Karl Marx and Max Weber both agreed that capitalism generates alienation in modern societies, but the cause for it were both different. For Marx it is due to economic inequality in where the capitalist thinks that the workers worth nothing more than a source of labour, that can be employed and dismissed at will. This causes the workers to be dehumanised by their jobs (in the past, routine factory work and in the present-day, managing demands on a computer), which leads to the workers finding slight satisfaction and feeling incapable of improving their situation. It was noted by Marx four methods on how capitalism alienates workers. The first, is alienation from the function of working.
In their Manifesto, Marx and Engels predicted that one day the proletariat of the world would rise up in an inevitable revolution. This is based around the theory of how the world is defined by a struggle between and among economic classes, which will eventually lead to the establishment of a provisional vanguard state that would slowly transition a society to a communist society by abolishing class altogether. The procedure and the process of the revolution that is to occur, is built upon Marx 's famous generalization that ‘the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles’[ Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, ed. by Jeffrey C. Isaac, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012).]. Marx 's
Another problem with this is that if they keep their workers, poor then in time they will find that there are no people to buy the products they make because they cannot afford to buy them. By only worrying about themselves, they alienate the workers in more than one way, which will be mentioned later on. (Romkey, 2018). Another problem that Marx associates with capitalism is that one cannot have complete freedom until capitalism falls. This is because the state tries to control the people and when the state is demolished through communism is the only time when people will truly be free (Romkey, 2018).
The way Marx envisioned how working conditions may be bettered in a communist world is that the labourers should work in a social relations context so that they feel comfortable performing their jobs (Sayers 2011: 81), rather than working only to feed their stomachs. If this is achieved, then alienation would not be an issue anymore, because then, the workers would be in control of their time rather than being exploited. In the past, history has proven time and time again through the 1848 Revolutions, and the Communist revolutions of Russia and Cuba, that due to the alienation of work and inequality, the working class rose up against the class of the bourgeoisie. In these instances, communism was the only way out of the labourers’ suffrage to live a life where they are in control of their time, instead of living under harsh conditions where they sleep where they work. Overall, there are examples throughout history that indicate that capitalism does eventually lead to communism.
Preconditions and Contradictions of a Capitalist Society According to Karl Marx, the revolutionist and sociologist, there are preconditions as well as contradictions in a capitalist society. In this essay there will be the identifying, defining and the discussion of key concepts as discussed in the Tutorials and in the module of the course as Sociology. There will be discussed who Karl Marx was, the influences in his life, the theory he studies named Marxism, conflict and contradictions, dialectic thinking, Materialism, Society, What Capitalism is?, and the critique based on Marx’s work from others. At the end I will come to a conclusion to prove that there are preconditions and contradictions in a capitalist society. Who is Karl
Marx states that the production in capitalist society worked in a way that the rich factory owner benefited and the poor factory workers lost. Hence, he says “if the wealth of the society is decreasing, the worker suffers most, for although the working class cannot gain as much as the property owners when society is prospering, none suffers more cruelly from its decline than the working class” (Paragraph 14, line 1-4). He claims that as the wealth in a society increases, competitions also take place among the capitalist for a higher demand of supplies produced through division of labour (Paragraph 19, line 4-7). Withal, such competitions and division of labour often leads to a devastating consequence, by which the workers become “both intellectually and physically to the level of a machine” (Paragraph 19, line 8) and that “the more they want to earn the more they must sacrifice their time and freedom and work like slaves in the service of avarice” (Paragraph 16, line 2-3). In addition, as the competition among the capitalist increases, big capitalist ruin the small ones and a section of the former capitalist sink into the class of the workers.
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. On the contrary, the capitalist society that Marx describes has only become greater in the global society. The disparity between the elite and the populace grows continuously, and the wealth of the first group surpasses the wealth of the second one. The elite has made the working-class into a class of consumption who nourishes its capital gain. This leads on to the global issue of social hierarchy.
Cars do not pop out of thin air there is a process by which steel, rubber, durable plastics, glass, and other materials are put together by both machines and people to create a car. In its crudest form, capitalism works in this way; after the car is created, people who a car need would then go to the car factory and purchase the car for the amount that they are willing and able to pay. In our capitalist society, there are a few other intermediate steps; people just do not walk into one of Ford’s factories and request to buy a Mustang. The cars are bought by a dealership and then sold to customers. The main point, after the extensive example, is that capitalism can be broken down into two essential parts, production and consumption.
And finally, how does capitalism pre-empt any act of resistance or critique thereby reproducing itself endlessly? A huge body of writing has dedicated itself to answering the above mentioned questions. Karl Marx wrote three volumes of Capital as an attempt to uncover the workings of the political economy. In these volumes, Marx identified one phenomenon that plays a crucial role within the operations of capitalism i.e. abstraction.
Scholars were fascinated by the effect this change had on society, and many feared it would fundamentally destroy it, because of the great power it gave to the merchant class. Karl Marx and Max Weber are two scholars who examine capitalism’s development and