Communist Manifesto

Karl Marx in his “Communist Manifesto” states that the wage gap will eventually result in revolutions of working class across the world, and consequently difference in classes will be vanished. Whereas, Robert Reich in “Why the Rich are Getting Richer and the Poor, Poorer” argues that American strategy of economic development, which is based on expansion of the production, will lead to collapse of American economy. Though, the poor people will suffer of various deprivations, wealthy people will be putted into even more unenviable situation in both cases. Moreover, scenario given by Marx in his work proposes the worst position for the rich people than Reich describes.

First of all, the equal situations illustrated by both authors are result of over-extension of the market. This is due to the fact that trading relations is no longer bounded by national borders and corporations are selling their products not only in the specific region, but on the every part of the globe, in order to get more profit. Such profit-seeking concept of producers also forced them to make production process as cheap as possible. For example, high-volume production was moved from developed to developing countries with cheap labor force (Reich, p. 5), also as the production becomes automated to exclude the costs due to worker’s salary (Marx, p.44, Reich p.17).

According to Reich, policy of American national companies, which is to expand distribution market, will eventually trigger slow but constant economical degradation. “And as the American corporation sold its goods and services all over the world, the purchasing power of American workers became far less relevant to its economic survival” (Reich, p.43). As the result of this, all classes in America wi...

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...ening wage gap. Reich states that economic crisis in America will result in lost wealth of the rich people, but that issue will affect only well-off people in America, consequently they can either immigrate to different country before he gets poor or invest in overseas companies. On the other hand from Marx’s point of view wealthy people will literally get destroyed by proletarians due to three reasons. Firstly, the proletarian revolution will be worldwide, so the rich people won’t have a place to run to, everywhere will be the same equal society. Secondly, proletarian revolution is inevitable therefore rich man can’t stop the Specter of Communism. Finally, if the former rich man will rise against communism he will be punished. Thus, in Marx’s scenario of sinking of wealthy people they are doomed, as there is no way for them to avoid that state of affairs.