What did Karl Marx believe about capitalism?

Answer 1

Karl Marx believed that capitalism through industrialization had increased the productive capability of the world's economy far beyond that ever witnessed before. Nevertheless, he also felt that capitalism created two competing classes of people. One, was the bourgeoisie who owned and controlled the means of production and hired wage laborers. The other was the proletariat, who were common workers who owned nothing but the right to sell their own labor. Capitalism's very nature would ensure that eventually, these classes would struggle against one another to the point where the class of workers would get large enough and oppressed enough that it would overthrow the bourgeoisie, seize the means of production from it and end the economic system known as capitalism. The system of socialism would be ushered in and gradually evolve into pure communism.

Answer 2

Marx was not against capitalism per se, but believed that certain forms of capitalism, combined with entrenched social class divisions, would produce dire consequences. Capitalism in it's productive form (what Marx called the C-M-C mode) involves has money at the center of the exchange of commodities: people invest money in order to increase their production of goods, and the money from the sale of those goods is either reinvested in the production process or used to buy other goods that the people in question need and use. This was a more-or-less 'healthy' form of capitalism (similar to the classical depiction of capitalism you see in Adam Smith), and while it is not without problems, Marx found it largely unobjectionable. It even had a leveling effect: since even low-level workers are considered producers, their wages will be set by their ability to produce, and the money generated from the sales of commodities will tend to get distributed broadly.

Capitalism in its monetary form, however (Marx called this the M-C-M form) involves the use of commodities as a means for generating money in its own right. Here investors trade in the exchange of commodities, without any real involvement in the production process - money is invested in the purchase of commodities simply to sell them and make a profit, and as much as possible it is accumulated, rather than reinvested or used to purchase other goods.

The problem with the M-C-M form is that no value is added in the exchange. The commodities come to the M-C-M capitalist at a certain price, and leave the M-C-M capitalist at a higher price, and the difference in price seems to come out of thin air (e.g., if you buy an iPod in eBay for $100, and then turn around and sell it on eBay for $150, you've made $50 for absolutely no identifiable reason). but Marx didn't believe that money could just appear out of thin air; it has to come from someplace. Marx reasoned that the only place this money could come from was the pockets of the producers of commodities, who would have to cut back on production costs in order to balance the money that is being extracted in the M-C-M process. since material costs (the costs of buying and maintaining equipment, purchasing raw materials, and etc) are difficult to reduce, the main cut-backs would have to come from employment costs, either buy reducing the number of production workers or by reducing their wages. effectively, M-C-M capitalists are constantly accumulating money at the expense of the people on the lowest edge of the production system. add in an established social division distinction between the 'investor' and 'worker' classes, and you have a situation where (almost by necessity) the M-C-M capitalists will will reduce the working class to abject poverty, while the working class has no recourse other than to continue working for whatever money they could get paid (Marx' term for this was 'wage-slavery'). In the long run, Marx though, this kind of grinding-down process could only result is some form of revolution. Marx was actually suggesting that the system be changed before that trigger point was reached.

Answer 3

Karl Marx viewed capitalism as an economic system that oppressed the working class. He believed that the recessions and depressions caused by capitalism would eventually force the working class to revolt and establish a socialist type economic system that would eventually become a communist system. His economic ideas and the philosophy behind them, dialectical materialism, have all been thrown into the dustbin of history.

Answer 4

Marx thought capitalism would of its own nature destroy itself. He felt that capitalists would concentrate on accumulating wealth without regard to the welfare of the workers and that the workers would eventually overthrow their employers. He was wrong because he misjudged capitalism's ability to survive by compromising with worker demands. Marx did not realize that capitalism would survive by granting its workers better pay, better hours, better working conditions, trade union protection and many other benefits to the working class rather than just maximizing profits and creating a politically aware proletariat.

Answer 5

Disagreeing with previous economists such as Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Jean-Baptist Say; who all agreed that Capitalism and the market were fundamentally stable, Marx saw Capitalism as a fundamentally tumultuous system, that was constantly be rocked and constantly in danger of falling apart. Marx saw Capitalism as the latest form of a class based society, where an upper class (The bourgeois) exploited the surplus value of the lower class (The proletariat). He famously stated that "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle" demonstrating that similar antagonisms have existed for much of mans history (feudal lords vs serfs, slave owners vs slaves. patrician vs plebian etc etc). For Marx history was in a constant state of change attempting to resolve this glaring contradiction. His theory of dialectical materialism built off of Hegel's Dialectic and described a world of constant change where the thing to be studied isn't the forms or objects but the processes in this system of change. Therefore he saw capitalism as a progressive system as it superseeded Feudalism, but he saw that because this contradiction had not been resolved in the capitalist mode of production that capitalism too would be replaced by a higher system which he called Communism which would be characterized by ownership of the means of production in common by all members of society for the benefit of all members of society. He believed that that capitalism provided the tools for its own downfall by,

1. Focusing its ideological and material powerbase on the middle class (small business owners who work themselves and employ a few people, aka the American Dream) but meanwhile destroying this middleclass through competition from large scale corporations.

2. The constant drive to bring more and more people into this system (the constant expansion of Capital, and the constant drive to discover and conquer new markets overseas)

3. The Social relationship of production (the assembly line where no single good is made by a single individual). This would have the effect of bringing workers together in the same place and in ever greater contact with each other (facilitated by an explosion of communication technology). This social relationship in production was contradictory to the private ownership and control over production.

4. The existence of a landless property less proletariat class that has nothing to exchange for its means of subsistence (food, housing, etc) other than its labor time.

5. The Tendency of the Rate of Profit to fall, stating that competition leads to an increase in productivity through machines, which replaces human labor. This spreads the value of the labor performed over a larger number of commodities causing the individual value of those commodities to drop and leading to a reduced rate of profit, this leads to even more machinery replacement of humans furthering this cycle.

6. The obvious contradiction of starving and want in the face of overproduction and glut.

All these things, and several others are a rough starting point as to what Marx thought about Capitalism, check out the "book" (really only a few newspaper articles) called Wage Labour and Capital, it provides a quick intro and outline of Marx's economic critique... Because honestly he's one of the more controversial figures in modern times and as such if you want to learn about Marx, then read Marx.

Answer 6

He believed capitalism brought prosperity to only a few and poverty to many.

Answer 7

because he hated the fact that people worked so much, while the other class were just getting anything they wanted

Answer 8

Quiet a lot. Primarily in two books, "Das Kapital" and "The Communist Manifesto". His main problem with it was that it made people what he called "wage slaves".

Answer 9

Marx believed that capitalism inevitably involved the exploitation of the working class by the capitalist class.