Karl Marx
1. “The bourgeoisie produces the proletariat, and in producing and expanding that class, the capitalists are producing their own grave diggers”
As capitalism expands, the number of workers exploited, and the degree of exploitation, increases. The tendency for the level of exploitation to escalate leads to more and more resistance on the part of the proletariat. There begins to be more and more exploitation and oppression, which then leads to a confrontation between the two classes. The reality in life in capitalism is hidden while illusion is seen as a fact. The capitalists exploit the proletariat, but the belief is that the abilities of the capitalists only lead to success for the worker. As more and more capitalists exploit the proletariat, the numbers will keep adding up which will cause a move toward a communist society. I believe that this cause of the exploitation is due to several factors. Workers are forced to act inhuman in the workplace by not communicating with anyone in the setting. Talking meant that there was more work that needed to be done. People were working to survive for food and shelter, while their wages were cut by the higher power. People were also forced to compete with one another. Whoever produced more or worked more quickly got a benefit of some reward. People are forced to work like animals. Their consciousness is numbed and it destroys relations with other humans and with nature.
I feel that as more and more people are being exploited and the numbers keep increasing in size, there is going to be a turn where the proletariats take a stand. The capitalists are basically causing this upon themselves by destroying human potential within human beings. They are ruinin...
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... so as long as men exist. I believe that in Marx’s communist society, workers will be happy and content with their work. There will be little competing with one another, but more interacting with one another. People will not be comparing themselves because everyone is equal. People will not compare clothes because everyone is equal. People will know one another and confide in one another as they relate experiences in life with each other. People will be able to work to get the individual need that they desire and not just to survive. People will get to be whatever is suited to fit their fullest potential. People develop freely into his physical and mental energy. If you were born a lawyer then you would be a lawyer. I could not imagine this kind of society producing their own grave diggers because people are just getting more out of what they put into it.
The bourgeoisie are particularly important because not only did they modernized society but industrialized it as well. They took revered occupations and turned them into paid wage-labor, for example being a physician or poet. Marx’s view on the bourgeoisie is that they emerged after numerous revolutions involving modes of production as well as exchange. They create the world according to their image, which strips society
In Marx’s opinion, the cause of poverty has always been due to the struggle between social classes, with one class keeping its power by suppressing the other classes. He claims the opposing forces of the Industrial Age are the bourgeois and the proletarians. Marx describes the bourgeois as a middle class drunk on power. The bourgeois are the controllers of industrialization, the owners of the factories that abuse their workers and strip all human dignity away from them for pennies. Industry, Marx says, has made the proletariat working class only a tool for increasing the wealth of the bourgeoisie. Because the aim of the bourgeoisie is to increase their trade and wealth, it is necessary to exploit the worker to maximize profit. This, according to Marx, is why the labor of the proletariat continued to steadily increase while the wages of the proletariat continued to steadily decrease.
Marx begins explaining the inevitable fall of the bourgeoisie by claiming that once the peasants overthrow the feudalist society and transform into a capitalist society they [the bourgeoisie] will create a ruthless industry in which the proletariat are treated as slaves. Marx describes this industry as one of “the epidemic of overproduction,” (Marx). This overproduction of the proletariat will allow for the success of the capitalist society bourgeoisie. By creating a capitalist industry, the bourgeoisie ultimately brought about their own downfall, “...created their own grave-diggers” (Marx). As the market quickly grows in size and wealth, the bourgeois becomes insensitive and unable to adapt to the increase of wealth they’ve created, “too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them,” (Marx). This will result in a period of disorganization and chaos. This period will be the period in which the proletariat will be able to revolt against the bourgeoisie, overthrow the capitalist system. Once the capitalist system is overthrown. They will eventually transition it to a communist system through socialism. Once a communist system is established, all the social classes will fall and become one equal class. The once troubled industry which brought the fall of the bourgeoisie will become a communist industry which will distribute its profit equally among its workers as long as they work and private property will not be
Marx and Engels saw both the proletariat and the bourgeoisie as an outgrowth of feudal society. They argued that the bourgeoisie emerged as a result of exploration and discovery of new land, ...
According to Marx, capitalist system has another damage rather than class differentiation and low source of income. This damage is basically alienation of labor. Labors are being fundamentally alienated from production, production process, man’s species being and also from other men. Those are the alienation steps of workers in capitalist world. According to communist theory Marx believes that in such system society divides into two different classes; on one hand there are property owners so called bourgeoisie and on the other hand property less workers so called proletariats. For Marx the class stratification that driven from private ownership causes to alienate workers from the existence world. It begins that property less workers become alienated from the product that they produce. Worker relates to...
