Karl Marx and His Critique of Capitalism

Karl Marx and his critique of capitalism

The definition of utopia is an ideally perfect place especially in its social, political, and moral aspects (dictionary.com). This paper will discuss the changes in capitalism since Marx?s critique in 1848. Marx?s fundamental critique remains correct today. Marx is still correct about his critique of capitalism because even though there have been changes made to capitalism to prevent some abuses, capitalism still produces inequality, reduces the family relationship, destroys small business, and enslaves.

In 1848 Karl Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto which was a formal statement of the communist party. ?The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles [?] we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold graduation of social rank? (Cohen and Fermon, 448). Marx believed that throughout the past the great societies of the world have all experienced class struggle in all their internal conflict. Marx felt that the class struggle that exists in capitalism would become the main internal conflict surpassing all other struggles. Marx illustrated class distinctions in both ancient history and modern history. Marx explained, ?In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, (and) slaves; in the middle ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild masters, journeymen, and apprentices? (Cohen and Fermon, 448). Marx makes this point to show that if a knight fought a slave then it was a class struggle, the oppressor vs. the oppressed.

Marx comments on the cycles between the oppressors and the oppressed because he felt that the capitalistic ways of oppression have been replaced with new forms of oppression, he stated:

The modern bourgeois society [?] has established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in the place of old ones. Our epoch has simplified the class antagonisms: Society as...