Essay A Comparison of Capitalism and Marxism - 637 Words

A Comparison of Capitalism and Marxism This essay will compare the economic principles of capitalism and communism by giving brief historical background on both and describing the two. I will begin with the father of economy, Adam Smith, and finish with the theories of Karl Marx. Adam Smith believed that if everyone behaves selfishly we are doing what is best for the economy of our society. This is what is known as â€Å"enlightened selfishness.† â€Å"Enlightened selfishness† is one of the main elements of capitalism. Profit is the motive for production of goods and greed is a virtue. You can own private property, but to maintain that private property you need capital to invest. Investing in something is always a risk. The larger the risk,†¦show more content†¦The workers were, in general, unskilled and often repeated the same series of actions for 12 hours a day. The owners were the people profiting the most from this system. Because the common worker was so easy to come by and easy to underpay, the owners could have a higher profit. All of this and child labor too. Children and women were under paid even more so than men. Urbanization forced the creation of working class districts. These slums had no running water, diseases such as s mall pox and typhus were commonplace, people were clustered around the factories creating crowded flats and mortality rates were incredibly high. Marx and others saw capitalism as going hand-in-hand with these horrors. Communism is considered a reaction to the â€Å"evils of capitalism.† Another way of saying communism is â€Å"dialectical materialism.† Karl Marx borrowed many ideas from the ideas of Gregor Hagel. Karl Marx was a German professor and theoretician, he published 2 famous works The Communist Manifesto (1848) and Das Kapital (1866). Before he could finish Das Kapital he died, Friedrich Engels finished the book. Frederik Angles was a collaborator of Marx’s and co-author of the book. Marx saw the exploitation of the common worker and predicted a revolution that would see the rise of the proletariat against the capitalistic suppressors. Proletariat is a term used by Marx to describe the working class. He alsoShow MoreRelatedKarl Marx And The Communist Manifesto Essay1691 Words   |  7 Pagesdialectically as societies shift from one mode of production to another†. This will be argued through a contextual account of Marxism, its development, critiques, and both the dependency theory and critical theory. Marx closely analysed the economic interactions within the capitalist community, arguing that the unfair wages were being distributed to workers due to capitalism being driven by profit. This is known as the ‘Labour Theory of Value’. 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