What if the world was more equal in how we shared its resources? What if workers could truly enjoy the fruits of their labor rather than seeing it claimed by a few at the top? Imagine if all workers own the means of production and share in the profits, instead of just a handful of business owners.
What if our democracy extended beyond politics into the economy, where everyone has a voice in how we produce and distribute wealth? For German thinker Karl Marx, these ideas were more than theory: they could become reality if we overthrew the capitalist system that’s still dominant today. Karl Marx created the most profound analysis ever of what he saw as a failing system responsible for great inequality and economic instability.
But Marx didn’t just stop at analysis—he also called for change. The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.
Karl Marx envisioned a world where exploitation and inequality would give way to fairness and collective wealth. He believed this could only happen by eliminating the capitalist class, which would require the working class to rise against the bourgeoisie and seize control of production. There have been several attempts to build societies based on Karl Marx’s ideas.
However, these efforts often had mixed results, with some turning into oppressive regimes that led to millions of deaths, labor camps, starvation, and other terrible conditions. Because of this, people became wary of anything connected to communism, the Soviet Union, Maoism, and… Karl Marx himself. Today, the term “Marxism” has become a kind of cuss word, synonymous with the ‘enemy’ of our so-called free world.
Donald Trump recently called Kamala Harris a ‘Marxist’ during a presidential debate. Also, people have been using terms like “cultural Marxism” which generally have little to do with Marx’s original ideas. People’s distrust of Marxism is understandable.
However, beyond the dark past of communist regimes, Marx’s works have stood the test of time and are still being widely discussed and supported. There’s something about his work and his understanding of society that attracts people. Many who read Marx discover that his ideas are terrifyingly relevant for today’s capitalist system: a system that, looking at the inequality it produces, seems pretty rigged against the working class… which is most of us.
This video explores Marxism. If you want to support Einzelgänger, consider joining my Patreon page, which allows access to ad-free videos, bonus content, and free merch. Thank you, and I hope you’ll enjoy this video.
Karl Marx was a German thinker who shaped how we understand politics and economics today. Born in 1818 in Trier, Germany, he began studying law but switched to philosophy due to his deep interest in ideas. He became a journalist but soon focused on social and political issues, which eventually led him to develop his theories.
Marx noticed something was fundamentally wrong with society, which had become a capitalist system by then. While capitalism had brought improvements over earlier systems like feudalism and slavery, many problems remained. In some ways, Marx thought, capitalism wasn’t so different from those older systems; inequality and exploitation persisted despite the supposed ‘freedom’ enjoyed by the working class.
It was still deeply unfair, with laborers getting the short end of the stick. This realization led Marx to lay the groundwork for the most extensive critique of capitalism. Marx is most famous for writing “The Communist Manifesto” and “Das Kapital” or “Capital,” in which he criticized capitalism and imagined a world where everyone was equal (11).
Even though he faced many hardships, including poverty and exile, Marx’s ideas inspired many movements and are still discussed worldwide. His works weren’t just meant as a theory. He hoped that someday, people would acknowledge the flaws of the capitalist system and bring about change.
He wished that humanity would abolish capitalism just as we abolished feudalism and slavery and transition into a new system: a system that doesn’t screw over the working class, where there’s freedom from oppression, no boundless greed, and we all get an equal share. More than 140 years after his death, capitalism remains dominant. Yet, the cracks are evident, especially after the 2008 crash.
And so, Marx’s work again serves as a guide for understanding what exactly is going wrong and why we might be better off moving on to a new system. Before delving into the dark sides of capitalism, I think it’s helpful to understand other modes of production Marx identified to see what preceded capitalism, where it improved things, and where it didn’t. Humans have this knack for transforming things from nature into useful things.
For example, we chop trees, and from the wood, we make tables and chairs. We melt iron into tools. We use stone to build houses.
We’ve been doing this since the dawn of time. Production, in some form or another, is deeply woven into the fabric of our species. And we owe our survival as a species to our ability to produce.
