Karl Marx's Division Of Labor

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Labor is a known economic term that most everyone knows to be roughly defined as the human element in economics that is responsible for producing goods and services. However, Karl Marx took this term and found a trend amongst laborers. That is, Marx claims class and labor are highly related and creates the term “estranged labor” saying that the lower in economic class a laborer may be, the more estranged from society. He claims that these divisions should be removed to create a Utopian society. On the other hand, there is Adam Smith who elaborated on the term division of labor, Smith states that the more sectors labor has, the more economic surplus is created. Both philosophers use their arguments to find the perfect, yet opposite, society. …show more content…
To summarize what Adam Smith theorizes, the division of labor increases productivity. Smith states that those laborers doing the task become so accustomed to their work, the efficiency is the first to increase. Furthermore, because the workers do not have to change their jobs frequently, they can focus on one task, allowing again for the marginal time of creation to decrease and the quality of the product to then increase.
So, who has more accuracy in their theory? There is no correct answer. Both Marx and Smith have validity to the words they communicated. For example, Marx is correct in saying that there unquestionably exist divisions in labor which are alienating the worker from different aspects of the field. Another positive of Marx’s work is he gives ideas on how to move past the estrangement of labor. This is one thing Smith does not do, which will be mentioned later on. The most prevalent case of this is the alienation is caused by the existence of private property. Marx declares that in order to create the ideal society and have a labor culture without division, the government must eliminate the possibility of private property as a whole (Rarneson). This is an area where Marx preaches
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Furthermore, the philosophers have such a grand idea about their ideal society that they become impractical to reach. Smith rarely gives ideas on how to achieve the Newtonian society.
Overall, Marx and Smith have very different views on what creates a perfect society. Ultimately, both Marx and Smith have very valuable opinions on differences between class and labor. Both want to create a type of perfect society and the debates are infinite upon if they succeeded to meet their goal, but Marx and Smith prospered and failed in numerous ways. Generally, the system of economics will continue to evolve and, although some arguments from these men have errors, Karl Marx and Adam Smith philosophies’ will always be used to analyze and systemize

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