{"id":6406,"date":"2016-02-18T18:38:03","date_gmt":"2016-02-18T23:38:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/?p=6406"},"modified":"2016-06-28T13:41:43","modified_gmt":"2016-06-28T17:41:43","slug":"is-capitalism-to-blame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/2016\/02\/18\/is-capitalism-to-blame\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Capitalism to Blame?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I found it captivating to read The Communist Manifesto Party <\/em>by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels shortly after discussing Adam Smith\u2019s Wealth of Nations<\/em>. Smith advocated for industrialization and capitalism in his work. He believed that as a\u00a0states\u2019 wealth and productivity grew, class disparities within that state would decrease. Marx and Engels disagreed with this idea. Wealthier, stronger entities\u00a0dominated over less developed ones for centuries during the time these authors wrote their works. Marx believed that capitalism only extended the potential for this issue. He claims in The Communist Manifesto Party<\/em>, \u201cModern bourgeois society, springing from the wreck of feudal society, had no abolished class antagonisms. It has but substituted new classes, new conditions of oppressions, new forms of warfare, for the old.\u201d[1]<\/a> Rather than restricting class disparities, Marx fully believed that the bourgeois society that rose from capitalism exemplified another dominating, ruthless power.<\/p>\n

In my senior seminar for International Studies last semester, we discussed how superior races have dominated over \u201clesser\u201d peoples since the beginning of time. Whether it was during Christopher Columbus\u2019s reign over the Native Americans beginning towards the end of\u00a0the fifteenth century or Great Britain\u2019s invasion of India during\u00a0the eighteenth century, more developed nations have always seen it in their interest to dominate over “lesser” people. Through this domination, these superior nations gained land, territory, and, ultimately, power. Marx would argue that capitalism is completely to blame for this continuous power struggle.<\/p>\n

\"christopher-columbus-631\"<\/a>I now pose these questions: Is Marx correct-\u00a0is capitalism completely to blame for the power struggle that continues to exist\u00a0today? What are some prominent examples that showcase this divide? How can we combat these struggles? How have First World countries made attempts to understand lesser nations? Or have they only made these\u00a0issues worse?<\/span><\/p>\n

Picture from: http:\/\/edmethods.com\/author\/tommaloneup\/<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, \u201cThe Manifesto of the Communist Party,\u201d in The Communist Manifesto and other Revolutionary Writings<\/em>, ed. Bob Blaisdell (Mineola, New York: Dover Publicans, 2003), 126.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I found it captivating to read The Communist Manifesto Party by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels shortly after discussing Adam Smith\u2019s Wealth of Nations. Smith advocated for industrialization and capitalism in his work. He believed that as a\u00a0states\u2019 wealth and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2267,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[110560],"tags":[70998,22743,22806,110640,1376],"class_list":["post-6406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hist107-archive","tag-adam-smith","tag-capitalism","tag-communism","tag-frederick-engles","tag-karl-marx"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2267"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6406\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/quallsk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}