Preview

Bourgeoisie Vs Proletariat Essay

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
868 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Bourgeoisie Vs Proletariat Essay
One basic tenet Karl Marx's defines in his famous Manifesto of the Communist Party is the distinguishing characteristics of two opposing social classes: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The bourgeoisie also known as the “capitalist” are the ones who own the means of production. Because of their wealth, they also have the power to control pretty much everything. The proletariat known as the “workers” do not own nor have any control of the means of production but earn money from the bourgeoisie by providing their labor for very little money. How is the proletariat held in subjugation? Well the bourgeoisie has ownership of the mean of production, class consciousness because the proletariats worked too hard that they had no social relationship …show more content…
The use value is a direct relationship between you and a product. For example, a cup holds water so you can have a drink. The exchange value is anything that has a direct value and can be exchanged for other commodities. For example, diamonds have very little usefulness but have a high value in trade for other commodities. The surplus value is the total cost of a manufacture product minus what it costs to produce it. For example, a company makes a car for five thousand dollars but sells it for twenty thousand even though it only cost them five thousand to make it When it comes to use value of labor, exchange value of labor, and surplus value it helps us understand the exploitative nature of capitalism because you can reduce the cost of production by reducing the proletariat pay, increase the speed that the proletariat produce, or cut their hours and benefits. Basically all these things are manipulated by the bourgeoisie.
Karl Marx believed that there are five aspects of proletariats alienation that occur in a capitalist society. The product of labor, the work process, co-workers, species-potential, and themselves are the five specific aspects of alienation that occur in a capitalist

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    In the communist manifesto, Marx divides society into two main classes, the bourgeoisie, who are the owners of the means of production and employers of wage labourers, and the wage labourers themselves, the proletariat working class. The bourgeoisie, he claims, by their very capitalist nature, exploit the proletariat workers by unfairly controlling the wealth and means of production, thus forcing the proletarians to sell their only real asset, their labour in order to survive. Marx then goes on to argue that the proletarians must revolt against the capitalist society that treats them so unjustly in order to equally distribute the wealth and power. He reinforces this by saying, "Not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons-the modern working class-the proletarians." (Ref. 2) and "Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product."(Ref 3) These statements would indicate that Marx regarded the proletarians to be the only revolutionary class under capitalism. But why does Marx regard them in this way?…

    • 1065 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    According to the Marxism theory, the proletariat are being exploited by the bourgeoisie as they own the means of production which indicates that they are the basis of the whole society and they control everything in it including the family. This kind of system could be seen as a capitalist society which means it makes the rich gets richer and the poor gets poorer.…

    • 496 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Best Essays

    In the books introduction, Engels, one of the manifesto’s co-authors, defines the bourgeoisie as the class of the capitalist who controls means of production in society. Likewise, he considers the proletariat to be the working majority, which sells its labor to support a system it has no control over (7). Marx, on the other hand, works to apply moral judgments to these two classes, allowing for him to write on more than just a class struggle. His bourgeoisie is exploitative, manipulative, and inherently evil, while he sees the proletariat as the masses destined to rule itself (10, 17) .…

    • 1485 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    “The worker puts his life into the object; but now his life no longer belongs to him but to the object”. This is because the worker’s labour is invested into the object, however as he does not own the fruits of his labour, which the capitalism appropriates from him. “Labour’s product—confronts it as something alien, as a power independent of the producer” (p. 32). The more the labour produces the more he becomes estranged.…

    • 2988 Words
    • 12 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Karl characterized two main conflicts between class, the capitalist (upper class) who owned the means of production and proletariat (working class) who work but does not owns the means of production but sell their labour power to bourgeoisie (middle class) in return for wages.…

    • 1749 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the Marx’s view on trade union, the relationship of production in the Capitalism has two important sides, which is the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The bourgeoisie is the owner of market to produce products. Their goal is to increase their markets to have more money, surplus value, and wealth (Tucker, p.473). The proletariat is the worker who works for the bourgeoisie, but receive their wages based on their work (p. 473). Basically, workers produce the products using bourgeoisie’s material for the market.…

    • 453 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Societies evolve and become more complex. As they do so, the means of production change, as do the relations of production.…

