In theory, everyone would be employed and no one would have money problems.  There is a large variety of jobs so the standard of living would be higher.  Everyone would have the same status so everyone would be treated equally.  Although these would better our world, this system brings along disadvantages that I believe outweigh the advantages.  In this system you belong to the government. They have complete control over everything and you have no rights at all.  There is no way to rise out of the working class and you get no chance to increase your living standards.   

            During the 19th century Marx observed and reported about the working conditions of the normal working man.  He then wrote about his research and observations named “A Chapter in the Exploitation of the Working Man”.  Marx discovered that during his time period men and even children were forced to work long hours with no breaks for very little pay.  At this time there was not anything wrong with this because there weren’t any labor laws or restrictions on how the employers could treat their workers.  Families were unable to break out of this system because these jobs were the only thing keeping them alive and they couldn’t survive one day without their paychecks. 

As Marx describes in our reading, “What constitutes the alienation of labour? First, that the work is external to the worker, that it is not part of his nature…The worker, therefore, feels himself at home only during his leisure time, whereas at work he feels homeless. His work is not voluntary but imposed, forced labour.”(497)  This quote gives us a different idea of forced labor.  Marx is saying that it can be forced labor even if you are doing the job voluntarily.  If you are not happy and putting everything into your occupation then you are just forced to participate just for the paycheck. 

Karl Marx was one of the greatest thinkers of mankind.  Although many of his ideas were wildly disputed, many parts of them would greatly improve our standard of living as a species.  If we would take some of his ideas and integrate them into our systems we would perform much better and be happier doing it.

The communist who overthrew czarist Russia in 1917 had strong ideas about the future.  When they put their ideas into practice, they drastically transformed the economic geography of the region.

                The communists had been inspired by the work of Karl Marx, a German philosopher who had examined the history of economic systems.  Marx believed that the capitalist system was doomed because it concentrated wealth in the hands of a few and left everyone else in poverty.  He predicted that a communist system would replace capitalism.  In a communist society, he argued, citizens would own property together, and everyone would share the wealth.

                To move their society toward communism, Soviet leaders adopted a command economy one in which the central government makes all important economic decisions.  The government took control of the major sources of the state’s wealth, including land, mines, factories, banks, and transportation systems.  Government planners decided what products factories would manufacture, what crops farms would grow, and even what prices merchants would charge for their goods. 

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                Rapid industrialization became a major goal of soviet planning.  Even farming became an industry under Stalin.  The Soviet government created enormous collective farms on which large teams of laborers were gathered to work together.  People were moved to the farms by the thousands.  By 1939, nearly nine out of ten farms were collectives.  The Soviets had firmly established their power over the countryside. 

                Although industrial and agricultural production increased, the region’s people had to make great sacrifices for this rapid transformation.  Millions of citizens starved to death in famines caused, in part,  by the creation of collective farms.  Those who survived soon realized that only a small number of individuals had benefited from the economic changes. 

                Many people tried to do something about this betrayal, but as great risk.  Under Stalin’s rule, the police swiftly punished any form of protest.  Some historians estimate that Stalin was responsible for the deaths of more than 14 million people.

                Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, leaders in Russia and the Republics have tried to reduce the state’s monopoly on economic power and return some control to private individuals and businesses. 

Marx mainly focused on the struggle of social classes due to economic differences. Similarly, Weber does address this same issue, but he feels that the issue of class difference cannot be resolved or improved by change like Marx. Weber is very pessimistic about improving the condition of society. Marx can clearly be seen as being more optimistic in that he introduced the concept of praxis (putting sociological theory to work to better society). Marx saw that changes could improve the conditions that are through concepts like socialism and the destruction of the social stratification system. This is one of the points that the two differ greatly and conflict with each other. 

The economic ideologies of these two nations differ very much from each other. The economic of Britain is similar to the American system. Britain has an economic system based on private enterprise and private supplies of capital.

Property in Britain and The United States can be owned by individual citizens. The economic freedom of the citizens of Britain and America is not complete freedom. Citizens must obey the law, but otherwise they can use their time, money and effort as they wish.   

