![]() ![]() Marx's original theoretical argument is that socialism, achieved through revolution, would be the inevitable outcome of the chronological development of capitalism. In essence, a range of critical strands around this issue again point to the historical rootedness of Marxism in nineteenth-century concepts. ![]() This ‘teleology’ has been heavily criticized. Marxism is mechanistic insofar as it construes history as a series of stages and modes of production (traditional societies, feudalism, capitalism, socialism). Jones, in International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, 2009 Teleology Moreover, in some circumstances, tasks requiring the least skill might be assigned to female labor (one example of the gendered division of labor) or child employees, for whom rates of pay could be set even lower, giving a further opportunity to the owners of capital to secure an enhanced competitive edge in the market.Ī. The factory system that developed rapidly in Britain in the eighteenth century was peculiarly well suited to this kind of division of labor. The division of labor, whereby production processes are reduced to a series of simple, repetitive operations, performed by unskilled, low paid workers, offer a means within capitalist systems of lowering production costs. Wages will therefore be subject to downward pressure. In order to maximize profits, entrepreneurial capitalists seek to minimize the costs of production and thereby out-compete other producers. In a free market, prices depend on the supply of, and demand for, all the means of production (i.e., the resources required for any form of production). The labor that an individual offered became a commodity that could be precisely evaluated and built into calculations about the costs of production and the price at which products must be sold to yield a profit.ĭetermining price levels is central to the capitalist system. Second, those unable to lease or purchase land formed a property-less peasantry – a proletariat – that must sell its labor in order to secure a livelihood. A new lease-holding or land-owning peasant farmer class was thereby established which was obliged increasingly to respond to market imperatives, to specialize and to produce competitively. First, as old feudal laws and customs – under which tenants had once held land from their lord – gradually decayed, they were replaced by economic leases that reflected market conditions. Within this stage, two groups may be identified. Brayshay, in International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, 2009 The Division of Labor: Entrepreneurs and Proletarianized Wage EarnersĪ feature of the demise of feudalism, especially in later Medieval England, was the emergence from the small-scale farming peasantry of what some have termed an intermediate stage of agrarian capitalism. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |