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Karl Marx's Analysis of Capitalism and Exploitation

This text explores Karl Marx's theories on capitalism and its impact on society, including the exploitation of workers and the concept of commodity fetishism. It also examines the role of religion in diverting attention from societal issues and maintaining the power of the ruling class.

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Karl Marx's Analysis of Capitalism and Exploitation

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  1. KarlMarx(1818-1883) born in Trier, GermanyHe developed a method of analysis called dialectical materialism, in which the clash of historical forces leads to changes in society. “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it.” [Theses on Feuerbach]

  2. CAPITALISM AND EXPLOITATION • Capitalism perpetuates the ILLUSION of freedom • All capitalist PROFIT is ultimately derived from the EXPLOITATION of the worker. • Marx called for a communist society to overcome the dehumanizing effect of private property.

  3. The workers under capitalism suffer from FOUR types of ALIENATION: • From the product (which is taken away from its producer). • In productive activity (work), experienced as torment. • From species-being (humans produce blindly, not in accordance with their truly human powers). • From other human beings (the relation of exchange replaces mutual needs)

  4. COMMODITY(Theory of value) • A commodity is a useful external object, produced for exchange on a market. • The VALUE of a commodity is determined by the quantity of socially necessary labour TIME required to produce it. • SURPLUS LABOUR produces SURPLUS VALUE for the capitalist, which is the source of all profit.

  5. COMMODITY FETISHISM • There are human relations underneath relations between things. • We assign to things characteristics which have their source in the social relations among people in the process of production. • In social production relations inevitably take the form of things and cannot be expressed except through things, in exchange. • The structure of the commodity economy causes things to play a particular and highly important social role and thus to acquire particular social properties.

  6. STRUCTURE AND SUPERSTRUCTURE • The nature of the economic structure is explained by the level of development of productive forces. • The nature of the superstructure (the political and legal institutions of society) is explained by the nature of the economic structure. • Ideas of justice are ideological; the role of both the superstructure and ideology is to stabilise the economic structure. • In any society the ruling ideas are those of the ruling class (the core of the theory of ideology)

  7. RELIGION • Religion is a response to alienation in material life. • It is defined “the opiate of the masses” [or the opium of the people]. • It creates a false idea of community in which we are all equal in the eyes of God. • It diverts people’s attention away from the real source of oppression and keeps ruling class in power. • It prevents any form of revolt, as it threatens eternal damnation, good for social control. • It helps produce false consciousness. • It cannot be removed until human material life is emancipated.

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