Karl Marx Synthesis Essay Essay

There have been many Marxist revolutionaries who have contributed substantially in opposing capitalism and superseding it with a socialist economic system. Karl Marx, the founder of social communism, attacked capitalism for its internal contradictions and flaws, such as the antagonisms and exploitations between the bourgeois and proletariat and its alienating conditions and affects on the proletariat as well as the bourgeois. Marx sought to abolish private ownership of the means of production, advocating a more socially equal redistribution of the productive economy, hoping to create a workers "community" in which all workers would have a equal share of the means of production.

Marx saw exploitation emerge from the capitalist system. The hours of the proletariat are protracted to an wild extent, leaving them no room to socialize or produce anything creatively on their leisure time. The workers work too many hours that there are supposed to, for a wage that is inadequate for their subsistence. The proletariat must sell their labor power in return for a wage that is barely anything. They are, like the products they produce, regarded as commodities: "These laborers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the changes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market" (Marx, Engel, 68-69). The proletariat is deemed as inferior and the bourgeois superior. This creates a class struggle. Marx attempted to find a solution of capitalist exploitation. Marx argued that exploitation emerged in capitalism because firstly, the laborers are completely deprived of human social relations, secondly they are forced to work for a meager wage , and thirdly the capitalists use their power arbitrarily. Exploitation is a matter of surplus value (profit). An individual is exploited if he or she puts more time into the product itself, and an individual is an exploiter is he or she puts less time...