Both Karl Marx and Adam Smith shared a position that the economy was split between labor and capital. Both, Marx and Smith, believed that increases in output would result in subsequent increases in capital accumulation. The similarities, however, between the two economists end there.
Smith’s ideologies goes on to suggest that capital accumulations are redistributed back to the labor-class through increases in the wage fund and that growth in the economy leads to growth among both classes. While Karl Marx on the other hand, fundamentally believes that labor value is exploited by the capitalist and the proceeds of productivity of labor is never returned to the wage worker, and wage workers remain at a level of subsistence.
Karl Marx’s analysis about the welfare of people under capitalism is dire. While his technical perspective seems similar to Adam smith at face value, his conclusions are more similar to the dismal views of Thomas Malthus and David Ricardo.
Marx, Ricardo, and Malthus all share interest in the misery among the working class and present dire views on the economy, subscribe to the Iron law of wages, and suggest there is some sort of societal grief associated with economic growth.
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The consequences of dislocation in growth rates lead to plague, war and death (among the other five horsemen). From that, Malthus suggested there are mechanisms to control population: preventative and positive. One reduces the birthrate, and the other increase the death rate, respectively. To Malthus, poverty and misery was the natural punishment for the failure of the ‘lower class’ not restraining the birth rate. Growth was dire for the working class, because they were expendable and didn’t experience much increases in