Marx is a very loaded author, and I would encourage you to read some of him for yourselves. It’s loaded because people have strong opinions about the politics of Communisms, Socialism, and Capitalism. I would rather you try and understand him yourself than take whatever talking heads on TV say about national health care.
The book talks about Alienation, Capitalism, Communism. Those are all important. I want focus on a couple things
FIRST, I want you to look at little deeper at the transition from one system to another that underlies his thinking.
His basic assumption is that Capitalism (or any system) has internal tensions or weaknesses. As that system builds up more and more pressure is put on those internal tensions. Eventually the weight of the system on those internal tensions will cause that system to break down. And what arises out of that breakdown is usually something that addressed that tension in the first place.
He saw capitalism itself arising out of the collapse of the feudal system. That system was predicated on land and serfs and farm production. So the royalty focused on titles, and taxes attended to landholdings. Merchants and small makers weren’t important. But in the 1800s, merchants and makers were making money (as industrialization took over and urbanization began to take over) and that money gave them power. Power which the lords and ladies didn’t recognize until it was too late. That’s why there are castles all scattered throughout old Europe — they are remnants of an economic system that doesn’t matter anymore. It’s what makes tv like Downton Abby interesting.
Once you recognize this, you can see this pattern everywhere. Scientific knowledge moves through this pattern. Newtonian physics worked really well, but wasn’t perfect. Einstein’s relativity addressed the problems with that, but still has holes. Quantum mechanics works in those holes, but now quantum and relativity don’t mesh up. Whatever comes next will stitch those two together. (I say this like I understand physics — ha!)
SECOND, the reason he thinks Socialism is the answer to Capitalisms’ weaknesses is because he thinks it through and comes to what is called the Labor Theory of Value. Essentially, all value in a product comes from the time humans have spent developing that product. Corn is just dirt + seeds, until someone farmer farms it successfully. Corn isn’t food until someone makes it into Fritos, or whisky! And so on. So when you spend $800 on a new phone, what’s baked into that 800 dollars is a gazillion hours of humans programming, humans developing the machines that make smartphones, and so on.
Now, if all value comes from the labor that humans put into something, what makes a factory owner rich? From this perspective that wealth comes from the people working in factories. So really, riches are created by working people, and held by the ownership class.
All that needs to happen is for the working ppl to recognize THEY are the ones making rich people their money.
A fair chunk of the last 150 years of politics is debating whatever the next step means, but suffice it to say that it is NOT as easy as working people realizing they are making the ownership class wealthy.
