Francis Aznaran
However, what is plan is that the above relationship does not hold true for all values. Some bankers, almost uniformly society’s highest earners, enjoy huge bonuses and compensation, but many of them caused the
current crash. In this way, they receive the highest pay for the worst contribution, modelling bizarrely, the graph of y=1x1 or (and how fittingly) the other side of y=x2:
income
i.e high income but contribution is actually negative
contribution to society
However, this does certainly not hold in all cases, since many (doctors, for example) earn higher than others because society values their contribution more. Inequality of ownership probably originated from agriculture. Those who could work the land, owned the land. However, as Marx insists, in modern times, this right of ownership has been twisted so that the proverbial ‘farmland’ (factory etc.) is owed by not those who work on it (the proletariat) but by employers (the bourgeoisie). In this way, the workers are alienated from the fruits of their own labour. It is owned by the bourgeoisie which pays the worker minimally. Marx actually specifically states that a worker is paid only as much as is necessary to keep him alive and working. What’s more, he is forced into the work as in the case is work or starve. He also has to compete with other members of the proletariat for said job. This, says Marx, is an existence neither happy nor just. He therefore advocates the ownership by the state of all proverbial ‘farmland’ – i.e. the means of goods production. This would render all workers equal, in income as well as before the law. However, as is evident from the economic crisis of the USSR in the 1960-70s, the resulting equality results in a lack of
competition, of incentive, and economic growth is dire at best. What’s more, a few bourgeoisie (ruling elite) develops the Party Members. These individuals enjoy special privilege, near wanton political power and a sense of superiority over the workers. In this way, Marxism does not abolish the bourgeoisie but simply makes it smaller and makes a nation even less democratic. Furthermore, in modern times, the distinction in capitalist states between bourgeoisie and proletariat is less pronounced; its boundary is more blurred. It is possible in modern UK and US to rise up out of each financial birthplace to a better one. Marx’s plans of complete social revolution are far too drastic. That said, it is possible; it is not easy. Ancient networks of old Etonions run this nation. Inequality, both here and in the US, is rampant. On NYC’s world-famous Manhattan Island, for example, in the 1990s, the financial powerhouse of Wall Street and the NYSE stood mere streets away from the impoverished neighbourhood of Harlem, which was undergoing a crack epidemic. In his work A Nation of Immigrants , JFK asserts that when the Pilgrim Fathers landed on the East Coast, they were without class, without every inequality that could have resulted from differences in social rank, land ownership, wealth and so on. In this way, a
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