Karl Marx - Capitalist Alienation Essay - 709 Words

A century and a half ago, Karl Marx established a theory that today is known as the backbone to modern socialism and communism. Marx viewed the early capitalism of his own day as inherently exploitive. At the core of capitalist production is what is considered surplus value, the value left over after the producer (in Marx’s case, factory owner) had paid the fixed costs of production such as raw materials, machinery, overhead and wages. The left over amount was kept as profit, a profit that Marx saw that was earned from the sweat of the labor. Derived from his idea of surplus value was that of alienation. Marx gave an economic interpretation to alienation. People were alienated from their own labor; their work was appropriated by someone†¦show more content†¦In realizing that the capitalist had a new tool with which they could barter or trade, they also realized they now had an effective tool to keep the cost of the labor commodity down and in effect control those of t he labor community that would become trouble for the new way of doing things in this new capitalist, industrial, power creating realm. The first casualty was and is always the worker in a capitalist society, according to Marx. See, first of all, Marx saw the many workers as victims who were or are taking advantage of by the owners of the factories and other means of production to satisfy the gain of profit by the few capitalists. Marx argued that under capitalism labor seldom receives more than bare subsistence. According to Marx, the surplus remaining is appropriated by the capitalists as their profits. This was a belief that many laborers, trying to organize to obtain better wages and work conditions during early commercial capitalism, held and acted upon. Arguing that â€Å"the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles,† (500) and that liberal governments and ideology were merely agents of the exploiting owners of property, Marx advocated the abolition of private property and predicted the demise of capitalism after a series of recurring crises. The abolition of property, and therefore of classShow MoreRelated Karl Marx - Capitalist Alienation Essay665 Words   |  3 PagesKarl Marx - Capitalist Alienation THE TERM alienation in normal usage refers to a feeling of separateness, of being alone and apart from others. For Marx, alienation was not a feeling or a mental condition, but an economic and social condition of class society--in particular, capitalist society. Alienation, in Marxist terms, refers to the separation of the mass of wage workers from the products of their own labor. Marx first expressed the idea, somewhat poetically, in his 1844 Manuscripts:Read MoreEssay on Karl Marx and Capitalist Alienation1828 Words   |  8 Pages The concept of alienation plays a significant role in Marxs early political writing, especially in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1848, but it is rarely mentioned in his later works. This implies that while Marx found alienation useful in investigating certain basic aspects of the development of capitalist society, it is less useful in putting forward the predictions of the collapse of capitalism. The aim of this essay is to explain alienation, and show how it fits into the patternRead MoreKarl Marx s Theory Of Alienation Essay1686 Words   |  7 PagesSociologist Karl Marx concentrated deeply on economic problems and related these matters to social issues. 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In some cultures your class could never be escaped in life, you had to wait for your next incarnation, while in other cultures the idea of wealth transcended a life and allowed for growth from one class to another. This is the reality of a capitalist society thatRead MoreKarl Marx, Alienation of Labor784 Words   |  4 PagesKarl Marx believed that there are four aspects of a mans alienation that occur in a capitalist society. The product of labor, the labor process, our fellow human beings, and human nature are the four specific aspects of alienation that occur in a capitalist society. Marx said that in the product of labor the worker is alienated from the object he produces because it is bought, owned and disposed of by someone else, the capitalist. In all societies people use their creative abilities to produce