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The Manifesto opened with an ominous words: A spectre is haunting Europe- the spectre of Communism (Oxford World s Classics,

2008). One of the paramount figures in the domain of economics, known as the notorious angry genius Karl Marx, more accurately with the result of collaboration between him and his remarkable companion Friedrich Engels, Marx haven t just contributed to the field of economy as an economist but his writings inspired generations of economic thinkers (Colander, 2002) and following his works, entire societies has taken shape guided by his prophecies. Once at Marx graveyard Engels said that Just as Darwin discovered the law of evolution in organic nature, so does Marx discovered the law of evolution in human history (Heilbroner, 1991) and not only economist he was also a philosopher, sociologist, prophet and revolutionist. He has taught us not to just look at history but to look through the history and his works such as the Communist Manifesto (1848), Poverty of Philosophy, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 and obviously his greatest work of all, Das Kapital sparked many controversies which is still in debated up until now. The following paper will try to briefly elucidate the brilliant concepts of dialectical materialism, class struggle and finally analyze Capitalism with a finishing conclusion. Marx and Engels are important men but interestingly enough, problem with these two great men is that they are obscured behind Marx the figure and if we were to count the followers, Marx can be easily considered as a religious leader par to Christ or Mohammed. Most of his ideas constituted from Hegelian Philosophy and further incorporates French utopian thoughts and classical political economy and it revolves around a philosophy of inherent change or dialectics, which was first introduced by Hegel (Heilbroner, 1991) and further modified by Marx but it wasn t quite same as Hegel s dialectic which the grounds were in the world of ideas. Marx approached it from the materialistic side including the terrain of social and physical environment thus it is called Dialectical materialism. Ideas progressed through the opposition of a thesis and an antithesis out of which synthesis is born (Backhouse, 2002). If we employ this idea to society, each stage of society produced conflicts within itself, after in which the society moves to a higher stage of society. It is possible to observe feudalism gave way to capitalism in which Marx suggested it would give way to socialism and eventually communism or the highest stage of society. The terms socialism and communism have no exact meaning as they are used today, but in the Marxian system they refer to stages that will occur in the historical process (Colander, 2002). This dialectical analysis of material world is Marx s historical dialectics (Blackhouse, 2002). To give further insight to materialistic dialectics of Marx, he focuses on economic forces as the primary element of historical change and it reformed social science altogether. Isaiah Berlin, a British critic applied the parable of the hedgehog and the fox to Marx s hypothesis as it is one of the early models that looks deep into the social aspects in great detail and building up an epic model from materialistic perspective which prophesizes the historical change (Colander, 2002). Berlin says, the fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows one main thing. It is certain that clever Marx was the intellectual fox, but in trying to explain the historical theory, he omits many other relevant issues, concentrating solely on economic factors as the main component in explaining the changing structure of society. His approach to society was all but one society, classless society, can be divided analytically into two parts, one being forces of production and the other being relations of production (Colander, 2002). What Marx called as the social

superstructure in the dialectical sense is static as it is aimed at constraining changes with art, literature, music philosophy, religion jurisprudence and other cultural forms, which contrasts to the forces of production used by the society in producing material goods, manifested in labor skills, scientific knowledge tools and capital goods, they are inherently dynamic. As we have static relations of production or the thesis and the dynamic, changing forces of production plays as the antithesis in Marxian dialectics. Which both were in harmony until forces of production or technological changes became inconsistent with the existing relations of production. Due to the contradictions will develop into a class struggle and the intensity, when it reaches to a turning point, there will be a period of revolution and a new set of relations will emerge (Colander, 2002). The new relations of production are the synthesis that results from the old thesis and antithesis and these relations of production becomes the new thesis. This harmony will exist until the dynamic changing forces develop new inconsistencies and in this never ending flux the ideas emanating from one period would help to shape another. Man make their own history wrote Marx, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly found, given, and transmitted from the past (Heilbroner, 1991). But crucial as it is the dialectical- the changeful aspect of this history did not depend merely on the interplay of ideas and social structures but as stated above, economic world itself was changing; the bedrock on which the structure of ideas was built upon. It is rather difficult to separate capitalism from the class struggle as they are inherently interconnected. By understanding the essence of the historical era and revolutions and as Marx sets up the stage, in the world of two great protagonists of the capitalist drama, the worker and the capitalist, where it is possible to see that he already overlooks the landlord, we dive into a world of perfect capitalism. No monopolies, no unions, no special advantage for anyone. However initially Marx had a much more radical view as it is profoundly evident from one of the greatest and most controversial work of Marx, The Communist Manifesto and the opening phrase directly coming from the work, has a rather more persuasive and passionate form (Heilbroner, 1991). The Communist disdain to conceal their views and aims cried the Manifesto (Penguin Classics, 2004). They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social relations. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win (Heilbroner, 1991). During this era the ruling classes did tremble and they saw a threat of revolution everywhere and their fears were not groundless. In France the workmen sang radical songs to the accompaniment of blows from their sledgehammers, and the German poet Heinrich Heine who was going through factories, reported that really people in our gentle walk of life can have no idea of the demonic note which runs through these songs. (Heilbroner, 1991). But despite the words of the Manifesto, the demonic notes were not a call of communism but a desperate cry of desperation. Once the revolution was over with fierce bloody stains, it was inconclusive. From here Marx idea of proletariat, the one who which sells their labor in the market and the capitalists who own the means of production and their exchange relationship postulates (Colander, 2002). The argument, which brought up by Marx was that, capitalism separated the labor from the ownership of the means of production. This

