Exploitation And Societal Reorganization Of Karl Marx And...

Sabrina Gibson Honors Mosaics II Professor Smetona 09 November 2015 Exploitation and Societal Reorganization Karl Marx and Mary Wollstonecraft are both philosophers who have observed the relationships between ruling and ruled classes of people. In Marx’s text Capital he discusses how there must exist a bourgeois class that exploits a class of proletarians in order for capitalism to exist. Mary Wollstonecraft in her work A Vindication of the Rights of Woman argues that a patriarchal society in which women are forced to depend on men for every aspect of their lives is exploitation and detrimental to everyone involved. A concept that is shared between these two works is that a society that depends on the domination and exploitation of a class will naturally reorganize into a society that has a balance between classes. The exploitation of workers by capitalists is necessary for a capitalist society to exist properly. When viewing the relations between members of a capitalist society as individuals, it can seem that capitalism is based on freedom and equality. The proletariat class, or those who do not own any means of production, sell their labor power to the bourgeoisie, or capitalists. The proletariats are free to sell their labor power to whichever industry they choose, and will be compensated fairly for their work in the form of wages. This concept of labor-power is an integral part of Marx’s argument about capitalism. He explains that labor power is â€Å"the mental and