The Marquis de Condorcet’s believed one day humankind would reach a future where the individual could be free to reason for himself and there would be no more positions of power such as tyrants or priests. ((Condorcet, Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind, 1795)) He wrote that this future would have equality between nations, equality between individuals, and where decisions are made based on science and rationalization. ((Condorcet, Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind, 1795)) His view directly opposes Marx’s idea we heard in class the other day, that there must be oppressors and oppressed in society until the oppressed overthrow the oppressors in a revolution. He based his argument off general world history, starting with slave owners and slaves, lords and serfs, and the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
In order to believe in Condorcet’s idea that there is an end all society in the future we must see that there have been large steps forward in equality. Is our world more equal and more based on rational thought than it was one hundred years ago? How about two hundred years ago? It’s very difficult to answer this question in a global setting, so I ask that we focus domestically, on the United States. From Marx’s view, is there an oppressed people in the U.S?  It is difficult for many people to see any citizen of the U.S as oppressed, due to our status as a world power, and they are right. Compared to most places in the world we could not be viewed as oppressed. But solely within our country, when looking back, there has never been such a gap in income inequality. In history, the people with power have that power due to their wealth. For the slave owners and lords they owned people and land. The Bourgeoisie owned private property. The majority of the money in the U.S is in the top five percent. When looking at income inequality from this perspective, is it fair to say that there is an oppressor and oppressed in the U.S? Furthermore, do they hold a power over us that we are unaware of?