Ch. 15 Essay
Jonathan Liddle Everyone who complains about the one percent and how bad inequality is in our country should learn about Karl Marx, he is known to be the liberator of humanity. Unfortunately, more people know who Kim Kardashian is than Karl Marx. He is one of the great critics of capitalism. While Marx was alive Capitalism was just getting started and the experience he had helped him see the issues it creates, he also points out issues as Capitalism continued to grow. Marx says that Capitalists aren’t bad it’s the system of capitalism itself that is bad. In order to understand capitalism, you must first understand the structure of society. There are two basic concepts that Marx talks about, one being the Superstructure and the other the
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Whether it be a hobby, your job or helping society in one way or another. Unfortunately, when we look at the capitalist society, Marx points out that the working class became a commodity to the rich. In other words, Marx says “The worker becomes poorer the richer is his production”. Since almost every company has that one or several people in charge and under them are the workers, Marx explains that this has caused the labor that the workers put out to be considered an object. It has turned into companies going out and buying labor for their production. the loss of purpose starts to unfold because the worker puts his all in this product that he ends up belonging too the product. Marx gives us another way of looking at it in the sense of religion “The more man puts himself into god the less he he retains in himself”. To the Capitalist the worker is an object that has a belly to be filled with a minimum wage salary, this alienated them, made them feel excluded from what they were making or producing. It turned into workers selling their labor skills just to be able to survive. These workers end up making things they can’t afford to buy on their
Marx believes that people in a capitalist society become enraptured by the system of commodities. For example, Marx’s ideas on the commodification of labor show how the individual, as a worker, becomes enraptured by the capitalist system of production, and accepts his role in the system. He writes, “The workers exchange their commodity, labour, for the commodity of the capitalist, for money, and this exchange takes place in a definite ratio”” (Marx, in Calhoun, p. 122). Marx believes that workers become captivated because they fetishize the commodification process to the extent that they view themselves and others through the lenses of commodities.
Meanwhile, more technological advances, the more the laborer is devalued inciting displacement and more despairing modes of labor. Marx illustrates the disparity by stating that: Labor produces for the rich wonderful things – but for the worker it produces privation. It produces palaces – but for the worker, hovels. It produces beauty – but for the worker, deformity. It replaces labor by machines, but it throws one section of the workers back into barbarous types of labor
The proletariats are the wage earners or the labour class, in a capitalist society the proletarians don’t have much wealth, and their main asset is their labour power. The bourgeoisie is the class that owns the means of production, their class interest lies in the value of property and the preservation of capital, and this ensures their perpetual economic supremacy in society. According to Marx, in the capitalist mode of production, a worker slowly loses the power to decide upon his or her life and destiny, they lose their Gattungswesen (“species-essence”), and this is a consequence of living in a socially stratified society, where human beings become a mechanistic part of a social class. Even though human beings are self-conscious and autonomous, in a capitalist society they are nothing but an economic entity whose acts are dictated by the bourgeoisie, with the aim
As stated beforehand the sole source of livelihood for the worker is their labour power thus they may leave an employer but cannot leave the whole class of purchasers that is the capitalist class without renouncing their existence. The worker may not "belong" to their employer like a slave belonged to their master but they are a "slave" to the capitalist system as they do not own what they produce and depend on the capitalist who is in possession of means of making a livelihood - the factories, mines etc. and the worker is compelled to work for them for their continuing existence. This is why the worker sells their labour power to the capitalist, In order to live. Marx then exposes the reality of work under capitalism in a way which has great resonance even today: "The exercise of labour power, labour, is the worker’s own life activity, the manifestation of his own life" (Marx-Engels pp 204).
This takes place in multiple forms. Chief among these is that the working class, the proletariat, becomes commodities for the labor owners, the bourgeoisie. This is because in order to get a job, they must, in effect, sell themselves as producers of labor. However, Marx and Engel assert that the more that the worker produces, the more he becomes an even “cheaper commodity” (122). This is because the workers are only paid enough wages to be able to live, saving even more of the profit for the owners.
He argues that with all the pressures of class conflict and the imbalance of capitalism there is no way that this pattern can continue without a major revolution. Marx compares capitalism to anarchy, in the sense that there is no organization within which only causes chaos. The common pattern of capitalism is a boom followed by a bust, and that bust leads to recession and social unrest. This sort of fickle economy, Marx believes, will furthermore contribute to the downfall of capitalism. This socialist revolution would, “abolish private ownership of key elements of economy and change nature of relationships from ones based on marriage and property.”
