Believers and people who practice both socialism and capitalism have heavy criticism of each other. Socialists for example believe that Capitalists produce a system where there is a clear distinction among the rich and the poor. The system is believed to encourage exploitation of workers, so that the business owners become wealthy. These business owners are the ones in many cases who influence policies, by using their wealth to getting what they want, by funding political campaigns, for example. Capitalists, on the other hand, believe that Socialists deny people their basic rights of freedom of decisions and opportunities.
Some examples of such would be, illegally lobbying or bribing government leaders to gain passage of certain laws, or tax codes. Another form of class conflict may include, a lock out aimed at destroying a labor union, and this is called “open conflict”, or “hidden conflict”, which could be a slowdown in production protesting the wages being paid. According to Karl Marx however, class conflict and struggle are inevitable dissentions that occur because of the economic organization of most societies (Johnson, 2000). Marx also believed that class is defined by the ownership of property and such ownership vests a person with the power to exclude others from the property and to use it for personal purposes. In relation to property, there are three classes of society, they include, the bourgeoisie or the people who own the means of production such as factory and machinery buildings, and whose income is profit, landowners whose income is rent, and the proletariat who own their labor and sell it for a wage.
Power Corrupts In this essay I will give examples to prove the fact that power corrupts. Whether it is the chance to gain more power or just to secure what you already had, power changes people. Of course, there are also examples where people use power wisely and fairly, but most of the time people use it unjustly. Some aspects of corruptness are too much ambition, deceit, loss of morals and greed. As examples I will use the Medici family in renaissance Italy, how the US government treated the Indians during the 19th century, Macbeth and factory owners during the industrial revolution.
Before capitalism, humans produced their own product with their own instrument of production, however, after capitalism come into being, not only the means of production but also the products themselves are taken away from the producers. The producers become labors of the capitalists, doing repetitive works and receiving wages in return for their work. The means of the production, the creativity of production process as well as the final product are all taken away from the producer. In this way, “man’s own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him stead of being controlled by him.”(Marx, P.160) In the modern case being discussed in the New York Times article, the blue-collar workers are precisely the passive wage takers from the capitalists who own the production instruments. As the market and the means of production being more and more controlled by the capitalist, the workers have less and less power to negotiate with the capitalist and therefore falling deeper into passive wage takers.
In recent times, there is a growing concern of wealth inequality in America. This has really drawn criticism and challenge to capitalism as the model of socio-economic structure. Debates surrounding this issue are often traditionally addressed through two models: communism and capitalism. Karl Marx, in his work, “The Communist Manifesto,” criticizes capitalism for it’s preaching of individualism and competition, which leads to the exploitation of the working class thus resulting in further antagonization between socio-economic classes. Marx ends his criticism by offering up the complete abandonment of capitalist system in favor of a communistic system in which socio-economic autonomy is in the hands of the state.
Marketing competition- competing with one another, where the own decide what the price is and what product is produce. 3. Pursuit of profit- the owner sells their products for more than what is cost. It is a economic system based on the private ownership of means of production. It stretches the line between the rich and the poor, creating class struggles and inequality.
This posed a threat to the greater freedom of world capitalism as an open market would require the dismantling of trade barriers and spheres of influence. To the communists capitalism was seen as being responsible for the division of society in
using the police and courts. Secondly Ideological state apparatus- this is where they rule by controlling people’s ideas, values and beliefs by manipulating functions of section of society, e.g. the religion and mass media. These two apparatuses reproduce class inequality from generation to generation by failing each successive generation of working class pupils in turn. It also legitimates class inequality by producing ideologies that disguise its true motive.
Slowly people began to create “money” and trade a certain amount of money for a commodity. However, nowadays, we have a system of capitalism. In this system someone buys a commodity in order to make a profit off of selling the same commodity. This system can be explained through the meaning of surplus value. Surplus value, in its most basic definition, is the amount of money earned by the capitalist after paying for overhead.
Other theories also have the idea that the Functionalists are exaggerating the consensus in society. Along with the Postmodernists, Marxists would also disagree with the Functionalist approach, as they believe that culture promotes capitalism, which they think has adverse effects on society; producing an economic system that determines the norms and values of society. Simply, classic Marxists say that people are socialised into a culture based on their social class and they blame it on capitalism. Overall, Marxists believe that culture is holding society back because it is reinforcing the class