Karl Marx
...ed under the, now prevalent, commercial capitalist economies. In realizing that they (the capitalist) had a new tool with which they could barter or trade, they also realized they now had an effective tool to keep the cost of the labor commodity down and in effect control those of the labor community that would become trouble for the new way of doing things in this new capitalist, industrial, power creating realm. The first casualty was and is always the worker / laborer in a capitalist society, according to Marx. See, first of all, Marx saw the many (laborers) as victims who were or are taking advantage of by the owners of the factories and other means/facilities of production to satisfy the gain of profit by the few (capitalist). Marx argued that under capitalism labor seldom receives more than bare subsistence. According to Marx, the surplus remaining is appropriated by the capitalists as their profits. This was a belief that many laborers, trying to organize to obtain better wages and work conditions during early commercial capitalism, held and acted upon. Arguing that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles,” and that liberal governments and ideology were merely agents of the exploiting owners of property, Marx advocated the abolition of private property and predicted the demise of capitalism after a series of recurring crises. The abolition of property, and therefore of class exploitation, would make possible a situation in which individuals would contribute according to their abilities and take according to their needs. These were and are the ways that capitalist techniques of acquiring their wealth and consequently attaining more of the wealth while disallowing many of those without it to continue to go without wealth and remain in a laborers mode of life to insure that the capitalist will always have workforce at a low cost to produce the goods and services needed to maintain a capitalist standard of life. Marx saw a pattern that in his mind seem to fit the way capitalist approach their livelihood in such a way that they feel threatened by any group or person that would infringe upon his/her profits and cause undo damage to a way of life of which he/she has become accustomed. See he (Marx) saw the defensiveness that capitalist held for their materialistic holdings and values and thus came up with a theory better known as alienation. The theory of alienation was discussed previously in this paper but by Marx’s standards says, the means by which alienation is created by and through the private ownership of property and other aspects or capital used to create profit and wealth from the production of goods and services. Such an adherence to a thought process by the capitalist makes it easy to keep laborers in their place, constantly working with, hardly ever, anything concrete in terms of materialistic value or wealth to show for it. Such a ponderous mountain of controlling, but not popular, opinion against laborers; they began a movement that would usher in a new era of “taking a stand” against their overpowering employers in order to gain some sort of equilibrium in the work place; which in turn, would probably make conditions better all around for workers (laborers). They did this by amassing large multi member groups working together for the betterment of all members, know as the “Union”; but when in a heated battle (negotiation or standoff) it was usually one voice of cohesion heard. In other words, the union’s members usually stood together in unison. This was a good and effective tool until the employers (capitalist) figured out how they could use the government and its law-enforcement agencies to crush any given movement of a union. And the capitalist and government used extensive brut force which really captured the attention of the unions and in some cases effectively busted (shut down) some unions. However, employing such brutality on its own people would also work in the surviving union’s defense. They learned to take their causes to ...