Early modern writers as diverse as John Locke in his Two Treatises of Government and Karl Marx in Capital attribute inequality to the social dominance of one force such that it eclipses other forces’ abilities to function as they might otherwise; a ‘domination disrupts nature’ thesis. Both Locke and Marx identify money as one such dominating force. This dominance applies not only to money being the end of transaction, but also to the dominance of the means of transaction, with corresponding ramifications for the items being transacted.
For example, Locke notes how the accumulation of wealth allows people to store more than they require, leaving relative deprivation in times of scarcity. Contrary to Locke, Marx notes how ownership for the purpose …show more content…
Both Marx and Marcel Mauss were particularly attentive to this feature. They were aware of how the fetishism of money, its apparent ability to render all items comparable, fuels inequality. It is not the process of exchange in itself that renders things equal. Rather it is the reduction in exchange to an abstract common unit. This supposed one dimensionality of value posits that all things can be assessed by a total of said units, such that their reasons for existence must be justified accordingly. In short, this is a critique of exchange logic, the fallacy that all items are commensurable. In philosophical terms it is the rejection of a monist conception of …show more content…
They wanted to establish societies that sought to protect the attributes of persons, and that would negate the class system of the agrarian and feudal society as well as the political centralization occurring in European state building. Later, Marx, and many of his followers, argued alternatively that rights and representation were insufficient to achieve the task of political emancipation. Instead they sought to neutralise class altogether by dissolving property rights and restructuring the social relationship to the means of production. The orthodox Marxist tradition as developed in the Soviet Union, and Maoism as developed in China, sought to accomplish this through the bureaucratic apparatus set up by vanguard communist parties. While attractive for its philosophical elegance, to put it mildly, when implemented it caused catastrophic harm. More recent inheritors of Marxism have modified their approach and, instead, now call for approaches to the democratization of the means of economic production. Without doing too much of a disservice to the various positions on the matter, economic democracy generally requires that a social group’s relationship to the means of production should not determine their status as persons; their class
For example, Locke notes how the accumulation of wealth allows people to store more than they require, leaving relative deprivation in times of scarcity. Contrary to Locke, Marx notes how ownership for the purpose …show more content…
Both Marx and Marcel Mauss were particularly attentive to this feature. They were aware of how the fetishism of money, its apparent ability to render all items comparable, fuels inequality. It is not the process of exchange in itself that renders things equal. Rather it is the reduction in exchange to an abstract common unit. This supposed one dimensionality of value posits that all things can be assessed by a total of said units, such that their reasons for existence must be justified accordingly. In short, this is a critique of exchange logic, the fallacy that all items are commensurable. In philosophical terms it is the rejection of a monist conception of …show more content…
They wanted to establish societies that sought to protect the attributes of persons, and that would negate the class system of the agrarian and feudal society as well as the political centralization occurring in European state building. Later, Marx, and many of his followers, argued alternatively that rights and representation were insufficient to achieve the task of political emancipation. Instead they sought to neutralise class altogether by dissolving property rights and restructuring the social relationship to the means of production. The orthodox Marxist tradition as developed in the Soviet Union, and Maoism as developed in China, sought to accomplish this through the bureaucratic apparatus set up by vanguard communist parties. While attractive for its philosophical elegance, to put it mildly, when implemented it caused catastrophic harm. More recent inheritors of Marxism have modified their approach and, instead, now call for approaches to the democratization of the means of economic production. Without doing too much of a disservice to the various positions on the matter, economic democracy generally requires that a social group’s relationship to the means of production should not determine their status as persons; their class