Strengths And Strengths Of Marx's Analysis Of Capitalism

Assess the strengths and weaknesses of Marx’s analysis of capitalism.

Marx’s explanation of capitalism is a widely recognised theory in a political, economic and social sense. His analysis of capitalism aims to explain how individuals allocate themselves and their resources to satisfy their basic human needs. He believes that the production of goods can be characterised by two main features: forces of production and relations of production. The forces of production refer to the ways in which people provide for their needs, this includes: land, labour and capital and the relations of production, which refers to the social relationships that dominate the production capacities of a society.

He distinguishes between the masses called the 'proletariat', which produce goods for the benefit of a dominant class of owners of capital the ‘bourgeoisie' and receive a wage in exchange for their labour. Marx explains that the bourgeoisie however exploit the labour of their employees by paying them wages of less than the market value of the goods they produce in order to make a profit themselves and allow future investment. Marx claims that the forces of production result in a set of social relationships which result in conflict between the proletariat and the capitalists is at the nature of capitalism. Profits and investment allow the bourgeoisie to continually accumulate capital and become more and more powerful. Furthermore competition between the capitalists makes the bourgeoisie group smaller and smaller, and more of society will become part of the proletariat group. Consequently society would then be categorised by a very small number of capitalists exploiting and oppressing a large number of poor proletarians. He also believes that as a r...

... middle of paper ...

...inevitable triumph of the proletariat and then stop, even though history shows that the class struggle exits, there have been no signs of a global revolution. Another flaw is the suggestion that this would happen first in the most advanced economies as the final stage of capitalism however it has only been detected in less developed economies such as Russia and China. According to Marx’s analysis he claims that developed democratic countries will adapt a communist approach, but it is clear that the majority of countries today still live by capitalist approaches. He claims that capitalism will be eradicated and replaced by communism, but in fact capitalism still exists. Capitalism may however be different to how it was viewed in Marx’s time. This is because capitalism has adapted and evolved since Marx’s analysis but it definitely still exists. Marx’s analysis fails