Political Theory. Communism and Capitalism.

Political theory is the study of the concepts and principles that people use to describe, explain, and
evaluate political events and institutions

It is the most inflectional part of philosophy In the real world.

In this section we will examine two of the most influential political theories

One by Adam Smith and other by Karl MARX.

2 Books That Changed History.

The publication of The Wealth of Nations (1776) by Adam Smith and The Communist Manifesto
(1867) by Karl Marx had an ever-lasting impact on the course of history of Politics and Economy.

These books defined the 2 views of Capitalism that are still with us today. Words like socialism or free-
economy come from these books.
In True sense these are the books that have formed our Modern View of Economy.

Adam Smith

Today, we judge institutions almost purely in terms of the economy.

A university is judged to be great on the basis of its endowment, on
the success of its fundraising ability. A political candidate is judged
first and foremost not by ideas, but by how viable he or she is in terms
of being able to raise money. Economics determines every aspect of
our society.

Smith was skeptical of the reigning economic idea of his day, mercantilism, according to which the wealth
of a nation lay in its accumulation of gold and silver. Mercantilism also advocated national self-sufficiency
in manufacturing, supported by the government. In contrast, Smith believed that the productivity of a
nation was a sign of its wealth, not its accumulation of gold and silver. He further believed that the market
was guided by an invisible hand. If the government allowed the economy to operate freely,
the market would regulate itself.

For Smith, the capitalist was the true hero of society. This is a person who accumulates and invests
capital and wins out over competitors by producing the best product and selling it at an appropriate price.
The capitalist also takes over other businesses that are not as efficient and increases employment
through greater division of labor. Smiths vision of the unlimited potential for wealth production from the
capitalist dominated 19th-century political thought.

The view of Karl Marx about the results of capitalism was radically different. Like Hegel, Marx believed
that history progressed through a process in which Contradicting ideashe used the terms thesis and
antithesisproduced a synthesis. In the 19th century, according to Hegel, the contrast between
unrestricted freedom and absolute despotism had spawned the synthesis of liberty under the law. Marx,
however, believed that the struggle between those ideas had created a synthesis that was based on the
economy

Marx lived in a time when the golden view of Adam Smith seemed a terrible lie. Europe had witnessed a
sign cant expansion in the factory system, but the workers were increasingly oppressed. In 1848, Marx
wrote The Communist Manifesto, using the term communism to mean a system in which the freedom of
a class of people as a whole takes precedence over the freedom of the individual. Marx called on the
workers of the world to unite against their oppressors.

Both Marx and Smith believed that the true value of a product is derived from the labor that goes into it;
thus, the laborer is the real creator of wealth. For Marx, the role of the capitalist is simply to exploit the
labor of the worker. He came to see all of history as a struggle between the classes based on the mold, or
method, of production in a society.

Marx foresaw a situation in which the working class became so oppressed and the factory owners grew
so greedy that the capitalists would begin to devour their competitors and form monopolies. The wages of
the workers would be so low that they could not even form a consuming society to buy goods, and the
capitalists would have to turn to other markets. The result would be imperialism. Marx also predicted that
the workers would come to understand that their loyalties should lie with their class and would revolt.
They would establish the dictatorship of the proletarian, expropriating the wealth of the capitalists and
abolishing the evil of private property. All need for government would disappear, and a golden age of the
worker would emerge.

Karl Marx

Karl Marx is one of the most difficult political theorists for us to read and
Understand.
we feel compelled to take sides when we read Marx, to reject him or to convert to Marxist but it is hard for us to
accept the idea that we can simply learn from Marx without signing up or rejecting him

Marx thought in terms of the movement of history and believed that his time could best be thought of as a transition
between an age in decline and a new one yet to be born. He saw capitalism as both a stage of history and an agent
of change. His works therefore have an ambiguity that is difficult for us to keep clear. He saw capitalism as a
problem, as the source of many of the problems of his time, but he also saw it as a necessary stage of history. So he
was not simply against capitalism, because he thought this would be like being against winter or death. He
described the revolutionary changes that capitalism introduced, but argued that capitalism was itself in transition. We
like to believe that conditions have always been the way they are and that they will always be this way, but Marx
reminds us that things are always changing. Furthermore, he shows us that because politics is always about relations
of power between the strong and the weak, that our assumptions about history and change are political; they are both
reflections of who we are and at the same time, existing power relations are propped up by what we tell ourselves
about what is necessary and what is our choice. Marx tells us that the things that we tell ourselves are matters of
choice are usually conditioned by our place in society, and the things we tell ourselves are necessary are usually
really decisions that we make. In other words, we usually get this backwards.

Unlike other political theorists who want to believe that politics is more than one group imposing its will on another,
Marx insists that, in fact, thats all it is. The history of all hitherto existing society, they write, is the history of class
struggles. That is all there is, he tells us, and the key to understanding any given moment in history is to discover
these struggles. Whether we look at ancient Rome, the Middle Ages, or modern times, politics is about the struggle
between the oppressor and the oppressed. The key to understanding the present time, according to Marx and
Engels, is to discern in an honest way the destructive and revolutionary power of capitalism

Consider the changes that all of us have seen in the last twenty years, as jobs move overseas, as globalization
transforms every aspect of our lives. Marx tells us that these are not random or isolated changes, but the result of the
destructive force of capitalism. Capitalism itself is not even the result of a particular economic system
so much as a force driving history in ways that sound incredibly modern.

The bourgeoisie have changed everything into a financial transaction. Work, family, religion, and art have all become
financial arrangements. Tradition and custom hardly mean a thing because they have given way to the needs of
capitalism and the bourgeoisie. Where we live, what we do for a living, and who we marry are all driven by economic
needs. The bourgeoisie has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid
wage-earners. The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental
veil, and has reduced the family relation into a mere money relation.
This philosophy of Marks will pave way for two revolutions. ( one in Russia and other in China ) .

Class struggle theory deeply inspired Mao and the step he took mirrored this philosophy.