How could we have protected ourselves from wild animals if human ingenuity hadn’t created the tools to do so? However, how production is done and how goods are distributed have varied considerably. Let’s look at the different modes of production Marx distinguished in which our species have operated and what this meant for the members of these systems.
Let’s start with primitive communism. According to Marx, the traditional societies of hunters and gatherers were based on egalitarianism. There wasn’t a hierarchy of capitalists, feudal lords, or slave owners at the top.
A small group exploiting the majority wasn’t a thing. There was no private ownership but collective ownership. People worked together for mutual benefit.
The hunter-gatherer societies didn’t pursue a surplus in food or other goods; there was no chasing of profit. Most things, such as meat from hunting, were immediately consumed. Primitive communism faded as societies transitioned to agriculture.
As the primitive hunter-gatherer societies generally lived as nomads, agriculture allowed people to settle in one place. People formed communities. They could even produce so much that they created a surplus of resources.
Some people made more surplus than others, which led to the emergence of class divisions and private property. People began owning stuff, such as land, buildings… and humans. Owning humans, also known as slaves, was pretty convenient, as they could produce goods and services for you.
By using slaves, you could maintain and expand your wealth without doing the hard work yourself. Many civilizations thrived on slavery, such as Ancient Rome and Ancient Egypt. A recent example of a slave society is The Confederate States of America.
We can divide the production of slave labor into two parts: the first part is what’s necessary for the slave to survive and maintain functionality, such as clothing and food. The second part is a surplus that goes directly to the master, who can use it as he pleases. A slave society isn’t particularly fair.
It’s immensely dehumanizing. It’s exploitation at its finest. Particularly after the Roman Empire declined, slave societies slowly transitioned to feudal societies.
Instead of masters and slaves, there were feudal lords and serfs. Feudal lords owned large pieces of land, and serfs belonged to the land, meaning they were obligated to work and couldn’t just leave. But the feudal lords didn’t own the serfs, and the serfs had some rights.
They couldn’t be sold or traded, for example, and could marry and have families. The serfs produced for both themselves and their lords. Typically, they spent a few days each week working on the land to grow food for themselves and their families.
The rest of the week, they provided labor and services on the lord’s land or performed other duties for the lord. Essentially, they rented the land from the lord and paid it through goods, such as a portion of their crops. If this lord-and-serf relationship sounds familiar, it’s because it has resurfaced as ‘technofeudalism’—a concept economist Yanis Varoufakis explores, arguing that big tech companies are the new feudal lords.
Feudal societies are still very unequal and exploitative, but they were an improvement compared to traditional slavery. Just like the slaves, the serfs weren’t too excited about their position, but times changed. Strong nation-states replaced the feudal lords, and private property became common among the lower classes.
The Industrial Revolution marked the end of the system and made way for a new one: capitalism. The majority of today’s population functions in a capitalist society where the means of production (such as factories, land, and resources) and the distribution of goods are privately owned. The primary goal of economic activity is to generate profit for the owners of capital, such as businesses and investments, through production.
Profits are the surplus of revenue after expenses. The more profits a company generates, the richer the owners generally become. But how about the workers?
Don’t they get any profit? No, they typically don’t. Instead, they are paid a wage in exchange for their labor.
Compared to slave and feudal modes of production, the capitalist system provides more rights and freedom to the people. It’s a significant improvement, without question, which Marx also acknowledged. But how about things like inequality and exploitation?
In a capitalist system, employees sell their labor power to the capitalists in exchange for a salary. The employee works for the employer and gets paid. This is the most common arrangement we see today.
But is it fair? Suppose the employee accepts a specific monthly salary in exchange for, say, forty hours of work a week. On Monday, the employee begins production.
By halfway through Tuesday, just before lunch, the value of what the employee has produced matches the amount of his salary. At this point, the employee has created enough value to cover what he’ll be paid. However, he’s expected to keep working until the weekend.
