Karl Marx's Views On Self-Smominism And Capitalism

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Karl Marx was a 19th century philosopher and economist, whose writings on communism and capitalism continue to influence people to this day. His arguments focus mainly on the detrimental effects of a capitalist society on the human condition. He believed capitalism to be an unnatural and unsustainable social and economic system, which not only negatively impacted the poorer facets of society (e.g. the workers), but the rich (e.g. factory owners) as well. Capitalism, according to Marx, fetishizes production, therefore alienating those involved in said production, as it places profit above human existence.
This essay will consist of a close reading of a passage from Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, published in 1927 after …show more content…

Means of production had evolved dramatically and new and improved machinery meant that manufacturing commodities was easier, drastically lessening the roles of human workers. Marx posited that labour was essential to the human condition, it is by shaping the world through work that we as human beings, realise ourselves in the world. Marx rejected the Hegelian notion of self-consciousness, that self-consciousness is and always has been omnipresent. Instead, Marx suggested that self-consciousness comes from man and work is fundamental in the process of the self-actualisation of consciousness. He considered man to be, what he called, a “species-being,” meaning that man, unlike animals, understands “himself as the present, living species,” he comprehends his own …show more content…

This is because, capitalism favours high production and low costs, to do this, workers must have designated, specialised tasks, in what Marx called the “division of labour.” In ‘The German Ideology,’ Marx argues, that division of labour when “not voluntarily, but naturally divided,” causes man’s labour to become “an alien power opposed to him.” The worker is unable to recognise themselves in the product of their labour. The reason for this is the aforementioned ‘division of labour,’ which increases a factories production, but results in workers who are unable to differentiate their work from the work of others, as the object has become an amalgamation of theirs and others work. In this way capitalism disguises the labour necessary for an object’s production from its consumers.
Marx claimed that in a ‘true’ communist society, one would not be restricted to one specific means of employment, on the contrary, they would be able to freely pursue any form of labour they wished. For example, one could “hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening [and] criticise after dinner,” without being labelled as “hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.” The idea that man must work to live was considered by Marx, to be abhorrent,

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