Discussion Of Commodity Fetishism According To Marx

However, what happens when the roles of the classes turn? This is Karl Marx predicts within his book The Communist Manifesto. The proletariats are the class considered to be the working class, right below the bourgeoise in terms of economic gain. Karl Marx discusses the number ratio between the two classes and discloses the fact that the proletariat outnumber the bourgeoise. Within the class is a sense of belonging, the bourgeoise live their lavish lives and have most of the say so when it comes to power. Most laws and regulations work in the favor of the bourgeoise class, while the working proletariat class is the class of struggle. This is where it ties into man’s self-alienation. Marx’s idea that the working man has alienated himself from humanity by becoming a machine of society, no longer being able to think for himself but rather only thinking of survival and mass production. By focusing on production for the bourgeoise, man is unable to relate to himself or others around him. He is alienated in the fact that he no longer belongs to a community but more so to a factory. This is beneficial to the bourgeoise because they would not have to fear the alliance of the workers against them if each worker felt isolated from one another. Karl Marx describes within his book the overview idea of the working man as a tool for production, a machine himself, isolated

Karl Marx witnessed first hand the rise of the industrial revolution and the beginning of capitalism. He also became one of capitalisms biggest critics. Marx believed that society needed a better way of distrusting wealth but also a better way a finding people’s full human potential or what he called “species-essence”. Marx believed that what we do connects to who we are, for example, work is what makes us human. It fulfills our species essence, as he puts it. Work allows us to be creative and flourish. However, in the 19th century Europe work did the quit opposite, it destroyed workers, particularly those who had nothing to sell but their labor. To the mill and factory owners a worker was simply an abstract idea with a stomach that needed to be filled. The workers had no choice but to work for long hours for a pathetic wage. Even worse, their labor alienated them. Alienation is a disorienting sense of exclusion and separation. Factory labor, under capitalism, alienated the workers from the product of their labor. They made stuff they couldn’t afford to buy themselves. The products they made were shipped out to other places far way to make money

The bourgeoisie society was unlike many in the past. They held onto this facade of capitalism, economic wealth and means of production. Individuality, family, and property were still prevalent among the proletariats, but were suppressed by the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie were considered the ruling class, and tore apart the family sentiment focusing on money, stripped the proletariats of their individuality, and owned all of the factories and industries. Although they prided themselves on being a wealthy social class, their means of production and wealth relied heavily on the labor of the proletariats. Marx criticized that the proletariats want to “fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence.” The proletariats came to realization that under the rule of the bourgeoisie they would only be viewed as a machine in means of production. If the bourgeoisie continued to obtain power and create more capital, there would always be class struggle and conflict, history all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” Marx pointed out that what the “bourgeoisie therefore

The fundamental message presented throughout Karl Marx’s Capital is that wage-laborers are exploited under capitalism. Marx argues that regardless of how well a worker is being paid, they are still being exploited by the capitalist in the form of unpaid labor. The focus of this paper will be to explain how and why this relationship between surplus labor and the exploitation of workers is formed in Marx’s opinion.

Designed over two hundred years ago, Karl Marx’s philosophy defines specific characteristics known today as the Marxist approach. In this critical approach, whomever holds the power and controls the factories or means of production, consequently controls the whole society. Marx’s opinion states that the laborers running the factories and thus holding the means of production should be the ones holding the power. However, this idea rarely holds true in practical society. Frequently, Marx notes, powerful people hire others to carry out the labor. This division of power reflects current culture. Two main classes or categories of people exist, the bourgeoisie and proletariat. The bourgeoisie is the powerful, or those who are in charge of

Marx believed that machines were a sign of progress in society and he was not opposed to it. However, it has negatively influenced employees globally. According to Marx, these machines caused workers economic impoverishment as it impacted their wages.. The wage a worker received was influenced by the use value and exchange value of the workers labour. Marx claimed that the there is the labour commodity and the capitalist commodity. The workers exchanged their commodity, known as their labour power for the capitalist commodity, which is the money. The wages are the price of the labour that the workers put forth. Often times, they do not pay workers a quality price for what they earn or how much work they do. They are constantly looking for bargains and people who do not sell their work for much. Industry’s try their best to get inexpensive materials, enhanced machines, and cheaper wage workers in order for them to decrease the amount of money coming out of their pockets. Marx believed that due to the unavoidability of capitalism, business owners are basing their business activities solely on the attainment of profit. For that reason, workers will continue to be replaced with machines causing business owners to decrease their spending on a workers’ labor power, leading the unemployment rate to increase. Marx states that value of labour power decreases causing wages to decline.

