Karl Marx: Industrial Revolution and Social Change
Karl Marx (1818-1883) and the Industrial Revolution
Karl Marx (1818-1883) lived during the First Industrial Revolution, a period marked by significant scientific and technical advancements. France and Belgium joined this revolution later, followed by Germany and the U.S. around 1870, ushering in the Second Industrial Revolution. Advancements in medicine led to demographic growth, resulting in migration to industrial centers, which faced problems of overcrowding, inadequate infrastructure, and intercontinental migrations. Improved sanitation measures further enhanced colonization.
Industrialization enriched the bourgeoisie, who became the ruling class. However, workers suffered exploitation and faced serious social problems, leading to the rise of the labor movement. Realism and, later, naturalism in art and literature reflected this social situation. Improved transportation shrank the world. Industrialization demanded new materials and abundant markets. Consequently, the bourgeoisie pressured states to develop colonial policies to benefit their industries. Marx viewed colonization as the internationalization of the exploitative relationship between owners and employees.
The bourgeoisie’s new economic power enabled them to gain new rights through the liberal revolutions of 1830 and 1848, and it nurtured nationalism. Liberalism emphasized individual freedom, and the people were embodied by Romanticism. Marx understood that the new states generated by nationalism were structures that benefited the bourgeoisie. He proposed the International Workingmen’s Association (AIT) to seek unity among citizens of the same class, not just within a state. The failure of the 1848 revolutions and the union of the bourgeoisie and aristocrats convinced Marx that workers would never improve their conditions through these means.
Marx’s Scientific Analysis
Marx proposed a scientific analysis of these events, which were so influential in 19th-century society, engaging with other thinkers to offer his own diagnoses and treatments. Despite being born during the Restoration period, Marx was educated in an environment opposed to the Prussian regime, as his father admired German and French Enlightenment thinkers. Marx aimed to achieve human dignity, freedom, and happiness, but he recognized that the means to achieve these goals differed from what others proposed. Society was no longer the society of the 18th century.
Hegel’s Influence
In college, Marx encountered Hegel. Although his intellectual development involved a gradual departure from Hegel’s idealism, Hegel’s influence remained decisive. Marx adopted the idea that reality and knowledge have a dialectical structure but distanced himself from Hegel’s idealism, leaning towards materialism. A particularly influential member of the Hegelian Left was Feuerbach. Feuerbach believed that a person is defined not by spirit (as Hegel argued) but by their nature, their body, and their feelings. He also accused Hegel of rationalizing theology by focusing on a single spirit. For Feuerbach, God is simply a projection of humanity.
Marx adopted these criticisms but also distanced himself from Feuerbach in two key aspects. While agreeing that humans are material beings, Marx refused to see human nature as fixed and ahistorical. He believed that humans survive by working, and this struggle for survival leads to change. Similarly, the image of humans as God’s creation is also historical: it changes with the rhythm of social reality.
Socialism and Communism
In Paris, Marx came into contact with French socialism and communism. There, he encountered other ideologues who sought to convince the bourgeoisie of the need for social change. Engels described these thinkers as Utopians. Marx’s insistence on historical materialism as part of the scientific analysis of social structure was a reaction to these solutions, which he felt had forgotten the logic of the capitalist system.
The Study of Economics
Disappointed by Hegel’s idealism, Feuerbach’s naturalism, and socialist utopianism, Marx undertook the study of economics, a discipline that became his life’s work. He saw economics as the best tool to understand human existence. His contribution was to collect the key elements of historical materialism, explaining the material conditions of human development.