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Marx’s theoretical work is the understanding of
the nature of human beings and how they have constructed their historical
world. Marx is considered a modernist because his views and theories fit the
meaning of Modernity, which are human freedom and the right to free choice. To
Marx, Capitalism is a barrier to the notion of human freedom and choice. Five
aspects of his political theory are: how he views human nature, effects of
Capitalism on human natures with emphasis on significance of labor, class struggles
within Capitalism, the demise of Capitalism and the need for the transition to
Communism.
Marx belief of human nature is that it changes over time; it is historical and
dynamic. In understanding human nature, it is important to understand what part
labor plays in human nature. “To be Human is to labor,” therefore Marx believes
that Humans work in the world with other Humans in exchange with nature to get
what they desire. Thus since human nature is dynamic so are humans’ wants and
desires. In order to achieve one’s wants and desires one must labor with others
around them and with nature. Since labor is the activity of a group, the
ever-changing world created through the labor of those groups also creates the
humans themselves and directly affects them. Through labor, humanity creates
and is responsible for the world that they live in. Marx suggests that
Capitalism leads to the centralization and concentration of living spaces,
means of production, monopolies and the distribution of more power to the bourgeoisie.
The success of Capitalism is directly connected to capital and wage labor.
Capitalism’s goal is to increase profits called accumulation; profits are then
reinvested elsewhere to make more capital. Like the buying and selling of an
object in the capitalist market, but in this case the exchange is money for the
ability of labor, what Marx calls labor power. Capitalism flourishes by
extracting surplus value, or profit, from the commodities produced by the
working class. Without capitals and profits there are obviously no wages and a
place to do any type of labor power; and without wage labor capital cannot
increase itself. Both are dependent on each other for the flourishing of
Capitalism. Capitalism is a form of life that does not do justice to human abilities
and capacities; it is a division from basic powers to humans and the
exploitations of human workers. Workers are forced to sell their labor power to
capitalists and capitalists have no choice but are forced to exploit labor to
gain capital; therefore the laborers are commodities themselves in the
capitalist market. As the result of Capitalism, labor has been under admonition
and oppression. Instead of picturing the world as it is, Capitalism pictures
the world in a distorted view. A view that leads to the alienation of the true
meaning of human nature. The view that places the products of laborers more
important than the laborers themselves; thus the laborers are objectified.
Laborers then do not realize that they are the ones who are in control of the
product that they produce. “Alienated labor hence turns the species-existence
of man, and also nature as his mental species capacity, into an existence alien
to him, into the means of his individual existence.” The distorted view leads
to the miscognition of self of the working class who are cut off from their
essential powers. They fail to realize that the world is of their own making
and that they have the ability to create and recreate the world in which they
live in. Marx’s theory of privileging of economic matters places an emphasis on
class struggles that are related to the forces of production as well as the
relations of productions. Economics is the production of the exchange of goods
and services through labor arrangements. In every society there is a way to
distribute goods and services called a mode of production. The mode of
production is the combination of the forces of productions; like raw materials,
technology or labor forces; and the relations of productions or the
relationship among human beings related to forces of production. One’s
relations of productions in a Capitalist society determine one’s location in
the mode of production, that is, their class. In a Capitalist society everyone
is located in a class, either the class of the bourgeoisie (capitalist) or the
proletariat (working class). More important than any talent or skill, the class
position is the fundamental factor that determines one’s life as a human being.
To be bourgeois (capitalist) is to have many property of one’s own; to be
proletariat is having no property and living by the rules of the bourgeoisie.
“The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with . . . the means of
productions, and of property. It has . . . centralized means of productions and
has concentrated property in a few hands.” To Marx, class is a restriction and
a restraint on the means and the modes of production; the laborer is dependent
upon the wage labor and has no individuality. Taking the capital out of the
hands of the capitalist and spreading the profit and properties equally with
the proletariat. Marx wants the proletariat to have the ability of free labor,
where separation of class no longer exists; and that can be true in a Communist
society. Marx’s theories predict that the contradictions and weaknesses within
capitalism will cause increasingly severe economic crises and deepening
impoverishment of the working class. The rich get richer (the bourgeoisie) and
the poor get poorer (the proletariat). In order for the bourgeoisie to survive,
the most important factor is the arrangement and growth of capital; the must
for capital is wage labor. So therefore wage labor rests solely on the rivalry
between the laborers. “What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, is
its own grave –diggers.” The bourgeoisie who choose to super exploit their
workers for the surplus value will find that they are indeed setting a trap for
themselves since the must for capital is labor. If the workers will not work
there is no capital to invest in anything. Once the workers are fed up with
their situations and realize there is a need to get together for a revolution
and change of labor, the bourgeoisie will have lost everything it owns; and
that will lead to the end of a class based society. In the resulting classless society
of Communism, the coercive state will be replaced by rational economic
cooperation. “In Communist society, accumulated labor is but means to widen, to
enrich, to promote the existence of the laborer.” The accumulated labor in
Communism is not just to benefit one and only one person; but it is to benefit
the workers as well as the employer. Everyone will be rewarded according to how
hard they work and people will have the equal chance of moving up the social
ladder. “In the place of the old bourgeoisie society, with its classes and
class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development
of each is the condition for the free development of all.” Workers will have
independence and freedom of labor; and each person is seen as an individual
that is part of a bigger and greater society.
As a whole, Karl Marx is considered a modernist because he believed in human
freedom and choice. He saw the problems arising from the effects that
Capitalism was having on the proletariat and clearly they had no human freedom
or choice. To Marx, Capitalism not only presented humanity with an upside down
view of the world, but also reinforced divisions of class. As a result the
laborers finally realize that they are the makers of the commodities and the
commodities are not the makers of laborers.