Karl Marx Vs Adam Smith

The theory of Marxism is superior on paper, but impossible in reality, while capitalism as presented by Smith is more suited for the real world economic practices. Karl Marx was the creator of Marxism and was a Hegelian at first, but his views where converted later on to communism and further on into his own Marxist beliefs. His beliefs held the fact that money is what alienates people, and that religion is insignificant. Adam Smith is the creator of capitalism in a sense. Many people contributed to his beliefs which outline the fact that the market should comprised only of small buyers and sellers; that way no entity is too large to influence price. This way everyone would benefit, but this will be explained later on. He also felt that the government was in place to serve the rich with its tax laws.

Karl Marx was born in1818, in Tier Germany. His parents originally Jewish converted to protestant to make life easier for Karl's father to practice law. Marx's education started in the University of Bonn, but was sent to the university of Berlin after he was arrested for drunkenness and his father felt it would be better for him. In Berlin he switched from law to philosophy, and oddly enough it was his father's death that put the thought of getting a job into Marx's head. After university his interests turned to journalism, he first worked for a liberal newspaper, but after working for a bit as its editor the Prussian government censors took interest and shut it down. He was soon forced to leave to Germany because of his new publication venture. He moved to Paris and considered himself a communist. He met Engels in Paris and together they published Marx's first book, The Holy Family. He was soon forced to move to Brussels, and partook in a communist program meant to keep communists in different countries in contact. When asked to put down the doctrines of this the result was the communist manifesto. After the French revolution he moved back to Paris, and continued to Germany where he started raising money to start a new radical newspaper, but was soon forced to leave when the Prussian government reinstated itself. The rest of his life he lived in London. Later on he mistook a depression for the fall of capitalism and started working on the book "Capital". After his death the critique of the Gotha program was published and recognized as his view of a future communist society. He used Hegel's beliefs against religion feeling that it was another form of alienation. His views later shifted to the ideal that money was the cause of human alienation.

Marx's ideals where concentrated on his belief that humans should be free from political, social, and economic constraints, and that this would let people perform at their full potential. His philosophies affect most of the world in one way or another, being the country in which you live uses his ideals as law, or a neighbouring country that is trying to prevent a Marxist revolution. His main thought was against Hegel's proposed dialectical ideals, which basically said everything has an opposite and together they create something new. Marx felt it was the material world that effected people the most. This lead to the belief that humans evolved from slavery to feudalism to capitalism and finally to communism. Then he went on to say the conflicts in each of them would lead to socialism, which he felt would be the perfect utopia for human life to prosper to its fullest. He felt that for politics and more advanced functions of society are affected by the basic things in life, in other words material goods. He went on to say that it was the way these things were produced would effect how people think and therefore go about with the advanced functions of society. He said that it was the surplus created by society that made one class above another to control this surplus, and this created the class conflict. He had a theory of false consciousness where the controlling class would tell the controlled class' what to think and therefore change their perception of the world around them, and completely crushing any ideas the controlled class' may have. So with socialism there was to be no controlling class and no surplus to grab so everyone would be on an equal playing field.

So now there is a perfect social system that would benefit humanity and make everyone happy and performing to their full potential. Why aren't we using it, and why are the countries that did use it so unsuccessful. This can be all connected with human instinct. We are in a way programmed to look out for ourselves and only ourselves. This is how society conditions us, and how the controlling class thinks. Therefore for a Marxist regime to work there must be no one interested in grabbing the surplus that will be created before equilibrium is reached. This can not happen at this point of social advance, for something like this to work something big would have to happen to change everyone's perspective on life. Then people would be more interested in the common good versus their own personal gain. That way no one would be interested in the surplus, and there would be no class conflict, this would lead to a perfect utopia as stated before. I feel there are only two things that could change the world in such a way, complete restart of the human race, for example a mass death of any form, or the ability to live for ever. The first one is still not guaranteed because humans may still evolve in the same way. The second one would be an almost sure thing because once humans cant reproduce and can't die they will no longer care for material goods but for a more spiritual existence. This is not the point, the point is the fact that unless either two of these happen, which is unlikely, Marxism will only be a great theory but without practical use. Some components will still used, but the complete ideals of Karl Marx will be just that Ideals, nothing more.

Adam Smith was born in Scotland in 1723. At 14 he was sent to the University of Glasgow later going into Oxford, he came out of this with a dislike for all English schools. He soon began giving public lectures and made his first economic theory. This was published in An Inquiry into the Nature and Cause of the Wealth of Nations. He then went to lecture at Glasgow as the chair of moral philosophy. This is when he produced the Theory of Moral Sentiments. Interestingly enough The Wealth of Nations was based on self interest. Smith was hired to tutor a young duke, with him he traveled through France. In France he met many intellectual leaders but they did not influence him that greatly. He died after returning home, retired from his previous paycheque. After his death most of