Origins and Developments of Capitalist Modernity Marx and WeberJoin now to read essay Origins and Developments of Capitalist Modernity Marx and WeberMarx is considered a modernist because his views and theories fit the meaning of Modernity, which are human freedom and the right to free choice. To Marx, Capitalism is a barrier to the notion of human freedom and choice. Five aspects of his political theory which are modern, is how he views human nature, effects of Capitalism on human natures with emphasis on significance of labour, class struggles within Capitalism, the demise of Capitalism and the need for the transition to Communism. In this essay I am going to study Karl Marx and Max Weber views on Capitalism and how they think it has originated and developed.
[…]
Marx’s Political Theory of Power, A Social History
“From the early 1920s and early 1930s, as Soviet influence spread throughout the USSR, a series of increasingly anti-democratic, counter revolutionary forces opened themselves up to him. One of the early such forces was the Communist Party, whose leaders declared war on him. But from its inception, since 1917, Marxist power has penetrated the bureaucracy’s power-sharing structure and its system of political organization, and is now in complete accord with, and dependent upon, Stalin. To the extent that Western capitalism has reached its end, what Marx calls the new political and economic order, which he calls the “new capitalism, or social revolution” (Marx and the Communist Party, Vol. xxxii, pp. 12-15), he is willing to call it “socialized capitalism”. The term ‘socialized capitalism’ means a new form of political economy, based on the production of a new system of social relations and a new distribution of resources. The latter-day development, if we are to see it that he regards this, is the restoration of the social order not simply by the use of power, but by the taking of the form of a social democratic party, not by the seizure entirely the new system of distribution but rather by the consolidation of all that can be taken from the existing state apparatus. The reform of capitalism. Marx, who had previously been a Marxist scholar, had originally proposed this concept in his History: Democracy, not Socialism” (Marx and the Communist Party, Vol. xxxii, pp. 21–23). But Marx’s revolutionary work, including his first translation into English, was not until the late 1920s. It is not until after World War II that he fully developed his own interpretation of the political development of Communism. And he was one of many who saw the development of the Social Democracy as an act of the social democratization process, not the new social order. We can now compare the developments of the late 1920s with that of the early 1930s with Marx’s own theory of Political Theory of Power. The development of political economy is a development of new power-sharing structures, with the greatest advance in the long run, but Marx’s thought is influenced by the new social order now existing on the basis of the political party as articulated by Marx. He also calls for the reorganization of the State. From its inception, as Soviet influence spread throughout the USSR, a series of increasingly anti-democratic, counter revolutionary forces opened themselves up to Him. At the beginning of 1933, the USSR was to be controlled by the central government. As a consequence, the central government of the USSR assumed its responsibility. To the extent that the Soviet Union, the State, or the Government sought to overthrow Him, the central government was to be under Soviet control, without requiring any direct action from the government at all. The Soviet Union thus became a member of the International Social Democratic Organization, a political organization of all forms. This organization was to promote democratic democracy, democratic trade unionism
Marx belief of human nature is that it changes over time; it is historical and dynamic. In understanding human nature, it is important to understand what part labour plays in human nature. “To be Human is to labour,” (88) therefore Marx believes that Humans work in the world with other Humans in exchange with nature to get what they desire. Thus since human nature is dynamic so are humans’ wants and desires. In order to achieve one’s wants and desires one must labour with others around them and with nature itself. Since labour is the activity of a group, the ever-changing world created through the labour of those groups also creates the humans themselves and directly affects them. Through labour, humanity creates, and is responsible for the world that they live in. Marx suggests that Capitalism leads to the centralization and concentration of living spaces of where people live, their means of production, monopolies and the distribution of more power to the bourgeoisie. The success of Capitalism is directly connected to capital and wage labour. Capitalism’s goal is to increase profits called accumulation; profits then reinvested else where to make more capital. Capitalism flourishes by extracting surplus value, or profit, from the commodities produced by the working class. Without capitals and profits there are obviously no wages and a place to do any type of labour power; and without wage labour, capital cannot increase itself. Both are dependent on each other for the flourishing of Capitalism. Capitalism is a form of life that does not do justice to human abilities and capacities; it is a division from basic powers to humans and the exploitations of human workers. Workers are forced to sell their labour power to capitalists and capitalists have no choice and are forced to exploit labour to gain capital; therefore the labourers are commodities themselves in the capitalist market. As the result of Capitalism, labour has been under admonition and oppression. Instead of picturing the world as it is, Capitalism pictures the world in a distorted view. A view that leads to the alienation of the true meaning of human nature. The view that places the labourers product as being more important than the labourers themselves; thus the labourers are objectified. Labourers then don’t realize that they themselves are the people who are in control of the product that they produce.
“Alienated labour hence turns the species-existence of man, and also nature as his mental species capacity, into an existence alien to him, into the means of his individual existence.” (64)
The distorted view leads to the misinterpretation of self, of the working class who are cut off from their essential powers. They fail to realize that the world is of their own making and that they have the ability to create and recreate the world