Is Marxism Still Relevant Today? Essay

The “Industrial Revolution” that started in the 1780’s in Great Britain had many effects, but they were not fully felt until the 1830’s or 1840’s. The works done by Karl Marx talks about how the classless system was not the ideal form of government in Europe. Karl Marx formed and developed the modern day popular form of “social justice” known as Marxism or socialism. Marx’s problem with the struggles of social justice and society during his time era were that he could not accept the form of politics such as the classless system at that time and on the rebound he introduced his idealism. Marx also unified the theory of social justice with the practical beliefs that human activity is key. Marx’s approach to social justice is based on human relations as free from exploitation,

Both of these proclamations of Marxism's demise focus on Marx's political strategy for moving toward socialism. Yet Marx's enduring pertinence lies instead in his indictment of capitalism. Capitalism is fully alive. Over the past twenty years the United States particularly merits Marx's indictment for its aggravations of class divisions. As the rich get richer and the poor poorer, we are all pitted against each other, millions in the third world are killed each year by humanly reproduced poverty, environmental despoilation proceeds out of control, and handy advantages of race, gender or nationality are used to exclude our neighbors. Thus, since capitalism isn't dead, neither is the heart of Marxism.

Summary of reading: Karl Marx, the father of Marxism, often misunderstood dreamt more of a utopian society than draconian. Marx envisioned the world where people worked not for self-fulfillment but the welfare of all. Additionally, Marx’s abhorrence for capitalism laid the foundation for revolutionary ideas and tactics. His exile to England led to the creation of the International Working Men’s Association, conversely, the first international worker’s organization. In Marx’s book “The Communist Manifesto” he notes three parts: the flaws and injustices of capitalism, second his Communist vision for society; and lastly, his viewpoint on the misleading doctrines of competing for socialist ideologies. Comparatively, Marx like Adam Smith, the founder of capitalism, believed that society is governed by certain unchangeable laws and must be rationally examined to predict the future. This belief led to many people identifying Marxism with “scientific socialism.” Although Karl Marx died at a

According to Karl Marx in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscript of 1844, “the only wheels which political economy sets in motion are greed and the war amongst the greedy - competition.” A capitalist society, defined by the systems of competition and private ownership, is divided into two classes - the “property owners” and the “propertyless workers” (701). In this system, workers suffer from exploitation and alienation, while capitalists grow wealthier and more powerful.

As the most important theoretician and prominent leader of a growing international labor movement, Marx considered various principles on the morality of human nature. For instance, he was committed to the thought that human nature had been distorted by Capitalism and therefore it could only be restored to its true potential through the assistance of Socialism and Communism. In addition, he questioned the capacities and boundaries of human nature, in order to justify the advances of revolutions during the 1800s. To validate his theories on the oppression of one class by another, it became necessary for him to resist the misuse of arguments he considered on human nature. Essentially, Marx’s critique on Capitalism was based on two fundamental issues: Alienation and Exploitation of the production of labor.

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,

"Money," writes Marx "is the jealous god of Israel, beside which no other god may exist. For Marx, society has become "Jewish." "The god of the Jews has become secularized and has become the god of this world. The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew, and his god is only an illusory bill of exchange" (Tucker, p. 50). It is not the religion of the Jews that Marx is attack but what Jews have come to stand for in society that he is attack. The Jews remain subject to an external power, be it religion or money, even if in their alienated way they embrace it as their own. In fact, because politics has failed to create a home for the human spirit, the only sensible thing to do is to hang on to one's private good. However, Marx does discover

Marx made a more direct diagnosis of the evil of capitalism. He condemned the exploitation of labor by capita, more precisely, this is exploitation of the class of the people who have to sell their labor by much smaller class of people who own capital. He developed a detailed theory of this, involving his “labor theory of value” and his concept of the “surplus-value” that industry generates ans that is appropriated by the owners of industry rather than the workers. Marx’s main claim is clearly a moral one, about the (alleged) injustice of the economic structure of capitalism.

