Marxism

Marxism is the most intriguing alternative vision in this chapter. This was developed by Marx and Friedrich Engels. For them, history moved through the following stages: feudalism, capitalism, socialism to communism respectively. They came up with “scientific socialism”, which was embedded in a materialist history theory. Marx and Engel claim that history consisted of continuous forms of exploitative productions and consequent rebellions against those productions; that what mattered was production of goods and the society’s organization into classes of producers and that of exploiters (616). All this was in response to the Utopian socialism that had been previously developed by Fourier; Marxism contrasted utopian socialism.

It criticized the post 1915 Europe that overemphasized on production. I found this alternative very interesting because of Marx and Engel’s prediction concerning the proletarian revolution. They argued that as industrialization advanced, more people would fall into the working class; the common people would not be able to have a share of this wealth, since it was monopolized by the capitalists. This gap between the wealthy capitalists and the poor masses would result in overproduction; while there would be under consumption and consequently the capitalists would get lower profits. This meant that the workers receive lower wages and or stay unemployed, thus triggering a revolution. This revolution would end the possession of private property, thus ending exploitation. Though the uprisings of the 1848 in European countries did not succeed, I feel that this alternative was the best. If the workers overthrew capitalism then the social landscape would change for the better (618).

This alternative seems so practical unlike the previous Utopian socialism. It is important in the world history course since it is what that led to the uprisings of 1848 in some of the European countries such as France, Italy and others; led to more changes in the social landscape and brought about different views about Confucianism, which had is significant to the understanding of the world history.