As capitalist societies expanded, Marx argued that exploitation amongst workers became more apparent. Marx believed that the only way to get rid of the exploitation, oppression and alienation was for a revolution amongst the proletariat workers. Marx suggests that it is only when the means of production are communally owned, that class divisions among the masses will disappear.

Theoretical concepts on class include the ideas of Marx, Weber and Bourdieu. For Marx, “wage labourers, capitalist and landlords, form three great classes of modern society.” (Marsh, 2013, p158) Marx saw class as a way of understanding how society and history interact. A person’s class can affect them in ways they are not conscious of. It operates as a social force that influences, opportunities and governs relationships. Marx used this to explain the opposed interests between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The bourgeoisie own the means of production, meaning they can protect what they have, whilst the proletariat sell their labour for little value, exercising much less power. (Marsh, 2013)

The need for a second, less class of citizenry to work is essential and they are referred to by Marx as the labour, Proletariats, or the working class. The working class exists to run the means of production, and they must sell their labour-power to the owning class in order to sustain themselves. Their skills are their only true ‘value’ in the alienated minds of the capitalists. The worker is limited with what they have to offer the capitalist and that is themselves and their individual skills as a commodity.

Marx’s primarily aims to explain how communism will free men, end the class struggle. The work argues that class struggles, and the exploitation of one class by another is the source of all inequality. Marx’s theories become one the motivating force behind all historical developments. The work strongly advocates the freedom of the proletariats which Marx’s claims can only be achieved when property and other goods cease to be privately owned. He see’s that private property has been a problem through out history, capital that aids the ruling class to maintain control. Marx argues that the lower class come together in a revolution and gain power and eventually take the power away from the upper class.

According to Karl Marx, alienation is the transformation of individual`s own labor into a power that rules by supra-human laws. In his theory he believed that alienation brought distinction of substances that were harmoniously put together. It brought social divisions of people from the aspect of their “human nature’’ which referred to the range of behavior shared by all human beings. Under capitalism, origin of alienation is commodity fetishism. Marx highlights four calibers of alienation in labor. The worker was alienated from the work he produced. The manner in which something was produced was not by its actual producer nor by its consumers but by capitalist class. It is the capitalist class who appropriated labor and endeavored to determine consumer’s taste for him to maximize profits.

This intimate relationship between man and nature, his activity and the objects of nature, is the ‘appropriate’ relationship because worker is not capable of creating without nature, that is, without the sensual external world. Hence, the world is the material into which man invests his labor, through which he produces things, and without it he cannot live. However, in a capitalist society, such relationship does not exist and man is alienated from nature, from the products of his activity or work. Under capitalism, workers produce for the market rather than for their own use or enrichment. According to Marx, the object produced by labor in modern society stands as an alien being to the worker. His labor is embodied in the product he created, and this product is an objectification of labor which represents a loss to the worker, as well as servitude to the object. Hence, alienation occurs when worker lacks control over the products of his labor. Additionally, during the process of production, man’s labor are seen as much an object as the physical material being worked upon, since labor is a demand in modern society, which can be bought or sold. The more objects the worker produces, the fewer he can personally possess, and therefore the greater is his loss. For instance, in

Karl Marx, also a philosopher was popularly known for his theories that best explained society, its social structure, as well as the social relationships. Karl Marx placed so much emphasis on the economic structure and how it influenced the rest of the social structure from a materialistic point of view. Human societies progress through a dialectic of class struggle, this means that the three aspects that make up the dialectic come into play, which are the thesis, antithesis and the synthesis (Avineri, 1980: 66-69). As a result of these, Marx suggests that in order for change to come about, a class struggle has to first take place. That is, the struggle between the proletariat and the capitalist class, the class that controls

People are slaves to the machine and the bourgeoisie because they need to work more hours daily for lower wages because the jobs become more simplistic and automated. A modern example of this is people on an assembly in Detroit, where cars are made. Things are now to the point were you can learn a job in a week when in the past it would have taken years to learn the same job. Marx believes that to sustain market growth capitalism becomes more automated for the giants of industry. Due to this “machinery obliterates all distinctions of labour and nearly everywhere reduces wages” (Cohen and Fermon, 454). In capitalism people are enslaved for lower wages, as the work becomes less appealing. Marx believed, “As the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases” (Cohen and Fermon, 453).

Though Marx views the communist revolution as an unavoidable outcome of capitalism, his theory stipulates that the proletariat must first develop class consciousness, or an understanding of its place within the economic superstructure. If this universal character of the proletariat does not take shape, then the revolution cannot be accomplished (1846: 192). This necessary condition does not pose a problem within Marx’s theoretical framework, as the formation of class consciousness is inevitable in Marx’s model of society. His writings focus on the idea that economic production determines the social and political structure (1846, 1859). For Marx, social class represents a person’s relation to the means of production, a relation that he believes is independent of