How convincing is Marxs critique of capitalism Essay

How convincing is Marxs critique of capitalism - Essay Example The debate between these two intellectual groups is as interesting as it is engaging. In this paper, I tried to highlight the insights of Marx’s criticism of capitalism and also tried to reflect some counter criticisms of Marx’s arguments. My interest is however the political grounds of Marx attack on capitalism. Thus I started by exploring the foundational concepts that Marx (state and class) based all his arguments, the dynamics of class relations in this state (alienation, exploitation and imperialism) before finally connecting these concepts with the democracy argument. The concepts of class and state are at the heart of Marx’s criticism of capitalism. Marx used the two concepts to explain the fabrics of the capitalist society. Marx threw light on classification of the society he studied. He wrote: â€Å"Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive feature; it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: bourgeoisie and proletariat†. Marx identified two distinct classes, the bourgeoisie and proletariat, sharply differentiated by their position in the mode of production. The bourgeoisie is the capital owner (owner of property and means of production) while the proletariat is a class of those who work for capital owners and their labour is controlled by same. On the state, Milliband deduced, from Marx’s works, two views of the state. The first, he called primary view of the state, is rooted â€Å"in the famous aphorism of the Communist Manifesto: The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affair of the whole bourgeoisie† and political power is â€Å"merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another.† The secondary view, according