Karal Marx Essay Research Paper One of

Karal Marx Essay, Research Paper

One of the first and most persuasive advocates of modern capitalism was Adam Smith. The most serious challenge to Adam Smith and his followers came from Karl Marx, a nineteenth century German. The son of a Prussian lawyer, the methodical Marx was a worthy and resourceful opponent. He unfolded his economic theories in his monumental Das Kapital, a work on which he spent eighteen years of research and writing. Marx s main objection to the capitalistic system was that it was unfair to workers. To show this, he developed his now famous theory of surplus value. This theory involves the relationship between the worker and his product and the employer and his profit. It implied that whatever profits the capitalist class acquired, it stole from the workers. Seventy years after his death about a third of the human race was living under governments that called themselves Marxist . Marxism is more that just a set of bright ideas which anyone, at any time, might have thought up. It is rather a time and place phenomenon, which acknowledges that the very categories in which it thinks such as abstract labour, the commodity, the freely mobile individual and so on could have emerged from a heritage of capitalism and political liberalism (Eageton, 9). Karl Marx s ideas had a greater influence in a shorter time then any other thinker in history.

Karl Marx was born in the Germany in a town called Trier. His parents were Jews who converted to Lutheranism when he was six, but Marx was anti-religious by the time he was a teenager. His creed even then was, Criticism of religion is the foundation of all criticism (Magee, 165). Marx did little paid work in the course of his life, instead, he chose to live in poverty most of the time and continue his studies and his writing. Marx went to Paris in 1843, where he met the young Friedrich Engels. Engels came from a rich German family that lived in Manchester, where they owned a textile business. Engels maintained Marx financially for the rest of Marx s life, enabling him to produce his work. A few years after he met Engels, Marx elaborated on the basic system of ideas that was to became known as Marxism, and became the intellectual foundation of Communism. Marx was expelled from France in 1845, so he went to Brussels, where he and Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto, published in 1848 (Magee, 179). Marx was duly expelled from Brussels in the same year, and ended up in London in 1849. He spent the rest of his life there. Most of his writings consisted of brilliant pamphlets and articles, but there was one full-length book, his masterpiece, Das Kapital, meaning simply Capital , published in 1867. It is one of the most influential books in history. Marx died in London in 1883, and is buried in Highgate Cemetery.

Within seventy years after Marx s death there were people living under governments called Marxist. These included countries in Eastern Europe, Russia, the former Tsarist land empire, and China (Gurley, 89). Nothing like this had ever happened before, nor will it probably happen again. It was amazing, the fact that Marxism was one continuous failure. The ideas conquered, but the societies that grew from it collapsed or separated themselves from Marxist policies (Magee, 167). During this period of ideological success, Marxism had an influence on the arts and politics. Famous people in the arts such as playwrights Jean Paul, the poet Pablo Neruda and the painter Pablo Picasso regarded themselves as Marxists or Communist (Magee, 178).

Marxism and capitalism were engaged in an intense worldwide struggle. Societies organized according to Marxist principles seemed to be coming up everywhere, they spread from zero to a third of the world, (Gurley, 3). The ideals of Marxism inspired, as capitalism did not, millions of people around the world, mostly the poor, but many intellectuals and a few priests and other clergy. Marx and Engels believed that above capitalism itself would rise a still higher form of society, socialism, where the workers would be the ruling class. They could be both admirers and critics of capitalism, but at the same time recognized exploitation, alienation and troublesome features of the new society, which they thought would be overcome when the working class successfully built the system.

Marx s solution to this exploitative situation was simple, the means of production and exchange should be taken from the capitalist and turned over to the workers. This would eliminate the problem of surplus value, since the working class would be producing and exchanging goods for itself as a collective unit (Leone, 5). The labor theory of value, even if it could be granted to be valid for every other commodity, can never be applied to the commodity of labor. This would imply that workmen, like machines, are being produced according to rational cost calculations (Schumpeter, 27). Since they are not, there is no guarantee to assume that the value of labor power will be equal to the man hours that enter into production.

Marx thought that the development of modern technology was to go on putting more and more people out of work. This would divide society into two classes, the capitalist and the workers. Capitalist exploitation would worsen the living standards of workers until, one day the workers would revolt violently. The overthrow of capitalism would usher in a socialist age bas