Objectives against Marxism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Objectives against Marxism - Essay Example Marxism is an economic worldview that is based on the assumption that a few people control all the means of production and that they reap all the benefits at the expense of those who work for them. According to Marxists, the workers, or the proletariat, will at one time in the future come to overthrow the bourgeoisie, who own the means of production. The majority of those who claim to believe in this philosophy have yet to prove that it can actually work. The Marxist philosophy has come to be applied in many fields including politics, and in the latter, it has been manifested through communism and socialism. For several decades in the twentieth century, Marxism was a powerful force on the world scene but because of its unsustainable nature, it has come to be relegated to the background in the recent years. While there are powerful arguments for the Marxist philosophy, there are also more potent arguments against it and most of the latter arguments are because it is unsustainable. Mar xism became a powerful force in the early twentieth century because its philosophy came to attract those people who had long been oppressed by their rulers. The early Marxists were men who had been raised in poverty and when they found this new philosophy, they felt that they could use it to improve their lot in life (Evans 762). What these people failed to realize is that Marxism is an utopian, which cannot be realistically implemented. This can be seen through the utter failure of the political systems based on Marxism that have so far failed to survive. Marxist governments, for example, have made the life of their people far worse than they were previously. A current case to note is the ongoing one in North Korea where despite the fact that the government still officially declares itself to be communist; the behavior of its ruling elite is a far cry from the Marxist philosophy upon which it was founded. While the people of this country continue to suffer, the elite live a life of luxury that the former can only dream of. In fact, it can be said that the North Korean elite has turned its back on the ordinary people, many of whom not only live in poverty, but are also suffer from malnutrition. This is an absolute failure of Marxism in the modern world and perhaps this country and its people would do much better if it had a government that had a free market philosophy as well as being democratic. An obvious example is South Korea, which took an opposite direction compared to its northern neighbor and is now one of the most respected economies in the world. The failure of Marxism as a political philosophy can be said to have been revealed during the Cold War when the Soviet Union had to work far harder than the United States in order to be able to compete with the latter. The communist system of government practiced in the Soviet Union was based on Marxist philosophy, where the state controlled every aspect of its economy (Skousen 500). The people who worked in the Soviet economy were given very little incentive to be more productive. Everybody was given a quota to meet and once that was done, then no more was required of them. Workers were treated more like machinery than as people who were essential for the development of the economy. There were certain instances where people did not even bother to work because they had no incentive to do so. They were not given any opportunity to be innovative in their work places, and even though they worked extraordinarily hard, under extreme conditions, they were given very little pay. The soviet economy therefore, did not have enough opportunity to ensure that it was diversified enough to stay competitive on the global scene.