Marx thought “class” to be the collective involved in a relationship that can be related closely to the means of production. Means of production can be identified as the physical material/equipment that is needed for economic production and can be in the form of raw materials, machinery, or even land. The means of production is owned by the bourgeoisie who own most of society’s wealth and buy the labour of the proletariat through wages (Spicer, Draper et al; 41). In the pursuit of profit, it is expected of the bourgeoisie to exploit the proletariat (Marsh; 1996; 53). The relationship between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is an exploitative one, referring to the meaning that the proletariat are producing goods through the means of production for the bourgeoisie, and these goods hold a higher value than what the proletariat are being paid (exploitation) which develops into class conflict/struggles.
The haves, or the bourgeoisie, were the capitalist that controlled the means of production, while the have-nots, or the proletariat, were the working class that were exploited by the capitalists. Marx believed that in a capitalist society the rich bourgeoisie control the economy and that the proletariat are alienated. Stripped of their self worth they are forced to produce more than they consume. The surplus of their labor is only enjoyed by the capitalist elite. He felt it should be the workers that should be in control.
The means of production should be possessed by a majority part of citizens rather than the minority. In other words, the determinant factor of judging a society is capitalism or communism, is the ownership of the ways of production which is either private or social. Only if the word of “private property” never appears in our world, will Marx be
The concept of surplus value used by Karl Marx declared that workers not only create economic value through the wages paid to them but also through the more value of transforming economic resources into valuable products. This allowed economies to experience more profit through producing goods, rather than simply earning income from the sale of property. Marx believed that this additional income could be
It is not the satisfaction of a need, but only a means for satisfying other needs”. Workers always remain in a state of oppression where they can hardly find any happiness or fulfillment. After all, workers are even alienated from their true nature and not able to enjoy their lives. For Marx, the division of labor and conflicts between two social classes are crucial problems of modern society. For Durkheim, the essential elements of modern society are conflicting Marx’s in many ways.
He sees power as a corrupting force and further sees capitalism as the root cause of the corruption. The economic system can never produce a fair power dynamic, as it relies on private property and when the means of production is wielded by the few, members of society can be sorted into two groups, the employer, and the labourer. Marx used the phrases capitalist mode of production to refer to the systems of organizing production and distribution within societies. He highlights wage-labour and private ownership as two means of
None society is unite because the different classes are always confronting each other as they have opposite interests. The economist Marx defines a tendency towards a polarization of classes in capitalist societies — he suggests that the class structure consists of two classes which are the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The capitalist method of production produces necessarily social conflicts between these two classes which have distinct interests: this phenomenon is called the class struggle. Marx starts his Manifesto with a sentence that proves how primordial is this notion of class struggle : « The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. » It is an economic analysis of the History — considering the relations of production.
In the theory of alienation, Marx gives the answer on how do the ways in which people earn their living affect their bodies, minds and also their daily lives. Workers in capitalist society do not have the machines, raw materials, factories which they use in their work. It is owned by the capitalists to whom the workers must sell their "labor power", or ability to do work, in return for a wage (Bertell Ollman, 2004). This system of labor displays four relations that lie at the core of Marx 's theory of alienation. Firstly, the worker is alienated (or cut off) from his or her productive activity, playing no part in deciding what to do or how to do it.
The whole of these associations of production forms the actual basis on which rises a lawful and political superstructure, at a positive phase of their growth, the material creative forces of civilization move towards into disagreement with the existing relations of production. From forms of growth of the productive forces these dealings turn into restraints. Then begins an period of communal revolution. With the modification of the economic establishment the huge superstructure is quickly changed. THEORY OF HUMAN NATURE: ECONOMICS, SOCIETY AND
This was the foundation of thought which lead to Surplus Value that capitalists extract out of exploitation of the labourers. Thus the Marxian theory of exploitation was developed on the basis of Labour theory of