Marx’s Political Economy
• As Marx focused on materials or the economic sector, he was interested in political
economists’ work which says that labor was the source of all wealth.
• Marx suggested “labor theory of value,” and argued that the profit of the capitalists was
based on the exploitation of the laborer.
• It means that capitalists pay workers less money than the workers actually produced. The
capitalists invest that surplus values from the exploitation of the labor to the expansion of the
capitalism.
• Marx criticized political economists for seeing evil systems of capitalism as inevitable
without trying to change it.
• Marx also criticized that such conservative political economists failed to see the conflict
between capitalists and laborers.
• Instead, Marx suggested a radical change from capitalism to socialism.
• In socialist society, people can interact harmoniously, and can work and create what they
need to survive.