                               The Power of Religion

                           By Abdulrazaq Magaji

                                              Abuja, Nigeria

In his book, Religion and Science, author Alfred North Whitehead described religion as something that is eternal but the expression of which principles requires continual development. But he puts man in a quagmire in his definition of religion. Hear him: ‘Religion is the vision of something which stands beyond, behind and within, the passing flux of immediate things, something which is real and yet waiting to be realised; something which is a remote possibility but at the same time the greatest of the present facts; something that that gives meaning to all that passes and yet eludes apprehension; something whose possession is the final good and yet is beyond all reach; something which is the ultimate ideal and the hopeless quest.’ Do you smell contradiction?

In its real sense, contradiction, in common logic is a signal of defeat. But extended to the frontiers of knowledge, it is not. To its credit, contradiction is a step towards progress. What you get when various shade of opinion contends with each other for attention is consensus.

Karl Marx, that nineteenth century thinker was more straight forward in his description of religion which he compared with, opium, a hallucinatory agent that befuddles the mind, denies man the ability for rational thinking and induces a flight of fantasy in mankind’s seemingly endless quest for God. His words: ‘Religion is the sign of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions.’ Many people, even our increasingly godless society do not subscribe to that extreme view of religion. Why?

Because religion, by its very nature appeals to man. It has the potential to seize upon the emotions people for positive reasons or negative reasons. Take religion from affairs of man and you have taking everything away from him. This is because, religion, which Whitehead refers to as the hopeless quest and which Karl Marx likened to opium, is to man what the carburettor does to an automobile engine. The British Encyclopedia refers to religion this way:  ‘It serves to give men shared goals, thereby reducing the sharpness of their competitive goals; it promises later rewards, thus softening the anguish of present frustration; it helps to define the meaning of suffering, thus reducing the threat of chaos.

But we cannot take away from Whitehead and, for that matter, Karl Marx is that the problem with established religions centres on dogmatism. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence, dogmatism denies man the ability for rational thinking. Dogmatism gets man to vacillate, often beating about the bush in defence of what he considers to be right. True, the founders of world’s established religions craved for a world wide brotherhood of man; the irrational man, the dogmatic man and, indeed the radical man later succeeded in imposing himself on man.

Faith and reason are not the best of friends. Indeed, the war between the two has along history behind it. And there has been fracas with deadly consequences the moment the battle line is crossed by either of the two. Right from medieval times, wars were waged, human communities sacked and innocent lives lost the slightest brush between faith and mission. Most of the inventions and discoveries of the past that have made our world a more habitable place today engaged in real battles with faith.

It is entirely wrong to describe religion as dogmatic, conservative and reactionary or to compare it with science. The two are different; indeed some see both as two sides of the same coin. If people have a wrong impression of religion as dogmatic, conservative and reactionary, the fault lies more with practitioners of religion; not religion itself. When a man commits an offence in the name of a religion that preaches peace, the man, not the religion takes the flak. Religion becomes dogmatic, conservative and reactionary when it falls into the hand of men whose intention is anything and everything but religious.

Newspapers are reporting that the Wall Street protests that started in New York are spreading to other parts of America and to European countries. Occupy Wall Street slogan has been changed as Occupy London Stock Exchange in UK. The economic crisis and huge unemployment are fanning the flames vigorously. It has spread to Italy. The demonstrators have demanded a change in democratic financial system. They also want the bankers to be jailed.

Republican Party represents the rich

The unemployed and the underemployed people, millions in number, have realised that the taxpayers’ money is being swindled by the rich and the elite cream of the society. Governments pander to the whims and fancies of these rich people. In USA, the Republican Party exclusively caters to the benefits of these rich people, many of whom are its own party members. There is a nexus between the rich, politicians and the bureaucrats in the government in swindling money and enriching themselves further. The Republican Party opposes taxing the rich bitterly. But it does not mind poor Americans suffering because of the job loss.

Poor people forced to sponsor the rich

Stock markets, banks and financial institutions are hand in glove in siphoning the wealth of the common people and transferring it to fill the coffers of the rich. That is why the protests have started targeting stock markets. But in my opinion, the protests will spread and target the other people responsible for siphoning off their money – bankers, officials, politicians and rich business people. People have realised that the present financial system is tailor made for the minority rich people to swindle the majority. When a bank fails because of big unpaid loans to rich people, the poor taxpayers are asked to compensate it. In other words, poor people pay for the comforts of the rich people. This is a crude form of capitalism.

