If you ever thought, “Why am I paying these taxes?! I didn’t sign up for this…” that’s how Karl Marx feels about the entire capitalist system. Sure, if you don’t like your job, you can go sell your labor elsewhere, just like you can move and go pay taxes elsewhere...but you still have to get a job (and pay taxes) and work if you want to survive. You don’t have a choice, unless you’re a capitalist...that is, you’re the one doing the hiring and controlling the “means of production." Basically, you own the factories and what-not, deciding worker’s wages and where profits go and how much you keep for yourself.
The foundational theory of Marxian economics is the labor theory of value, which says that capitalists don’t pay workers for the full value they're providing as workers, keeping the surplus for themselves instead of spreading the love to the workers who created the value. Over time, this creates the growing inequality between capitalist and workers, i.e. the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
Marx saw workers working hard, yet their wages didn’t reflect the value they provided, because all that extra value was pocketed by their bosses. He believed that, as capitalists get wealthier and wealthier from this surplus, and workers get poorer and poorer, the poor will eventually say “I’ve had enough of this,” and there’ll be a worldwide revolution of workers against capitalism (it can’t be just a small group), which accumulates the majority of wealth into the hands of a few.
Marx thinks it’s just a matter of time...and that when wealthy people are philanthropic in the meantime, it’s really just capitalists giving concessions to the workers to keep them content enough to not revolt, so the capitalists can keep their power (and their money). Instead of the “Wow, look how nice that billionaire is for starting a fund to feed the poor” reaction, Marx would say something like “Wait, why does one person have all that money in the first place? And why are those poor people so poor in the first place? Oh right, capitalism.”
The way Marx saw capitalism and technology growing, he felt that capitalism would eventually shoot itself in the foot, since it’s not really sustainable to have inequality continuously...grow. Yep...a lot of ideas coming out of that beard of his.
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Finance: What is capitalism?7 Views
And finance Allah shmoop What is capitalism Oh well there
are really two faces of capitalism you know kind of
like Aria on game of thrones Yeah or like any
little kid trick or treating in Halloween or you know
two face So let's start with what capitalism is not
Hello Communism Yes your darkness our old friend Communism is
all about the government being quote smarter than the market's
unquote that is Communism believes that via central planning in
estimating and bureaucratic controls the markets for pretty much anything
can be run better fairer and more efficiently than by
its polar opposite cousin capitalism That's the economic application to
the political will that under a communist system politically everyone
is equal fish you know two cellphones good for cellphones
bad Something like that Whereas communism is a frank instant
ian attempt at cloning in or reproducing life in a
lab and then copying it market by market locale by
locale capitalism is well financial Darwinism Survival of the financially
fittest More or less Communism failed globally in hindsight that
so much for its ideology of governments controlling things But
for the one little element that was never addressed in
the Soviet laboratories where communism was at that element Yes
corruption Yeah When central planning happens enormous power is concentrated
among a very small number of individuals usually individuals who
came to power through Machiavellian means often military or other
yes men Grey flannel suit wearers not through believers in
a cause innovators visionaries or business runners So the very
powerful became very corrupt and the ideology of political communism
I'LL never really came to be tested on a global
stage fairly and squarely where it has been tested and
works has been in tiny enclaves with rare compositions Take
the Kibbutz in Israel Well a kibbutz is a collective
farm Everyone shares equally and well pretty much everything The
farm produces one for all and all for one like
Israeli Musketeers or something like that The big diff Well
they're all equally well educated They're all from the same
background same culture same unfortunate run ins with boils So
it's easy to divvy things equally when you feel like
the guy or gal across the table was truly equal
to you In talent and drive and other natural gifts
you get two cell phones and you get to cell
phones and you get two cell phones Yeah all equal
And yeah a kibbutz structure would never work in a
large city where the disparity and talent is usually massive
from top to bottom So where does that put capitalism
Well structurally capitalism refers most directly to a frictionless set
of transactions No controls no governing no government just perfect
markets where supply and demand intersect here and prices live
within nana meters of here There isn't the kind of
one person can change everything kind of corruption that you
get in a central bank or central allocation system The
capital markets the brutal Darwinism of companies competing in the
marketplace gives a kind of truth or honesty or really
quote fair unquote price that applies more or less everywhere
in the system At its most extreme we witness capitalism
at work in the stock market At any given moment
tens of thousands of investors are inspecting what Amazon is
really worth and letting their investing dollars speak for themselves
The trading of stocks is almost a perfect market with
no central government dictating what it thinks Amazon should be
Trading at two thirty p M On a Tuesday in
a communist stock market While the government might dictate that
well today Amazon should trade for fifteen hundred twelve dollars
a share and for a ten dollar fee per share
trade paid to the government trader you too can be
a proud owner but that's the price Fifteen hundred twelve
bucks Take it or leave it Communism in this sense
runs is a kind of command economy That said the
U S Is not a perfect capitalistic set of markets
either It's just a relatively capitalistic approach to transacting in
mark but when compared with other systems of commerce in
the US we have laws they're actively in fourth and
violators are punished severely and this has been going on
for centuries The positive result Trust in general Investors around
the world trust in the American capital market system They
trust that accounting and financial disclosures are fair and full
and honest Just remember that capitalism is financial Darwinism under
the fair rubric of laws and structures analogous to what
biology and physics and geographic location due to the evolution
of species of animals cos that best fit their contemporaneously
environment thrive and those that don't well don't and somewhere
Toys R Us and the Dodo Bird are living happily
ever after together you know along with Sears and soon
target in a whole bunch of others that'LL be Amazon
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