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The
significance of Marx’s discovery of the role of the mode of
production was likened by Engels to that of Darwin’s theory of
evolution: |
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Just as Darwin discovered the law of evolution in organic nature, so
Marx discovered the law of evolution in human history; he discovered the
simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that
mankind must first of all eat and drink, have shelter and clothing,
before it can pursue politics, science, religion, art, etc.; and that
therefore the production of the immediate material means of subsistence
and consequently the degree of economic development attained by a given
people or during a given epoch, form the foundation upon which the state
institutions, the legal conceptions, the art and even the religious
ideas of the people concerned have been evolved, and in the light of
which these things must therefore be explained, instead of vice versa as
had hitherto been the case. |
According to
this theory, the mode of production or relations of production of
the same type generate similar socio-political structures and even
ideological forms. By using this approach, Marx singled out five
socio-economic formations: the primitive type of society; slavery;
feudalism; capitalism; and communism. It was the capitalist stage
and the capitalist mode of production and exchange which were
described and analyzed by him most exhaustively. The central idea
in his analysis of capitalism, as expressed in his Manifesto of
the Communist Party, was a remarkable ‘acceleration’ that this
phase of history, dominated by the bourgeoisie, had brought to
global development:
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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. Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of
chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric
telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization of
rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground - what earlier century had
even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social
labor?
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Marx’s main
conclusion from his analysis of contemporary capitalism was that the
bourgeoisie would be unable to control this rapid expansion of the
productive forces it had itself unleashed and would completely
antagonize the proletariat by driving it to utter destitution and
poverty. Capitalism was, inevitably, heading for self-destruction:
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Modern
bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange and of property,
a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of
exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of
the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.
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On the basis
of his analysis, Marx drew up the prediction that anti-capitalist
revolutions would occur in the most developed capitalist countries.
The current phase of history would be terminated by a proletarian
revolution that would abolish the minority rule of the bourgeoisie
and also individual property as the economic foundation of its
political power and usher in the era of communism with a workers’
government running society ‘in the interest of the immense
majority’.
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