Dialectical Marxism And Marxism

The dialectical philosophy had been around for a while before Marx utilized it with his views. The basic idea behind dialectical philosophy is the centrality of contradiction. In the dialectic philosophy, contradictions exist in society and the best way to understand reality is to study the development of these contradictions. One theorist, Hegel, used contradictions to study historical change. Marx also accepted the centrality of contradictions to historical change. Unlike Hegel, Marx believed that these contradictions could not be worked out in our minds, they were instead real existing contradictions. By this he meant that these contradictions could not be worked out by a philosopher, but had to be solved by real world struggle and

Man has left nature and has created an artificial world of his own. This fact has been the most shattering phenomenon which has disrupted man from God and all that is implied in God: meaning, significance, majesty, love, prayer, meditation, and all that is valuable. The irony is, man has never been so rich as he is today. Both things have happened together: the inner, spiritual being has become poorer while the outer being has become richer. We have more money than any other society before, we have in every way more power than any other society ever had before, and still no society has ever felt such meaninglessness.

Humans are the most social creatures on earth and what better place to express that then Las Vegas. City where aesthetic satisfaction and quality of life is purely expressed with material behaviors and lines between personal value and choice between tangible and intangible life goals and crossed and at times simply arrested. Scholars view materialism as a type of personality trait that involves personal and societal value. This trait is consumption-based and involves human demand for materialistic items to represent personal and social happiness. Associated with western cultures and capitalism, studies about materialism date back to an industrial and post-industrial revolution of 19th century (e.g., Campbell, 1987; McCracken, 1988; McKendrick et al., 1985; Williams, 1982). Richins considered materialism as a system of personal values (e.g. Fournier and Richins, 1991; Richins and Dawson, 1992).

The debate between how society is formed and how it should be formed has always been a point of contention among people. When a society is formed, there is a constant struggle between the proletariat, the working class population, and the bourgeoisie, the upper class of society with significant capital. One of the better known ideologies is Marxism, which explains how a nation should form itself to develop a communist society. Karl Marx illustrates his ideas of Marxism in The Communist Manifesto. A point of controversy within the Communist Manifesto addresses how nationalism does not help form the communist state but rather rhetorically seeks to deny the sense of nationality. The writings of Benedict Anderson are about how the nation state manifests itself through the spread of nationalism in his book, Imagined Communities. In Anderson’s book, nationalism helps create a community and a sense of unique identity for the population within that community. Marxism shares a common ground with Anderson’s imagined political community, despite denying the existence of nationalism within the emergence of communist communities.

Taylor’s The Madness of Materialism…”, it states that we have been like this for a long time.

Nearly a century and a half has passed since Karl Marx’s death, but his work lives on in stride. Several contemporary 20th and 21st century Marxist scholars have adopted his eerily relevant critiques of capitalism into their own work, but in doing so, have revived unheeded interpretations of Marx’s theory and have uniquely diverged from his original texts in ways that reflect their individual historical, theoretical and political motives. This has resulted in a restoration of Marx’s account of ecology and capitalism, as well as novel gendered and geographical advancements of Marx’s theories. Contemporary scholars such as Marxist-feminist Sylvia Federici, John Bellamy Foster, and Marxist-geographer David Harvey have all contributed to Marx’s preexisting work but have also departed in ways that make them pertinent to their specific academic fields of interest. For this discussion, segments of three literary pieces from each of the mentioned scholars will be used to analyze what the authors contributed to or developed that was already existing in Marx’s work; what each author adds to the field of Marxism that had not already been established in Marx’s work or was entirely absent from it; and what reasons motivated these authors to transform Marxism in the way that they did. Overall, it will become evident that both the inclusion and advancement of Marx’s work and Marxism has kept apace with the contemporary times.

Marxism is an idea developed by Karl Marx, a nineteenth-century German philosopher. It explains the political, economic, and social relationship between the working class and those holding the means of production. In literature, Marxist criticism is used to find fault in a story 's social hierarchy. Shakespeare’s King Lear takes place in England, presumably sometime in the eighth century. At this point in time, traditional absolute monarchies are present. Monarchs are given all of the ruling power, without question and without having to earn it. Below monarchs, in rank, are other lowery nobles and obviously the working class. It is needless to say that women in this setting are undoubtedly suppressed by males who have nearly all of the power. In King Lear, there are numerous incidents in which characters of lower class and status challenge the traditional monarchy to better their own placement in their community. However, every time an incident like this occurs, chaos always ensues and the character who stepped out of place is shamed. It is easy for the reader of King Lear to quickly judge such characters as impulsive, selfish, or evil. However, given the circumstances they are born into, their intentions are actually not very unreasonable when given some thought. Jane Smiley read King Lear and took a different view to the characters than most readers do. In response, she wrote A Thousand Acres and provided a

Materialism had ruined our society in many ways. People get more and more obsess with materialistic objects now because they are trapped in this fake world created by the society. Materialism had created this whole new type of false measurement for the society, which people starts considering possession are more important than values. Even though materialism acts as a “motivating” force in today’s world economy, it erodes the value system and had affected the

In this chapter I’m going to explain a brief introduction to Karl Marx and the history of Marxism. Karl Marx, who was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist created the theory of Marxism.

down by this religion state a man must have a calling in life, or in

The correctness of Engels’ analysis was borne out as early as the first years of the 20th century. The trade union movement grew not only among the laborers and the masses of the unskilled, but also broke its half-century long alliance with petty-bourgeois radicalism (the Liberal Party) and founded the Labor Party, the mass workers’ party.

As a culture, we constantly deal with the subconscious remnants caused by the conflict between money and spirituality. We have allowed toxic ideas to pervade our unlimited essence like a virus destroying our intrinsic right to wealth and fulfillment.

     Human relationships have always been dynamic. Change and adaptability have gone hand in hand with the passing of time for human society. Karl Marx’s views on Industrialization and the bourgeoisie had a major impact on how we view our industrial alignment today. Marx and Engel’s The Communist Manifesto gives broad views on the subject of the middle class and how they fit into a society that was ruled by feudalism and aristocracy. Capitalism becomes a major topic in a socialist-based society that underwent many changes as industrialization progressed. A government must be dynamic in its nature reflecting the change in society. At times aristocracy has refused to allow society to adapt

A desire for “a better car… TV set… toothpaste” pervades man’s sense of reality, making him lose his sense of being which causes him to view life as “an affliction” and in some circumstances blame God for suffering and the evils in the world (222). Merton argues that it is not God, but “man’s own technocratic and self-centered ‘worldliness’” that distracts him from creation, enabling him to act like “a little autonomous god” that judges everything by his standard, not God’s divine standard (297,222). Modern life is preoccupied with worries about the stability of work and the cheap thrills of consumerism. Through this, mankind has become insensitive and indignant to the good news and God’s

Within Marx’ understanding of religion, ideologies of religious institutions, along with all other social institutions, are based on the economic relations found in society. Under the current economic conditions of modern capitalism, religious ideologies are used to normalize and promote the interests and values of the owners of the means of production (the bourgeoisie). Simultaneously, in addition to legitimating the control and power of the bourgeoisie, religion promotes complacency among the laboring/working class (the proletariat) by imbuing material social conditions with otherworldly explanations and justifications. Religion, according to Marx, is a tool by the oppressive class to maintain the status quo of existing power structures and continued social domination of the oppressed through a mystical and divine rationale. The declining power of religious institutions (in rationalized society) results in the transfer of this legitimizing process in other areas of social life – such as through political institutions and