MOD 5 Karl Marx PDF

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Karl Marx and Democracy...

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The Inexorable System of Karl Marx speaks on the future of capitalism and the alienation that it causes within society among the working class and the capitalists, thus creating a class structure. According to Marx (1844) a perfect world of capitalism is one in which there are “no monopolies, no unions, no special advantages for anyone… [and] every commodity sells at exactly its proper price,” (p.155). One such commodity is that of labor-power which humans possess, but in Marx’s case he was speaking of labor-power among the working class/proletariat. The proletariat are forced to put a price on their worth which is essentially dictated by the capitalists. This is because in such a society, production is owned by the bourgeois who provide the jobs that the working class needs in order to sustain their livelihood, as such, a person’s labor-power is worth only as much as is needed to sustain one’s basic needs. Even though the working class are being paid their “proper value” they are forced to work for more than they are being paid so that capitalist can make a profit, because funds have to be cut somewhere, and with competition among the working class for jobs with no benefits or personal growth and development within their jobs, and no access to owning production, it causes alienation from man, production, his work, and his fellow workers. Though the bourgeois are able to have growth as a result of owning production which allows them the freedom to express their creativity, they too have their own alienation. In order for capitalist to make a profit they have to turn a blind eye and not care about the struggles of the working class, because if they start to care then it will be less likely for them to in good conscience exploit the working class of their commodity/labor. If they are unable to exploit the working class then their profits will suffer, and so they choose the latter over the former. Marx also speaks of an economy in which as a result of industrialism there has been a social and an economic change in the workforce whereby technology is replacing human labor, but it does not come without its issues because to replace human labor with technology would cause the capitalists their profit if everything were to be sold at its exact value. On the other hand, such a replacement further pushes the concept of alienation of man from his fellow workers because now there is more competition among them to procure jobs at even lower costs, so rather than a society in which they are helping each other to gain jobs, or to get an increase in wage, they are competing for the same job that pays very little with little to no personal satisfaction, gain or room for development. Similarly, Sir Ken Robinson describes an institution in which a system is setup for students to compete to prove their brilliance rather than help each other to reach a specific goal, or passing tests because it is considered cheating. Such a system in education creates a one where students eventually develop a habit of competition and being self-serving rather than having attributes of selflessness where competition is eradicated as students help each other to reach their goals. So now, they have been alienated from each other when the answers to the questions that will prove their brilliance sits at the back of the book, but are expected to work on the questions alone, with no help from each other or by simply flipping a few pages. Like Marx theory of alienation in which man work simply to provide their basic needs and not because it brings them joy; Sir Ken Robinson in his critique of the education system and its need for reform states that education was developed on the ideology of the Enlightenment period where students who are not as engrossed with the idea of school and its system of determining ones brilliance is based upon the “capacity of a certain type of deductive reasoning and the knowledge of the classics,” that is measured by the use of standardized testing (Robinson, 2010). With education being compulsory for everyone and a lack of stimulation for some students who are unable to pay attention because they find no joy in it are said to suffer from ADHD because of their failure to master the tests administered.

Robinson however suggests that the issue is not that they suffer from ADHD, but rather it is in the way that the material is being taught to a new generation of students and is instead rooted in the alienation from the product of their labor, where students who are indeed brilliant according to standardized testing aren’t and so are left to feel as though their own brilliance and creativity is unimportant. Marx best said it, “no hunting community would evolve or could use the framework of an industrial society, and similarly no industrial community could use the conception of law, order, and government of a primitive village,” (p.145). So rather than using a standardized testing based on the intellectual model of the mind from the 18th century to judge one’s brilliance, the education system should be reformed to match its time and the everchanging society in which it exists....