Karl Marx was a revolutionist in the nineteenth century who developed a critique of capitalism to free the working class [the proletariat] from the capitalists; and allow them to evolve [dominantly] as an aware society. With the division of labor and the acts of mindless work, Karl Marx believed that capitalism was destroying the humanity of the proletariat and keeping them oppressed under the bourgeois. Marx’s worry with capitalism was the fact that it allowing the working class to continue to alienate themselves in a way that even after a day of work make them “...realize that they had even worked” (Terkel, Phil Stallings, 3).Under the system of capitalism, the mode of production and workers are controlled by private groups instead of the

During the height of the Industrial Revolution in Europe, specifically England, was a period of mass sufferings, child induced labor, and food shortages all due to the rapid growth of urbanization and industrialization, in which a large population of the people from rural areas migrated to cities and towns out of necessity for work, “half of the population of England and Wales was living in towns by 1850.” This was all witnessed by Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels when they were living in England in the 1840s, it was there where Engels, whose father owned a textile factory and was a partner to cotton plant in Manchester, took extensive notes and saw first hand all atrocities and horrors present in the slums of Manchester, particularly child labor, eventually leading to his publishing of The Condition of the Working Class in England. Engels presented Marx with his recently published work in Paris igniting a longterm friendship and lifetime collaboration. Collectively, Marx and Engels deduced that there was a growing problem in England and Europe as a whole that needed to be solved. Their concerns were centered around the Industrial revolution, a movement in which machines were able to mass produce products at a more efficient rate, but at the cost of terrible living conditions, working conditions, wages, and the exploitation of the Proletariat (the working class), at the hands of the Bourgeoisie (the elite).

In this paper, I will (I) explain Marx's theory of the nature of capitalist exploitation; and (II) indicate how the phenomenon described in the previous paragraph may be interpreted as evidence against Marx's theory, and sketch an interpretation of this phenomenon according to which it is consistent with Marx's theory. My interpretation will suggest that the average worker's access to luxury items can be explained by the necessity in capitalism of reproducing the working class.

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.”

Emerging, as Marx posits, “out of the economic structure of feudal society,” Capitalism quickly became a pervasive, relentless and seemingly inescapable structure. “The emancipation from serfdom and from the fetters of the guild” led, on one hand, to the unprecedented creation of various economic and social opportunities. Conversely, Marx also acknowledges that “these new freedmen became sellers of themselves only after they had been robbed of all their own means of production, and of all the guarantees of existence afforded by the old feudal system…Just as man is governed, in religion, by the products of his own brain, so, in capitalist production, he is governed by the products of his own hand…within the capitalist system all methods for raising the social productiveness of labor are brought about at the cost of the individual laborer; all means for the development of production transform themselves into means of domination over, and exploitation of, the producers; they mutilate the laborer into a fragment of a man, degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine…they transform his lifetime into working-time, and drag his wife and child beneath the wheels of the Juggernaut of capital… Accumulation of wealth is at one pole, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil slaver, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole, i.e., one the side of the class that produces its own product in the form of capital.” Throughout the first

Karl Marx was the first in a series of 19th and 20th century theorists who started the call for an empirical approach to social science. Theorizing about the rise of modernity accompanied by the decline in traditional societies and advocating for a change in the means of production in order to enable social justice. Marx’s theories on modernity reveals his beliefs of modern society as being influenced by the advancement of productive forces of modern industry and the relationships of production between the capitalist and the wage laborers. The concept of modernity refers to a post-feudal historical period characterized by the move away from feudalism and toward capitalism. Modernity focuses on the affects that the rise of capitalism has had on social relations. This was noted by Karl Marx and Max Weber as influential theorists commenting on this. The swift advancement of major innovations after the Enlightenment period, known as modernity, stood in stark contrast to the incremental development of even the most complex pre-modern societies. These societies saw productive forces develop at a sluggish pace, over hundreds or thousands of years, as compared to modern times, with its swift growth and change. This confounding contrast fascinated Marx, who then traced the spawning of modern capitalism in the Communist Manifesto. He cited this record speed as the heat which generated the creation of the global division of labor and a greater variety of productive forces than had

Karl Marx was a 19th century philosopher who wished to understand the great social and economic changes brought about by the industrial revolution. Marx sought a scientific understanding of society as he believed it would allow for an explanation of long term social change the likes of which he himself was experiencing at the time (Giddens & Sutton, 2013). Central to his theory is the idea that class-conflict is a major driving force in the progression of history (Giddens & Sutton, 2013). This theoretical perspective is sometimes referred to as historical materialism, however it may be more appropriate to refer to it as a ‘materialist conception of history’(Giddens & Sutton, 2013). This essay will firstly seek to define what a