All the value he produces after this point is surplus. The employer uses this surplus to cover other costs; whatever remains is profit. American professor of economics emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Richard David Wolff, describes it as follows: Wages are the products of the laborer’s necessary labor time; revenues retained by the employer are the products of the laborer’s surplus labor time.
End quote. Let’s face it: in capitalist societies, we’re free, as in, a slave master doesn’t own us, nor do we belong to the land owned by a feudal lord. But if we don’t own capital that generates money to pay for our living expenses, we depend on employers willing to exploit our time and labor in exchange for that money.
In other words, if you’re not a wealthy capitalist yourself or successfully self-employed, you must work for a wage, or you’re screwed. I quote: Marx’s argument then hits home: capitalism remains like slavery and feudalism because (1) it too divides the participants producing and distributing goods and services into two groups (employers and employees), and (2) it too divides the laborer’s working day into necessary portions. End quote.
Now, let’s go a bit deeper into Marx’s analysis of the capitalist mode of production. Capitalism: Exploitation, inequality and estrangement Marx’s analysis is extensive. In Das Kapital, he pointed out many shortcomings of the system.
For example, he concluded that the capitalist mode of production leads to exploitation and inequality. He argued that the wealth created by the workers is mainly taken by the capitalists simply because they own the means of production. Now, let’s explore several of Marx’s criticisms and why they’re still relevant today.
First, let’s examine the problem of exploitation. As we’ve discussed before, in the capitalist mode of production, workers are paid less than the value they produce, while capitalists take the surplus value and generate profit from it. The higher the profit, the better and the wealthier they can become.
To maximize profit, one should keep the production cost as low as possible while selling the products for the highest possible prices. Aside from the low wages and high prices, let’s focus on the increase in productivity. Here’s where it grows even more eerie for the workers.
Marx states that increasing productivity, such as introducing new technologies or better efficiency, comes at the expense of laborers. We can see this today in certain companies where employees face intense conditions, with strict quotas and constant monitoring. They work long hours under significant stress, performing repetitive tasks as automation increases.
A worker reported in 2018 that she and her colleagues weren’t even allowed to take toilet breaks during their shifts in one of the warehouses of a well-known multinational. Marx describes the exploitation of workers as follows: (. .
. ) they mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a man, degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine, destroy every remnant of charm in his work and turn it into a hated toil; they estrange from him the intellectual potentialities of the labour process in the same proportion as science is incorporated in it as an independent power; they distort the conditions under which he works, subject him during the labour process to a despotism the more hateful for its meanness; they transform his life-time into working-time, and drag his wife and child beneath the wheels of the Juggernaut of capital. End quote.
Capitalists always aim to produce more efficiently—not to benefit workers by giving them more leisure time, reducing burnout, or allowing them to spend time with family, but to increase surplus value and profit. This efficiency often involves developing technology to speed up production, hiring more workers, and squeezing them even harder. As Marx stated: Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole, i.
e. , on the side of the class that produces its own product in the form of capital. End quote.
Now, the system in which workers don’t own the means of production and thus need to sell their labor power has become so dominant that many people don’t have a choice: They must be employed somewhere to survive. They can’t pay rent or buy groceries without selling their labor power. As a result, the laborer has become dependent on the capitalist, much like the serf was dependent on the feudal lord.
So, how much more free is today’s laborer than the slave? Building on the issue of exploitation, Marx also identified a deeper problem within capitalism: estrangement or alienation. He argued that workers who produce for a capitalist without earning the full value of their labor or owning the product they made become estranged from both their work and its result.
Specialization, which divides the creation of a commodity into specific tasks, contributes to this estrangement. Laborers are assigned to repetitive tasks, becoming mere cogs in the machine. Spending most of your life selling your body and mind as labor for someone else’s pursuit of profit is pretty dehumanizing, isn’t it?
Thus, according to Marx, workers also become estranged from themselves—from their own humanity. As they toil away on the assembly line, existential questions may arise: Is this why I was born? Is this why I, with all my potential and creativity, was put on this Earth?
