...Q: The crisis of capitalism that Marx predicted has failed to materialize proving Marx wrong. Discuss. Karl Marx (1818-1883) was a revolutionary as well as a notable thinker; through out his life he worked on politics, economics, philosophy, sociology, class struggle and history but for the most part he dedicated his life to the overthrow of the capitalist order, which he accused as responsible for the degradation and enslavement of the vast mass of its population. Marx was the Co-founder of Marxism(with Engels), the Theory of Surplus Value, alienation and exploitation of the worker, The Communist Manifesto, Das Kapital, Materialist conception of history. Marx worked on his intellectual work started under the influence of G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831) who in the 19th Century Germany was the dominating philosophy. The Young Marx was, during this time, mostly concentrated on criticizing the ideas of political economists and analyzed things from a more humanistic and philosophical point of view. The older Marx had a clear preoccupation with economic analysis and there was again arguably, a disappearance of Hegelian terms in his writings. Marx was straight forward in his approach to capitalism and argued that the capitalist system just like the previous socioeconomic system will inevitably produce internal tensions which will lead to its destruction. Just as capitalism replaced feudalism, he believed socialism will, in its turn, replace capitalism, and lead to a stateless, classless...
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...Do you believe that Capitalism is moral? Justify you answer. Capitalism can be defined ideally as an economic system in which the major portion of production and distribution is in private hands, operating under what is termed a profit or market system. (Shaw et al. 2013, p.118) As compared to other forms of economic systems, capitalism benefits the society in various ways (and based on utilitarian argument, this will be morally preferred because the balance of good over bad is the greatest). Few would deny that capitalism is the most productive and efficient economic system, especially after the collapse of Soviet Communism. But some critics still contend that capitalism is not a moral system. Yet morality is impossible unless one is free to choose between alternatives without outside coercion. Since capitalism is based on freedom of choice, it provides the best environment for morality and character development. In addition, business success not only requires but also rewards virtuous behavior by participants in the market. A social system such as capitalism is a system of relationships and cannot be moral or immoral in the sense that a person can be – only individuals can be moral agents. However, a social system can be moral in its effects if it promotes the possibility and likelihood of moral behavior by individuals who act within it. It follows, then; that there is a moral imperative to create a political and economic system that permits the greatest possibility...
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...Due to the limited resources and unlimited human wants, whole world faces problem of scarcity. Therefore, capitalism is needed to solve these production decision such as what and how to produce the goods and services and distribution decision such as for whom to produce the goods and services. Capitalism is an economic system in which the major portion of production and distribution is in private hands, operating under what is termed a profit or market system. In the country which works on capitalism system, the production and distribution decisions are made by private individuals who are free to pursue their self-interest and their decisions are coordinated and communicated through price signals which also means by profit motive in the market. I believe that the morality of capitalism is debatable, whether the capitalism is moral or immoral have to view it from different sides of perspective. Utilitarianism said that an action is judged as right, good, or wrong on the basis of its consequences. It emphasizes that greatest good for the greatest number of people. In other words, the goods have to be maximized for everyone affected by the decision (Weiss J.W., 2008). When all the costs are added and compared with the results, if the benefits outweigh the costs, then the action may be considered ethical. In a capitalist economic system, individuals have natural rights to property. They can possess, use and dispose the means of production or distribution such as equipment, machines...
