Marx vs Locke
John Locke and Karl Marx are two of the most respected philosophers in history. Locke was born in Great Britain in 1632, and among other works, wrote The Second Treatise of Government. He believed that the best structure for society was capitalism, which is an economic system where the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned. Karl Marx, born in 1818 in Germany, was the author of "Estranged Labor", and co-author of Communist Manifesto. He was an advocate of socialism, which is a system of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned by a centralized government that also controls the economy. Locke and Marx both make valid statements to defend their respective opinions; in reality Locke has the most successful theory, but when written on paper, Marx has the best ideas for a utopian world. Karl Marx views human beings in a capitalist society through the work that they produce; "The devaluation of the human world grows in direct proportion to the increase in value of the world of things" ("Estranged Labor" 119). The people of the working class became a commodity, which is something that can be used for commercial value, just like the goods created by the workers.
Everyone should live in a State of Nature, where people have the freedom to do what they want with their bodies and their property. The work he produces does not belong to him, it belongs to someone else. Desire creates dreams, and dreams create action. The judicial branch is comprised of a panel of unbiased judges of one's peers that hear cases presented by both sides of the offence. In Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels discuss the element of government that should exist in his utopian world. By this statement, Marx asserts that since man is a part of nature, and labor estranges nature from man, it also estranges man from himself and from other men as well. Locke was very insistent on the protection of property, which included the body and the fruit of its labor; "For this labor being the unquestionable property of the laborer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough and as good left in common for others" (Locke 13). Once man views his labor as alien from himself, he realizes that his work is not an enjoyable activity; work becomes a daunting task that must be carried out everyday under the careful watch of another man. This cycle of work gives laborers a purpose to complete their jobs day in and day out. "Political economy conceals the estrangement in the nature of labor by ignoring the direct relationship between the worker (labor) and production. Locke views this competition as healthy, even though it promotes the separation of the classes according to income level. So in theory, Marx's socialist ideas are extremely appealing. Laborers produce too many goods, and they receive far less in wages than the value of the goods they produce.
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