Karl Marx Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Karl Marx - Essay Example Karl Marx saw religion as being used to console the poor and to give them false promises thus making them forget the challenges that they were going through in life. The bourgeois was using religion in this consolatory manner so as to make the proletariat not to rise against them in protest for the injustices that they were undergoing. Karl Marx, therefore, saw religion as the opiate of the masses that was making the poor to have a passive approach to the challenges that they were going through in life. The second idea that I love about Karl Marx is his idea of human history and class conflict. Karl Marx claimed that in the history of human beings, every historical epoch is marked by two classes of people, i.e. the bourgeois and the proletarians. The bourgeois is the rich and the owners of the means of production. The proletariats, on the other hand, are the poor people who provide labor to the bourgeois. Karl Marx said that besides the bourgeois being the owners of the means of production, they also constitute the ruling class, political power and authority reside with them. Carl Marx claimed that because of this glaring inequality between these two classes of people, conflict is bound to arise in such a society. This is because the proletariat will always feel short changed and as a result, they will strive to overthrow the bourgeois from power so that they would also have an opportunity to be rich and to own the means of production. The bourgeois, on the other hand, will strive t o ward off the resistance of the proletariat.... The new proletariats will in turn start protesting against the bourgeois and this will lead to a new conflict in an attempt to overthrow the bourgeois from the reins of power. This process will continue on and on, in a dialectic way, till when it will come such a time when classes in the society will be completely abolished, i.e., when all the people in a society will be able to communally own the means of production. This kind of society will be a socialist or a communist society. Karl Marx believed that through this theory of class struggle he had explained the history of humanity and the law behind the history. Karl Marx was strongly convinced that without equal distribution of resources in a society, conflict is bound to arise. For Karl Marx material is the ultimate reality and the history of human beings can be explained as a constant and dialectic struggle for the material resources. Karl Marx envisioned a time when there will be equality in the distribution of resources and wh en the means of production of a society will be communally owned. He envisioned a time when the resources of a country will be divided not according to one’s ability but according to one’s needs. But this is not possible in a capitalist society; it is possible only in a socialist or communist society. This is because in a capitalist society, the distribution of resources is not based on one’s needs, but rather on one’s ability to acquire the resources. I really love this idea of Karl Marx because a critical look at the many conflicts in our societies and the world at large can be attributed to class struggle. Our capitalist economies have created a wide economic