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...INTRODUCTION Is capitalism really man's enemy or is man his own enemy? I believe capitalism can be used as a very effective and productive tool but it must be used with caution for it can be very deadly. Capitalism has the power to eradicate poverty and at the same time has the power to destroy humanity within a blink of an eye. It is therefore a wise leader who will see the need for the inclusive capitalism as opposed to the real-world capitalist system. One of the greatest businessmen of the world, Bill Gates once said; "You know, Capitalism is this wonderful thing that motivates people, it causes wonderful inventories to be done. But in this area of disease of the world at large ,it has really let us down." -(www.brainyqoutes.com) While agreeing to this, Mahatma Ghandi said; "Capitalist as such is not evil; it is its wrong use that is evil"-[Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi (1869-1948)] REAL WORLD CAPITALISM VS INCLUSIVE CAPITALISM While an inclusive and desirable economy will strive to keep all the stakeholders happy and satisfied, the real world capitalism shall have inequality, waste, starvation, undemocratic, war and dictatorship just to mention a few. The inclusive capitalism economy will try to make the employees comfortable and will likely use the people-oriented leadership style are the democratic leadership style just to ensure its employees are free to voice out their opinions unlike in the real-world where the voice of the poor in oppressed. The real world economy...
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...Alienation Marx found alienation to be a main flaw in capitalism. To Marx alienation demonstrates what is wrong with capitalism but also what is desirable about communism, and uses this flaw as part of his explanation of the breakdown of capitalism. Alienation is the lack of a sense of meaning. I personally find this to be the worst aspect of capitalism as we don’t even realise that we are alienated. People participate in mass consumption that they are completely disconnected from instead of achieving self-realisation. Marx did not hold this negative view especially in the mature economic writings when he applauded capitalism for “creating rich needs that it cannot satisfy” (Ester 1986, p41). As previously mentioned the lack of self-meaning or self-realisation is...
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...description of failure of capitalism in The Grapes of Wrath and the latter is a description of the failures of capitalism in The Great Gatsby. In The Grapes of Wrath the Joad family is traveling from Oklahoma to California, a distance of about 1,500 miles, in search of work to sustain their family. Their home in Oklahoma is taken by the bank because the farm is unusable after the dust bowls have started. The novel The Great Gatsby follows the lives of a few rich people and shows the way their money has the ability to do. Both Fitzgerald and Steinbeck condemn the idea of the...
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...Big Business Corporatism Versus Free Market Capitalism Right now, there is a lot of talk about the evils of “capitalism”. But it is not really accurate to say that we live in a capitalist system. Rather, what we have in the United States today, and what most of the world is living under, is much more accurately described as “corporatism”. Under corporatism, most wealth and power is concentrated in the hands of giant corporations and big government is used as a tool by these corporations to consolidate wealth and power even further. In a corporatist system, the wealth and power of individuals and small businesses is dwarfed by the overwhelming dominance of the corporations. Eventually, the corporations end up owning almost everything and they end up dominating nearly every aspect of society. As you will see below, this very accurately describes the United States of America today. Corporatism is killing this country, and it is not what our founding fathers intended. Corporatism is actually not too different from socialism or communism. They are all “collectivist” economic systems. Under corporatism, wealth and power are even more highly concentrated than they are under socialism or communism, and the truth is that none of them are “egalitarian” economic systems. Under all collectivist systems, a small elite almost always enjoys most of the benefits while most of the rest of the population suffers.The Occupy Wall Street protesters realize that our economic system is...
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...contradiction” (1994: 5). Prophet of Innovation is not just a beautifully drawn portrait of Schumpeter’s life and times, it is also a distinguished business historian’s meditation on the two opposed cultures of political economy post-1870: history and theory. The Prophet of Innovation, among its other accomplishments, tells the story of how a great and productive intellect wrestled with the two-cultures problem in political economy. In the work of Schumpeter, McCraw finds the very personification of political economy’s struggle between history and theory. Just as Schumpeter’s work personifies the roles for history and theory in economics, so too does McCraw make Schumpeter’s turbulent life and times a metaphor for Schumpeter’s great subject, capitalism. Schumpeter was four when his father died. An exile, he moved his household 23 times in his lifetime, living in five different...
