Many people who have spent their whole lives in America, have a knee-jerk reaction to a few words: ‘capitalism’ is good, ‘Marxism’ is communism and is thus evil, and the ‘American Dream’ is a realistic goal. However, the simplistic differentiation of these ideas causes the reality of each to slip through the cracks: the ‘American Dream’ of working hard to get rich is nearly impossible to achieve; when placed with capitalism, the ‘American Dream’ causes gross inequality; and “evil” Marx saw the inequality problems in the US over 100 years before they began. There is no doubt that the division between the rich and the poor in the US today is a problem, and by looking at Marx’s writings, as well as Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, …show more content…
Where is the money gained from working harder going? To the capitalist. The benefits from the increased efficiency in the workplace have “nearly all gone to companies, shareholders, and top executives, rather than rank-and-file employees,” (Schwartz, 2015). As the higher classes get richer and inflation continues to rise, the worker, whose wages have been stagnated, is forced to work even harder to get the same pay – which just gives the capitalist more money. The richer the capitalist is, the poorer his worker is, but the more the worker needs to hang onto any job that they have. The worker is constantly faced with the reality that they are replaceable, but realizes that having a low-paying job is better than having no job, and the worker begins to sell more of their labor for less money in order to hold onto a job – which just gives the capitalist more money. The worker also realizes that he is in competition with his peers, as well as those who don’t have a job, making the worker even more willing to work for less money in order to hang onto a job – which just makes the capitalist more money. A cycle is created, making the rich richer and the poor poorer. The money that these capitalists are getting accounts for the fact that the wealthiest 1% of the United States population holds more money than the poorest 50% of the US population (Reich, Inequality for
America was once known as the land of opportunity. However, that is no longer the case. Americans are still suffering from a depression that began three years ago in 2008. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2007, the United States unemployment rates were 4.6 percent. In 2009, one year after the depression began, the unemployment rate rose to 7.6 percent. Millions of Americans are living in poverty, unable to afford the basic necessities. On the other hand, there is a minuscule percent of the population that are billionaires. Written in 2005, Holly Sklar’s essay “The Growing Gulf Between the Rich and the Rest of Us” argues that if something isn’t done about the growing inequality between the rich and the poor, the American economy as a whole will weaken. A year later, the Economist published the article, “Inequality and the American Dream” implies that the American dream is broken. Sklar’s argument sheds light on the Economist’s argument. In particular, Sklar’s use of facts regarding the wealthiest Americans, the poorest Americans, and the discussion of the impact of inequality on society provide insight into the Economist’s article.
With each class comes a certain level in financial standing, the lower class having the lowest income and the upper class having the highest income. According to Mantsios’ “Class in America” the wealthiest one percent of the American population hold thirty-four percent of the total national wealth and while this is going on nearly thirty-seven million Americans across the nation live in unrelenting poverty (Mantsios 284-6). There is a clear difference in the way that these two groups of people live, one is extreme poverty and the other extremely
According to Marxist revolutionary theory, advanced capitalism is a necessary precondition to the development of socialism. Capitalists would ruthlessly exploit workers, accumulating capital from the workers’ labor but not sharing it. This would result in the workers developing a collective class consciousness, overthrowing their oppressors, and replacing their bourgeois government with a dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., socialism. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels expected that, because the United States had the most advanced form of capitalism in the world, it was the most likely setting for a proletarian revolution, yet, no socialist or labor party has ever become a major factor in American politics. American communist, socialist, and labor parties have never been able to become more than radical leftist fringe groups, even as a much perverted form of socialism came to dominate a large part of the planet over the course of the Cold War. “For much of the second half of the twentieth century,” Peter Singer writes, “nearly four of every ten people on earth lived under governments that considered themselves Marxists and claimed… to use Marxist principles to decide how the nation should be run.” Far from falling under Marxist influence, the United States became the sworn enemy of global communism. Generations of theorists and scholars have proposed a variety of possible reasons why no socialist or labor party has ever achieved prominence in the American electoral system.
Marx’s thoughts on capitalism were nearly spot on, but even though American’s understand capitalism or, at ...
Some say the American dream is completely dead in today’s society. No. The American dream is alive and well for those who will go the extra mile for it. People may believe it is dead due to factors that may “hinder” a person from achieving it. These factors include, but are not limited to, discrimination, lack of job opportunities, debt, natural disasters, etc. These theories may be proven wrong in most cases, with the exception of some. The American dream is the idea that anyone, no matter the situation they are currently in, can eventually live a happy and stable life in America. The dream is attainable for a willing individual, who will work hard for what they want. This does not mean it will be easy, nor does it mean
Divisions within the social stratum is a characteristic of societies in various cultures and has been present throughout history. During the middle ages, the medieval feudal system prevailed, characterized by kings and queens reigning over the peasantry. Similarly, in today’s society, corporate feudalism, otherwise known as Capitalism, consists of wealthy elites dominating over the working poor. Class divisions became most evident during America’s Gilded Age and Progressive era, a period in time in which the rich became richer via exploitation of the fruits of labor that the poor persistently toiled to earn. As a result, many Americans grew compelled to ask the question on everyone’s mind: what do the rich owe the poor? According to wealthy
Inequality exist and is high in America because the amount of income and wealth that is distributed through power. In America the income distribution is very inequality and the value of a person wealth is based on their income with their debts subtracted. “As of 2007, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 34.6% of all privately held wealth, and the 19% (the managerial, professional, and small business stratum) had 50.5%, which means that just 20% of the people owned a remarkable 85%, leaving only 15% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage and salary workers)” (Domhoff, 2011). In contrary the poor do not get ahead and the rich get more. Americans are judged and placed in class categories through their home ownership which translates to wealth. Americans social class is often associated with their assets and wealth. “People seek to own property, to have high incomes, to have interesting and safe jobs, to enjoy the finest in travel and leisure, and to live long and healthy lives” (Domhoff, 2011). Power indicates how these “values” are not distributed equally in American society. Huge gains for the rich include cuts in capital gains and dividends and when tax rates decrease for the tiny percent of Americans income is redistributed. Taxes directly affect the wealth and income of Americans every year.
