Engel's Contradiction Of Capitalism

Philosophers have given various propositions as to how society as a whole has changed throughout the course of time. Engels first lays out the fundamental warfare between socialism and capitalism and then explains what he calls “Material conception of history” (Engels 1939, p. 292). In his materialistic history, he claims that the trade of products and their production is the basis of every social order (Engels 1939, p 292). Engels states that in every society that has permanently appeared of history, the distribution and production of goods and the division of society among estates and classes is determined by means of production and the exchange of product (Engels 1939, p 292). According to Engels, he believed that production and consumption …show more content…
There are the effects of the contradiction on workers, the capitalist, and the society. Engels stated that “the occasional wage worker became a wage worker for life” (Engels, p. 296). He also stated that “the means of production and the products, the individual lost an increasing number in their value. Because they had no other choice, they had to go to the capitalist and work for the wages” (Engels 1939, pg. 296). These limited modes of production were then transformed by the bourgeoisie from individual modes of production into the social means of production, “which could be used only by a body of men as a whole” (Engels 1939, pg. 294). The capitalists benefited the most from the labor of others (Engels, p. 295). As a result, the small workplaces have become antiquated which was replaced by huge factories where many people could come produce together. As for the society and its societal relationships, Engels states that “Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole.” (Engels, p. 300). It is due to this underlying contradiction in capitalism that many different problems occur within this approach of appropriation and production. The contradiction of capitalism resulted in other forms of fundamental contradictions such as the contradiction is between individual organizations and the social anarchy of production. Anarchy in the socialized production was that capitalists produce and sell anything they want to create (Engels, p.297). There was an issue with the emergence of the capitalistic mode of production when the “laws of commodity production started to operate more openly, and