Karl marx 6
Karl marx 6According to the philosopher Karl Marx, the capitalist system carried within itself the seeds of its own destruction. One day, he predicted, a violent revolution would eliminate all social classes and result in a society of plenty for all. Marx believed history was moving inevitably toward a goal. But for Marx this goal was purely economic, the result of a struggle between industrial workers and owners.
In his writings, Marx argued that the true cost of any product is the labor employed in building it. But the factory owner, he said, doesn't labor to create a product; he just buys the labor and raw materials and sells the resulting product. Although laborers contributed the full value of the product, Marx said, factory owners sold the product for more than they paid their workers. Therefore, he said, the difference was stolen from the workers.
Owners, he predicted, would increase their profits by paying their workers as little as possible, so workers would be increasingly impoverished. Eventually the wealth of the owners and poverty of the workers would lead to a revolution. But Karl Marx was wrong; conditions in England did not cause the proletariat (working class) to rise up and kill the bourgeoisie (prosperous middle class). Because life overall improved for the workers, there was no need for them to rise up and fight.
“During the 1800s, Parliament gradually passed a series of...
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