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Karl Marx Research Paper

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Karl Heinrich Marx was born to a middle-class family on May 5th, 1818. A long line of Marx's family members were Rabbis, but Marx's dad converted to Lutheranism to avoid anti-Semitism before Marx was born. Marx was born in Prussia, which is now Germany and his parents were Jewish (Wolff). Marx was home-schooled by his dad until high school, then he went to Bonn University because his dad wanted him to become a lawyer. However, Marx was more interested in philosophy and literature (Biography.com). Karl Marx was a journalist, economist, and revolutionary socialist whose ideas still influence us today.
After the first year at the university, Marx got married to Jenny von Westphalon. She was a low class citizen. In 1836 Marx enrolled in the …show more content…

The difference between capitalism and socialism is socialism believes social inequality is bad for people. They believe the opposite of capitalism in that the government should have programs to help the poor by taxing wealthy people more. This means, hard - working people would have money taken from them to help people who are lazy, and do not work and want to survive by having by having the government support them. Socialists approve of free public schooling and healthcare. On the other hand, capitalists believe the government does not use money as wisely as private businesses do. Therefore, society is better off with the free market in choosing economic winners and losers (Capitalism Socialism or Communism …show more content…

It says the value of a commodity ( something that is bought or sold ) can be measured by the ''average number of labor hours needed to produce that commodity'' ( investopedia.com ). For example, if a car takes twice as long to create than a computer, the car is twice as valuable than the computer. It does not depend on how much effort was taken to make the product, just the amount of time. This theory is demonstrated to be proven false, but it was popular among economists through the nineteenth century. The Labor Theory of Value was not only studied by Marx. Marx tried to turn this theory against the capitalist theorists. Most of the capitalists did not agree with this theory. Marx said his theory could explain the value of all goods, including the economic good that workers sell to capitalists for a wage. Marx called this commodity ''labor power''. Labor power is the worker's ability to produce services and goods. Marx said the value of Labor power depends on the number of hours it takes society to feed, clothe and shelter a worker so he, or she is able to work. He asked the question: if all services and goods in a capitalist society are sold at wages and prices that show their true value, how can capitalists enjoy earnings? How do capitalists squeeze out left overs between total earnings and total costs? He said capitalists must have a powerful place because they are owners of the means of production and then

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WW1 and 2 is all based of disagreements and impulsive decisions. This leads off into wars and when there's war, there's guns. Guns are a weapons used by humanity to fight wars or against something. There are a shaped metal that is meant to shoot projectiles typically at an organism to end a problem it's causing.

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Marx argued that there are two classes of people that exist in society, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The bourgeoisie refer to the upper class that own the means of production and whose central concern is the value of property. On the other hand, the proletariat describes the working class wageworkers in a capitalist society. Marx argued that the bourgeoisie simply exploited the proletariat, and the physical labor produced by the proletariat generated more wealth for the capitalist, leaving laborers under payed and machine-like. During this process, Marx believed that through this system of mass production, laborers were stripped of individual imagination and as a result, left individuals feeling alienated to their own emotions and erotic feelings in order to maximize production and wealth.

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These two groups were constantly at odds, particularly because the bourgeoisie possessed the income of production. Because of this longstanding system of production and labor, it was natural that there would be a working class that would be continuously be oppressed by a super visional upper class. As a result of their ownership of the means of production these upper class were also given special positions within government and thus two systems, labor and government, were tarnished by class inequity. The way to attempt to even out the system and then come up with a way to end the upper class owning the means of production could there be fairness in terms of labor. On the other hand, Marx saw that labor itself was where the power of the proletariat was.

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Karl Marx was born May 5th 1818 in Germany. The economic ideas of Karl Marx were specifically that he did not believe in people having great ideas to change the economy but rather that all people needed was to be able to live a decent life, meaning that they had food to eat and a home. For Karl Marx the economic system had to be equal values, and therefore eradicating classes. Therefore arises Communism, which is the defined by the Chambers Concise Dictionary (2009) as “A political ideology advocating a classless society, the abolition of private ownership, and collective ownership by the people of all sources of wealth and production.” The ideas of Karl Marx were adopted in many countries across the globe for example the USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Russia) that existed from 1922 to 1991 when the idea of socialism and communism failed and

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Week 1 sociology Tim McGregor 6 Oct 2015 Karl Marx was born on May 5, 1818 in Trier Prussia (Germany) and died of cancer on 14 March 1883 in London. Karl Marx is well known for being a key person in the founding of sociology, The Communist Manifesto and the Socio-political theory of Marxism. While Marx went to a Lutheran elementary school but later grow into an atheist and a materialist. In 1835, Karl enrolled in Bonn University in Germany where he excelled in law; however, he was distracted in with his love for philosophy and literature.

