Reference no: EM13160653

Communists claim that although the right to property assumes that an individual owns what he makes and has “no temptation to labour more than he [can] make use of” (Locke), in reality wealth has been accumulated in the hands of few. Capital has become not a personal but a social power, a means to oppression (Marx). Moreover, this supposedly “free market” is not free at all, but an apparatus for exploitation (Marx). In addition, communists disagree with liberals on that exchanges in free markets are voluntary. The government, media, education and the policy all make sure the interests of the dominant (capitalist) class are served (Marx). Furthermore, communist wonder, how can the choice of desperately poor people to work for miserable wages be “voluntarily” when the poor have no other option to survive? In the free, individualistic society, poverty disables the working people to pursue their self-interests. Moreover, the ideology of individualism and the cult for material gains has spurted greed and antagonism. Furthermore, liberalists also state that in a just society individuals (and companies/capitalists) are free to do whatever they want, as long they do not harm others (Mill). However, under the free market economy, companies/capitalists do harm others without sympathy. The constant struggles for profits and extension of markets have commodified not only nature but also human beings (Marx). Although the private ownership of the means of production --- the tools and the raw material used to produce wealth --- and free market economic system “rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life” ( Marx), the division of labor and exploitation has turned humans in dull appendages of machineries (Smith, Marx).The constant competition for jobs and sense of insecurity has sophisticated the joy of work and prevented a vast part of society to fulfill their natural potentials (Aristotle). Moreover, it has created a social environment that encourages the evil side of human nature to flourish (Shaw). Communists claim that the economic system of society determines the consciousness of human beings (Marx). Thus all problems that capitalism creates can be solved by replacing the capitalist economic system with a better one – communism.