Topic: Analysis of Capitalism
Essay Outline
- Para 1: Thesis Statement: labor exploitation using “The Communist Manifesto” by Karl Marx and “Address to the Prisoners in the Cook County Jail” by Clarence Darrow.
- Para 2: When talking about labor exploitation, there is a direct association with utilization, and traditionally this would make exploitation as an unequal taking benefit of another individual because of their rank, which is inferior, providing power to the exploiter.
- Para 3: Marx under capitalism draws the concept that worker under capitalism suffers from different types of alienated labor.
- Para 4: According to Marx, exploitation is done by the mediators who are capable of commanding materials, with income from their salaries that are embodied with extra labor than the exploitation is put forth, in relation to capitalist production and social relationships (95).
Analysis of Capitalism
In this paper, I will prove labor exploitation using “The Communist Manifesto” by Karl Marx and “Address to the Prisoners in the Cook County Jail” by Clarence Darrow. The exploitation of labor utilizes power to analytically extract more charges from employees than is offered to them. The two readings indicate how people have been misusing powers to exploit others economically. For instance, Darrow says, “prisoners are highly mistreated for they are expected to provide free services as they serve for their imprisonment period” (10). Labor exploitation is, therefore, a social connection based on irregularity of command between employers and their workers.
When talking about labor misuse, there is an undeviating association with utilization, and conventionally this would make exploitation as the unequal taking benefit of another individual because of their rank, which is inferior, providing power to the exploiter. In his communist manifesto, Karl Marx is preferred as the most influential and classical approach to exploitation. He recognized that labor exploitation as morally unfair, but more stress on economic injustice, pinpointing the mathematical disparity of pay to value released. Desai connotes, “Economists are divided on the clarification while analyzing exploitation of labor offered by Adam Smith and Marx” (9). Exploitation, according to smith, is not an inbuilt systematic occurrence in confident fiscal schemes as Marx did, but rather moral injustice, which is optional. Amable argues, “The philosophical and economic manuscripts wrap a broad range of topics, comprising much interesting material on communism and private property, and on money, alongside enhancing Marx’s analysis of Hegel about labor exploitation” (78).
Marx, under capitalism, draws the worker under capitalism suffering from different types of alienated labor. It is vital to know that alienation by Marx is not a mere subject of confusion or subjective feeling (99). The gap in Marx’s early analysis of hostility and his humane approach later is that individuals who are alienated usually undergo extreme untaught suffering. In supporting Marx, Adam Smith says, “human beings are free and able to work than a supervised slave.” In this quote, Adam meant that people should be allowed to work freely without being harassed. In the view of Marx, the capitalist institutions themselves are the effects of human behavior. Overall, capitalists usually have the intention of staying in business to exploit their workers to the legal limit.
According to Marx, the exploiters are the mediators capable of commanding materials, with income from their wages embodied with extra labor than the exploiters themselves have put forth in relation to capitalist production and social relationships (95). Hilt noted, “The agents have class ownership and status of creative resources that help maximize exploitation” (520). Typically, the bourgeoisie is the exploiter. Generally, the exploited workers are those who get low than the regular commodities she/he releases. If employees get an amount equal to their ordinary products, there is no income left over. Thus, these employees cannot benefit from the fruit of their labor, and the variation between what can be purchased and what can be made cannot be warranted by redeployment according to wants.
The communist manifesto was developed by German philosophers to ensure that workers are not explicated. Further, the manifesto by Marx summaries approaches concerning the nature of politics and society. Communists argue that capitalists tend to misuse people because all means of production are owned by the government. This communist manifesto is against the laid down policies to deal with society to ensure that no exploitation. Labor exploitation is attached to the Marxist technique of “labor approach value,” enhanced earlier in a somewhat dissimilar form by David Ricardo, an economist who summarized that the economic standards of goods in broad is eventually established by the rate of the labor that it takes to release them.
The technique of labor exploitation is widely linked to Marx’s reading. For millennia class domination has occurred, and people movement has occurred for millennia in times of pre-capitalist. According to Karl Marx and other philosophers, exploitation is at the center of monetary relations under capitalism since the possessor pays the employee little than the worth the workers’ output, and the possessors maintain the surplus, which may constitute costs the capitalists deserve but also constitutes profit (99). According to the labor theory of value, Karl Marx argues that under private enterprise, all value is released by labor, which is pushed by capitalistic class to work more hours than is needed to give for their services. The working hours are added, but the wages remain constant hence leading to exploitation of workers for not adding them a salary for extended working hours.
