Heading : ' Work And Capitalism '

Many laborers do not have enough money to support their family. The goal of the owner contradicts the goals of the laborer because the owner desires the maximum amount of labor with the minimum amount of pay, but the laborer desires the maximum amount of pay with the minimum amount of labor. Hence, capitalism paves the way for employers to control laborers.

Marx thought of capitalism in a pessimistic way, he saw the relationship between the employee and employer in a capitalistic society as toxic. To Marx, in a capitalistic society the employee would always be at a constant struggle for power be never endlessly repressed by the bourgeoisie. The employer would pay employees only what they needed to survive making it impossible to move up in class or society. He also recognized that in capitalism everything becomes corporatized. Things like marriage go from a sacred bond between two individuals that once never included money or the government, to something that is regulated by the national government and must be done through the federal court and include ties between the individual's financial status. Small businesses would also become corporatized, a local family doctor has now become part of a larger practice that brings in complex forms of payment such as insurance instead of simply paying a small family doctor directly. He also goes into the downfall of capitalism. The way capitalism works is through a series of economic highs and lows, each high is marked by prosperous times, high employment rate, and overall happiness. But the lows are marked by deterioration of the national economy, low employment rates, and struggle for all classes. To Marx’s these highs and lows are what's killing capitalism with each low being worse than the last until the people revolt and create a new form of government. The next would be socialism and once this fell like capitalism, the new governing system would be communism. Communism is an ideal system where people are never struggling for money and are paid based on their needs rather than their particular job. Through this system a

Marx's theory on Capitalist exploitation is an incredibly deep theory, but to explain it in a nutshell, it is that the working-class people are improperly compensated for their work. The rich, the higher-ups, they continue to expand their wealth by exploiting the working class, the Capitalist system not only allows but effectively demands that Capitalists increase their wealth, long-term or short-term, whether at the cost of the working-class or not. There are three “values” to take into consideration, the use-value, the exchange-value and the

“to a mere money relation,” (Marx and Engels [1848] 2013:35]. Marx, saw the tear down of the old as the only way for the bourgeoisie to survive. Periodically, a crisis occurred where productive forces threatened their conditions and bourgeoisie would have to bring in new productive forces and destroy the old. Marx believed that these changes to technology and productive capacity were the main influence on how society and the economy were organized. The bourgeoisie had to push for the modern world to quickly and continually develop to protect capitalists’ monopolies. However, constant development caused continual disturbances of social conditions by breaking down stable aspects of human life. Capitalist used their power to push the world to advance so that they could prosper with no concerns to the possible effects on the economy, which would have been most detrimental to the proletariat. For Marx, this showed that capitalists’ self-interest pushed economic progress, which led to societal progress but also risked crisis. Capitalism not only affected society through the creation and separation of social classes but also in influencing societal progress and social relations.

Throughout the 19th and 20th century capitalism was on a rise and many writers had different perspectives on the positives and negatives of capitalism and how it shaped America. Thomas DiLorenzo who wrote How Capitalism Enriched the Working Class, focused on how the world became better because of capitalism. Melvyn Dubofsky’s Industrialism and the American Worker, focused on how the lives of working people were deteriorated because of the development of labor and what conditions these people faced. Douglas Blackmon’s Slavery by Another Name, provided evidence that slavery did not end along with the Civil War and that African-Americans continued to be enslaved and exploited under the system. DiLorenzo agrees that capitalism helped improve wages and workers in America, but Blackmon and Dubofksy show evidence of other arguments that prove to us that capitalism was not a positive impact.

For example, it shapes the nature of religion, law, education, the state and so on. According to Marx, capitalism sows the seeds of its own destruction. For example, by polarising the classes, bringing the proletariat together in ever-increasing numbers, and driving down their wages, capitalism creates the conditions under which the working class can develop a consciousness (or awareness) of its own economic and political interests in opposition to those of its exploiters. As a result, the proletariat moves from merely being a class-in-itself (whose members share the same economic position) to becoming a class-foritself, whose members are class conscious – aware of the need to overthrow capitalism. The means of production would then be put in the hands of the state and run in the interests of everyone, not just of the bourgeoisie. A new type of society – socialism developing into communism – would be created, which would be without exploitation, without classes and without class conflict. Marx’s work has been subjected to a number of criticisms. First, Marx’s predictions have not come true. Far from society becoming polarised and the working class becoming poorer, almost everyone in western societies enjoys a far higher standard of living than ever before. The collapse of so-called ‘communist’ regimes like the former Soviet Union, and growing private ownership and capitalist growth in China, cast some doubt on the viability of the practical implementation

In Capital, Karl Marx reveals the ugly truth that capitalism lays on the foundation of class exploitation. Without such exploitation, there is no profit to be made and capitalism will cease to exist. Capitalism, which relies on the reproduction of capital, creates and concentrates wealth to a small portion of society’s population while reproducing poverty and widening the size of inequality.

