Karl Marx and Wal Mart

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Karl Marx and Wal Mart

When we think of the well-known private employer “Wal-Mart” what exactly comes to our minds? We may think of Wal-Mart as being a convenient, useful, low price department store that contains our everyday goods and necessities. On the outside perspective, we are generally appreciative of the fact that Wal-Mart exists and is able provide for our needs. But do we ever think of what happens inside the company? While customers may be happy, the employees can be considered as angry, disappointed, frustrated, and struggling do to harming executive wage decisions. While many employees are getting cut from their full time positions to part-time, they are also getting a decreased pay. In this theoretical application paper, I will be applying the father of conflict theory Karl Marx’s theoretical concepts to a Wal-Mart news article. There are many different theoretical concepts that I will be applying throughout this application essay. These major concepts applied are capitalism, Bourgeoisie, Proletariat, haves, have-nots, exploitation, class consciousness, and objectification.

Capitalism, is among one of the most important concepts and mainframe of this application paper. According to the 2009 film “Capitalism a Love Story,” capitalism is considered as taking and giving, but mostly taking. Capitalism can also be defined as a mode of production that produces profit for the owners (Dillon, 72). It is based on, and ultimately measured by the inequality and competition between the capitalist owners and the wage workers. A major facet of capitalism is constantly making and designing new things then selling afterwards (Dillon, 34).Capitalism has emerged as far back as the middle ages but had fully flowered around the time o...

... middle of paper ...

...s really mean, they can also be found in many places in the capitalism world. Wal-Mart in this case was a very good candidate. The concepts directly applied to employee frustrations of getting demoted, having their wages capped, and being exploited. Though these are unfortunate circumstances for the employee that demonstrate the inequality between the executive and employee, these moves are deemed necessary of the functioning of society.

Works Cited

Capitalism A Love Story. Dir. Michael Moore. Paramount, 2009. DVD.

Dillon, Michele. Introduction to Sociological Theory: Theorists, Concepts, and Their Applicability to the Twenty-first Century. Chichester, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010. Print.

Greenhouse, Steven, and Michael Barbaro. "Wal-Mart to Add More Part-Timers And Wage Caps." The New York Times. The New York Times, 01 Oct. 2006. Web. 16 Feb. 2014.

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