Capitalism and Proletariats

Critiques of social contract theories abound, even including criticisms from social contract theorists themselves, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau. John Locke’s social contract theory remains one of the prominent theories to this day, and includes the idea that a thing owned in common can be obtained by adding one’s labor to it. Critics of social contract theories aren’t simply seeking to negate the theories of social contract theories, but in many cases are seeking to enhance them and show how they can be applied to certain principles. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel is one critic of social contract theory, who begins his work with an alternative to foundational state of nature conjectures used by social contract theorists such as Thomas Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. Karl Marx then critiques and refines Locke’s work to fit his purpose, while using Hegel’s theories to supplement his work. Marx uses Hegel’s “lord and bondage” critique to utilize Locke’s social contract theory from a different perspective; Marx alters the reason why Locke’s theory of property is important.
According to Hegel, our self-consciousness arises from recognizing another individual and being recognized by that individual. Hegel concedes that such self-consciousness makes us dependent on the one who we are both recognizing and being recognized by. In order to break free of this dependency, the equals must struggle for death; whoever is more afraid of death will be unwilling to give up his life and will therefore become dependent on the other. Marx takes this concept and applies it to labor under the system of capitalism, where people are forced to either be employers or employees.
From political economy itself, in its own words, we have shown th...

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