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and would "reeducate" the workers into a "higher consciousness" free from the residues of the prior bourgeois mentality.4 What makes this entire process inescapable and irreversible, Marx insisted, is that the physical means of production follow technological transformations in a series of historical stages that are beyond man's control. Each of these stages of transformation requires a particular set of human institutional relationships for the full blossoming of that technology's potential.What men, in their limited and subjective views of the world, take to be the invariant foundations of human life--morality, family, property, religious faith, customs and traditions, and so on--are merely the temporary elements of a societal "superstructure" serving the ends of the objective material forces of production during each of these historical epochs.Therefore, even man's "consciousness" about himself and the world around him is a product of his particular place and role in this process of historical evolution.5 Every man's "class" position in society, according to Marx, is determined by his relationship to the ownership of the means of production.Those who own the means of production in capitalist society must, by historical necessity, "exploit" the others who offer their labor services to them for hire. The capitalist class lives off the labor of the working class by expropriating as "profit" a part of what the laborers in their employ have produced. Hence, these two social classes are in irreconcilable conflict with each other for the material rewards of human labor. This conflict reaches its climax with the violent overthrow of the exploiters by the proletariat, who experience an increasing economic misery during the final death throes of the capitalist system.6 In the new socialist order that replaces capitalism, the means of production will be nationalized and centrally planned for the economic betterment of the vast majority of humanity, and no longer will be used only for the profit-oriented benefit of the capitalist property owners. Economic planning will generate material prosperity far exceeding anything experienced under capitalism; technological advances and rising
4 See Karl Marx, "Critique of the Gotha Program" [1875], in Robert C. Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader (New York:W.W. Norton, 1972), pp. 382�98. 5 Karl Marx, "A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy" [1859], in ibid., pp. 4�5. 6 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, "Manifesto of the Communist Party" [1848] in ibid., pp. 331�62.
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