Karl Marx’s Capital and Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women are both texts that have influenced modern ideas and withstood the test of time. Though on very different topics, Wollstonecraft writing of the plights of women and Marx commenting on capitalistic society, the both explore similar ideas and a structure within society that demonstrates a system of the weak and the powerful, and the issues with this societal structure. This paper will be scrutinizing the strengths of each writing, and how they are still congruent to modern society as it still stands. In Capital, Karl Marx states that the manner through which the social production takes place appears to based on both freedom and equality within the capitalistic …show more content…
Capitalism has its roots in a system of slavery because in a capitalist society, there is a system of value that one must accept in order to function in society, and when this system of value emerges, a worker becomes a slave to his wage, and therefore the employer that ascribes that wage. This slavery relates to domination and exploitation in society because the bourgeois class, the upper class, dominates over the proletariat, and therefore uses this domination to exploit the work of the lower classes for their own personal and financial gain in order to maintain and solidify their financial status and therefore their ability to be continuously socially dominant. The ability of a capitalist to maintain his wealth is largely supported by Marx’s idea of surplus value. Surplus value is the excess of the value that the labourer produces over the wages that they are paid for their labour power, which the capitalist gains in the form of profit. Surplus value can be seen as whatever profit is returned on the production capital that was invested. In terms of surplus-value, Marx says “Our capitalist has two objects in view: in the first place, he wants to produce a use value in exchange, [...] an article destined to be sold, a commodity; and secondly, he desires to …show more content…
Though the two authors represented two very different ideas, their thoughts reflected one and others more so than one may assume. Mary Wollstonecraft stood for feminism, a social and political movement; whereas Karl Marx was the figurehead for Marxism, and economic system centered around equality. Both Marx and Wollstonecraft see society as being divided into two very separate categories: the powerful, and the powerless. In Marx’s case, the bourgeois or capitalist class as the powerful, and the proletariat or working class as the powerless, and Wollstonecraft viewing men as the powerful, and women as the powerless. Both wanted to reach a state of equality for the powerful and powerless in modern society with the idea of fighting against the ruling system in order to start a revolution which would increase the strive for equality is an underlying theme in both works. In Capital the workers as seen as belonging to the capitalists and only being worth their labour. Marx makes the point, “the working-class, even when not directly engaged in the labour-process, is just as much an appendage of capital as the ordinary instruments of labour.” The workers are slaves to the system, and are therefore the property of the capitalist, who uses his money as power in order to let