The American dream can be achieved by education, opportunity, and hard work, but is this is not a reality, but just merely a dream. Opportunity in American feels as if everyone has a fair chance of being successful. In America, it seems that the idea of everyone has a fair chance to opportunity. But this is not the case, in Gregory Mantsios essay “Class In America-2012” he talks about how there are many myths that are wide spread about the differing classes in America. Then he further goes on disproving the widely proclaim myths with stats that show in real world the gap between the wealthy one percent of the population owning 36 percent of the capital in comparison to the 99 percent of Americans in the U.S. For the purpose of this essay, the
To do what makes oneself happy. The American Dream is represented in many different ways and every person lives and chases a different version of the American Dream. Chris McCandless lived his American dream by walking alone into the wilderness of Alaska. The song written by Toby Keith, “American Soldier”, shows the price some pay for their dreams and ours to come true. Jay Gatsby died trying to acheive his dream and get the girl he loved, but died happy because he had pursued her until his death. The band All Time Low wrote a song called “The Reckless and The Brave” that brings a new light to how we go about achieving our dreams. So I believe that the American Dream is all about doing what will make you the happiest in the end.
The “American Dream” consists of all U.S citizens having the opportunity to obtain success and prosperity through hard work and determination, but, in a capitalistic economy such as the United States the “American Dream” is merely impossible. Low wages are masked as starting points, taught to eventually pay off in the form of small raises or promotions. Competition to obtain unequally shared resources, is used to define an individual’s extent of initiative. In reality, these are all concepts used by the wealthy to deter the poor working class from obtaining upward mobility. Middle class America, the key factor in helping the wealthy stay wealthy, have adapted to these beliefs and concepts, created to keep them far behind. Conflict theorist
Comparing the perspective of the American dream in the 1920’s to the American Dream in the 1940’s and present day seems to be a repeating cycle. The American dream is always evolving and changing. The American dream for present day is similar to the dream of the 1920’s. An Ideal of the American life is to conform to what our society has determined is success. Money, materialism and status had replaced the teachings of our founding fathers in the 1920’s. A return to family values and hard work found its way back into American’s lives in the 1940’s. The same pursuit of that indulgent lifestyle that was popular in the roaring twenty’s has returned today for most Americans, many Americans are living on credit and thinking that money and the accumulation of material items can solve all problems. Through film, literature, art and music, an idealized version of what it means to be an American has changed from money, materialism, and status of the 1920s to hard work and family values of the forties.
When the term ‘American Dream’ was first mentioned in 1931 by James Truslow Adams, he described it as “that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.” (Clark). When Adams mentioned the term, it had much more of an idealistic meaning, rather than the materialistic meaning it has in modern society. At the time of it’s mention, the dream meant that prosperity was available to everyone. In the beginning, the American Dream simply promised a country in which people had the chance to work their way up through their own labor and hard work (Kiger). Throughout history, the basis of the dream has always been the same for each individual person. It
It could be said that socialism and the American dream are at the opposite ends of the emotional spectrum amongst many of the United States’ populous. The American Dream conjures feeling of belief and optimism whilst the word socialism has connotations of scepticism and fear. Due to the history of socialism in the United States and its failure to gain a foothold in US society or politics, suggests that socialism cannot not be brought in line with the American Dream. The American Dream in fact acts as block to socialism. Socialism would be required to be utilised in a Western European style model to bring it in line with the American Dream, which is what the US needs to reduce a multitude of multifaceted critical social, political and economics problems they face, specifically concerning
...008, American economy suffered a great economic crisis known as “The Great Depression” that affected the country tremendously. This crisis comes from the greed of capitalists and lack of information and understanding of capitalism from the people. Each of us, especially the government, is responsible for allowing such crises to happen. Karl Marx’s critique serves as a guideline for us to understand capitalism and acknowledge its negative effects to our lives. By doing so, we can forecast future crises and preventing from happening.
Marx believed that capitalism was unfair because the rich middle and upper class people manipulated the system and used it for their own benefit while we got the short end of the stick. We, being average Americans— like myself— who go to college full-time, juggle a job, and yet are constantly struggling just to make ends meet: the unappreciated, exploited and underpaid every day heroes.... ... middle of paper ... ... 6.