Anna Hazare kindles protest movement in India

A bloody revolution is in the offing. Its seeds have been sown already in New York. Karl Marx predicted that the first revolution will start in Britain. But his prophecy failed and the revolution came in Russia. Britain was spared of the revolution because it enjoyed the Colonial wealth. But now no such cushion is available for Britain to save itself. It is very clear in which direction the protest movement is heading for. Several governments are bound to fall. It may be an Arab Spring or a bloody communist revolution or any other thing. It is very difficult to predict it at this stage. But one thing is clear. Changes are inevitable. Some people can be fooled for all the time. All the people can be fooled for some time. But all the people cannot be fooled for all the time. The time has come for the underprivileged common people to wake up and fight the injustice against them. In India, this movement has been kindled by Anna Hazare. In the Western countries, the protesters against stock market have started it.

Communism worse than capitalist exploitation

I am not a socialist or a communist. In fact I am opposed to communism tooth and nail. Wherever communism took deep roots, there has only been misery for all and no economic progress has been registered. In China, Mao Tse Tung killed more than 100 million Chinese people in the name of Cultural Revolution in the sixties. In Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin butchered more than 100 million people in Siberian concentration camps. China started showing economic progress only after it shed its communist doctrine and adopted capitalism in its economic policies.

Can you kill your own people to quell the rebellion?

The protest movement should avoid taking the Western countries in the communist path. It is difficult to imagine USA or Britain being communist or socialist countries. But definitely the present form of capitalism should be changed. There should be more equitable distribution of wealth. There should not be so wide a disparity between the haves and the have-nots. All men are not equal. There is bound to be disparities in the earning capacities and wealth possession among the people of a nation. But at the same time, care should be taken to see that there are no islands of prosperity in the midst of abundant poverty and misery. Such a system is bound to collapse like a pack of cards. No external enemies are needed to destroy it. USA and other Western countries have been sitting on a time bomb for years together. That time bomb may explode at any time. You can bomb Afghanistan and kill one million people in the name of war on terrorism. But can you kill one million people belonging to your own country to quell the rebellion?

            The very first line in the Communist Manifesto gives credence to the idea that this book is about historical class struggles and their relationship to today. “The history of all hithero existing society is the history of class struggles.”[1] Marx is commentating about how throughout all human history there has been a relationship in society between those who rule and the people they rule over. In the past it was between the lord of the land and the serfs they controlled. In Marx’s time, the power of the Aristocracy had been fading for many years. From the ruins of that old order there had sprouted a new form of oppression. The Bourgeoisie (middle class) now controlled the labored masses (the Proletariat) who must work in their factories in order to make a living.

            Marx believes that the Bourgeoisie was able to gain power in the early 19th century for several historical reasons. The first of these reasons is that the exploration and discovery of the New World and Far East opened up many opportunities for the middle class to exploit. The colonization of these new lands resulted in “… the increase of the means of exchange and in commerce generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development.[2]”  The old feudal system of industry conducted within closed guilds controlled by the king could not keep up with this growing market. The manufacturing based Bourgeoisie capitalized on this growth and their industries and labor practices rapidly expanded throughout Europe. This destroyed the guilds and significantly weakened the aristocracy’s power to control the markets and the people. Without the expansion and colonization of new territories, the need for increased industry would have never surfaced and the Bourgeoisie would have remained a small class.

            The Bourgeoisie was able to invest in expanding these new markets due to the inventions of the Industrial Revolution. According to Marx, “the modern Bourgeoisie is itself a product of a long course of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and exchange.[3]” Constant revolutionizing of the means of production allowed the Bourgeoisie to sweep away older social conditions and impose new ones that were more to their advancement. With the inventions of the Industrial Revolution like the cotton gin, they could produce goods faster and quicker than any local guild. Also, with trains able to transport their goods in record breaking times, they could get more products to more people. With the guilds weakened and people flocking to work in factories, the old Lord-Serf relationship was weakened and replaced with the wage labor model that benefitted the Bourgeoisie model of work. With the new markets to exploit and the new tools at their disposal, the Bourgeoisie was quickly able to expand production to meet the new demand for their goods around the world.

