PHIL 2280 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: The Communist Manifesto, Class Conflict, For Marx

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Philosophy
• Course: PHIL 2280
• Professor: Omid Shabani

Document Summary

Earlier philosophers tried to understand the world while marx tried to change the world. Marx believes that historical development is based on the antagonism of the oppressed and oppressor classes. The view of history as a movement caused by conflict in the material order is called historical materialism. Historical materialism divides history into five stages: the primitive communal society, slavery, feudalism, capitalism, communism. Mar(cid:454) relied the hegelia(cid:374) (cid:272)o(cid:374)(cid:272)ept of (cid:862)diale(cid:272)ti(cid:272)(cid:863) to e(cid:454)plai(cid:374) histor(cid:455) as a stor(cid:455) of (cid:272)lass struggle; to view history unfolding as a dialectical movement is what he calls dialectical materialism. For him, reality is constantly changing, and what causes change is simply the quantitative alteration of things, leading to something qualitatively new. In constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, bourgeoisie creates its antagonist class, the proletariat. With the development of industry, the proletariat grows both in numbers and its concentration of mass.