Analysis Of Marx 's ' The Mattress Crisis '

Marx’s analysis of capitalism begins with an investigation of the commodity because the wealth of capitalist nations is essentially “an immense collection of commodities” (Chapter 1). Marx differentiates between the use-value and the exchange-value of any given commodity. The use-value of a commodity refers to its qualitative ability to satisfy a human need, while its exchange-value is the “quantitative relation… in which use-values of one kind exchange for use-values of another kind” (Chapter 1). Therefore, exchange-value is not an intrinsic quality of a commodity; it is only discovered in comparing a fixed quantity of commodity A to a fixed quantity B. Since differing quantities of these two commodities appear to have the same value,

In the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Karl Marx identifies a dichotomy that is created and bolstered by the capitalist mode of production. In this mode of production, the dichotomy presents itself in a division of labor that forms of two kinds of people: capitalists, the owners of the means of production, and laborers, those who work under the domain of the capitalist. Marx harshly criticizes this mode of production, arguing that it exploits the laborer and estranges him from himself and his fellow man. According to Marx, this large-scale estrangement is achieved through a causal chain of effects that results in multiple types of alienation, each contingent upon the other. First, Marx asserts that under capitalism, the laborer is alienated from his product of labor. Second, because of this alienation from his product, man is also alienated then from the act of production. Third, man, in being alienated both from his product and act of production, is alienated from his species essence, which Marx believes to be the ability to create and build up an objective world. Finally, after this series of alienations, Marx arrives at his grand conclusion that capitalist labor causes man to be alienated from his fellow man. In this paper, I will argue in support of Marx’s chain of alienations, arriving at the conclusion that laborers, under the capitalist mode of production, cannot retain their species essence and thus cannot connect with one another, and exist in a world

Karl Marx witnessed first hand the rise of the industrial revolution and the beginning of capitalism. He also became one of capitalisms biggest critics. Marx believed that society needed a better way of distrusting wealth but also a better way a finding people’s full human potential or what he called “species-essence”. Marx believed that what we do connects to who we are, for example, work is what makes us human. It fulfills our species essence, as he puts it. Work allows us to be creative and flourish. However, in the 19th century Europe work did the quit opposite, it destroyed workers, particularly those who had nothing to sell but their labor. To the mill and factory owners a worker was simply an abstract idea with a stomach that needed to be filled. The workers had no choice but to work for long hours for a pathetic wage. Even worse, their labor alienated them. Alienation is a disorienting sense of exclusion and separation. Factory labor, under capitalism, alienated the workers from the product of their labor. They made stuff they couldn’t afford to buy themselves. The products they made were shipped out to other places far way to make money

Marx viewed the ‘commodity’ as the most elementary form of modern wealth. The essence of the commodity is the

The philosophy of Karl Marx begins with the belief that humans are inherently cooperative with common characteristics and shared ends. To human beings, life is considered an object and therefore, humans make their “life-activity itself the object of his will and of his consciousness” (Tucker 76). In other words, humans are able to think, imagine, and “produce even when he is free from physical need and only truly produces in freedom therefrom” (p. 76). It exemplifies that idea that humans not only have the capability to create things for survival but express themselves in what they produce, within the standards of the human race or universally. When capitalist wage-labor enters the picture, it forces these shared ends and the freedom of expression in human production to cease, causing a rise of competitiveness among

Marx believed that machines were a sign of progress in society and he was not opposed to it. However, it has negatively influenced employees globally. According to Marx, these machines caused workers economic impoverishment as it impacted their wages.. The wage a worker received was influenced by the use value and exchange value of the workers labour. Marx claimed that the there is the labour commodity and the capitalist commodity. The workers exchanged their commodity, known as their labour power for the capitalist commodity, which is the money. The wages are the price of the labour that the workers put forth. Often times, they do not pay workers a quality price for what they earn or how much work they do. They are constantly looking for bargains and people who do not sell their work for much. Industry’s try their best to get inexpensive materials, enhanced machines, and cheaper wage workers in order for them to decrease the amount of money coming out of their pockets. Marx believed that due to the unavoidability of capitalism, business owners are basing their business activities solely on the attainment of profit. For that reason, workers will continue to be replaced with machines causing business owners to decrease their spending on a workers’ labor power, leading the unemployment rate to increase. Marx states that value of labour power decreases causing wages to decline.

