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The ideas of Karl Marx (1818–83) contrast sharply with those of Comte and Durkheim, though he too sought to explain the changes associated with the Industrial Revolution. As a young man, Marx found that his political activities brought him into conflict with the German authorities, and after a brief stay in France he settled permanently in exile in Britain, where he saw the growth of factories and industrial production as well as growing inequality. His interest in the European labour movement and socialist ideas was reflected in his writings, and much of his work concentrated on political and economic issues. Yet, since he connected economic problems to social institutions, his work was rich in sociological insights.

Marx wrote about the broad sweep of human history, but his primary focus was on the development of capitalism: a system of production that contrasts radically with all previous economies. Marx identified two main elements of capitalism. The first is capital – that is, any asset, including money, machines or even factories, that can be used or invested to make future assets. The accumulation of capital goes hand in hand with the second element, wage-labour. Wage-labour refers to the pool of workers who do not own any means of production themselves but must find employment provided by the owners of capital.

Some ‘Occupy’ protests around the world targeted ‘greedy’ forms of capitalism in which vast wealth accumulates among a tiny percentage of the population while ‘the 99 per cent’ majority struggle to make a living. Twenty-first-century anti-capitalist movements continue to take their inspiration from the analyses of Marx and Engels, though they rarely advocate communism as their preferred alternative.

Marx argued that those who own capital – capitalists – form a ruling class, while the mass of the population make up a class of waged workers – the working class. As industrialization spread, large numbers of peasants, who used to support themselves by working the land, moved to the expanding cities and helped to form an urban industrial working class, which Marx also called the proletariat. For Marx, this means that capitalism is a class system in which relations between the two main classes are characterized by an underlying conflict. Although owners of capital and workers are dependent on each other – capitalists need labour, workers need wages – this dependency is unbalanced. Workers have little or no control over their labour, and employers are able to generate profit by appropriating the products of the workers’ labour – paying them less than their labour is worth.

Marx saw conflicts between classes as the motivation for historical development; they are the ‘motor of history’. Marx and Engels (2008 [1848]) wrote at the beginning of The Communist Manifesto, ‘The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.’ According to Marx, there have been a series of historical stages, beginning with ‘primitive communist’ societies of hunters and gatherers and passing through ancient slave-owning systems and feudal systems with landowners and peasant farmers. The emergence of a new commercial or capitalist class displaced the landed nobility, and, just as capitalists had overthrown the feudal order, so too would the capitalists be overthrown by the proletariat.

Marx theorized that a workers’ revolution would bring about a new society in which there would be no large-scale division between owners and workers. He called this historical stage communism. This does not mean that all inequalities would magically disappear, but that society would no longer be split into a small class that monopolizes economic and political power and a mass of people who benefit little from their labour. The economic system would be under communal ownership, and a more humane, egalitarian society would slowly emerge.

Marx’s ideas had a far-reaching effect on the twentieth century. Until only a generation ago, more than a third of the Earth’s population lived in societies whose governments derived inspiration from Marx’s ideas. However, a revolutionary wave that began in Poland in 1989 swept aside communist regimes across Eastern Europe, ending with the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union – its stronghold – in 1991. Even in China, where a communist party still holds political power, capitalist economic development has taken a firm hold. In spite of the spread of capitalism around the world, the working-class revolution to which Marx looked forward seems no closer today than it did in Marx’s own time.