Karl Heinrich Marx was born in Trier, Germany on 5th May 1818, passed away in London on 14th March 1883. By altering George W.F. Hegel’s philosophy of social change he managed to establish his foundation of his historical and theoretical system. It is important to note that Marx lived in the age of industrial revolution whereby significant technological advancement in communication, transportation and manufacturing sparked an outburst in commercial markets for products in the mid-19th century (Appelrouth & Edles, 2008) Marx’s theories were produced against the adversity of the workers in the 19th century’s context (Marx, 2007 cited in Barron, 2013). He observed that the industrial revolution formed two classes, the bourgeoisie being the capitalist
The time needed to produce the commodities was usually half of the labourer’s working hours per day. However, the labourer had to stay on to produce additional value known as the surplus value for the bourgeoisie (Barron, 2013). The surplus value was then kept by the bourgeoisie. This increases the income gap between the two classes (Ritzer & Stepnisky, 2014). He further argued that the bourgeoisie would follow the general law of accumulation thus, pursue to exploit the proletariat in full measure which would give rise to class conflict (Appelrouth & Edles,
According to Marx, the first factor was that the labour was external to the proletariat. The work did not enhance the proletariat’s physical and mental energy instead, it reduced those energies. Thus, the proletariat would only feel himself when he is outside of his work. The labour of them becomes involuntary which Marx named it as forced labour (Marx, 2009 [1932]). For instance, the bourgeoisie would reduce the proletariat to operate like machines in the factories by making them just a part of the production line without having the knowledge of how the part they were in charge of contributes to the final product. The bourgeoisie on the other hand, was able to express their creativity as they took charge of the design of the product. Marx argued that the work was supposed to be a means of expression for the proletariat and the origin of their contentment instead (Ritzer & Stepnisky,