Origins and Developments of Capitalist Modernity Marx and Weber

Marx is considered a modernist because his views and theories fit the meaning of Modernity, which are human freedom and the right to free choice. To Marx, Capitalism is a barrier to the notion of human freedom and choice. Five aspects of his political theory which are modern, is how he views human nature, effects of Capitalism on human natures with emphasis on significance of labour, class struggles within Capitalism, the demise of Capitalism and the need for the transition to Communism. In this essay I am going to study Karl Marx and Max Weber views on Capitalism and how they think it has originated and developed.

Marx belief of human nature is that it changes over time; it is historical and dynamic. In understanding human nature, it is important to understand what part labour plays in human nature. “To be Human is to labour,” (88) therefore Marx believes that Humans work in the world with other Humans in exchange with nature to get what they desire. Thus since human nature is dynamic so are humans’ wants and desires. In order to achieve one’s wants and desires one must labour with others around them and with nature itself. Since labour is the activity of a group, the ever-changing world created through the labour of those groups also creates the humans themselves and directly affects them. Through labour, humanity creates, and is responsible for the world that they live in. Marx suggests that Capitalism leads to the centralization and concentration of living spaces of where people live, their means of production, monopolies and the distribution of more power to the bourgeoisie. The success of Capitalism is directly connected to capital and wage labour. Capitalism’s goal is to increase profits called accumulation; profits then reinvested else where to make more capital. Capitalism flourishes by extracting surplus value, or profit, from the commodities produced by the working class. Without capitals and profits there are obviously no wages and a place to do any type of labour power; and without wage labour, capital cannot increase itself. Both are dependent on each other for the flourishing of Capitalism. Capitalism is a form of life that does not do justice to human abilities and capacities; it is a division from basic powers to humans and the exploitations of human workers. Workers are forced to sell their labour power to capitalists and capitalists have no choice and are forced to exploit labour to gain capital; therefore the labourers are commodities themselves in the capitalist market. As the result of Capitalism, labour has been under admonition and oppression. Instead of picturing the world as it is, Capitalism pictures the world in a distorted view. A view that leads to the alienation of the true meaning of human nature. The view that places the labourers product as being more important than the labourers themselves; thus the labourers are objectified. Labourers then don’t realize that they themselves are the people who are in control of the product that they produce.

“Alienated labour hence turns the species-existence of man, and also nature as his mental species capacity, into an existence alien to him, into the means of his individual existence.” (64)

The distorted view leads to the misinterpretation of self, of the working class who are cut off from their essential powers. They fail to realize that the world is of their own making and that they have the ability to create and recreate the world