Arrested Development and Philosophy_ They've Made a Huge Mistake - Kristopher G. Phillips [27]
According to Karl Marx (1818–1883), the main problem with capitalism, and the reason we need to move from capitalism to socialism (and later, to philosophical communism) is not that capitalism makes people poor. To be sure, Marx did believe that capitalism makes people poor. In fact, it makes people rich through making other people poor. The way to become rich is to get people to work for you (as a capitalist) for as little as possible, while making you as much money as possible—a process that can only result in the increased relative and absolute poverty of workers. The primary Marxian problem with capitalism is that capitalism involves some individuals controlling others, and the control is always for the benefit of the powerful capitalist rather than the good of the powerless laborer.
Marx argued that as surely as economic systems had inherent guiding laws and defining characteristics, so do species have distinct traits and forms of activity. These traits and forms of activity constitute a species’ essence. And, Marx says, “Free conscious activity constitutes the species character of man.”1 No other species chooses its activity. On one hand, the activity of animals is automatic, a product of instinct. Humans, on the other hand, including Buster Bluth, are capable of choosing their own activity, and thus have control over their own lives. The human essence (or, as Marx frequently calls it, “species-being”) is the ability to choose freely one’s own life activity. This activity is expressed through production, through people (even Gob) creating in a way that manifests their vision of how the world should be, and in response to the true needs of others.
The bad news, as Uncle Karl (Marx) sees it, is that capitalism alienates people from their ability for free conscious activity. By definition, one thing is alienated from another thing when the two belong together, but something else separates them. Capitalism, Marx argues, alienates workers in four primary ways. First, the workers are alienated from the actual goods that are produced by their labor, taken by the capitalist and sold in the market. The workers cannot choose or keep the objects they produce, and so they do not reflect their vision.
Just think of George Michael—“frozen banana salesman/child.” He doesn’t keep the bananas. He dips them, freezes them, and sells them. Second, the workers are alienated from control of their own labor altogether, as the capitalist determines what is to be produced, how and why it is produced, and so on. Thus taking away the workers’ ability to have free and conscious activity. You don’t imagine the working conditions in the Cornballer factory are pleasant, do you?
Third, since capitalism alienates the workers from control over their activity, and free and conscious control over that activity is the human essence, capitalism alienates the workers from their essence. Lupe probably wouldn’t choose to clean Lucille Bluth’s home if she didn’t have to. Finally, the workers are alienated from others, and from community.
Because a worker is alienated from who he really is, his true essence, he is incapable of seeing the true essence of any other person. Just think of the office and family politics at the Bluth Company. All individuals have a creative potential, a vision, a capability of changing the world to meet this vision and the needs of others (even Lindsay). But if someone cannot see that in himself, he cannot see it as a universal property in other people.
The Bluths are a classy bunch, but instead of being “classy” in the way that means “having good taste.” They’re “classy” in that they’re “of a class”—they’re capitalists. Briefly, a class is a group of people sharing a particular relationship to the “means of production” (meaning tools and raw materials, i.e., the stuff we use when we make more stuff) in society. The two main classes in capitalism are the capitalists (also called the bourgeoise, who own the means of production and control labor) and the workers (also called the proletariat,