Am I nothing more than a laborer so that a rich snob can buy another boat? In addition, we experience estrangement from each other. Employees compete with each other for jobs, salaries, and opportunities.
They see each other as rivals, trying hard to prove who’s the best at serving the capitalist at the top. Capitalists benefit from this “divide and conquer” dynamic, which they encourage. This is why some societies are described as “competitive.
” But what is it like to live in a world surrounded by competitors who may try to undermine you? What happens to solidarity and community? Capitalists typically seek to maximize profits by keeping wages as low as possible, which leads to inequality.
The proletariat remains poor and dependent on selling their labor. At the same time, the bourgeoisie enriches themselves further, enabling them to buy more means of production, hire more workers, and generate even greater profits. Today, we see these mechanisms play out as well.
An immense group of employees is just getting by. Others have it slightly better but still utterly depend on receiving their salaries at the end of the month. The most unfortunate group hardly survives, living in perpetual poverty; some even end up in tents or tunnels.
But simultaneously, we see people flaunting supercars. Jeff Bezos has the financial means to end world hunger today. Instead, he bought a 500 million dollar boat.
I quote: Capitalism, Marx said, never went beyond those economic models where a few dominate a majority. Capitalism just replaced the dichotomies of master/slave and lord/serf with a new one. A dominating and exploiting minority was still there, but it had a new name: employers.
A dominated and exploited majority was still there but with its new name: employees. End quote. Wolff also argues that a tiny group of people at the top (the major owners and top executives) decide what to produce, where and how the production takes place, and what to do with the fruits of the employee’s surplus labor.
And the employees themselves? They are consistently kept out of the decision-making process, yet they are the ones who have to deal with the consequences of those decisions. That doesn’t sound very democratic, does it?
So it seems that capitalist democracies are democratic regarding politics, but not when it comes to the activity people spend most of their time doing: work. Now, where does this all lead to? Marx argued that capitalism isn’t a stable system.
It has cycles of boom and bust. We see economic crises, periods of rapid growth followed by economic downturns. We see constant changes in wages, purchasing power, and employment.
Sometimes, there’s hardly any work. In other periods, there’s so much work that companies recruit migrant workers. When things are going well, it’s all rainbows and sunshine.
When things go wrong, people often get angry and seek scapegoats. Historically, ethnic minorities have often been unfairly scapegoated for societal problems. Recently, some political figures have even gone as far as making outrageous, baseless claims—like Haitian immigrants supposedly eating dogs and cats.
It’s the instability of the system that creates these crises, which give rise to populist leaders who appeal to the dissatisfaction of the people. Marx thought that a class struggle would eventually result from the extreme inequality within capitalism. In his vision, the working class would rise to overthrow the capitalist order and establish a more fair and just society.
However, Marxist-inspired communities had mixed outcomes in practice. Several governments, including those in China and the Soviet Union, attempted to implement Marx’s theories in the 20th century. In many ways, these regimes were an improvement.
They ended feudalism and improved education and access to healthcare. However, they deviated significantly from Marx’s vision. Rather than a revolution from the bottom up led by the laborers, a few powerful factions took control and imposed communism from above.
What should have been an equal, truly democratic society with collective ownership of the means of production often resembled “state capitalism. ” These governments became corrupt and oppressive—far from the classless society Marx envisioned, where the state would eventually “wither away” and no longer be necessary. There was a lot of poverty as well.
Meanwhile, capitalism has evolved, especially in places like the Nordic countries. These societies have found a way to balance capitalism with equality and social welfare. Yet, there are still problems.
Globally, inequality is rampant. Wages are stagnating while prices go up. Employment conditions aren’t exactly ideal for many people.
Societies are becoming increasingly polarized amid a looming recession. There’s a housing crisis, many people suffer mental health problems, and environmental issues are widespread. In some parts of the world, capitalism even facilitates old-fashioned slavery.
Our system’s failings show that Marx’s critiques still matter. Thank you for watching.
