Marx and Madison: Addressing Class Struggle

Paper Summary:

This paper looks at the views of Marx and Madison on class struggle. The ideologies of both Marx and Madison are compared. It is shown that while Marx looked to socialism as a result and solution to the class struggle, Madison looked to establish a structure to minimize the effect of the differences, and in which capitalism could co-exist with representative government.

From the Paper:

"Marx wrote that the history of all existing societies is the history of class struggle. Using this statement as a basis for his theoretical model, he argued that historical change was in large measure due to the forces of people acting to gain, protect or protest their relative social and material status. If everything is material and humans create social life in response to economic need, then aspects of human society are primarily based on economic structure, classes are determined by their relationship to that structure, and events can be seen as the outcome of the interaction of those classes. From the moment humans were able to produce more than was needed for mere subsistence, there was a struggle over who was to control the surplus and the means of production."

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