Marx s View Of The Dialectic - 902 Words

When thinking of this reaction paper, it was difficult to narrow down the theories and ideas of Marx into a few pages, as he has so much relevant work. The majority of Marx’s work was dedicated to inequality, especially inequality under Capitalism. This inequality is best seen by the exploitative relationship between the bourgeoisie and proletariat. The key theme with this relationship is that the bourgeoisie own the means of production, and take advantage of the proletariat who do not own their own means of production, which forces them to sell their labor. This leads to Marx’s view of the dialectic. A central contradiction of capitalism, and in my opinion one of his most important ideas, is that the capitalist (bourgeoisie) must exploit†¦show more content†¦Next I will discuss strengths of Marx’s theory. A major strength of Marx’s theory on is that it provides a comprehensive explanation of the power struggle that conceptually occurs within a ca pitalistic society. This explanation is extremely comprehensive and covers not only macro-social aspects, but also micro-social aspects which helps understand more clearly the proletariat’s struggle with human potential, alienation, etc. It is relatively rare for sociology to focus extensively on micro-social interactions for explanations, which is a strength of Marx. I think this theory on capitalism is a great conceptual theory, but is not entirely applicable in the real world, which some frown upon. Another strength is the focus on not only the present, but also the past and future. Along with this, it is important to point out that even though Marx eluded to a future of communism, he did not spend too much time depicting what this new world would be like, according to Ritzer (73). Yet another strength is Marx’s political and economic background. Not only was he a very influential sociologist, but an economist and philosopher. This background allowed Marx to bring views from other fields into his theory of capitalism. When speaking to the weaknesses of Marx’s theory, Ritzer points out that several failed communistic states have turned into a more capitalistic form of governance (73). Marx envisioned