قائمة العصور الزمنية
Marxian stages of history > Capitalism

رأسمالية may be considered the Fourth Stage in the sequence. Marx pays special attention to this stage in human development. The bulk of his work is devoted to analysing the mechanisms of capitalism, which in western society classically arose "red in tooth and claw" from feudal society in a revolutionary movement. In capitalism, the profit motive rules and people, freed from serfdom, work for the capitalists for wages. The capitalist class are free to spread their laissez faire practices around the world. In the capitalist-controlled parliament, laws are made to protect wealth.
Capitalism appears after the bourgeois revolution when the capitalists (or their merchant predecessors) overthrow the feudal system, and it is categorized by the following:
اقتصاد السوق: In capitalism, the entire economy is guided by market forces. Supporters of اقتصاد عدم التدخل economics argue that there should be little or no intervention from the government under capitalism. Marxists, however, such as Lenin in his Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, argue that the capitalist government is a powerful instrument for the furtherance of capitalism and the capitalist nation-state, particularly in the conquest of markets abroad.
ملكية خاصة: The وسائل الإنتاج are no longer in the hands of the monarchy and its nobles, but rather they are controlled by the capitalists. The capitalists control the means of production through commercial enterprises (such as مؤسسة تجاريةs) which aim to maximise profit.
ديمقراطية تمثيلية: The capitalists tend to govern through an elected centralised parliament or congress, rather than under an autocracy. Capitalist (bourgeois) democracy, although it may be extended to the whole population, does not necessarily lead to اقتراع عمومي. Historically it has excluded (by force, segregation, legislation or other means) sections of the population such as women, slaves, ex-slaves, people of colour or those on low income. The government acts on behalf of, and is controlled by, the capitalists through various methods.
أجر: In capitalism, workers are rewarded according to their contract with their employer. Power elites propagate the illusion that market forces mean wages converge to an equilibrium at which workers are paid for precisely the value of their services. In reality workers are paid less than the value of their productivity — the difference forming profit for the employer. In this sense all paid employment is exploitation and the worker is "alienated" from their work. Insofar as the profit-motive drives the market, it is impossible for workers to be paid for the full value of their labour, as all employers will act in the same manner.
إمبريالية: Wealthy countries seek to dominate poorer countries in order to gain access to raw materials and to provide captive markets for finished products. This is done directly through war, the threat of war, or the export of capital. The capitalist's control over the state can play an essential part in the development of capitalism, to the extent the state directs warfare and other foreign intervention.
مؤسسة ماليةs: مصرف (أموال)s and capital markets such as سوق الأوراق الماليةs direct unused capital to where it is needed. They reduce barriers to entry in all markets, especially to the poor; it is in this way that banks dramatically improve class mobility.
احتكار: The natural, unrestrained market forces will create monopolies from the most successful commercial entities.
But according to Marx, capitalism, like slave society and feudalism, also has critical failings — inner contradictions which will lead to its downfall. The working class, to which the capitalist class gave birth in order to produce commodities and profits, is the "grave digger" of capitalism. The worker is not paid the full value of what he or she produces. The rest is surplus value — the capitalist's profit, which Marx calls the "unpaid labour of the working class." The capitalists are forced by competition to attempt to drive down the wages of the working class to increase their profits, and this creates conflict between the classes, and gives rise to the development of class consciousness in the working class. The working class, through trade union and other struggles, becomes conscious of itself as an exploited class. In the view of classical Marxism, the struggles of the working class against the attacks of the capitalist class will eventually lead the working class to establish its own collective control over production