Most importantly for those who Marx feels capitalism has an adverse effect on, the proletariat. Marx in The Communist Manifesto explains what capitalism is and what it is to be a capitalist: "To be a capitalist is to have not only a purely personal but a social status in production. Capital is a collective product, and only by the united action of many members, nay, in the last resort, only by the united action of all members of society, can it be set in motion." (Marx, K., Engels, F. and Berman, M. (2011)). Through such a definition of capitalism, he adamantly stresses that capitalist state is selfish, one that has been manufactured by the desire of individuals to have a greater material wealth than his societal
We know that the economic evolution of the contemporary world refutes a certain number of the postulates of Marx. If the revolution is to occur at the end of two parallel movements, the unlimited shrinking of capital and the unlimited expansion of the proletariat, it will not occur or ought not to have occurred. Capital and proletariat have both been equally unfaithful to Marx. - Albert Camus, 1953
In western capitalist societies, communism is portrayed as a system that practices wealth distribution where everyone makes the same amount of money and own the same exact things with no competition. In reality Marx’s idea of communism gives people the chance to develop their skills and advance their potential to the fullest extent, that is actually denied under the capitalist class system. Marx agrees with rousseau that political and civil rights are important and gives the people more power but he takes it further and argues that in order for people to be truly free they must have control on their labor and their production by democratizing the economic and labor system.
With a Capitalist system governing the society, powerful forces of self interest have a natural tendency to lead to collusion and corruption. In other words capitalist tend to seek power and to use it to rig the market to their favor to detriment of the society. Marx knew the class struggles that were apparent in Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and how the division of classes affected one?s life. The bourgeoisie was the wealthy upper class and they proletariats were the lower working classes of Europe. This is where the theme of autonomy and responsibility steps in and plays a role in the changes that were made in society.
The Communist Manifesto opens with the famous words "The history of all hitherto societies has been the history of class struggles.” In section 1, "Bourgeois and Proletarians," Marx delineates his vision of history, focusing on the development and eventual destruction of the bourgeoisie, the middle class. Before the bourgeoisie rose to prominence, society was organized according to a feudal order run by aristocratic landowners and corporate guilds. With the discovery of America and the subsequent expansion of economic markets, a new class arose, a manufacturing class, which took control of international and domestic trade by producing goods more efficiently than the closed guilds. With their growing economic powers, this class began to gain political power, destroying the vestiges of the old feudal society, which sought to restrict their ambition. According to Marx, the French Revolution was the most decisive instance of this form of bourgeois self-determination. Indeed, Marx thought bourgeois control so pervasive that he claimed, "The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie". This bourgeois ascendancy has, though, created a new social class in which labor in the new bourgeois industries. This class, the proletariat (the lower class in economic status) are the necessary consequence of bourgeois modes of production. As bourgeois industries expand and increase their own capital, the rank...
Though these many excepts have discrete arguments, they also share several underlying themes. Of these several themes, of fundamental importance is one of work in philosophy and social science bringing about real change in the world. Throughout his writing he continues to focus upon the individuals that from the world, particularly the oppressed, not just the powerful on whim the lens of social science and particularly history is often pointed. Even for those who do not agree with Marx on his prescription for the world, his determination to improve the conditions of the oppressed is a model we should all strive to emulate.
... second is the breakdown of the worker in order to have more control. In past capitalism this has been much clearer but it still exists today, workers fear the people they work for, therefor they don't demand the necessities they need to work. They fear the non-worker and don't demand what they need because they have been broken down, dehumanized, and forced to fight their internal feelings as opposed to their outer conditions. The final way that capitalism breeds or causes oppression is through its growth and profit potential. Just as when the capitalist idea was first imagined it still moves amazingly fast. Money can make more money easier and quicker that people with no money trying to make it. This is why the bourgeoisie have stayed in control and the oppressed proletariat have remained in their positions. Their oppressed positions caused by capitalist thoughts.
The modern bourgeois society […] has established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in the place of old ones. Our epoch has simplified the class antagonisms: Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, two great camps facing each other: Bourgeois and Proletariat (Cohen and Fermon, 448-449).
Karl Marx emphasized a lot on the importance of socialism in society. In his theory, socialism was the only way to end the huge in socio-economic classes. He condemned the emergence of capitalism and the growth of industries that made disunited employers and employees as captured in his theory of labour. In his view, under capitalist production, a great number of people, more often than not, are confiscated from their rewards after so much hard work, and have utterly no control over the environment in which they work under. Jobs no longer reflect human imagination, but rather an insignificant method of generating more profits to enrich modest elite. Marx 's fixation on class reflects even today 's post-modern, socially dynamic world. Marx ideas
The capitalist is motivated by being rewarded wealth. Capital can only multiply by giving itself in return of labor power. This exchange is based on specified percentages. For example, after a long 12 hours of weaving the worker is only compensated two shillings. They attain residual wealth by taking advantage of workers. These workers are being compensated less than the value of their work. The workers endure great deals of exploitation. Workers put their labor power into effect to acquire means of survival which makes existence possible. The amount of commodities is based on the cost of life and the workers’ work ethic. Marx foreseen that class conflict between the bourgeoisie and proletariat would result in the collapsing of capitalism. The motivations of the capitalist and the workers create conflict because the capitalist attempt to uphold capitalism by advocating their principles, beliefs, and fabricated perceptions that prevent proletariats from rebelling. Once the two classes conflict with one another the cla...