a classless society, workers are willing to maintain in the status quo.