Bernie Sanders Marxist Analysis

Bernie Sanders is a Marxist. Although Bernie Sanders is a self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist, it seems that his platform and where he stands on current issues follows a Marxist ideology. His belief that there should be a classless America with a redistributed wealth not only undermines capitalism, but solidifies his stance as a Marxist.

Karl Marx was a German philosopher who had an idea of revolution in the context of society. The purpose of these changes would be the ultimate creation of an ideal society in his mind. However, his ideas were not well received by his home country and he was forced to leave. Marx defined his ideas by examining mankind’s historical power struggle between those who hold wealth and power and those who do not.

The capitalist and the proletariat working class.

Problems emerge when capitalists pay the working classes extremely low wages while keeping the profits for themselves. This system allowed the rich to become richer and the poor to become poorer. This situation would lead to the working class becoming enraged and fed up, finally coming to a head in the form of an uprising. This revolution would be called “Communism.” Furthermore, Marx believed that his perfect society is one that is both stateless and classless. Marx’s main idea was to free the lower class from poverty and create a classless society. Marx believed that in order to liberate the poor, the government would have control over the production so that the citizens would be equal, with no class distinction. Historically, this has proven to be easier said than done in practice. In the communist society that Marx described, the government has supreme authority through its total control of land and means of production. Because the government distributes land and property among the people, it

has the power to set a standard of equality. While the founding fathers’ of America may have wanted to create a place where all men are created equal, a Communist society, one that Sanders is pushing for, is the exact opposite. A classless society where the government has absolute power is the very thing that the Americans rebelled against.
When looking at how Bernie Sanders stands on the issue of social income and wealth inequality, he believes that the gap between the wealthiest people and the poorest is too large and needs to be closed, and have the money from the wealth is redistributed to the poor. When looking at Karl Marx’s ideology it is very similar to Bernie Sanders position in the aspect that they both feel that it necessary to close the gap of social wealth inequality. The reason why there is such a big gap because those who do the manual labor produce more than they need to survive. Bernie Sanders sees that with income inequality growing the gap between the two social classes of the capitalist and the laborer is also growing. Due to the fact that monopolies are destroying old industries and putting small businesses out of business, it makes hard for the working class to truly bring in income and grow, leaving a huge income inequality and in poverty.
Marx noticed these factors of this society and realized that it was exploiting the people in an unhealthy way in that they did extra hours to produce excess under the incentive that they would be rewarded when in fact the already wealthy were only getting wealthier.

However, fast forward to modern day and Bernie Sanders is exploiting the same problems that were happening during Karl Marx’s time except Sanders is trying transform this capitalistic environment into something else with the help of implementing programs and raising taxes to America to lower working hours and higher wages to even the playing field to give the proletariat the ability of financial freedom after some years have

passed.
However, when looking closely at wage labor it is only another way to alienate labor that creates competition. Competition is formed throughout the entire economy between both the capitalists themselves and the proletariats. The capitalist is competing against other capitalists in a means to out produce the other and became a dominant monopoly within the industry. What this does and affects is the cost of the product in lowering the price due to the social pressure to sell to the customer in turn pressuring the laborer to be able to push more products out. Unfortunately, for the laborers, after being pushed to work so hard for the capitalists they only get aid minimum wage forcing the worker to consistently reproduce within the same social class, ultimately keeping those a worker within the social class, progressing the idea of a capitalist society throughout time and history. What Bernie Sanders is trying to do is end the struggle between the two as well as the nonstop cycle of proletariat’s being born into the working class and ending the distinction of the working and poor to the wealthy capitalists. With trying to raise the rates in which the laborer gets paid higher is a start in which the American social class can get find their way out of poverty and overall end class struggle.