Marx And Tocqueville Essay, Research Paper
Marx and deTocquiville
To understand what Marx and deTocquiville ;two of the
great social thinkers of all time, believed, you have to
understand what was going on at the time. They were living
in the peak of the Industrial Revolution. The cities that
housed this revolution were overflowing with factories and
people. People who were once country folk decided to come
out to the cities in search for a better life. These
working class people were also known as proletariats.
Another aspect was what were these people thinking? They had
there minds set on the right thing, a better life, but what
made them think they would live a fair life? Liberalism was
what made them think this.
The bourgeoisie, or higher class believed in this
ideology, and it rubbed off on the working class. Liberals
believed in a constitutional government, equality of
opportunity, and laissez faire economics. They believed in
self interest, freedom, and privacy. So why then were
the working class people poorer than when they were in the
country, lived in slums and shacks, and worked terrible hard
hours? This is where Karl Marx comes in.
Marx saw that the proletariats had no rights. He
thought that they lacked political power and government
protection. He felt that it wasn t fair for the upper class
to control the means of production and business in general,
when the working class was doing all the hard work. He said
that the working class was the class that had to bear all
the burdens of society without enjoying its advantages.
Materialism was also a factor in this class struggle. It
proved that the class struggle could not be evaded.
DeTocquiville thought differently.
After studying the social classes in America, he came
to believe that classes were not bad at all. He was
impressed by the general equality of conditions among the
people. He thought that the democracy that was in America at
the time seemed to be coming to power in Europe. Where
though? Proletariats sure didn t feel equal to the
bourgeoisie. He believed the nobles were coming down the
social ladder and commoners were moving up the social
ladder. Destined to meet and live in social harmony with no
real class boundaries keeping them apart. To this day, it
hasn t happened. Sure there is working class and there is
still rich people and they both are equally protected by the
government, but there is still a separation of wealth. I
mean there will always be rich and poor. Middle class and
high-middle class. There is just no way to get away from
social boundaries.
Even though there ideas varied a bit, Marx and
deTocquiville had good insights to the way society should
be. I don t really agree that the working class should ve
controlled all of business but they should ve had better
pay, better working conditions and maybe a cut in the
company. That just wasn t done back then. It was the time of
robber-barons. Marx was a little too sour about the whole
thing anyway. He didn t realize that a lot of those
industrialized nations expanded suffrage and provided social
benefits to help to settle the working class discontent.
DeTocquiville on the other hand was too nadve about it. He
saw the social classes as coming together and being equal, I
don t know how or where he saw this, but he did. It must ve
been the fresh American air he was breathing when he was
here studying the classes. The bottom line is that as long
as money and wealth is the number one priority, true
equality will never be.