            The final strike to the Aristocracies power came in the form of the revolutions and wars that occupied Europe from in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, mainly in France. According to Marx “Each step in the development of the Bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class.[4]” Originally, the industrial middle class was under the control of the nobility and lumped together with everybody else in the Third Estate. They only had one vote against the nobilities and the clergymen’s two as both groups often sided together. They were never able to pass anything that would help their class as the other two estates would block it. However, because of the strife caused by the French Revolution, they were able to gain power as part of the disenfranchised Third Estate. Because of their access to funds, they eventually were able to become the “counterpoise” to the nobility and rivaled them for power.

This new status was easily attainable in France as the king was killed in the revolution and another king was not to be reinstated by other countries until years later after Napoleon. Through the establishment of the modern industry markets, they surpassed the nobility in terms of power and influence. With their new found influence, they were able to control the state in order to serve the common affairs of the Bourgeoisie. Once they gained control in France, they were able to expand their influence and practices outside the country. Soon, all of Europe was using practices established by the Bourgeoisie in France.

Without these historical factors; the colonization of new lands, the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution, the Bourgeoisie would have never been able to gain enough power to significantly change the social order of Europe. It is likely that during Marx’s lifetime that without those three events, the Nobility would have still been the controller of the people in Europe. This was not the first time that the Bourgeoisie had changed the relationship between the people and the rulers, but it was the most widespread in the modern age. Marx believed that it was important for people to understand the historical context of what was happening in Europe in order to fully understand the modern social commentary in the second part of the book.

The rest of the Manifesto focuses on Marx’s social critiques about 19th century society and the problems that the Proletariat was facing. Marx believes that the Bourgeoisie control of industry is slowly destroying human freedoms and creating a world full of nothing but poor laborers stuck in a system of wage labor. He says of the wage labor system the Bourgeoisie has created, “It has converted the physician, the layer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage-laborers.[5]” Under the supposed freedom of “Free Trade”, the Bourgeoisie has expanded to the point where everybody is working for them. Their domination of the market forced the smaller artisans and shopkeepers that existed in the old days of aristocracy control to close and those people to move to the larger cities in order to gain work. In the factories, their previous experience is ignored and they are forced to do physical labor, completely negating their talents gained over years of practice.

Marx believes that people should protest against this type of treatment. There were groups forming at the time to protest against these practices, but another twisted part of the Bourgeoisie wage labor process stops them from starting a revolution. Marx explains that they are forcing people to stay within the system or possibly die as I result. The most common wage received at the time “is the minimum wage i.e. that quantum of the means of subsistence which is absolutely requisite to keep the laborer in bare existence as a laborer.[6]” With the bare minimum amount of money given to the laborers for them to live, they could not afford to strike or protest in fear of losing their jobs and starving to death. The Bourgeoisie purposefully did this to preserve profit and hamper strikes.

Another part of this system to keep the workers under control was forcing them to part with any extra money by giving it to other Bourgeoisie. Marx explains that when a worker receives his small paycheck “… at an end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.” By keeping the money in the system and away from the Proletariat, the Bourgeoisie was able to control their workers source of income and prevent them from ever escaping from the wage labor system. Many workers were basically becoming slave laborers from this cycle.

Despite all of these obstacles put against them, the Proletariat was still trying to improve their situation. At the time of Marx’s writing, unions were starting to form against the harsh practices of the Bourgeoisie. However, Marx believes that because of the general incoherence between the masses of workers “… the Proletarians do not fight their enemies, but the enemies of their enemies, the remnants of the absolute monarchy, the landowners, the non-industrial Bourgeoisie, the petty Bourgeoisie. Thus the whole historical movement is concentrated in the hands of the Bourgeoisie; every victory so obtained is a victory for the Bourgeoisie.[7]” Marx thinks that the Proletariat is focusing on the wrong enemy, the old enemy of the monarchy. The Monarchy no longer has the power to change policy, so the protesters need to focus their tactics on the industrial Bourgeoisie in order to obtain true freedom. 

