Compare and contrast the theories of Karl Marx (the class motive) and Essay

Compare and contrast the theories of Karl Marx (the class motive) and John Stuart Mill (the happiness motive) with reference to the issue of oppression in moder - Essay Example hasized in both Marx, and Mill, but whereas Marx sees the political motives of the individual to be class-based rejection of capitalism, Mills sees the happiness of the individual as more important than political or social oppression. Each of these theorists have contributed towards twentieth century political influence, with both socialists and libertarians using these works as cornerstones of activism and individual beliefs. Marx’s supporters tend to believe in community support, with individual needs oppressed in favor of the society; Mill’s theories are concerned with the right of pursuit of individual happiness, against the demands of a society for conformity and participation in accepted beliefs. Marx’s theory of the individual was heavily influenced by the work of Hegel, who was influential in turning the concentration of philosophers from institutions to the individual. Hegel saw society as the individual having subjective encounters â€Å" With the Material World† (Schleuning, webpage). While Hegel sees the material world as essential to developing the individual; property and ownership are crucial. ‘Ownership’ in this sense is not purchasing, but creation of material through work: creative self-expression. Marx sees the individual worker being divided from his former ownership of the items which he makes, affecting his consciousness (Ritts, 153). â€Å"The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production† (Marx, page 191). This is the ‘tyranny of the minority’, or the smaller bourgeois class, over the much larger, working-class majority. Ritts sees this as Social Darwinism, with the fitness not suitability for survival, but personal fortune (Ritts, 153) The individual worker’s life inside an industrial society is, according to Marx, very precarious, and this is one of the causes of conflict between the individual and the bourgeois owners. Marx’s