12.1.17 An Unequitable Comparison In Phillis Wheatley’s poem, “To the Right Honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth”, the speaker compares England’s control over America to the enslavement of foreigners in America to emphasize her nation’s lack of freedom during the revolution. In particular, the speaker pays attention to word choice to illuminate the correspondence between the two sides. To show the intentional choice of diction, the speaker references the deliberate “Tyranny” (18) that England exercises “t’enslave the land” (19). The speaker had the ability to choose any word to convey England’s power over America; However, her selection of “enslave” (19) displays her conscious decision to correlate human subjugation with hierarchy.
Capitalism led to inequality. For example, in capitalist society, bourgeoisie owned the majority of power by controlling schools, government, land, property, and factories. Under the power of capitalism, many factory owners held the right in the nation, and they only paid workers (the proletariat) with a low wage; this not only caused the workers to continually suffer in poverty, but it also resulted in the problem of unequal
So to kill capitalism would essentially be killing all of the hope left within the laborers for a better tomorrow. The system may stifle the chances of economic mobility, but the death of capitalism would make this a definite reality eliminating all chances for change. However, at this time there were two poor classes: the laborers and the farmers. For the farmers, a switch to communism seemed to be the perfect solution to ending their poverty as this would put them on the same playing field as big businesses and industries. However, as for the laborers communism would only establish their poverty stricken position as permanent.
Capitalism had taken a hold of the country because of the factories and railroads that popped up all across it. Andrew Carnegie and J.P. Morgan are widely known figures today, who gained their success from Capitalism. It is important to note that in the 1898 Declaration of Principles of the Social Democratic Party, the group declared, “That private ownership of the means of production and distribution of wealth has caused society to split into two distinct classes with conflicting interests, the small possessing class of capitalists or exploiters of the labor force of others and the ever-increasing large dispossessed class of wage-workers, who are deprived of the socially-due share of their product.” While the use of capitalism in our economy helped ensure the government would not overpower businesses, it placed all of this power into the hands of very few individuals, who happened to abuse it. This is when farmers and laborers began to despise capitalism and then organize themselves to promote something in which they strongly believed in, a socialist America.
In the beginning of the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution caused a massive economic spike from small-scale production to large factories and mass production. Capitalism became the prevalent mode of the economy, which put all means of production in the hands of the bourgeoisie, or the upper class. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels argue that capitalism centralizes all the wealth and power in the bourgeoisie, despite the proletariat, or the working class, being the overwhelming majority of the population. The manufacturers would exploit the common proletariat and force them to would work in abysmal conditions and receive low wages, furthering the working class poverty. “The Communist Manifesto” predicts that as a result of the mistreatment
Marx believed that the bourgeoisie exploit workers in capitalist societies. The proletariat will be paid enough only to afford food and housing, and the workers, who do not realise they are being exploited, have a false awareness, or a misguided sense, that they are well off when really they have bare minimum especially compared to the bourgeoisie. They think they can count on their capitalist superiors to do what was best for them when really they are being entirely used. Marx's theory can easily be applied to modern society despite it being
Marx’s theory of social inequality is heavily based on the idea that power is derived from the ownership of the means of production (Marger 30). Consequently, Marx believed that poverty is the product of the efforts of the powerful ruling class to protect their own interests. Since large corporations are part of the ruling class, they control the major economic activity in communities and therefore have the power to determine the fate of their workers. As a result, the ruling class (the bourgeoisie) will often exploit the working class (the proletariat) or move to a different location that is more economically beneficial to them, in order to stay in line with the capitalist principle of maximizing profit (Marger 169). In this case, people in poverty are poor because the ruling class exploits the working class, making the latter group powerless and trapped in
This denies the working class an opportunity to sustain a suitable lifestyle within society. For this reason alone, a socialist approach to combat the immense imbalance of economic power within the capitalist system could better the lives of the working
Karl Marx who was an economist, during 19th century established an idea between wealthy and rich. According to “Three Great Economists”, Karl Marx believes that “the class struggle itself, expressed as the contest over wages and profits, would be the main force for changing capitalism and eventually undoing it” (33). Here Marx shows that there will always be difference between classes in capitalism and the only technique can be use to change this concept is to ruin a capitalism. This shows that income inequality is something we cannot fight with in capitalism, because no matter what we do we always will have this problem. People will always want more, and some will achieve it and other won’t.
Therefore, capitalism is responsible for the manifestation of certain social conditions that have led to homelessness. (Marx) A broader
He argues that with all the pressures of class conflict and the imbalance of capitalism there is no way that this pattern can continue without a major revolution. Marx compares capitalism to anarchy, in the sense that there is no organization within which only causes chaos. The common pattern of capitalism is a boom followed by a bust, and that bust leads to recession and social unrest. This sort of fickle economy, Marx believes, will furthermore contribute to the downfall of capitalism. This socialist revolution would, “abolish private ownership of key elements of economy and change nature of relationships from ones based on marriage and property.”
Marx and Engels look at capitalism with seriously negative opinions. They regard the system as extremely unsuitable, and are deeply concerned with getting rid of it. In a capitalist society, capitalists own and control the main resources of production - machinery, factories, mines, capital, etc. The modern working classes, or proletariats, own only their labor. Proletariats work for the capitalists, who own the product that was produced and then sell it for a profit.
Another trait of capitalism is the emergence of two social classes, the upper and the working-class. Critics often describe the system solely through its shortcomings, such as poverty and harsh labor conditions of the working-class, while the upper-class lives in wealth (Jillson 121, Ginzberg 38).
On the contrary, the capitalist society that Marx describes has only become greater in the global society. The disparity between the elite and the populace grows continuously, and the wealth of the first group surpasses the wealth of the second one. The elite has made the working-class into a class of consumption who nourishes its capital gain. This leads on to the global issue of social hierarchy. It establishes inequalities within economy, education and health that the poorest try to outdo, becoming unconsciously even more depended on the capitalist system, because they
Marxism refers to the body of ideas first worked out by Karl Marx. These ideas shape a theoretical basis for the struggle of the working class to a higher form of human society (Sewell et al., 2008). Capitalism on the other hand, is the social structure that emerges on the basis of the social relationship between the consumers and the sellers of labour power (Ritzer, 2000). This essay will discuss the preconditions for capitalism, which include: commodities, surplus value and labour power. The contradictions of capitalism such as; alienation, exploitation and the decline in human development and will also be discussed, as well as contemporary examples of these found in South Africa.