            Marx was very supportive of the idea of forming unions to fight the Bourgeoisie practices, saying that “The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever-expanding union of the workers.[8]” He believed in the power of numbers and that with enough people to support the cause and the centralization of these protests, the groups could merge into one national struggle between classes. With the people united together, they could oppose the power of the Bourgeoisie through sheer numbers and overturn their harsh practices.

It is here were Marx begins to start his argument for communistic practices in order to save Europe from the Bourgeoisie tyranny. All the historical commentary and the critiques of the system were planned to eventually lead to the idea that communism can stop the Bourgeoisie and save humanity from being poor wage laborers. Marx wanted the unity to occur, as it would provide a strong platform to promote communistic ideologies. The last words in the Manifesto call for a revolution and for the “Working men of all countries, Unite![9]”  He pledged that “Communists everywhere would support every revolution movement against the current social and political order of things.[10]” With the power of the Proletariat behind the communist movement, they could revolutionize Europe and rid it of the Bourgeoisie forever.

Marx wove both historical context and current social commentary together to create a platform to spread his ideals of communism to the Proletariat. His comments about the degradation of the old feudal system due to colonial expansion and revolutions guided the reader into how the current Bourgeoisie led industry came into power in Europe. He then analyzed the new system at the time of writing to exemplify its faults towards the Proletariat. The poor wages and never ending cycle of work were examined in order to show the wage laborers that there was something wrong with the system and that they should fight to change it. He showed that the unions slowly forming against the Bourgeoisie could be centralized and be used to start a national revolution to change their lives forever. By carefully combining historical commentary and a modern social analysis into one book, he was able to create a compelling story to advance his ideas to the common man and start a revolution in the name of communism.

[1] Pg. 219 Paragraph 1 Communist Manifesto (All page notations are for Penguin Classics Version of the book)

[2] Pg. 220 Paragraph 4 Communist Manifesto

[3] Pg. 221 Paragraph 2 Communist Manifesto

[4] Pg. 221 Paragraph 3 Communist Manifesto

[5] Pg. 222 Paragraph 3 Communist Manifesto

[6] Pg. 236 Paragraph 5 Communist Manifesto

[7] Pg. 229 Paragraph 1 Communist Manifesto

[8] Pg. 229 Paragraph 3 Communist Manifesto

[9] Pg. 258 Paragraph 7 Communist Manifesto

[10] Pg. 258 Paragraph 3 Communist Manifesto

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The material conditions life generate alienation and no institution whether religious,political or economic is exempted from the condition of alienation.

In the words of Marx objectification is the practice of alienation.Just as man so long as he is engrossed in religion can only objectify his essence by an alien and fantastic being so under the sway of egoistic need,he can only affirm himself and produce objects in practice by subordinating his products and his own activity to the domination of an alien entity and by attributing to them the significance of an alien entity named money.

Karl Marx was particularly interested in the process of alienation in the capitalist society.As a result of his close association with Engels,Marx became personally aware of the anguish and alienation of the urban industrial workers.While alienation is common place in capitalist society and dominates every institutional sphere such as religion,economy and polity,its predominance in work place assumes an overriding importance for Marx.

According to Marx Alienation is apparent not only in the fact that my means of life belong to someone else but also that an inhuman power rules over everything.The impersonal forces of the market economy are alien to the worker,they make him dependent upon all the fluctuations in market price and inthe movement of capital.They have no regard for his welfare,are independent of his will and ultimately produce his beggary and starvation.

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In capitalist societies where the forces of production are owned by the minority the ruling class the state bureaucracy will inevitably represent the interests of  that class and would therefore from the Marxian viewpoint be an agent of exploitation of one class by the other.

According to Marxian theory in socialist society the bureaucracy should be replaced by new,truely democratic institutions.Lenin believed that after the dictatorship of the proletariat was established there would be a steady decline in state bureaucracy.He recognized that some form of administration was necessary but looked forward to the proposals outlined by Marx and Engels.He thought administrators should be directly appointed and should be subject to recall any time.

Even more valiant attempt was made in China by Mao Tse Tung to remove bureaucratic control during the cultural revolution wherein he introduced certain innovative ideas like the role shifting system and collective decision making.