While structural functionalists chose to theorize the design of society outside the realm of history and conflict, Marx, his followers, and his predecessors such as Georg Hegel built their understanding on The idea of history proceeding in stages. Progress occurs through class struggle: collapse, reconstruction, and the constant push towards a more ideal system. Change and disorder are necessary components to achieve final order. Marx took Hegel's earlier work on the topic and developed an understanding of three key historical phases. In primitive society individuals existed in unity through kinship ties, however a new phase emerged where individuality was born from the understanding of freedom and this led to disruptive events such as the French Revolution. This movement over time culminates from division into a more perfect union that allows individuality to develop as part of the community. In Marxist fashion, this dichromatic theory is then applied to the position of the individual within the economic market that has constrained and now governs each person. We will explain it briefly: only within a free market can the individual hope to break the chains of predestination and develop his own interests. Marx argues: “In this society of free competition, the individual appears detached from natural constraints etc
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