CMNS 310 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Free Market, State Capitalism, Utopian Socialism
Document Summary
Technological and political progress: improved living standards and building of the nation-state. Political economists (adam smith, david ricardo and john mill) celebrate free market and emancipatory power of the bourgeoise (capitalist) class. Adam smith: free market is an indispensable arena in capitalist societies for contestations of all forms of power, and the contestations can bring economic prosperity and eventually social good. Karl marx: inequality of capitalism revealing the economic law of the motion of modern society. Production and mode of production as a departure point. The bourgeoise owns the means of production (materials, machinery, etc) Week 2: capitalism and inequality1@october 30, 2020 1:19 pm. The proletariat (working class) sell their labor to the bourgeoise in wages: estranged and alienated labour. The object that workers" labor produces does not belong to the worker owns to bourgeoise, the owners. The labor of the worker is objectified as means to satisfy workers" needs (money from wage) workers are unhappy at work.
