Karl Marx's Economic Development Theory

“People have said, mobs are crazy, you cant tell what they do.’ Why don’t people look at mobs as men, but as mobs? A mob nearly always seems to act reasonable, for a mob.” Says John Steinbeck in his major work, In Dubious Battle.

Chapter Summary for Economic Security: A Better Income Security System for All Canadians by Jean-Yves Duclos Duclos pointed out two main challenges that must be confronted when designing a new income security system for Canada. The first challenge was to deal with “evolving sources and forms of economic insecurity” (Duclos, 233). The second challenge was to construct an income security system that supports the strength of the Canadian economy as opposed to undermining it. Duclos stated that, “the two pillars of Canada’s current income security system for working-age adults are employment insurance (EI) and social assistance”(233). The chapter consisted of three main sections.

In the beginning of the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution caused a massive economic spike from small-scale production to large factories and mass production. Capitalism became the prevalent mode of the economy, which put all means of production in the hands of the bourgeoisie, or the upper class. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels argue that capitalism centralizes all the wealth and power in the bourgeoisie, despite the proletariat, or the working class, being the overwhelming majority of the population. The manufacturers would exploit the common proletariat and force them to would work in abysmal conditions and receive low wages, furthering the working class poverty. “The Communist Manifesto” predicts that as a result of the mistreatment

The proletariats are the wage earners or the labour class, in a capitalist society the proletarians don’t have much wealth, and their main asset is their labour power. The bourgeoisie is the class that owns the means of production, their class interest lies in the value of property and the preservation of capital, and this ensures their perpetual economic supremacy in society. According to Marx, in the capitalist mode of production, a worker slowly loses the power to decide upon his or her life and destiny, they lose their Gattungswesen (“species-essence”), and this is a consequence of living in a socially stratified society, where human beings become a mechanistic part of a social class. Even though human beings are self-conscious and autonomous, in a capitalist society they are nothing but an economic entity whose acts are dictated by the bourgeoisie, with the aim

He argues that with all the pressures of class conflict and the imbalance of capitalism there is no way that this pattern can continue without a major revolution. Marx compares capitalism to anarchy, in the sense that there is no organization within which only causes chaos. The common pattern of capitalism is a boom followed by a bust, and that bust leads to recession and social unrest. This sort of fickle economy, Marx believes, will furthermore contribute to the downfall of capitalism. This socialist revolution would, “abolish private ownership of key elements of economy and change nature of relationships from ones based on marriage and property.”

Introduction The role of state in economic development has long existed around the world. Due to the economic depression of 1930 the existing economic theories were not able to give any apt explanations for this worldwide economic collapse. This provided a backdrop for a revolution spearheaded by John Maynard Keynes. John Maynard Keynes was an influential policy analyst and economist.

Marx believes that by having such two classes where one class exerts dominance over the other, it will lead to disastrous outcomes, where income

Writings of Karl Marx had formed the theoretical basis for communism and the continual debate against capitalism. Marx understood capitalism to be a system in which the means of production are privately owned and profit is generated by the sale of the proletariat’s labour. He considered it to be an unfair exploitation of hard work with alienated social interactions and purpose. I agree with Marx that capitalism is indeed unfair and alienating, because it concentrates wealth within a small group of people by exploiting the surplus value of workers’ labour, and creates an alienated workforce. Hence, this essay will first discuss the relevance of Marx’s perception of capitalism as an alienating and unfair system for the contemporary world, before examining the potential of governments to influence the extent of alienation and unfairness that occurs.

Industrialization also enhanced the capitalism which is focused on the issue of more profit and conflict between capital and workers. While owner of productions take more profit with less labor, workers take less profit even with much more labor force. Karl Marx is one of the thinkers who criticizes this situation of capitalism in terms of workers and capitals in industry, especially he focuses on the situation of

It is argued that social inequality occurs because of the conflict between the upper-class and the working-class, or as Marx defines it, the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat. Based on the Manifesto of the Communist Party (Marx and Engels, 1848), the divergence emerges because the aim of the Bourgeoisie is to obtain a surplus-value that is produced by the work of the Proletariat. On the other side, the Bourgeoisie provides the Proletariat with the minimum required, such as a place to live and a minimum wage, in order to keep the society under control and avoid a rebellion. However, Marx did predict a revolt of the working-class that would eventually lead to a communist regime. When it comes to applying this theoretical approach to reality, it is evident to notice that no global revolt in regards to capitalism has occurred.

Capitalism is understood to be the “economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.” In modern society, capitalism has become the dominant economic system and has become so integrated that it has resulted in a change in the relationships individuals have with other members of society and the materials within society. As a society, we have become alienated from other members of society and the materials that have become necessary to regulate ourselves within it, often materials that we ourselves, play a role in producing. Capitalism has resulted in a re-organization of societies, a more specialized and highly segmented division of labour one which maintains the status quo in society by alienating the individual. Karl Marx and Emile Durkheim theorize on how power is embodied within society and how it affects the individuals of society.

One of the most important concepts that defined the capitalist economy is the division of labor. Throughout the years, great philosophers such as Adam Smith, Max Weber, and Karl Marx have discussed theories that have drastically changed and molded the modern labor force. Thus, the ideal of labor division was created. Its purpose is to distribute labor skills amongst groups of people and by doing so it enabled workers to build products quickly. From this ideal, it allowed industries to expand their productivity and create trade on a global scale.

According to Edwards et al. (2006) Marx thought that within capitalism there would be an increased divide between the bourgeoisie class and the proletariat class in the future. The proletariats are lower of the two classes, the people who have to work for wages in order to survive. The bourgeoisie are the people in society who controlled and owned the means of production in a capitalist system.

Marx and Engels look at capitalism with seriously negative opinions. They regard the system as extremely unsuitable, and are deeply concerned with getting rid of it. In a capitalist society, capitalists own and control the main resources of production - machinery, factories, mines, capital, etc. The modern working classes, or proletariats, own only their labor. Proletariats work for the capitalists, who own the product that was produced and then sell it for a profit.

In the Communist manifesto, a well known quote of Marx, “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” This is introductory to the first part of the pamphlet and a conclusion to Marx’s theory about class struggle. Marx’s highly structured on how the class struggle emerges and affects the development of a society. The development of a society from the old and from the new is the result of the conflict of classes in the society.