The role of historical progress in the ideas of Marx and Flaubert

Marx managed to express the imaginary character of dialects making it possible to enable the
course of the historical progress. Knowing the reality is the perspective of a slave, leading to
a possible escape from the bizarre state of submission, the historical progress may have
enabled the repressed to step out of any ideology, making it almost an impossible choice. This
invisible force, pushing the members of the working class towards the impossible, enabled
the breaking up with the old ideologies.

Both Marx and Flaubert were the children of the Enlightenment. One of the main Marxs
themes in his works was the problem of the capitalist system which was in the stadium of
terminal crisis, according to his opinion. Capitalism, of its very nature, involves the
exploitation of the working class. This exploitation is bound to reach a point at which the
proletariat finds it intolerable, and rises in revolt. The capitalist system will be replaced by the
dictatorship of the proletariat, which will abolish private property and introduce a socialist
state in which the means of production are totally under central government control. But the
socialist state, in its turn, will wither away to be replaced by a communist society in which the
interests of the individual will coincide with those of the community. His capital work The
Communist Manifesto states that the enlightenment of the masses could only be achieved
through an extreme and through the abolition of the private property. A revolutionary
struggle which results in giving equal power to everyone is the only way to achieve freedom
for all.

In Flauberts Madame Bovary, the hatred of middle-class values is strongly apparent. In

Flauberts lifetime, France was caught in the throes of immense social upheaval. The
Revolution of 1789 and the imperial reign of Napoleon were recent memories, and the
collapse of the aristocracy was paralleled by the rise of a new middle classor bourgeoisie
made up of merchants and capitalists with commercial, rather than inherited, fortunes. As a
member of the educated elite, Flaubert found the moral conservatism, rough manners, and
unsophisticated taste of this new class appalling. In his novel Madame Bovary, Flaubert
depicts the dangers of taking any philosophy, namely Romanticism to its extreme. The story
of a woman, imprisoned by her middle class surroundings, warns that either enlightenment
or romanticism taken up by ordinary people can have unintended catastrophic consequences
if not understood ideologically correctly. The novel reacts against romanticism. Flaubert
recognized a strong streak of romanticism himself. In the novel this romanticism is present,
but Flaubert always treats it with irony. He allows himself a few romantic moments, but
recognizes their flaws and warns about the extremism of romanticism. The main protagonist
is blinded by the idea of romanticism becoming a reckless spendthrift, greedy, developing
possessive attitudes. Negligent and unable to separate fantasy from reality, Madame Bovary
becomes much in debt that she finally forces herself to commit suicide. Flaubert shows a step
by step deconstruction of an extremist romanticism.
In contrast, Marx argues for an extremist response to achieve true enlightenment. After
abolition of feudal property, the French revolution failed to provide power to the proletariat.
The bourgeoisie replaced feudal powers, the working class continued to be exploited.
According to Marx there is one common thread to our entire existence the exploitation of
one part of society by the other. He advocates for revolutionary measures The communist
revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its
development involves the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.

Marx uses historical developments as possible tools for solving the class struggle problems.
On the other hand, Flaubert uses real life developments to describe ill-effects of an ideology
which can lead to an extreme.