Comparing Marx's Wage Labour And Capital

[TITLE] In Marx’s Wage Labour and Capital, he makes his view clear that the economic system of capitalism, as well as religion, are oppressive economic and social structures. Capitalism is but an inescapable social contract that all people must enter into in order to live. According to Marx, this oppressive system must be changed, and only the people within in can do so. In Rousseau’s Book One of The Social Contract, he states that modern society is responsible for oppressing man’s natural, liberal state. He believes that man’s most natural state of self-preservation is the most ideal, but he is not completely against the idea of an organized government, so long as it is a democracy through which the people are able to rule. Despite differing

Under capitalism, the worker must continually work in order to live, but working is not their life. Marx says, “life begins for him [the worker] where this activity [work] ceases…. The twelve hours’ labour, on the other hand, has no meaning for him… but as earnings” (Marx 205). A person spends half their day working just to live, but even those twelve hours may not be enough, and leaves them hardly any time to live the rest of their life. Even if somebody is free to choose which job they to take—to a certain extent—they do not have the choice to not work, at the cost of their own life. Douglass, in his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, on numerous occasions, mentions the endless workdays of slaves, and how it is no way to live. Working to live under capitalism is not

Government often controls or influences the economy in some way. Simply because they focus on different aspects of society does not mean they cannot be viewed side by side. Even in Theses on Feuerbach, Marx says, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it” (Marx 91). The fact that they look at different institutions is irrelevant—it is that both institutions can be changed from within, which is what both Marx and Rousseau are advocating. It is possible that Rousseau thought that some of the oppression originating from a poor government could have originated from the economy. Greed could lead to corrupt officials bending the law to their will, furthering the suffering of the people. Even if Marx does not outright suggest a political reform (in this work) and that may be seen as a reason not to relate his and Rousseau’s ideals, seeing as how interconnected government and economy are, it is obvious that they can still be compared even excluding Marx’s later