Karl Marx - Capitalist Alienation Essay -- Socialism Communism Labor

A century and a half ago, Karl Marx established a theory that today is known as the backbone to modern fabianism and communism. Marx viewed the early capitalism of his own day as inherently exploitive. At the core of capitalist production is what is considered surplus value, the value left over by and by the producer (in Marxs case, factory owner) had paid the fixed costs of production such as raw materials, machinery, overhead and wages. The left over amount was unploughed as profit, a profit that Marx saw that was earned from the sweat of the lug. Derived from his idea of surplus value was that of alienation. Marx gave an economic interpretation to alienation. People were alienated from their own labor their work was appropriated by someone else and the work itself was compulsory, not creative the cause was capitalism, and the cure was socialism. Marx believed that modern labor is an evolution of something that began centuries ago and encompassing everything from slave states to European feudalism right on up to todays version of commercial capitalism which, completed or perfected the capitalist technique of doer alienation. Marx is correct in saying that capitalism exploits the working class, and that working under capitalism is in fact alienating. Worker alienation became an effective calamus by which the capitalist could separate themselves from the laborers of their nations. The separation, however, was more to show a capitalists class status rather than having...