Compare And Contrast Karl Marx And Modernism

Through Karl Marx’s analytical comprehension of Modernism, he deduced that society needs a new system of government and economics. Capitalism unsuccessfully lives up to the expectations of a Modernist society, but only through Marxism, a society will truly enter into a modernist era. Karl Marx understands Modernism as everyone is created equally with the ability to interpret, and so societies government and economic functions must reflect that. Capitalism is nothing more than a reshaped form of pre-modernism, but Marxism, through its redistribution of wealth, treatment of all as equals, forsaking of self for the group, and the fundamental idea that everyone owns everything, is how a society needs to function if it desires to truly embrace Modernism.

A primary mode of production for Capitalism comes from the exploitation of the working class. Pre-modernism divided itself into two primary groups, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat; the proletariat’s purpose revolves around submitting itself to the requests of the bourgeoisie, whose only return is a sort of protection of some kind. In Pre-modernism and, as Marx believes, Capitalism hinges on the exploitation of a lower class. For Marx, the rich use Capitalism in order to exploit the working class in a similar way the nobility exploits the servanthood, the difference being Capitalism harbors itself in the realm of production—the area where things are made and the capitalist exploits surplus labor from the working class. “Marx depicts capitalism as ‘produce[ing]…its own gravediggers’ in an ever-growing mass of exploited and dispossessed humanity that will eventually rebel and inherit capitalism’s accomplishment – the spectacular productive capacity generated by its life drive” (Brown, pg. 93). Through the exploitation of the working class, the proletariat, Capitalism finds its means of value for the individual, where Marxism finds value for the group through the equality of