    • 494 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The proletariat are the workers in society and the bourgeoisie are the ‘affluent’ business owners and doctors and lawyers of society. Karl Marx, who was a Marxist and started the movement, said that society has two classes of people and they are the two which have just been mentioned.…

    • 335 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    They took power from these people and finally the society is divided into two separate classes directly facing each other; bourgeois and proletarians. (The Communist Manifesto, p. 2) Now, according to Karl Marx, it's the time for the proletarians to take power from the bourgeois and create a new world order. In the document, Karl Marx also argued that in the process of doing their job in wiping out the feudal system, bourgeois created the system that will lead to their own collapse, which is full of exploitation and unequal distribution of wealth. (The Communist Manifesto, p. 4) Hence, like every time when there is a strong divide between classes in the society, it is the time for a revolution to occur. It is the necessary step for the society to progress further, and it can only be attained by "the forcibly overthrow of all existing conditions." (The Communist Manifesto, p.…

    • 427 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In this essay I will outline the emerging difference between the very rich (Bourgeoisie) and the very poor (Proletariat) . In the Communist Manifesto, it describes these classes as one being superior over the other, or in other words, one class acting as the oppressor and the other acting as the oppressed. In society through the ages, it was classes fighting amongst themselves, but nowadays, its two classes separating further apart. The Bourgeoisie are simply, bosses, owners etc. They are earning buckets of money. On the other side, the Proletariat, are the poor people who are barely able to make a decent pay and somewhat are struggling to survive. They are working class people, but as new machines are being developed in the workplace, they are struggling to keep their jobs. I am going to reference my work from books and the internet as that they will be the assets in writing this essay. In today’s world, the Bourgeois would be like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.…

    • 665 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Marx said that in the product of labor the worker is alienated from the object he produces because it is bought, owned and disposed of by someone else, the capitalist. In all societies people use their creative abilities to produce items which they use to exchange or sell. Marx believes that under capitalism this becomes an alienated activity because the worker can't use the things that he produces to engage in further productive activity. Marx argued that the alienation of the worker from what he produces is intensified because the products of labor actually begin to dominate the laborer. Rubin outlines this principle by explaining that the worker is paid less than the value that he creates. He also says that a portion of what the worker produces is appropriated by his boss and the worker is therefore exploited. The worker also puts creative labor into the product that he produces but he can not receive any creative labor to replace it.…

    • 784 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    He also criticizes the capitalists in European economics. These people collect factories and raw materials for production, pay their laborers wages to produce goods, and as a result produce a profit due to good calculations. Although he says this is the rational thing to do to make more money, it is exploiting the low class laborers. Labor becomes an object, a type of commodity, instead of something people do. Consequently, laborers become an object and lose their humanity.…

    • 538 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Marx commences his essay by maintaining that workers' miseries are directly proportional to their level of production; the more value workers attribute to their product, by virtue of their labor, the more miserable they become. Workers themselves are a commodity and the greater the value of their production, the cheaper a commodity they become. "The increase in the value of the world of things is directly proportional to the decrease in value of the human world." The end result of labor is its objectification into a thing, and the value of labor lies only in its objectification.…

    • 586 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Social Class , Karl Marx

    • 1520 Words
    • 7 Pages

    “The workers use their physical power for receiving a wage from the capitalist”, (Moore: 64), and the large amount of the money in the production will go to the capitalist, because they own the means of production. Capitalist only have a benefit interest, they want to make more profit and for them to make more profit, the…

    • 1520 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    commodity

    • 1636 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Commodities are objects that satisfy human needs and wants. Commodities are the fundamental units of capitalism, a form of economy based on the intense accumulation of such objects. The basic criterion for assessing a commodity’s value is its essential usefulness, what it does in the way of satisfying need and wants. This usefulness is its use-value, a property intrinsic to the commodity. Commodities also possess an exchange-value, the relative value of a commodity in relation to other commodities in an exchange situation. Unlike use-value, exchange-value is not intrinsic to a commodity. Exchange-value allows one to determine what one commodity is worth in relation to another commodity, for example how many units of corn one might exchange for a given unit of linen. In a complex market, all sorts of different commodities, although satisfying different needs and wants, must be measurable in the same units, namely money.…

    • 1636 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays