Marx: Does Capitalism Really Work?

In his theory, Marx states that the Bourgeoisie or the “capitalist class” are the ruling class of the two basic classes of capitalist society. They are the employers of laborers and are the owners of production. They were not the royals of society, but would be considered the owners of major corporations, manufactures, land-owners, and other employers. The wealth of the Bourgeoisie came from by employing labor. By employing workers, the Bourgeoisie created the surplus

In the beginning of the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution caused a massive economic spike from small-scale production to large factories and mass production. Capitalism became the prevalent mode of the economy, which put all means of production in the hands of the bourgeoisie, or the upper class. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels argue that capitalism centralizes all the wealth and power in the bourgeoisie, despite the proletariat, or the working class, being the overwhelming majority of the population. The manufacturers would exploit the common proletariat and force them to would work in abysmal conditions and receive low wages, furthering the working class poverty. “The Communist Manifesto” predicts that as a result of the mistreatment

De Tocqueville doesn 't view liberty as an attribute part of the democratic era. He believes that the only character that is associated with this era is equality. He explains in his theory that people of this era prize equality over liberty, although he doesn 't deny that democratic people value liberty, because everyone can take part in it and enjoy it effortlessly, as opposed to liberty where you have to "sacrifice" to achieve it (De Tocqueville, 1835). He holds that equality creates individualism, which means people separate themselves from one another, their ancestors and the future generations, that leads to tyranny and despotism. On the contrary, he claims that during the aristocratic ages, people were not selfish and careless about others ' needs because "aristocracy links everybody, from peasant to king" (De Tocqueville, 1835). Marx, equally, believes that the outcome of industrial capitalism is alienation of the proletariat, the working class, from their society.

labor –at the centre of his analysis of human history. He was able to show that the

Marxism is an economic and social system. Holland Arrowsmith explains Marxism as a term which refers to “a hugely diverse set of social, economic, philosophical, historical and cultural theories”. Several theories such as social, economical, political and critical theories have been derived from Marxism philosophy. Marxism advocates equality amongst the class structure of society. Marxism is divided into two fundamental classes. According to Marx there are only two classes which exist: Bourgeoisie, which means powerful or dominant class and Proletariat, which means the peasant or working classes. Bourgeoisie, which gains the power, defines superstructure “including all social and legal institution, all political and educational systems, all religions and all art” (Bressler, 162), and articulate the ideology which is based on profits of bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie ideology leads to alienation of individuals, especially proletariats. This bourgeoisie ideology creates the clash between the two classes. Marx supported the working class and their victory over dominant class. Marxism believes in providing equal opportunity to the working class as that are available to the

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.” (Allen, Lecture 5: Marx and His Life, 2014). Idealistically, at the fall of capitalism is when socialism would gain credibility and be seen as a realistic goal of society. This revolutionary shift towards socialism would introduce the ideal, organized, classless society that Marx

The world came across with lots of revolutions in terms of politic, social, and economic and so on. One of the most impressive and well-established revolution among these revolutions was industrial revolution. In fact, industrial revolution is a term which opened a new era in the world. As it related in the book of Charles More (2002) “Understanding the Industrial Revolution”; industrial revolution is different from the other revolutions, while others happened sudden or continued with a few years, industrial revolution was an unending process and it did not happened suddenly. During this unending process, women were affected both from negative and positive sides. This paper investigates some studies about the effect of industrial revolutıon

However, some of Marx’s statements proved to be false. One of the predictions that Marx made in Communist Manifesto that turned out to be false was his statements about the industrial revolution. Marx was convinced that the more capitalist countries developed, the more enslaved one of the social classes would become. Marx stated, “Modern industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist… Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois state; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine.” At the time it seemed like Marx made a good point as many people in capitalist countries worked long hours in factories. However, we now know this to be false because citizens in capitalist countries such as America enjoyed a higher standard of living than communist countries such as the Soviet Union ever had. While Marx thought his ideologies would be applicable in the real world, they only looked good on

Marx argues that due to division of labor and class struggle, “man comes to objectify himself through this mere one-dimension he has created and identifies with” (Marx p.475). The class struggle resulted from division of labor created an inequality where some will own the means of production, and the lower class who provides or sells their labor or “self” to survive working for those owners of means of product. This two groups are simply explained as bourgeoisies and proletariats by Marx. As the industrialization and society modernizes, the inequality will prevail observably. Marx argues that the proletariats will revolt against bourgeoisies and lead to the fall of capitalism and rise of communism. Marx’s point of view of social change is for social interest and getting rid of class exploitation once the proletariats remove the bourgeoisies from the top of the social and economic chain. Unlike Marx who focuses on the class struggle and the rapid social changes, Durkheim points out that it should be don’t only as far as necessary. According to Marx, “we conclude that it is not good to push specialization as far as possible, but only as far as necessary” arguing that the specialization should not be pushed to the possible limit, but only to what is necessary and not over pushing it (Durkheim 334). Unlike Marx, Durkheim argues that the

When explaining why people in poverty are poor, theories may be individual-focused, stressing personal responsibility, or structure-focused, stressing the forces that lie outside the individual’s control. The statement, “people in poverty are poor because they aren’t working hard enough,” complements the popular beliefs about the poor in the U.S., falling in line with individual-focused theories such as Oscar Lewis’ “culture of poverty” thesis. This explanation regards the idea that poverty is the result of a set of norms and values that is characteristic of the poor (Marger 165). He argues that key features of those in poverty, such as having a present orientation, a lack of values about marriage and education, high usage of alcohol and drugs, frequent use of violence, and a belief in male superiority forms a culture in which the poor perpetuate their own poverty as they do not possess the same values needed to fit in with society’s dominant culture (Marger 166). However, key sociological

It inevitable struggle between social classes would lead to the creation of a classless society where all means of production would be owned by the community. The idea of Communism is that workers earn wages in the industrial and agricultural sectors. Individual worker rights are secondary to the importance of the state. The government acts as the facilitator for the community and controls all the wealth and there will be not private ownership which means that all the profits that are earned by the workers will return to the community for equal distribution. Marx’s view is to have a classless society.

Karl Marx had an idea of a classless happy society without poverty, greed or any private ownership. This idea of a utopian system was labelled Communism. He theorized that in such system all would be equal and all would give as much as they would and take as much as they would require. But that was all theoretical. There is not and never was a real Communist country in the world. The kind of Communist country that Marx described. There was, however, countries that aspired to become Communist. One in particular is Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or the USSR. The real big steps towards communism there began in 1917 when the Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin made a first ever official Communistic revolution in the world based on the

Capitalism is built on the existence of private firms, where in Karl Marx’s opinion, the income generated is a result of the exploitation of workers. In private firms, workers do not own factors of production and Marx believed that this would inevitably lead to the alienation of workers from their environment and themselves. Unlike in traditional societies, where workers gain satisfaction from creating products of their own chosen specialized fields, in the current context, workers see their work merely as a form of survival. Marx believed that in a capitalistic economy, the rich have power over the middle and lower income classes and that the oppression of the middle and lower classes by minimizing wages to reducing cost of production, will eventually lead to a revolution against the rich and hence resulting in the economy producing products for the needs of the general mass rather than for boosting profits. (Marx, K., & Engels, F. 1948)

Marxist theory also helps us further our understanding of the achievement gap. We will interpret the achievement gap through the concepts of ALIENATION, SPECIES-BEING, and CLASS CONFLICT. Although these concepts pertain to critiques on capitalism, they remain useful and revealing to the U.S. education system, as this system itself was heavily influenced by capitalism. For example, there are bells to conduct the school day, grades to track student performance, incentives to outperform your peers, and many other aspects influenced by capitalism. Marxist theory allows us to examine how the organization of the school system either promotes or hinders the achievement gap. We begin with alienation.

“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”. Karl Marx used the word “struggle” repeatedly for the social changes in describing how society move forward. In his theory, a commodity is something that is bought and sold, or exchanged in a market. It has a “use – value” determined by the qualities of things and the purposes or needs because the commodity can satisfy human’s need and it also has a “exchange – value” determined by quantities of things and what can be gotten for them. As use – values, commodities have all of different qualities, but in terms of exchange – values, they are just different quantities and do not contain the use – value. Marx emphasized that the labor and work are quantified; in