karl marx ideas on capitalism
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Karl Marx's ideas on capitalismKarl Marx set down the principles on which communism was to evolve. Marx held that history was a series of class struggles between owners of capital (capitalists) and workers (the proletariat). As wealth became more concentrated in the hands of a few capitalists, he thought, the ranks of an increasingly dissatisfied proletariat would swell, leading to bloody revolution and eventually a classless society.
Capitalism is distinctive, Marx argues, in that it involves not merely the exchange of commodities, which are useful external objects, produced for exchange on a market, but the advancement of capital, in the form of money, with the purpose of generating profit through the purchase of commodities and their transformation into other commodities which can command a higher price, and thus yield a profit. Marx claims that no previous theorist has been able adequately to explain how capitalism as a whole can make a profit. Marx's own solution relies on the idea of exploitation of the worker.
Worker does the necessary labor. Any work the worker does above this is known as surplus labor, producing surplus value for the capitalist. Surplus value, according to Marx, is the source of all profit. In Marx's analysis labor power is the only commodity which can produce more value than it is worth, and for this reason it is known as variable capital...