implies that labor no longer own the workshops, its tools or the raw materials of production process. Capitalism basically means a society of two classes and one of the most important characteristics of this society is the exchange, the wage bargain between the capitalist and the labor supplying proletariat. In order to fully understand the idea it is necessary to briefly examine the theory developed by Marx explaining the commodity prices, or exchange values (Colander, 2002). His interest in wages was considered the most crucial element in the capitalist system. He viewed the labor theory was a means of a broader end, an understanding of the evolution of society. In Marx s labor theory, labor as the common element and considered that the amount of labor time necessary to produce a commodity governs their relative prices. His theory of relative prices was mainly taken from Ricardo s theory of value (Colander, 2002). The significance of this was that it provided him with a rough explanation of how exploitation could arise even in equilibrium. He thought exploitation was inherent in the basic relationships of capitalist production (Penguin Classics, 2004). Here Engels contributed with the idea that intensity of competition among workers impoverished them on the other hand Capitalist could combine their own interest by augmenting their industrial incomes with rents and interests. With the addition of specialization renders workers from freely moving from sector to another. The result was that when prices fell it was workers whose incomes were reduced to below natural rate. Capitalists were able to keep their competitive price of their product above their natural prices hence extracting surplus. Further study of capitalization is done in his life long work Capital, which some scholars have termed it systematic dialectics (Penguin Classics, 2004). A major issue with Capital started off with very abstract categories, only generalization could be made in the early stages and could only explain general phenomena. By stressing the fixation with the exploitation Marx s arguments rested on the distinction between labor and labor power. The value of individuals labor power was like the value of any other commodity and it was measured in time. If it took six hours to produce the goods a worker needed to subsist and reproduce, the value of his labor power was six hours. However the capitalist made the workers work for 10 or more hours, in case of 1862 record it was noted that at a Manchester factory the average work week for a period of a month and a half was 84 hours (Heilbroner, 1991), and thus this is what Marx called it as the source of profit (Penguin Classics, 2004). The surplus extracted from the work force was a sum of money but Capital however was not simply money (Colander, 2002). To function as a capital it had to be transformed first into means of production and labor power, then into capital in the production process, then into stock of commodities and finally the commodities were sold into money. To form a simple presentation, Money-Commodity-more Money or M-C-M (Penguin Classics, 2004) was the best way to describe this circuit. Some very important ideas are thoroughly discussed such as what we call depressions or Marx termed it as business crises and its origins, reserve army and how the unemployed brings down wages and forms an environment where capitalist can exploit the workforce even in an equilibrium and find profits and finally the most important contradiction which Marx pointed out which ultimately leads to the destruction of capitalism is the falling rate of profit, clash between the forces and relations of production (Colander, 2002). To conclude without this man - dark skin, stocky and powerfully build with shining deep eyes which made him look like a revolutionist sometimes called as The Moor by his

children, our history would have looked entirely different, it is not because if Marx has not lived, there would have been other Socialists and prophets of a new society but rather it was the with Marx and his prediction of the downfall of capitalism which fortified the emergence of the communism brought stimulus and change. He was an economist who has read every Economist, an emotional critic who can write that capital has a vampire thirst for the living blood of labor yet his books might be written with fury, it also analyzes with cold logic. His vision of the historic process as an arena to which social classes struggle for supremacy. Overall the model of Capitalism showed extraordinary predictive capacity but as history folds the changes were slow and streched over time and unnoticable similar to a growth of a tree. it was not of course exact and in the end Marx pure capitalism collapsed. Certainly he wasnt infallible,

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