England was the dominant world power and had the largest industrialized economy
during the 1800's. The development of the factory and the institution of the assembly line
created a large demand for workers. This demand was satiated by migrating peasant from
the rural areas in England and Ireland to developing urban centers. As these urban centers
or cities evolved using industry as the economic backbone for the population, a large
number of factory workers were accumulated to operate the machinery in horrid
conditions. These workers, which would be termed as the peasantry under a feudal
system, were now the working class or proletariat. They entered cities with hopes of
bettering their lives and survival. Though revolution never took place in England during
this period, it allowed Marx to study industrialization, urbanization and imperialism. The
theory of Marxism has three basic concepts: historic materialism, forces of production
and relations of production. Historic materialism is defined as a society's past
performance and present capabilities of satisfying the basic means of life. Humankind's
basic needs of eating, drinking and shelter need to be met properly. The forces of
production (technology, capital, the infrastructure of society, etc.) are important for the
simple fact of who ever controls them controls the society. The last aspect of Marxism,
the relations of production, deals directly with the relationships between classes of people
(the aristocracy, the middle-class and the working class).2 Marxism includes a predictive
analysis of socio-economic structures. Using history, logic and the dynamic nature of
humankind as guidelines, Carl Marx attempts to map out a sequence of events which will
eventually lead to utopia (anarchy). In his work, Das Capital, Marx details the six steps.
These steps are primitive socialism, feudalism, capitalism, socialism, communism and
then anarchy. ...