Capitalism And Capitalism Essay

Capitalism, the foundation of the American economy, is a system characterized by the privatization of the means of production. This system includes wage labor, competitive market, private sector employment, and the overall goal of gaining a profit. Capitalism, though relatively normalized and seen as the standard practice in the economic systems of the world, is a system that gives power to the wealthy and strips away at the proletariat class’ ability to rise in the social and economic hierarchy. It offers wealth and opportunity for those at the highest rung, in hopes that their filled pockets would put money and jobs back into the economy to raise efficiency and production, all while accumulating profit. Karl Marx’s theory of labor exploitation

This means that people are not only the providers of labor, but also those who consume the products of the labor provided. Capitalism consists of a seemingly positive feedback loop where producers invest in technological improvement and labor which raises efficiency and productivity, lowers prices of goods, and increases consumption. Sternberg defines capitalism as. “an economic system characterized by comprehensive private property, free-market pricing and the absence of coercion” (385). This system, however, ignores the fact that workers, with the onset of the industrial revolution, are continually replaced by machines who are able to work more efficiently, thusly lowering the price of labor. The rise of the industrial revolution made it so that workers were no longer as valuable as the machine that replaced the individual, making the value of labor much lower and therefore depreciating wages. The employer determines the value of the worker’s labor in reference to their ability to produce in comparison to a machine designed to complete the task at a more efficient rate, and thusly controls the worker’s social and economic status. By eating away at the value of labor, a clear divide is visible between the capitalist class and the