Another concept that brought about inequality among the bourgeoisie and proletariat is the labour theory of value. As stated in the textbook Classical and Contemporary Sociological Theory, “One of the basic truths of capitalism is that it takes money to make money, and the more money a business owner has at his or her disposal, the more ability the business owner has to generate profit-making schemes” (Appelrouth and Edles: 25). In this case, the bourgeoisies are at a benefit as they own the means of production, while the proletariat are at a disadvantage as they don’t have capital to make money. Marx’s ‘general formula for capital’ explains the class and power relations that predominate in modern capitalist society through the formula M-C-M. Marx describes this law of value to be beneficial to the bourgeoisies as they increase profits and capital. Bourgeoisies are able to do this because they have the money (M) to buy capital, which converts their money into commonality (C), which they then use to produce other commodities that are sold for money (M). Bourgeoisies predominate the proletariats through power relations as the formula is inversed for the working class, C-M-C. The working class sells their labour through commodity (C), which then is exchanged for money (M) and used to buy commodities (C) necessary for survival. The C-M-C

It has now been proven that in the film the bosses accurately represent the bourgeoisie and the employees accurately represent the proletariat. Now it must be shown that the actions of the bosses and employees can be explained through Marx’s theory on conflict between the proletariat and bourgeoisie. The laying off of employees is done to maximize profit as it is cheaper to hire “entry-level graduates” and “farm some work in Singapore” instead of paying people who have worked at Initech for years (Office Space). This drive to maximize profits is so the “markets [keep] ever growing, demand ever rising,” which is what fuels the “modern bourgeois” (Marx Ch. 1). Marx writes that these kinds of actions of the bourgeoisie will eventually make “man…face with sober senses his real conditions of his life, and his relation with his kind” (Marx Ch. 1)... This is a key plot event in the film, wherein Peter Gibbons is freed from

Instead, the business owners made choices for them and used the workers for their own rewards. The bourgeoisie were the owners "the formation of the bourgeoisie public sphere was ideological to the extent that it secured the domination of one class over another."3 The problem with the bourgeoisie class was that they saw no wrong in their system because they reasoned it to be the right way. The owners controlled the means of production, but it was the people under them that actually knew what they were doing. The oppressed people were controlled by the oppressors and could not make decisions about the work they did, political matters, or equality in the workplace but held the responsibility of making the businesses successful. There was huge clashing between the workers and the owners because the owners made the choices while the workers were forced to take responsibility for them.

Capitalism is an economic system in which industry, trade and factor and means of production are controlled by private investors or owners with an aim of making profit in a market economy. It affects the rate of capital accumulation, labor wage and the control of competitive market. This usually affects the economy of different societies since the government has no control over the economy. The forces of capitalism greatly affect the societies in that the poor continues to be poorer while the reach society continues to accumulate wealthy and become richer. It widens the income disparity gap. It influences both the economic aspect and social aspect of the societies largely. This mainly is influenced by the forces that

According to Marx capitalism has a structured relationship between labor and capital which creates alienation. First the proletariat are alienated by repetitive work and assembly line like jobs. Many of these jobs do not require creativity or intelligence. The proletariat do not own what they produce so they do not take pride in their work. Capitalism promotes competition between collages which can promote alienation between themselves. I like to think of a skilled painter, it takes a lot of knowledge to paint a beautiful canvas. The artist knows his reputation is on this painting so he/she takes his/her time to make sure it is a work of art. Each painting they do will be unique in some way. Whatever they paint will be his/her property to sell or keep.

The system of capitalism is partially based around the unpaid surplus labour of workers that allows for the generation of profit for the workers ' respective superiors. Marx argues that such a system rewards those who have some sort of domination over the workers, the actual producers of commodities. This results in terrible living

People are slaves to the machine and the bourgeoisie because they need to work more hours daily for lower wages because the jobs become more simplistic and automated. A modern example of this is people on an assembly in Detroit, where cars are made. Things are now to the point were you can learn a job in a week when in the past it would have taken years to learn the same job. Marx believes that to sustain market growth capitalism becomes more automated for the giants of industry. Due to this “machinery obliterates all distinctions of labour and nearly everywhere reduces wages” (Cohen and Fermon, 454). In capitalism people are enslaved for lower wages, as the work becomes less appealing. Marx believed, “As the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases” (Cohen and Fermon, 453).

Capitalism is when the rich gets richer and the poor gets poorer. Capitalism has mercy on no one. Each individual lives in a society where the mass crowd complain about how the big business are buying the smaller ones but just doesn’t grasp the idea that all this is happening because of the consumers themselves. Within a system just as there is pros there are also cons, cons that are costly in the end. One of the biggest cons that capitalism promote is wealth inequality. Wealth can be inherited, so some people can be rich just due to luck of their ancestors. The others that are not so lucky has to work hard for their earnings. So this becomes a problem because not only does it promotes wealth inequality, it also promotes inequality of opportunity. Capitalist societies are failing to create both equality of outcomes and equality of opportunities. Example of this is the Great depression which lasted from 1929 to the beginning of World War II, profoundly shook the world’s confidence in the capitalist system. The crisis began with the crash of the New York stock market and resulted in widespread economic damage throughout the world, including bank failures, massive unemployment, and bankruptcies. According to the article Capitalism it states, “In addition, the suffering that resulted from the Great Depression highlighted the vulnerability of the labor force. In the United States, 25 percent of workers lost their jobs, and bank failures wiped out many people’s life savings.”