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  KARL MARX’s CAPITALISM   Capitalism  is an economic system that is based on private ownership of the means of productionand the creation of goods or services for  profit. [1]  Other elements central to capitalism includecompetitive markets and capital accumulation. [2]  There are multiple variants of capitalism, includinglaissez-faire, welfare capitalism and state capitalism. Capitalism is considered to have been applied in a variety of historical cases, varying in time, geography, politics, and culture. [3]  There is general agreement that capitalism became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. [4]  Competitive markets may also be found in market-based alternatives to capitalism such as market socialism and co- operative economics.   Karl Marx on Capitalism, Marxism Capitalism   Marx Critique Of Capitalism  Marx applied his theory of history to the society and economy of his time in order to discover the laws of motion of capitalism and to identify contradictions between the forces and relations of production. He was concerned with long-run trends in the economy; when he examined the present, it was always in the context of the present as history. In his analysis of capitalism, he formulated certain principles that have become known as Marxian laws and are treated with much the same reverence by some Marxists as the laws of supply and demand are by some orthodox economists. The Marxian laws of capitalism include the following: a reserve army of the unemployed, a falling rate of profit, business crises, increasing concentration of industry into fewer firms, and increasing misery within the proletariat(are workers who sell their labor and who do not own their own of production).  In his analysis of the economics of capitalism, Marx used, with a few exceptions, the basic tools of classical economics, particularly Ricardian theory. Thus, he assumed (1) a labor cost theory explaining relative prices, (2) neutral money, (3) constant returns in manufacturing, (4) diminishing returns in agriculture, (5) perfect competition, (6) a rational, calculating economic man, and (7) a modified version of the wages fund doctrine. In most of his analysis he rejected the Ricardian assumptions of fixed coefficients of production, full employment, and the Malthusian population doctrine. Commodities, the Labor Theory of Value and Capital Commodities are objects that satisfy human needs and wants. Commodities are the fundamental units of capitalism, a form of economy based on the intense accumulation of such objects. The basic criterion for assessing a commodity’s value is its essential usefulness, what it does in the way of satisfying need and wants. This usefulness is its use-value, a property intrinsic to the commodity. Commodities also possess an exchange-value, the relative value of a commodity in relation to other commodities in an exchange situation. Unlike use-value, exchange-value is not intrinsic to a commodity. Exchange-value allows one to determine what one commodity is worth in relation to another commodity, for example how many units of corn one might exchange for a given unit of linen. In a complex market, all sorts of different commodities, although satisfying different needs and wants, must be measurable in the same units, namely money. Capital, Surplus Value, and Exploitation  Marx differentiates ordinary money from capital. In the simplest form of circulation of commodities, a commodity is transformed into money, which is then transformed back into a commodity as someone sells a commodity for money and then uses that money to buy a commodity they need. In this very basic market arrangement, people produce commodities so that they can obtain money to buy the commodities that they need. This dynamic naturally emerges in societies with a simple division of labor, in which different people specialize in the production of different commodities. Capitalism operates in accordance with different principles. Capitalists do not see money as a means of exchanging the commodities they produce for the commodities they need but as something to be sought after for its own sake. The capitalist starts with money, transforms it into commodities, then transforms those commodities into more money. Capital is money used to obtain more money. These two different arrangements are summed up respectively in the diagrams C-M-C and M-C-M (C = commodity; M = money). Capitalists are primarily interested in the accumulation of capital and not in the commodities themselves. Analysis Marx’s account of the ex ploitative relationship of capitalist to labor remains powerfully compelling and seems by many to be vindicated in history. Essentially, Marx argues that the mechanism of exploitation built into the capitalist economic system is the source of social antagonisms that will eventually lead to the dismantling of capitalism itself. In the early Hegelian writings, Marx looks to a notion of alienation, the estrangement of the worker from his humanity, to support the same prognosis. With the theory of exploitation and surplus value, he shifts away from philosophical language toward an economic frame of reference, though a common element, the idea that the capitalist social relations of production will lead to a destruction of the capitalist mode of production. The later formulation is more effective than the earlier, as it accompanies an analysis of actual historical events rather than purely speculative thought. Marx and Capitalism... They Almost Meet in the Dark  The root of all of the evil Marx surveyed was, he concluded, the private ownership of the means of production. The emotional case which he built in favor of a revolution to improve the position of the industrial worker was mountainous. The method of carrying out the revolution, he advocated, was for the workers to seize the government by force and then to use the state to expropriate the ownership of capital. Unfortunately, the moral truth of the massive case which Marx marshaled for improvement of the lot of the industrial worker was dwarfed by the magnitude of his error in assigning as the cause of the maldistribution of wealth, the private ownership of capital  . The Structures of capitalist society(Classical sociological theoty by George ritzer) During the marx’s time in Europe was undergoing an increasing industrializations. People are leaving their agricultural and artisan trades and works in factories because they are being forced to do so and it is literally inhuman. In the year of 1840’s, when Marx is about to enter his most productive period, Europe was facing a widespread sense of social crisis. Marx found the heart of capitalist society within the commodity. The two main types that Marz was totally concerned about were the proletariat and the capitalist.   
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