Joshua Paterson

Favorite Philosopher

Salt Lake Community College

Karl Marx
My Favorite Philosopher

Joshua Paterson
Philosophy 1000
Prof. Alexander Izrailevsky,Ph.D.

Joshua Paterson
Favorite Philosopher

Karl Marx was one of the greatest thinkers of the modern era. He was a Philosopher and
Economist, because of him being part philosopher his economic ideas are somewhat idealistic,
but they were just idealistic enough to have inspired many people to take a stand and work
towards a better system that does not exploit them. His profound ability to analyze and perceive
the world around him allowed him to produce papers that contained the philosophical seeds for
some of the biggest social movements of our time. From V.I. Lennin to Che Guevara and Mao
Zedong, his extremely powerful words have dramatically shaped the course of history.
Especially his criticism of capitalism. That remains relevant today, and predicted many of the
problems our society faces because of it. The exportation of labor, the growing wealth of the
bourgeoisie capitalists, and frequent and often disastrous economic depressions. These were, to
Marx, unacceptable means to be living in and he devoted his life to forming a philosophy and
political system that would avoid all of the self-contradictory aspects of capitalism. A system he
viewed as not only not economically viable, but as inherently immoral and based upon abuse.
One of Marxs most well known and controversial concepts was that of The Labor
Theory of Value. This states that value in commodities is formed by human labor going into
making them.. A handmade chair, for example, is worth much more than a chair off of a
mechanized assembly line. This is because a human used their time and energy to create it. So a
worker in a factory rents their labor to the factory, in exchange for an hourly wage. However,
under capitalism, a factory owner has no interest in paying you a wage unless you can provide

Joshua Paterson
Favorite Philosopher

more labor than they will pay you for it. The worker is working not to sustain themselves but
to produce a surplus that the employer gets to keep. Marx saw this, the essence of capitalism, as
coercive by nature. The problem is built into the system. The workers get more poor as their
bosses get rich, not on their own merit, but by exploiting the worker.
This brings us to what Karl Marx calls class struggle. There are workers who sell their
labor in exchange for wages, and capitalists who do not get their income from labor, but from
the surplus that the workers produced. This leads to tension. Marx argued that the inevitable
end to this system was that the tension between the two classes would eventually become so
strong that the workers would unite for the purpose of overthrowing the Bourgeois and
establishing a socialist state.
Marx believed that work can be one of the most fulfilling aspects of our lives, he saw it
as a way to externalize the good qualities that are found within each and everyone of us. One
of the main causes of frustration in the workplace is what Marx called alienation. The extreme
disconnect between the laborer and the product they are producing. This happens because in
capitalism, efficiency is king; and specialization of jobs is the best way to become more
efficient. The more specialized your job is the less you feel connected to final product, and less
connected to your sense of accomplishment. Workers also get alienated from their work when
wages get lowered to the point that they can no longer afford to buy the products that they are
making. This is one of the biggest contradictions of capitalism. Capitalists will continually try
to lower the cost of labor

Joshua Paterson
Favorite Philosopher

and increase efficiency, not so they can reduce the total amount of work that has to be done, but
to maximize the surplus they get to keep for themselves. However, over time, the working
classs wages are so low that they can no longer afford to buy the capitalists product. Thus
capitalism is bad for capitalists. It is in their best interest to squeeze as much labor for the
workers for the lowest price, but it is also kills their market. What good is making a product
that nobody can buy ?
Capitalism also alienates one man from another. People start to become only a number, a
completely disposable factor in how much money is being made. The second labor costs could
be reduced by mechanizing a job, or making the process slightly more efficient, humans will be
removed from work. In such an efficient system very many people are not needed to work, but
instead of this being seen as the freedom it is, capitalism makes us think that we are somehow
worthless. We label these people as unemployed and look down on them. Capitalism slowly
implants these ideas into our heads. It is much easier to ignore a homeless person if you view
them as just too lazy to get a job. This is what Marx calls ideology, and it helps to insulate the
internal contradictions. For example, in the feudal system, serfs knew that they would spend
some time working for the lord directly. The exploitation was not hidden, but it was justified by
the promise of a fruitful afterlife. In capitalism, the ideology is not one of justification but one
of concealment. But they serve the same purpose, to keep an exploitative system alive.
What other problems may be caused by the lowering of wages being incentivized by the
larger system? Marx was wise enough to foresee the exportation of labor. Why pay your own
countrymen to make products when you could pay foreigners half as much to do the same job?

Joshua Paterson
Favorite Philosopher

The answer is that any reasonable capitalist would export their labor. We see this problem a lot
in our modern world. People in America see mostly only the benefits of capitalism. We dont
see the Chinese workers locked in a hot room, working for thirteen hours a day for ridiculously
low wages. We dont see the factories that have nets around them to keep the workers from
committing suicide from the horrid working conditions. If we did I believe that more people
would have a problem with participating in such a system. The system trends towards a more
and more abusive relationship between the worker and the employer. This may seem very
unnatural and cruel, but this kind of despicable behavior is inherent in the system. This is one
of the reasons I like Marx so much, he was so perceptive that he was able to predict these
problems just from studying the basic ideas behind capitalism.
Marx was also a feminist. He is famous for stating that a society could be measured
solely by the social position of its women. He also asserted that women must be part of the
revolution saying That the emancipation of the productive class is that of all human beings without
distinction of sex or race. Although he did believe the current movement of women who where

trying to gain the right to work was flawed. He thought that women should not seek the same
enslavement that men have, but rather that both men and women should be free to enjoy leisure
, instead of their surplus time being stolen by capitalists.

I like Marx more for his amazing analysis and criticism of capitalism. Not so
much for his thoughts on what should happen after. Marx asserted that the dictatorship of the
proletariat was a necessary intermediate step in achieving a utopian stateless, classless society.

Joshua Paterson
Favorite Philosopher

Installing a dictatorship seems, to me, very much so counter-productive when trying to avoid
exploitation and class. His thoughts have been used to justify mass violence and cruel regimes.
But I believe this is the fault of those regimes and not Marx. I think it could be well argued that
capitalism has done exactly the same thing countless times. I also believe that any solution the
mass exploitation and woes of capitalism will be rooted in the many, and valid criticisms that
Marx was wise enough to foresee over a hundred years ago. It is not often that we get to see a
thinker get something so right. Marx was willing to see, and then act upon his beliefs in a way
that few have done before, as he said The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in
various ways. The point, however, is to change it. And that is why Marx are my favorite philosopher..