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Karl Marx viewed society as a complex entity shaped by historical forces and characterized by the struggle between classes. He analyzed the capitalist mode of production, criticizing it for exploiting workers and generating social inequality. In "The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844," Marx wrote about the alienation of labor under capitalism, arguing that workers were reduced to mere instruments of production, and stripped of their creativity and autonomy. One way in which workers are alienated from the products of their labor is that they do not own or control the means of production, such as the factories or machinery they work with.

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A major weakness of Marx’s theories is the “limitations of central planning.” Top-down government controlled levels of production may not accurately represent the levels of demand needed in the marketplace. Further, general profit sharing amongst labor owned production devalues that some goods or services have greater value and/or cost than others as “all labor is created by the labor involved in producing whatever is being produced.” This can then lead to profit maximization not occurring due to lack of incentives for

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“The value of an object is just as much as it will bring” Marx (pg.221) In “The Select Writings of Karl Marx), Marx argues the wealth of societies’ that prevails the capitalist mode of production is a large collection of commodities, with individual commodities present in their most basic form. Marx states a commodity is an external object e.g. iron, paper, etc. “an object which by its qualities satisfies human needs of some kind or another” (pg.220).

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This is around the same time he finally broke off from the philosophy of the Young Hegelians completely. In Brussels, he wrote The German Ideology, where he explains his theory of historical materialism. He was unable to find a publisher, and it ended up being published after his death. Marx created a Communist Correspondence Committee in an attempt to link socialists form around Europe in the beginning of 1846. Socialists in England were inspired by his ideas so they formed the Communist League.

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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.

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In October of 1835, Marx began studying at the University of Bonn. The school is filled with rebellious students. He contributed to this part in the average student life. He wanted to be a poet and dramatist.

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He then married Jenny von Westphalen, she was four years older than Karl Marx. Her father influenced Karl since he was a French socialist, Jenny’s father was one of few that liked Karl. However, Karl’s father felt that Jenny was bound to be a sacrifice to “the demon that possessed his son”. After four years of marriage, the couple moved to Paris, France. Paris was known then as the epicenter of socialist, the move changed Marx and he gave socialism a thought of choice.

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Father Karl was a man of liberal views, adherent to the ideas of the French Enlightenment. The formation of the personality of Marx was greatly influenced by his future father-in-law, Ludwig von Westfalen, also a supporter of the ideas of the Enlightenment. After graduating from the Gymnasium in Trier in 1835, Marx first studied at the Faculty of Law of the University of Bonn, then at the Faculty of Law of the University of Berlin, where he studied law, history and philosophy. At this time he becomes a member of the so-called "Doctor's Club", which includes the radical Young Hegelians: the Bruno brothers and Edgar Bauer, M. Stirner, etc. Discussions in this circle had a profound influence on the content and style of Marx's

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The individual by pursuing his economic self-interest simultaneously profits the all others’ economic self-interest of that society. Since each individual acts unhampered by government rules in capitalism, it causes the creation of wealth in a very efficient manner which then ultimately causes the rise of the living standard, the increase of the economic opportunities, and the rise of the supply of products. Therefore, when an economy functions with a free-market system everyone has the chance to create wealth for himself and in the same time he simultaneously creates opportunities for everyone else interests. This means that while the rich becomes richer the even poor one becomes richer. Such like, the Capitalism serves everyone for achieving their economic self-interest, including non-capitalists.

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Labour itself is value. Labour power, which can be defined as all the energy a worker uses is a commodity and like other commodities the cost is determined by the labour that was necessary to produce it. Marx’s value is not defined in its true textual sense, value for Marx is defined as social necessary labour time. The value of the commodity depends on the quantity of the labour socially necessary for its production thus labour is contained in value. Therefore the exchange value of a commodity varies with in line with the quantity of labour required to produce it.

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