Capitalism Vs Marxism

These cards will describe what Capitalism and what Marxism is.

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Capitalism

Definition: a system of wage- Labour and commodity production for sale, exchange, and profit, rather than for the immediate need of the producers.

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Capitalism includes three pre-requisites, that help the 'Elite' class run their business, these three pre-requisites are:

1. Land

2. Capital (Money)

3. Labour

The first two are generally owned by the 'elite' class who are the minority group, who are the "owners of the means of production", and the last one is owned by us, the popular class (the workers). We have to sell our labour to get a payment (wages) to live.

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Laissez-faire Capitalism

The goods that are manufactured by the workers are eventually sold on the open market, where most of the buyers are the same people who made the goods.

Free market is at the heart of Capitalism

The competition between the providers ensures that the price and quality are controlled.

The governed laws of the market are of supply and demand.

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Laissez-faire means "leave it alone".

In this state the government is considered are the enemy of the free market, also the government would have no intervention.

 However in reality the government always interfers, for example they introduced minimum wage.

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Marxism

Marxists would argue that in the Capitalist state there is a great deal of inequalities.

For Marxists people have always organised themselves in order to extract what they need from the environment in order to survive and prosper.

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Marxism and Ideology

It consists of the lies, deceptions and misinformation peddled to the working classes in order to maintain the state of 'false consciousness'  which prevents workers from seeing their true or material interests.

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Louis Althusser

His views, the idea that we are free agents, capable of independent though and decision-making, is simply an illusion. He thinks that we are all the manifestations or effects of ideology.

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Karl Marx

His main critique of Capitalism was based on the exploration of workers by bosses who convert the workers labour into profits for themselves.

Commodities always represent the exploration of the workers who produced them becasue teh price for which they are sold is always much greater than the prouduction cost. In Marx's terms this profit is a direct reflection of the degree to which workers' labour has been exploited.

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