Communism and Nonalienated Labor Is Best

Karl Marx (1818-1883) on Social and Political Philosophy, 

answering the question of which government is best.

 

COMMUNISM: Is a combination of some of the best known types of economic and political systems. Communism nearly always combines a state economic system with dictatorship; fascism, which is a modified capitalism with a dictatorship; and democracy, which most often is a combination of political democracy with capitalism. 

Karl Marx in his famous Communist Manifesto applies his own principles of materialism and dialectical method to the problems of society. The Communist Manifesto contains a general theory of history, and analysis of the ills of European society, a program of revolutionary action, and, finally, a plea for the union of the laboring classes.

Communism 

Marx divides the history of men into two groups (the oppressors and the oppressed): the Bourgeois (according to Marxist theory, relating to the social class that owns the means of producing wealth and is regarded as exploiting the working class) and the Proletarians (the working class).

Marx maintains that the bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Furthermore, the bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country.

Marx's issue with the bourgeoisie is that the bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralized means of production, and of property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralization. Independent, or but loosely connected, provinces with separate interests, laws, governments and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class-interest, one frontier and one customs-tariff (costs).

The problem Marx sees is that of the bourgeoisie destroying commerce and industry. Why so? Because there is too much civilization, too much means of subsistence [basically increasing the condition of being or managing to stay alive, especially when there is barely enough food or money for survival], too much industry, too much commerce.

Marx's solution, in this light, is the enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; and, by the conquest of new markets, and by the through exploitation of the old ones.
 
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR THE MIDDLE CLASS?
In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed-a class of laborers. Owing to the bourgeoisie and to its extensive use of machinery and to division of labor, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman.

Thus, the middle class sinks gradually into the proletariat partly because their diminutive  capital does not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialized labor is rendered worthless by new means of production.

Further, the growing competition among the bourgeoisie, and the resulting commercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating.

WHERE DOES THIS LEAVE THE PROLETARIAN?
They have nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all pervious securities for, and insurances of, individual property.

The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority. Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie.

THE BOURGEOISIE IS UNFIT TO RULE.
Thus far, every form of society has been based on the antagonism (or hostility) of oppressing and oppressed classes. The modern laborer sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class.

Here, the bourgeoisie is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie because its existence is no longer compatible with society.
 

Alienated Labor

Alienation is one of the most serious problems of modern society. Marx contended that his work significantly defines a person and, further, the alienation of man from the products of his work alienates him from his essence. Marx believes that this especially occurs in the capitalist societies.

In alienated labor the worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more goods he creates. The devaluation of the human world increases in direct relation with the increase in value of the world of things. Labor does not only create goods; it also produces itself and the worker as a commodity.

The fact simply implies that the object produced by labor, its product, now stand opposed to it as an alien being, as a power independent of the producer. On this presupposition that the more the worker expands himself in work the more powerful becomes the world of objects which he creates in face of himself, the poorer he becomes in his inner life, and the less he belongs to himself.

The alienation of the worker in his product means not only that his labor becomes an object, assumes an external existence, but that it exists independently, outside himself, and alien to him, and that it stands opposed to him as an autonomous power.

Marx, thereby, give 10 measure to which nations should take (the communist ideology); for this list please refer to your text book: Classic Philosophical Questions p. 473)