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Karl Marx. Second, capitalist societies will experience repeated cycles of economic downturns or crises. Because workers are organized into mass assembly lines, the firm of each owner can produce large amounts of surplus. Karl Marx.
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Karl Marx Second, capitalist societies will experience repeated cycles of economic downturns or crises. Because workers are organized into mass assembly lines, the firm of each owner can produce large amounts of surplus.
Karl Marx Third, Marx argues, the position of the worker in capitalist societies will gradually worsen. This gradual decline will result from the self-interested desire of capitalist owners to increase their assets at the expense of their workers.
Karl Marx Though many of Marx's predictions have turned out to be correct, the immiseration of workers has not occurred. Still, many claim that unemployment, inflation, alienation, and false desires do characterize much of modern capitalist society.
Defenders of Free Market Defenders of free markets counter that Marx makes an unprovable assumption that just means equality or distribution according to need. They claim that justice really means distribution according to contribution (which requires free markets).
Even if private ownership causes inequalities, defenders of free markets still maintain that the benefits of the system are greater and more important than the incidental inequalities. Whether the free market argument is persuasive depends ultimately on the importance one gives to the rights to liberty and property as opposed to a just distribution of income and wealth.
Conclusion: The Mixed Economy Which side, free markets or Government intervention, will ultimately win? Neither the collapse of the Soviet Union nor the rise of strong collectivist Governments like Japan proves one side or the other. Indeed, it may be the case that neither side by itself presents a complete picture of how the modern economy ought to run.
Many economists now advocate retaining the market system and private property while modifying their workings through Government regulation, a mixed economy that attempts to remedy the deficiencies of a free market system. Such policies can be very successful, as they have been in Sweden, Japan, Norway, and many other countries.
Even though the U.S. is more successful economically than most other countries, studies do indicate that mixed economies have some advantages. New technologies are also firing the debate over the balance between Lockean private property and collective ownership.
Conclusion Modern technologies, especially computers, create new forms of intellectual property that, unlike other types of property, can be copied and consumed by a number of different individuals at once. Locke's view, and the view of some utilitarians, is that the mental labor that creates the property, creates the property rights over that product.
Conclusion Socialists point out that artists, writers, and thinkers have always created works without any financial incentive. Should new scientific and engineering discoveries be protected as private property? Should these things be shared by the society that made their discovery possible?
The debate continues. Still, though critics of Marx contend that Marxism is dead, many socialist trends and theories remain influential. Locke and Smith's form of capitalism has the upper hand, but many nevertheless maintain that a mixed economy comes closest to combining the utilitarian benefits of the market economy with a proper respect for human rights, caring and justice.
