There article ‘Theoretical’, the Materialist conception of history.

There is usually two types of conception about history, one being the idealist conception which means the history is based on great ideas and actions of famous individuals, or guided by spiritual forces, and ect or the conception which is being talked about in Frederick Engel’s article ‘Theoretical’, the Materialist conception of history. Engles goes on to talk about that in the materialist conception there is various institutions and social structures thats have developed over time, in which people arrange their social institutions, belief patterns, and social relations are to be understood, in one of his studies Engles noticed the way people interact to make their daily bread and how they go on to distribute it among each other. Therefore, this production and distribution causes the different phase of human development. This theory is also very similar to Charles Darwin’s natural selection theory, charles darwin talks about the different phases of evolution, however, causes of the change in phases are mostly physical as for Engle’s it is the behaviour of people.
Moreover, Engles talks about how in today’s society there is something wrong with economic system, because of many reasons, it can’t employ all those who wish to work, a big percentage of the world is living in poverty, there is hunger in the streets of big cities, many families are homeless, and the schools and colleges fail to educate the kids on what is actually going on around them. Still, a small group of wealthy people get richer and richer, whilst the majority of humanity suffers.Furthermore, he talks about how our present society, consists of merchants, shopkeepers,and owners of small manufacturing concern who make a living by buying, selling, trading the commodities and those who ministered to them. Underneath this class used to be the class who provided the commodities or helped with its storage/distribution and was relying on its income but that class has now turned into the working class and it is a class which is working for the capital’s profit. This creating commodities for a market is called capitalism. Eventually Capitalism turned the society into two groups of people, bourgeoisie and the proletariat, the bourgeoisie are the owners of mean of production, they enjoy a certain benefits in the society, and on the other hand the proletariat are the worker group who started by working and making enough commodities for themselves but it was taken from them by the bourgeoisie and sold for a higher price.
Engels talks about how the old division of labor of the peasant village, with products being exchanged in kind, started to break up as this undeveloped factory system began to evolve. “In the midst of the old division of labor, grown up spontaneously and upon no definite plan, which had governed the whole of society, now arose division of labor upon a definite plan, as organized in the factory; side by side with individual production appeared social production.” (Engels,299). However, he also talks about how even though it became more organized in the factories, capitalism lead to a very unorganized economy due to the anarchy of production. He explains the anarchy of production brings the majority of people to the “proletarians” group, the anarchy of production is basically, having a lower price compared to the competition so your products gets sold, however, the problem with it is that one of the only ways to bring down the price is by paying the labour less, therefore, leading to them having to work more. Also in the anarchy of production small businesses usually end up bankrupt due to the fact that they can’t afford to bring down their prices, therefore ending up high unemployment rates.
The social product, is a product that is created by working people in different branches of production, however, it is taken by the small group of capitalist who own the means by which this social product is made. Moreover, the distribution of this social product is what is wrong with the economy from Engle’s eyes, the distribution of these products add to the social wealth of the capital class at the expense of the well being of the working people, ultimately leading to their impoverishment. Furthermore, Engle’s says “The whole mechanism of the capitalists mode of production breaks down under the pressure of productive forces which it itself created” (Engles,302) he explains how the capitalist mode of creation is the reason for its downfall, by putting the majority of people in poverty there is going to be less buyers for their products leading to them no longer being able to transform this mass of means of production into capital.
In conclusion, Engels believed that history goes through different stages, and that there is a contradiction of some sort in every stage which leads the history into the next, and ultimately reaching the ultimate outcome of history. Moreover, he believes that the ultimate goal of humanity would be to reach communism, a society in which, there is social production, democracy, it is a organized society, and ect, however, there is many obstacles that is stopping humanity from reaching that goal, one of which is human ambition, in order to achieve communism some people have to give up on the wealth and power they have, but that is not going to happen due to human ambition, everybody’s ultimate goal in life is to have power and wealth, and some work hard to achieve it which means they will not give it up easy.

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