Karl Marx

Karl Marx was a man who lived in the 1820's Germany, growing up with a jewish family who was financially well off. What Marx is most known for is his analysis of capitalism and the ideas that came along with it including, the dialectic of capitalism, the reasoning behind why people have the wealth that they have today and where it all started, the labor theory of value, and the theory of base and superstructure.

Marx's idea of how the world changes is the dialectic. There is a thesis, the main idea, which then comes with contradictions within itself, being the anti thesis, which then turns into a higher synthesis of the thesis and the anti-thesis together. Connecting to the dialectic of capitalism which came from feudalism, which is land ruled by the kings and those below them have to work for them and their descendants being born into their social class without being able to change it, then the internal contradictions being the Bourgeoisie (capitalists), and the higher synthesis from the elements of feudalism and the elements of the capitalists become, capitalism. And as time goes on, capitalism much change as well. Going through the same process, there's capitalism, then there's the internal contradictions that we face in society, which then becomes the opposition of capitalism as the higher synthesis, then becoming a socialist society.

Then there is the primitive accumulation of capitalism. In America today we see, live, and experience the social classes in society. We also see the gap between the rich and the poor, the rich having lots of money while the working class and below have to work to get as much as they can to survive. As we have noticed in the interviews with other students in America and perhaps on our own, the richer people tend to be caucasian. Marx's analysis showed that the reason most of the richer people in America are rich not because their ancestors worked hard for the money, or businesses they have but because they made lots of money by stealing natural resources from other countries and making a commodity out of it, turning it into capital by selling it and making money off of their stolen goods. They also got their money because of slavery and conquest, the Europeans conquered land in Africa, stole not only the land, but the resources and the people living there and used them as laborers to produce the business they now own because they stole their goods and services. The labor theory of value is a theory about the importance of laborers in capitalism. Laborers produce a certain amount of goods but they only get a percentage of how much those goods are worth, the capitalists receive the rest of the money to invest in capital, to make more profit which becomes wealth. As Lassal, who was part of the social democratic party of Germany said, "workers are the source of all wealth. Labor is the source of all wealth," meaning that the capitalists depend on the laborers to make as much money for them as they possibly can in order for them to gain even more profit by making machines to produce their goods quicker.

Marx's idea of base and superstructure talks about the basic aspects of capitalism and the parts that go along with it. His theory was that the basis of capitalism was the relationship between the ruler and the ruled, or in other words, the capitailists and the laborers and the basis then leads to the superstructure, being other aspects of it such as, profit, capital, wealth etc.