Contradictions Of Marxism

In the theory of Marxism, the main focus is on the division of labour in the different social classes and how they change over time. Marx was interested in how the capitalistic society operated and how contradictions and conflicts of interest were a result of alienation in the society. The overexploitation of the majority party by the minority was a great concern to Marx as he believed that people should be rewarded depending on the amount of labour they put in. Contradictions arose from this inequality and questioned how far people will go for personal gain. In order to properly understand the contradictions of a capitalist society, key concepts such as the structure of capitalism, social theories and how Marxism works must be taken into consideration.

Alienation is the separation of an individual from others and the feeling of lack of involvement and pointlessness (Marsh, 1996). According to Marsh (1996), Marx saw alienation as a central feature of capitalism. Workers are alienated from their work because their activity is competitive rather than cooperative and above all, it is controlled by someone else (Marsh, 1996). Human alienation’s increase reaches its height in a capitalistic society when the gain of capital and the demand for profit dominate all other requirements (Haralambos and Holborn, 2008). This is where we see that capitalism is based on the exploitation of the proletariat workers by the bourgeoisie (Mandel, 1976). Workers start seeing work as solely a way to earn capital to buy goods and services they desperately need to exist. This is what caused miners to strike, the frustration of knowing that they work so hard to only receive enough money for basic needs. According to Marx, “the more the workers produce, the more they lose themselves.” (Haralambos and Holborn, 2008. 868). Marx suggests the end of private property and the start of communal ownership so capitalism is replaced by communism and the disappearance of conflicts of interest. In the case of the Marikana incident at Lonmin mine, workers were exploited because of the huge financial gap between the classes causing tension within the

The rise of the proletariats did not mean the rise of means of production within the capitalistic society, but the belief Marx had that the contradictions that existed between the bourgeois and the proletariat would favour the rise of the majority party and the downfall of the minority, bourgeois party (Haralambos and Holborn, 2008). He saw the two classes and how those (proletariats) who did more work received less because all they had to offer was the labour power and how the other bourgeois class gained all the monetary gain through this exploitation. Marx believed that tensions and conflicts would rise between capitalists causing the downfall of the system (Marsh, 1996). To him, polarization (working population splitting and being identified as two different groups: capitalists and labourers), homogenization (two polarized groups causing workers to be alike due to work and loss of traditional skills) and pauperization (wage workers are turned into paupers because their wages do not increase with the rise of profits even though workload increases) are inevitable and are the main tensions that will bring down capitalism (Marsh, 1996). According to Marx, the magnitude of the contradictions between the two social classes was increasing with the rise of capitalism. With the rise of capital, one would assume that all parties received their equal share, but the more money was made, the fewer people