Marx- socialism- the economy

What was Marx’s general view of capitalism and its ability to change?

Karl Marx saw capitalism as structurally unjust and incapable of reform, rooted in the systemic exploitation of labour through the extraction of surplus value.

How did Marx describe the nature of economic exchange in capitalist systems?

In Das Kapital (1867), he argued the capitalist economy is sustained by the theft of workers’ labour power, masked as “free exchange.”

What did Marx argue about the origins and legitimacy of property ownership?

Property is not earned but accumulated through class domination

1. How did Marx interpret the roles of the state, the market, and wage labour?

The state and market are instruments of bourgeois power, and wage labour is “not a free contract” but compulsion by economic necessity

What solution did Marx propose in response to the problems he identified in capitalism?

Marx called for the abolition of private ownership and the collective control of the means of production.

What was Marx’s view on inequality and the path to emancipation?

Any inequality produced by capitalism is illegitimate, regardless of consent. For Marx, “the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the workers themselves,” not the state or market.