Marx Analysis

Karl Marx lived in Germany and was born to a Jewish family in 1818. His dad was a lawyer, whom later on converted to Christianity. He wrote the book " The Communist Manifesto" urging other to join and read about his beliefs. Marx is most known for his ideas and theories of capitalism such as labor theory of value, the dialect as well as the theory of base and superstructure, etc.

The ideas of labor theory of value is basically the idea that labor is and important part in attaining wealth ( as well as nature as Marx would argue). Capitalists or the expropriators use and abuse the labor of the workers for their own benefit. The workers do all of the labor and don't reap the benefits, instead they are taken advantage of for low wages. The workers are in turn being exploited because they have no choice or other means of getting money except for seeing their labor for money so they are subject to this way of life without choice. Of course they can own their own factory but not everyone is going to be able to obtain the money to start their own factory or business so its difficult to get away from this. For example in a game of monopoly the capitalists would be the ones to own all the properties (symbolizing jobs) and the workers would be the ones rolling the dice and landing on properties. Since the capitalists run all of the properties they simply sit back as the workers pay the in money (by producing good being sold for capital).


The ideas of dialect thinking consist of questioning how things were, how they got there and how it will be in the future. Through development things change and the process that something goes through is very important to answering those questions about. The process described as the dialect includes a thesis which is the primary idea and an anti-thesis is an internal contradiction to the idea of the thesis. When the ideas of the thesis and the anti these clash, they form a synthesis which is a compromised thesis and anti thesis. Capitalism changes this way starting out one certain way and changing over time but how it will be in the future nobody knows for certain. Looking back at history and how capitalism is now the question of where will it be in the future is an interesting idea.

Marx's theory of base and superstructure is about the individual aspects that makes up capitalism. The base of capitalism is between the ruler and the ruled or basically the laborer and the person who expropriates the labor. The superstructure includes other aspects of capitalism such as profit, capital and wealth and how all these these aspects intertwine and affect social orders and conditions.