"Instead of 'exploitation,' growing out of the nature of production, our industrial evolution shows certain evils of competition imposed by an 'unfair' menace." Since Marx was wrong to assert that ownership was the source of oppression, Commons held that appropriation of the means of production was no answer to the laborers' needs. (Dawley, pg 181-183)

To begin, Marx claims that labor power is a special commodity that describes the physical and mental abilities found within human beings (Marx, page 270). Humans have this unique ability to transform natural materials into commodities through their own power. This is why individuals must be “free” in multiple senses in order to sell their labor as a commodity.

Every commodity’s valve is a function of the labor time necessary for the production of labor power” (Young 227). In this sense, the victims are used as a commodity to being in profit to their owners just as slaves. Through this quote Marx demonstrates how humans are used as a commodity to bring traffickers power and essentially gain profit.

In regards to the labour-capital relation within a traditional capitalist corporation Marx & Engels (2007) refer to the dialectic between the capitalists (or bourgeoisie) who own the property and the means of production and the laborers (or proletariat) who own no property and are obligated to sell their labour to the bourgeoisie to gain substance. For Marx & Engels, this labour market is inherently fraught with tension, since the interests of the capitalist and labourers are diametrically opposed, and the balance of power between capitalists and labourers tips further in the favour of the capitalists. Because workers have nothing to sell but their labour, the bourgeoisie are able to exploit them by paying them less than the true value created by their labour. Furthermore, because of the unequal positions of capitalist and labourer, labourers must work for someone else- they must do work imposed on them as a means of satisfying the needs of others. As a result, labourers inevitably experience alienation which Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (1844) summarizes as the separation of individuals from the objects they create, which in turn results in one’s separation from other people, from oneself, and ultimately from one’s human nature.

Marx also proposes the important point that “capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed -- a class of laborers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labor increases capital. These laborers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market” (F. Engels., K. Marx, Feb. 1847).

Marx argues that alienation in capitalist societies is due to the fact that in work, we each contribute to the common wealth, but can only express this fundamentally social aspect of ourselves through a production system that is not social but privately owned, for which we function as instruments, not as social beings.

Ultimately, the creation of the bourgeoisie industry leads to the establishment of the world market, in which “commerce, navigation, [and] railways extended” (66). In other words, the Modern Industry not only combats the increasing market demand, but also leads to the development of the transportation and communication. Although these traits are presented as praiseworthy, Marx and Engels shift to demonizing the creation of this industry, in which the proletarians are its victims. The industry, underneath its initial grandness, has reduced the proletariat into an “appendage of the machine” (72), who performs the most “simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him” (72). In other words, the introduction of machinery into the workplace lessens the “individual character” (72), because the proletariat is simply operating gruelling machines, instead of creating the product himself. Not only that, but since machines are accomplishing the majority of the tasks, the cost of production lowers, effectively reducing the proletariat’s paycheque in proportion to the use of machinery. The proletariat is given just enough money for the “means of subsistence . . . and for the propagation of his race” (72). With this, the proletariat has simply become a miserable wage-labourer, barely surviving off the supposed greatness of the Modern Industry. Communism, in defence of the proletarian,

This intimate relationship between man and nature, his activity and the objects of nature, is the ‘appropriate’ relationship because worker is not capable of creating without nature, that is, without the sensual external world. Hence, the world is the material into which man invests his labor, through which he produces things, and without it he cannot live. However, in a capitalist society, such relationship does not exist and man is alienated from nature, from the products of his activity or work. Under capitalism, workers produce for the market rather than for their own use or enrichment. According to Marx, the object produced by labor in modern society stands as an alien being to the worker. His labor is embodied in the product he created, and this product is an objectification of labor which represents a loss to the worker, as well as servitude to the object. Hence, alienation occurs when worker lacks control over the products of his labor. Additionally, during the process of production, man’s labor are seen as much an object as the physical material being worked upon, since labor is a demand in modern society, which can be bought or sold. The more objects the worker produces, the fewer he can personally possess, and therefore the greater is his loss. For instance, in

Marx discusses in this piece the ever-changing nature of systems, from the Feudal system to the manufacturing system to the Industrial system, “The feudal system of industry...now no longer sufficed...The manufacturing system took it’s place...Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionised industrial production.” (D.Mclellan, Marx, OUP 1977) pg 223. Therefore the middle man was cut out, he was no longer important, the division between the powerful and powerless grew to become much more. “The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry, the place of the industrial middle class, by industrial millionaires, the leaders of the whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.”