Compare And Contrast Liberalism And Marxism

In the world of political philosophy there is two major schools of thought on base of society and the individual, Liberalism and Marxism. These two are fundamentally different from each other on the formation of society and the place of the individual in society. While it is often believed that you cannot address the concerns of one without ignoring the concerns of the other, this is untrue. John Dewey, an American philosopher who focused mainly on the importance of education, managed in his argument of individualism and education to weave a line through both liberalism and Marxism addressing the concerns of both. John Locke’s liberalism, is based around social contract theory. To understand social contract theory it helps to follow Locke’s

In fact Marx directly says this, in his essay Alienated Labor, stating “alienation is shown not only in the results but also in the process of production” (61). What is meant by this alienation is that the worker class does not have the ability to think and choose for themselves, because the capitalist owns the means of production and the product that is being produced, only allocating enough surplus value to keep the working class alive in procreating. Because of this there is no conceivable way in which a worker could feel any connection to the product which they are producing making the worker alienated from said product. In the same sense the worker it is also alienated from their work, as the force of production is labor power which is paid for not by an equal share of profits made but by a living wage. A living wage being the lowest number value that a capitalist can give the worker that will keep the worker complacent. The alienation of the working class goes much deeper than a mere loss of connection to a product that is produced and it 's means of production, the worker also becomes alienated from the human