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...STRAYER UNIVERSITY ROCKVLLE CAMPUS YACINE FALL Sociology of Developing Countries---SOC 300 Spring 2013 2nd Assignment Subject: Can religion play a positive role in the improvement of social, economic, and political conditions of undeveloped societies? Elaborate your thought. Religion is usually defined as the belief of a supreme, invisible power that has absolute control over our fate as humans, the universe and everything surrounding it. This invisible power establishes symbols that relate humanity to spiritual and moral values. Religion is all about spirituality (nature of consciousness) and morality (the distinction between right and wrong or good or bad). Religion is present in every corner of the world but practiced very differently and it has different influences in our lives depending on the location where it is practiced. Therefore, it generates different outcomes. In some undeveloped societies, religion can play a positive role in the improvement of social conditions, but when it comes to economic and political conditions, it can be very devastating. Religion can sometime help improve and stabilize the social system in undeveloped countries through its teachings. In all of the four dominant religions practiced in the third world (Catholicism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam), the teaching of promoting peaceful coexistence among humans are very popular. Religion also infuses social norms like honesty, morality and equality which will lessen social injustices, racism...
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...Macroeconomics May 13, 2014 The Two Economic Systems Throughout history there have been two basic forms of social organization: collectivism and individualism. To briefly define each one is to say capitalism is an economic and political system in which all the means of production and distribution are privately owned and operated within a free market society. On the other hand Socialism is an economic and political system in which all the means of production and distribution are collectively owned and operated by all members of a society. In my opinion, both systems, in their purest form, have their pros and cons. Capitalism promotes a free market system whereby citizens are practically free to create almost any product or provide almost any service and ideally start their own business to make their own profits. One of the main selling points of capitalism is that it’s a system that primarily self-regulates. It’s meant to keep prices and the quality of products and services at least half way decent. Of course it doesn’t always work out that way, but that’s the general idea. Another wonderful thing about capitalism is that it aims to preserve economic freedom from excessive government control. However, there is always at least some government regulation involved, as there should be in my opinion. Though most hardcore capitalists believe in the French expression Laissez-Faire, which means “leave it alone.” They hold to the idea that if government would...
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...Today, as we look around the world, we see an increase in the number of corporations; as capitalism has spiraled to a peak. While corporation’s products and services are needs and wants of the economy, their moral actions, or lack there of, are not, however, directly or indirectly affect us each day. Are corporations people? Can corporations be considered moral? Questions such as these have been raised by Shaw and Barry in the text Moral Issues in Business. While the answers to these questions are debatable, the infamous Enron Corporation shows us that while the people make up the company, the company as a whole receives the reputation of being immoral or unethical. We consider Kenneth L. Lay and Jeffery Skilling, the former president and CEO of Enron, the driving forces behind Enron’s bogus success and responsible for the moral code that should have been set for the organization. These unethical actions Enron took part in even had support by auditor, Arthur Anderson, and attorneys, Vinson & Elkin. The top leaders of Enron had a passion for capitalism, which drove the company to illegal and unethical behaviors, eventually leading to the catastrophic fall of the company. However, in order for Enron to deceive as long as they did without being caught, a lot of their actions were actually legal, but immoral. Enron’s use of mark-to market (MTM) accounting and taking advantage of energy deregulation in California, led to their “profit at all costs” mentality, legal, moral,...
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...When auditing succumbs to capitalism – Enron We all know why Enron failed. Everyone knows the story and everyone is pointing the finger at someone else. Let us not waste our time trying to pass the buck, but look at the failures of auditors in this saga for they were the ones entrusted to act as steadfast agents of independence to protect the interests of the common man from the capitalist vices of the modern era. Where did it go wrong? Capitalism, for all its glory and wonder is nevertheless flawed. It is its own worst enemy. The purpose of auditing is to make sure capitalism does not get ahead of itself and collapse taking us down with it. Of all the theories to support the existence and importance of auditing, independence has by far been the most if not the only solid argument. Its duty as an autonomous entity to reduce the information asymmetry so that the engines of our financial markets run efficiently and free from the flaws of the capitalist system. The role it plays as a fail-safe to prevent the house form crumbling down is as good a reason as it gets. But in this case it would seem as though, despite its best efforts auditing, ironically has itself been pulled into the very house it was meant to watch over. This shouldn’t come as a surprise because let us not forget auditors are also subject to the philosophies of capitalism despite being its nanny. This failure of the checks and balances meant to keep capitalism on a leash lead to synergistic corruption which saw...
