Marx and Private Property?

Question:How does the existance of private property create a problem for humanity according to Marx? Can Anyone explain this to me or point in the right direction? It is for a paper I have to write

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: How does the existance of private property create a problem for humanity according to Marx? Can Anyone explain this to me or point in the right direction? It is for a paper I have to write

Just a few things to have in mind. Marx was not against ALL private property. For instance, he was in favour of the private property of your toothbrush, the house in which you lived, etc. But he saw an excess in the possibility of owning the whole set of factories of, lets say, SONY or the like.

Another pertinent annotation. The sense in which private property is 'a problem' is curious in the general marxian philosophical entrepreneur.

He believed that every valorative judgement (such as "x is a problem that we OUGHT to eliminate") is infected by a fundamental flaw. The flaw is that we have moral apparatuses that depend crucially in the way that our societies are organized. So, if you live in a society such as Mexico, you have a mentality that will feel correct or incorrect (as problems) certain things, like believing in the catholic church, do what the TV says, respecting the corrupt as the one valuable enough to be able to be it without punishment, and the like.

That is why the word 'problem' for Marx strictly speaking means something very special. Something like, a situation that will be overcame in a specific way due not to our free choices (morally ascribable) but to the natural laws of history, society, psychology and economy. We can abandon his specific marxian set of presuppositions now that we know that they are there.

'Private property' for Marx posses a problem of a few kinds;

FAIRNESS: For Marx, 'legal enforcement and unlimitedness of private property' is the only explanation of the enrichment of people via surplus value, profit. We pay to most investors not for their ability to produce and take care of collectively produced wealth but because they simply OWN the means to do it. They get economical benefits without working for them. (The most important companies out there are managed not by the owners' abilities, but for experts in the field of administration, so what end up the owners doing to deserve their money?... many of them just seat there and wait).

This would compromise Marx with a theory of justice, which is at the end a theory of value. This would be unaccepted by many marxians and marxists that are out there. But we have some good hints. Marx himself calls private property 'robbery', that is saying that these people who leak wealth in which production they did not participate actively.

ALIENATION: When you work NOT for your self, but for the benefit of others, then you stop being a person, and start behaving as a thing, a slave, irresponsible thing, an underdeveloped person. This is why, many marxists agree, we have crime, depression, antidemocratic societies and persons, ignorance, etc. Why is working for a company or the owner of a business a cause of alienation? Well, because the characteristics of the legal institution of private property nowadays permit that the owner of the business gains money without putting ANY MINUTE of work. So you start caring for the owner, and stop doing it for you. How does Marx proves that this care for the owner happens always when you sell JUST your force of work?

This comes with his famous theory of the origin of profit or surplus value theory. Imagine that you have ten workers in your workshop, that produce one pair of shoes each every day of work. (Think of Marx's time, and avoid including factors of marketing and so on). Every pair of shoes they make costs you lets say considering only inputs (for example, raw material) and salaries alone, 10 bucks. Where does profit would come from if you'd stop there? Either by paying less to the workers by their work or by raising the prices of the products. Either way, people not including the owner ends up paying the profit of the owner.

So, for Marx, at the end of the day you work daily to make rich some guy other than yourself. This is living for other and stop living for yourself. You become an 'alien' (which in latin means 'other') to yourself. You would be no longer the end of your efforts. This causes suffering, misunderstanding, and all the awful things that we see everyday in the news and the like.

(Let me remember the other relevant aspects of marxism)

Because those who own the means of production set both the prices for the goods they sell and the wages for the labour they use. The profits derived from both of these constitute a robbery of the mass's wealth and labour, yet render the labourer generally unable to survive without the wages and products offered.

This process also alienates workers from their work, so that a millionaire who orders a fine mansion to be built is given higher status than the hands which actually built the building.

The reason so many people want to believe Marx is because they can NOT understand him. Listen to this:

"...on the one hand, the dominion of material property bulks so large that it wants to destroy everything which is not capable of being possessed by all as private property. It wants to disregard talent, etc., in an arbitrary manner. For it is the sole purpose of life and existence is direct, physical possession. The category of the worker is not done away with, but extended to all men. The relationship of private property persists as the relationship of the community to the world of things.

Finally, this movement of opposing universal private property to private property..."

"Material" vs. "private" property? Private property IS material.

"material property...wants to destroy everything which is not capable of being possessed by all as private property."

???? What does that mean? How can property of any kind "destroy" anything not capable of being possessed as "private property"???? It makes no sense.

Material property "is the sole purpose of life and existence" makes him sound like a capitalist.

It is Marx's INCOHERENCY which creates a problem for humanity, because people think it is "idealistic" yet refuse to believe it can be implemented without tyranny. It cannot.

In simplest terms, Marx believed that all (commoners) were to work and divide their harvest amongst all of them equally. Of course, he himself and his cronies were not part of that.