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What Is Karl Marx Theory Of Exploitation

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The key concepts that I will discuss in this assignment are the theories and ideas of Karl Marx on Alienation, Exploitation, Materialism and Class struggle. The objective of this assignment is to examine the literature written about Karl Marx in order to clearly present his main ideas and theories in relation to work and capital. In the second part of my assignment I will discuss what relevance these theories and ideas have in today’s world. Karl Heinrich Marx the philosopher and revolutionary socialist was born on the 5th of May 1818 and died on the 14th of March 1883. He was born in the city of Trier in Germany and studied law in Bonn University. He based his ideas and theories on social structure, economics and politics. …show more content…

Marx’s theory on exploitation is related to his earlier writings on the theory of alienation. They are both similar in that they are both highly critical of the capitalist system. Grint,(2005) emphasises that before Karl Marx nobody had ever confronted the idea of exploitive wage labour, many great thinkers of Marx’s time like Locke and Ricardo thought that the value of the wage labour was exactly equivalent to the labour expended while producing a product.
Watson,T.J (2008) states that “ capitalist employment is exploitive in attempting to take from working people the value which they create through their labour and which is properly their own.”P.62. Essentially what Watson is expressing is that Capitalists exploit workers by paying them less than they are worth in order to extract enough profit from them to enable them to be able to survive within the capitalist system. This system works in favour for the Capitalist but in essence in opposition to the labourer who is getting less money for what their labour is worth. Under a capitalist economy where the worker is exploited makes the employment relationship very conflictual in the marxarian view highlights Edwards,et al. (2006). This exploitation in work that happens under a capitalist economy is the reason why Marx arrived at the conclusion that working in this system would be very conflictual and oppressive. Grint …show more content…

According to Edwards et al. (2006) Marx thought that within capitalism there would be an increased divide between the bourgeoisie class and the proletariat class in the future. The proletariats are lower of the two classes, the people who have to work for wages in order to survive. The bourgeoisie are the people in society who controlled and owned the means of production in a capitalist system. Marx believed this divide would happen because the workers are dependent on their wages as a means of survival where as one of the employer’s objectives is to lower wages in order to reduce costs. This clash of interests would inevitably bring on a resistance from the proletariats. “Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win” (Marx and Engels 1848) chpt, 4. As we can see from this quote that was written in the communist manifesto by Marx himself, It is clear that he believed that as a result of this oppression by the bourgeoisie the proletarians would revolt against the capitalist system and this would result in a

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