Marx's sociological conception of an economic system, as the relationships among people rather than the relationships among things or magnitudes, leads to a unique definition of capital and of capitalism.
Marx thought that for capitalism to exist, the workers must have no means of production, no means of subsistence, and "nothing to sell but their labor power." The means of production, namely the capital, belong to a separate class, the capitalists, who are thus in a position to force the workers to produce more than enough output for the workers' own use, and to allow the capitalists to appropriate the surplus.
Marx thought that the historic role of capitalism is that it creates the economic preconditions of socialism and communism. The Marxian dialectical conception of evolving possibilities depicted capitalism as creating the expanded set of options that--for the first time in human history--made it possible for all persons to have the leisure to develop their own creative potential. But Marx thought that the productive potential could not be utilized for egalitarian and humanitarian purposes under a system which funnel its benefits to a few capitalists, while keeping the workers overworked despite labor-saving machinery.
From Marx's perspective, the relationship between capitalists and workers is the defining characteristic of capitalism, and it is form the stresses between these inherent elements that capitalism metamorphoses toward a new social system.
Another inherent feature of capitalism in Marx's opinion is the production of commodities--goods made for sale rather than for use by their producers.
No comments:
Post a Comment