Industrialization also enhanced the capitalism which is focused on the issue of more profit and conflict between capital and workers. While owner of productions take more profit with less labor, workers take less profit even with much more labor force. Karl Marx is one of the thinkers who criticizes this situation of capitalism in terms of workers and capitals in industry, especially he focuses on the situation of
And so it goes with anything produced, day after day. If Marx was alive in 2017 he may say capitalism has turned laborers into machines. And from what I have read of him, he would say their labor still, belongs to the masters. Marx was expressing the loss in a sense of ownership, of self, in a product was gone.
It is argued that social inequality occurs because of the conflict between the upper-class and the working-class, or as Marx defines it, the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat. Based on the Manifesto of the Communist Party (Marx and Engels, 1848), the divergence emerges because the aim of the Bourgeoisie is to obtain a surplus-value that is produced by the work of the Proletariat. On the other side, the Bourgeoisie provides the Proletariat with the minimum required, such as a place to live and a minimum wage, in order to keep the society under control and avoid a rebellion. However, Marx did predict a revolt of the working-class that would eventually lead to a communist regime. When it comes to applying this theoretical approach to reality, it is evident to notice that no global revolt in regards to capitalism has occurred.
Marx and Engels look at capitalism with seriously negative opinions. They regard the system as extremely unsuitable, and are deeply concerned with getting rid of it. In a capitalist society, capitalists own and control the main resources of production - machinery, factories, mines, capital, etc. The modern working classes, or proletariats, own only their labor. Proletariats work for the capitalists, who own the product that was produced and then sell it for a profit.
Marx argues that the method of exploitation built into the capitalist economic system is the source of social dislikes that will eventually lead to the demolishing of capitalism itself. Marx distinguishes ordinary money from capital. A commodity is transformed into money, which is then transformed back into a commodity, and then sold for money and then that money is used to buy a commodity and so on. His concern with the exchange-value of labor power is to show that origin of surplus value is not about cheating the workers during the sale of their labor-power, but to show that surplus value may occur in an equal exchange.
Although I do not deny that capitalism definitely has it benefits, I’d like to explore a couple of Karl Marx’s arguments
Karl Marx (1818-1883) considered himself not to be a sociologist but a political activist. However, many would disagree and in the view of Hughes (1986), he was ‘both – and a philosopher, historian, economist, and a political scientist as well.’ Much of the work of Marx was political and economic but his main focus was on class conflict and how this led to the rise of capitalism. While nowadays, when people hear the word “communism”, they think of the dictatorial rule of Stalin and the horrific stories of life in a communist state such as the Soviet Union, it is important not to accuse Marx of the deeds carried out in his name.
Karl Marx argues that modern labor practices lead to the alienation of human beings from the product of their work. He states that human beings will become alienated from their product because there will be no “pride” in the product, humans will become alienated from one’s own labor because the task will be so mindless that it will become autonomous, losing his free will, humans will become alienated from others because todays labor practices are based on everyone fighting for the best jobs; forcing everyone to only look out for themselves, and finally alienation from oneself in the sense that what people contribute to the world is a manifestation of oneself and when we do not have to be creative we begin to lose who we are as people. More like people will live to work instead of work being an extension of our own being. I disagree with Marx on his idea of alienation because people it is impossible for someone to come completely alienated from everything because they did not have full hands on experience with the creation of the product. Karl Marx first argues against modern labor practices by saying that people will become alienated in four ways, from their product, from their labor, from their counterparts and finally from
The major structural contradictions can be identified in the issue of commodity value (Best, 2003), class conflict and exploitation (Marsh, 1996) and the effects this has on the worker (Harlambos & Holborn, 2008). Marx argues that use-value is the only significant worth of a product, however, the Capitalist society has conflated this with exchange value – a worth based on abstract market fluctuations rather than material reality (Best, 2003). As the exchange value is not set, it is only the realisation of profits – of the difference between labour costs and the amount paid for the commodity – that benefit the Capitalist. This creates a situation where the Capitalist is over reliant on an unstable situation (Best, 2003). Herein lies one of the foundational contradictions of Capitalism to which Marx accredits the system’s over all