The Role Of Labor And Its Effects On A Capitalist System

Karl Marx had different views about the division of labor such as how it increases productivity. The way how it

Division of labour is also credited with the rise of trade between different areas, the rise of capitalism, and increasingly complex manufacturing and industrialization. For Karl Marx, the production portion of Capitalism signalled great trouble. He believed production in Capitalist society worked in a way that the rich factory owner benefited and the poor factory workers lost. In his manner of reasoning, the Capitalist system was inherently meant to benefit the rich and exploit the poor: “All the bourgeois economists are aware of is that production can be carried on better under the modern police than on the principle of might makes right. They forget only that this principle is also a legal relation, and that the right of the stronger prevails in their ‘constitutional republics’ as well, only in another form.”[ii] Marx’s view of society and the world lead him to believe that humans create change in their lives and in their environment through practical activity in the practical world.

Karl Marx and Adam Smith wrote in the same time period – during the industrial revolution, where the bourgeois had risen to power by oppressing and exploiting the proletariat. The term bourgeois refers to the people in the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labor. The proletarians are the people in the class of modern wage laborers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live. While Smith, in his Wealth of Nations, wrote in favor of capitalism, Marx, in his Communist Manifesto, was a harsh critic of the system and declared its inevitable destruction and consequent rise of the working class.

The simplistic perception of capitalist society varies greatly among Smith and Marx. Smith believed that capitalism is a mechanism designed to curb man's selfishness and put it to work for the general good of all (Baumol, 1976). Conversely, Marx believed that capitalism is based on neither good nor evil, but a product of historical circumstances or experience (Baumol, 1976). Marx also believed that the law of motion in capitalism frustrates, rather than facilitates, the individual ends (wealth). Marx believed that wealth divides capitalists by class, and that workers must develop in a universal class (Levine, 1998). Marx also disagreed with Smith in believing that production must cease to be a labor process if it

The ensuing conflict, between labor vs. capital, during the late 1800s initiated a struggle of power in the workforce between the rich-industrialists (or corporate leaders) and the middle-class/lower-class workers. The Capitalists had intervened with the protests orchestrated by the workers, ensuring that the power remains with them. The strategies of the industrialists and the unique ways of protesting from the workers, contributes to spur a vigorous argument between the employers and their employees. The workers tried their best to ameliorate their working conditions by forming numerous unions, trying to fix currency (gold to paper) to economically help themselves, refusing to go to work, resorting to violence and non-violence, etc. However, the Corporate leaders kept an upper hand and dissolved the workers’ ambitions by hiring scabs, creating a strong relationship with the military (Pullman strike), controlling and fixing policies at work, hiring immigrants for cheap labor, etc. Throughout the late 1800s, the corporate leaders have been able to successfully prevent workers who had resorted to: forming unions, protests (ex. Pullman strike and Homestead strike), violence (ex. Haymarket Sq. Riot), etc., from achieving a radical solution to the workers issues with the management by using several different strategies including but not limited to: hiring scabs/immigrants in the Homestead strike, using government support in the Pullman strike and keeping the power on their side

Adam Smith and Karl Marx are both famous for their philosophies on economics, more specifically the division of labor. For each of them the division of labor is rather similar in its definition, but the outcome of the division of labor differs drastically from Smith to Marx. For Smith the division of labor leads to mass production and allows large amounts of people to get things that were once available only to the rich. Smith believes that small specialized tasks leads to the invention of new technologies, and that individuals working selfishly to better themselves in the capitalistic world is beneficial to everyone. For Marx the division of labor is more about the relationship between the employee and the employer. He believes that

As the famous rap group Mobb Deep once said, “Cash rules everything around me cream, get the money. Dollar dollar bill yalllll”, they weren’t lying. If one that gets things done is money, and in order to get money these corporation use the strategic ideology of division of labor to get their products going. Division of labor is a practice that every corporation does with its workers. It narrows specialization of tasks within a production process so that each worker can become a specialist in doing one thing. Especially on an assembly line. In traditional industries, division of labor is a major motive force for economic-growth. With this practice products get finished quicker and sold quicker as well, which brings in the money flowing hence why it’s an important practice and its everywhere. At restaurants, we have waiters/servers, host, cooks, managers, food runners, and busser, this gets people seated faster, attended to quicker, and food cooked in a timely manner (most times). I believe without this a lot of places would in fact be a mess without, just like Emile Durkheim. She believes that division of labor is beneficial to our society and I mostly agree with her statement. Karl Marx also finds Division of Labor necessary to have multiple number of workers under one capitalist. As for Adam Smith, his main focus is growth. Smith believes that growth is rooted in the practice of division of labor. Each of these people agree that division of labor is a necessity in our

nation's great cities and as oil refining rose so did the popularity of the automobile. With these

The first book, “Of the causes of improvement…,” talks about the division of labor and the wage of labors. According to Smith, there are three advantage of division of labor. First, it increases the employees’ dexterity; second it decreases the amount of time it consumes to make the product; and third reason is that because of the many inventions of machine, each employee can perform the work of many. Smith thought division of labor is important because labors can be more efficient if they are specialized in specific work.

Smith and Marx agree upon the importance of capitalism as unleashing productive powers. Capitalism is born out of the division of labour... that is, it is made possible by dividing jobs up into simple tasks as a way of increasing efficiency. By increasing efficiency, then everyone can produce more than they personally need. The extra produced can go towards the accumulation of capital, (machines, more land, more tools, etc) which will allow for even more increased efficiency and production. Both thought that this increased production was great. But Marx said that capitalism was only one stage... that every country must go through capitalism, to get that increased production, but that capitalism is

Adam Smith's "Book Wealth Of nations" discusses his philosophy and motivation for salaried labor. Smith argued that the institution was just one more artificial restraint on individual self-interest. "THIS division of labor, from which so many advantages are derived, is not originally the effect of any human wisdom, which foresees and intends that general opulence to which it gives occasion. It is the necessary, though very slow and gradual consequence of a certain propensity in human nature, which has in view no such extensive utility; the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another."

The Industrial Revolution (1750-1850) had brought about significant changes in agriculture, mining, manufacturing, transportation and technology and subsequently established an era of unprecedented economic growth in capitalist economies. It was within this era that Karl Marx had observed the deprivation and inequality experienced by men of the proletariat, the working class, who had laboured excessively for hours under inhumane conditions to earn a minimum wage while the bourgeoisie, the capitalist class, reaped the benefits. For Marx it was this fundamental inequality within the social and economic hierarchy that had enabled capitalist societies to function. While Marx’s theories, in many instances have been falsified and predictions

Karl Marx, in the Capital, developed his critique of capitalism by analyzing its characteristics and its development throughout history. The critique contains Marx’s most developed economic analysis and philosophical insight. Although it was written in 1850s, its values still serve an important purpose in the globalized world and maintains extremely relevant in the twenty-first century.

units, and Smith illustrates that a system of fair and accessible trade is necessary for an

There is perhaps not a more famous ongoing dialectic argument in the field of political economy than the one between Adam Smith and Karl Marx in regards to capitalism. The two thinkers, although coming to radically different conclusions about the outcomes of the capitalist system for all parties involved, agree on a surprising number of ideas such as labor being the source of commodities’ value, as well as the fact that the division of labor increases productivity. However, their different conceptions of what determines the price of a commodity, the driving force behind and the effects of the division of labor, and the purpose of the capitalist system have widespread implications that cause their holistic arguments to diverge considerably.