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...The other day, I ran across this article and skimmed through it. I disagree with much of the author’s interpretation of the film. The books and the movie are not contrivances attempting to change people’s ideology. They’re stories. If Collins was pushing a viewpoint regarding capitalism, it really shouldn’t be so difficult to discover. The author of the article makes this difficulty clear in floundering to draw inferences. That details can be isolated and confounded into such a conspiracy reflects that the author of this article has his own ideas he is imposing upon The Hunger Games. Fiction books making political points are far more overt than these. Look at Orwell’s classics Animal Farm and 1984. Look at Ayn Rands books (if you can stand the thorough absence of spirituality and moral truth). Look at State of Fear by Michael Crichton. You don’t have to go digging into the esoteric and the obscure, and if you did, you would find more than this paucity of lines which back your claim. With these works, you can see plainly what the authors intended to say regarding the real world. That’s the whole point, really. If you want to make someone think something, you don’t hide it so much. If Suzanne Collins intended her books to be anti-capitalist, she did a pretty terrible job of it, focusing so exclusively on Katniss’ emotional tug-of-war. I don’t think it necessary to even address the ‘historical timing’ of the 74th Hunger Games in comparison to Roosevelt’s New Deal legislation,...
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...Revisionist Socialism What is it? Revisionist socialism seeks to reform or tame capitalism rather than abolish it. It seeks to reconcile socialism with capitalism. It seeks social justice in the sense of narrowing the economic and social inequalities (to varying degrees) within capitalism through welfare and redistribution. Social democracy is the most obvious example of revisionist socialism. Revisionists are invariably parliamentary, not revolutionary, socialists. Bernstien Beginning in the late 1890s a diverse group of so-called revisionist thinkers increasingly questioned the validity of a number of fundamental Marxist theorists. They particularly objected to how rigidly Marx's doctrine was being interpreted by his colleagues in Second International. The foremost theoretical spokesman of the revisionist movement was Eduard Bernstein. Bernstein was a German social democrat whose views on socialism had been influenced by his extended influenced by those in Switzerland and particularly in England, where he became familiar with the views of the early Fabian Society. While his own theory of socialism differed from theirs, Bernstein nevertheless shared many of the Fabian beliefs, including the notion that socialism could be achieved by non-revolutionary means. In a series of articles that first appeared in Die Neue Zeit between 1896 and 1899 and later published in the book Evolutionary Socialism (1899), Bernstein laid the foundation for a revisionist challenge to Marxist...
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...Mikayla Zwilinske Philosophy of the Human Person D. Kaspar May 09, 2014 Marx v. Mises Throughout time, many philosophers have deliberated the ideals of capitalism, the economic system where industry and trade is privately owned. Through writings and theories, one question seems to be brought up often: how has capitalism affected society? Philosophers Karl Marx and Ludwig von Mises have written about capitalism and their views - some different, some similar. Marx believed that, although capitalism benefited the economy, it created social classes. However, Mises is a defender of capitalism, believing it benefits the consumers just as much as the producers. Altogether, Marx looks at capitalism from a workers standpoint and Mises from property owners. Comparing and contrasting their beliefs in capitalism can help to better understand it and how it affects societies. In Marx book, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, there is a section called Alienated Labor. It is in that section that he speaks strongly about how capitalism results in alientation for the worker. As stated earlier, Marx believes that capitalism separates society into classes of proprietors and propertyless workers. He says that political economy does not explain private property, but grasps the actual material process of it. There is no rational planning of it. Political economy doesn’t explain its reason for the division between capital and labor. For example, when the relation between profit and wages...
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