Write a 8 page essay on Examine the following statement critically: Marxism is a nineteenth century perspective that has very little relevance to a twenty-first century world.
Marxism, despite the collapse of communism is highly relevant to the current structure of both the capitalist labour system and international relations.
Despite the supposed triumph of capitalism over Marxism, the Marxist philosophy remains, not only relevant to the twenty-first century, but provides tremendous insight into the current labour system.
According to Marx, the capitalist economic system is an exploitative one, which dehumanizes labour and reduces it o a commodity and labourers/humans to tools of production.1 The labourer is nothing more than an “agent of production,” dominated by the rules governing supply and demand or consumption and production.2 Certainly, Marx admits that in direct comparison to slavery, labourers are given wages but, the payment of wages does not imply that the capitalist system extends labourers their rights. Instead, it solidifies his position as a wage labourer whose status within the political economy is nothing more than that of a tool of production.3 In other words, and as interpreted by Marx, the capitalist system is fundamentally founded upon exploitation.
The above stated recalls the current internationalization of labour, including the sweat-shop phenomenon to mind. The proponents of globalization have often cited the phenomenon of outsourcing as a positive attribute of the globalization of labour but, this is an erroneous representation of the reality. Outsourcing, which is motivated by the capitalist desire to reduce production costs by hiring cheap labour, is effectively based on the exploitation of labour and, just as Marx maintained, lends to the dehumanization of the workforce, reducing them to little more than faceless tools of production.
Proceeding from the above stated, one can even argue that the current labour structure, as in the globalisation of labour, is, perversely, proof of the triumph of Marxism, not capitalism. Capitalism, as is evidenced in its ability to
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