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From two central documents of the 19th century, Adam SmithÆs The Wealth of Nations and Karl MarxÆs Communist Manifesto, the historian can learn much. In these works, each author discusses the impact of industrial capitalism on individuals and society in a very different way. Smith argued the division of labor required for capitalism naturally lent itself to the rise of social classes and class stratification. Marx maintained that capitalism imprisons the working class, keeps them from rising to ownership class and, ultimately, this inequity is only restored through revolution. SmithÆs position regarding capitalism is that capitalism encourages the motivated and ambitious and the talented to become entrepreneurs whose products are tested in the market. Success depends in this system on matching consumer or industrial needs to desirable products at a management level of both price and cost of production. The laws of supply and demand have the effect of pushing prices up when supply is limited, and driving them down when supply is unlimited. To remain competitive, a capitalist producer must realize lower costs for producing than his competitors in order to be able to offer the market a desirable product at an acceptable price. Above all, in the concept of ôlaissez-faire,ö Smith advocated free markets and little government regulation of economic activity (From, p. 715).

Smith realized that this system would, in effect, have the impact of push

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stem has the same value, the same use, and the same putative nature (a nature formed by dependence and alienation from the fruits and processes of production itself). Marx and Engels attempted to show that history moves through stages, each of them ôàcharacterized by conflict between social groupsö (From, p. 718). Assuming that ôrelatedö items or human beings are ôrelatedö because they share some central defining characteristic or ancestry, Marx goes on to further argue that the reduction of the masses (the proletariat) to the status of wage-laborer links them in common cause. Though radically alienated from other men and women in the emotional and interpersonal sense, wage laborers are nevertheless united in a desperate struggle - a struggle that at times is a struggle for mere survival. Capitalism, by constructing human workers as commodities, fosters an environment in which genetically and ancestrally unrelated workers assume a common cause - the cause being, inevitably, the overthrow of the capitalists and the regaining of control over production and its fruits. The Manifesto of the Communist League proclaimed that ôàrecurring economic crises, caused by capitalismÆs unending need for new markets and the cyclical instabi
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1933
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)

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