How did karl marx interpret industrial revolution?
Karl Marx believed that the development of the industrial mode of production, and the factory system in particular within it, was an expression of the essentially dualistic character of class societies. Marx argued in The Communist Manifesto that conflict between factory workers and factory owners was both inevitable, and an expression of something inherent in class-based societies:
In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank....Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — Bourgeoisie and Proletariat. [The Communist Manifesto, ch. 1. Emphasis mine.]
Arguing against a prevailing argument of his time that the development of capitalism via the industrialization of medieval Europe, also called the Industrial Revolution, Marx claimed that a capitalist economy was but a new form of the older, slave- and farming-based economic systems that had come before it. He argued that there was something inherently dualizing or divisive about human societies the world over, and his conclusion was that this dualizing element was class, or division into meaningful social groupings based on economic power and standing.
We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long course of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange. [ibid.]
Marx is saying, in effect, that we need to consider that there have been many industrial and technological revolutions throughout history, with equally powerful effects on the societies that lived through them.
At the same time, it is important to note that Marx's views of industrial European society - and by extension, the Industrial Revolution that ushered in that new society - are mixed, at best. His writing in the Communist Manifesto suggests that he considered industrialization to be an extremely socially destructive phenomenon:
"[The bourgeoisie] has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”.
Industrialization was not without serious drawbacks, and Marx spent much of his career identifying both the individual and the social effects of industrial, capitalist society. Capitalism did provide, however, opportunities and new resources that previous modes of production did not; Marx boasted that "the bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together.... What earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?"
Marx's view of industrialization and capitalism, in terms of their effects on the individual, is decidedly negative. In an early work, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, Marx writes, "...[capitalist wage-]labor is external to the worker, i.e., that it does not belong to his nature, that therefore he does not realize himself in his work." Marx wrote extensively in Das Kapital, and some of his earlier works like the Manuscripts, about the alienation of the individual human being through working for a wage. Although Marx believed the factory system had unleashed spectacular productive capabilities, the shift from a majority population of small farmers in Europe to one with a majority wage-worker population had, in his lifetime, led to frequent and often militant confrontations between employees and employers, culminating in the pan-European revolutions of 1848 and the 1870 revolutionary uprisings in Paris and elsewhere, which Marx covered in his career as a journalist. Whatever freedom and opportunities the modern, industrial production system had brought with it, Marx argued, it had catastrophic social consequences as well, and it was impossible to separate the good and bad qualities of industrialization.
Further reading:
https://faculty.frostburg.edu/phil/forum/Marx.htm
Marx saw the Industrial Revolution as a necessary stage in the development of the economy and society on the road to full communism. The Industrial Revolution swept away the old economic system of feudalism, replacing it with an unfettered capitalism that brought about enormous social change. As with any economic system, capitalism developed its own internal class relations. The dominant class was the bourgeoisie. They owned the means of production (such as equipment, technology, and factories), which allowed them to exploit the proletariats—who worked for them—generating their wealth.
During the Industrial Revolution the system of capitalism developed rapidly and, with it, the huge gap in power and wealth between social classes. It also led to even greater exploitation of the impoverished men, women, and children who toiled away in often appalling conditions in the new industries. Marx railed against such conditions, but he saw the Industrial Revolution as a necessary stage in the eventual arrival of Communism. As capitalism developed, so would the system's internal contradictions. He saw the endless quest for profit as unsustainable and argued it would lead to capitalism's eventual collapse. At the same time, argued Marx, the proletariat would develop consciousness of itself as a distinct and separate class with its own unique interests—interests not served by capitalism. Suitably armed, the proletariat would then be able to overthrow capitalism at the appropriate historical juncture and begin the long, laborious process of establishing communism.
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