According to the scientific analysis of capitalism, Marx depicts that exploitation is unavoidable under the scheme and that only by moving to socialism and transcending can exploitation be mitigated. There will be no output without laboring. If the laborers go on strike as a result of exploitation, manufacturing would not be secure. Marx connotes that labor is only productive, but capital is necessary to production so that the application of technology and science can be argued to be productive (100). A worker might also be exploited by capital, but Marx has changed something political into what he claims is scientific.
Indeed, exploitation occurs under capitalism, and it stays as a political and social challenge that we would target to overcome through the communal rule. This is the issue even if we disclose that capital alongside labor leads to the manufacture of value. The two are viewed to be reliable on each other in manufacturing. Workers in any business may experience unhealthy or dangerous work to some degree. For instance, working in an environment with a fire risk or retrieving substances from boiling water. However, a reasonable employer would safeguard workers against such hazards that they may experience and should not exploit them. In cases where there is labor exploitation, these protections are not provided. Some exploitative employers even usually force employees to work even without providing them with precautionary measures while at work. Long working hours are another way in which employees might be exploited. It has been found that employees are forced to work very long hours, almost 15 hours every day (Hilt 530). They are also expected to travel long distances, which are not included in the usual working hours.
Moreover, workers are exploited when they lack housing. People who are working hard require a place where they can rest. However, some workers are pushed to make with humiliation and inhuman shelter, whereby exorbitant prices are charged. There are also cases of underpayment in situations of labor exploitation. Regularly employees are underpaid, with employers providing no overtime payment and employers paying little than a minimum salary. Employers irregularly will even use their regulations to maintain finance to themselves, such as inflicting outrageously extra charges for mobile calls done during doctor visits or work (Desai 10). Karl Marx found that labor exploitation also occurs when employers put their workers under psychological or physical pressure. Some employers refuse their workers from visiting a hospital or the doctor when they are sick. Others curtail their workers’ liberty of movement, for instance, by taking away their identity card or passport, therefore maintaining their employees.
According to “The Communist Manifesto” by Karl Marx, regardless of embarrassment and adversity that some well-known companies have attained for manufacturing their commodities, exploitation and cheap labor of human rights remain widespread still. United States Labor Law records that there are definite salaries that must be offered to people for providing services when these acts are violated. Workers should not work for cheap labor.
Marx is against the exploitation by capitalists, which comprise necessary appropriation by capitalists of the extra value manufactured by employees. Under capitalism, workers are compelled by their insufficient possession of means of manufacturing to advertising their labor power to capitalists for little than the whole value of the commodities they make. Employers are not expected to take unfair benefit from the employees through exploiting them. Exploitation can be structural or transactional (Amable 88). For instance, a sweatshop that remunerates little salaries might be associated with exploiting workers in this sense. Furthermore, exploitation can be mutually or harmful beneficial. Mutual exploitation is whereby both parties benefit. The two parties mutually benefit because both of them are unfair in some way. Brutal exploitation is commonly practiced in most industries were only the employers help with the workers suffering economically and socially.
In conclusion, issues about exploitation regularly take the outline of unfair economic exchange. According to the influential theory of exploitation by Karl Marx, employees in a capitalistic society are exploited as they are pushed to hire their labor services to capitalists for little than the whole value of goods they manufacture with their labor. In authenticity, Marx justified employees labor under capitalism is neither accurately voluntary nor completely for the employees themselves. Therefore, employees are forced to sell labor to capitalists because they lack production or else they perish.
Works Cited
Amable, Bruno. “Institutional complementarities in the dynamic comparative analysis of capitalism.” Journal of Institutional Economics 12.1 (2016): 79-103.
Darrow, Clarence. “Address to the prisoners in the Cook County Jail.” Bureau of Public Secrets (1920).
Desai, Radhika. “Marx’s critical political economy,’ Marxist economics’ and occurring revolutions against capitalism.” Third World Quarterly (2020): 1-18.
Hilt, Eric. “Economic history, historical analysis, and the “New History of Capitalism.” The Journal of Economic History 77.2 (2017): 511-536.
Marx, Karl “The Communist Manifesto.” (1967). 91-101