Competition Between the Classes

This week in class we discussed Karl Marx’s thinking on property. Marx says that the ownership of property divides the classes between those who have property and those who do not. He furthers this thought by saying that under these conditions of defining these two groups that the struggle between the two groups becomes violent.  Marx calls the owners of the means of production or the wealthy the Bourgeoisie and he calls the workers or producers the Proletariat. Marx believes that the violence happens between these classes because the workers are always trying to get what the wealthy have and the wealthy are always trying to stay wealthy and keep the poor from getting richer. I believe that this distinctive class separation can be seen today and is very violent. Every day you hear on the news how someone stole something or how someone was killed. Generally when you hear about one of these situations it is generally because someone who doesn’t have something is stealing to try to get what they want or they are killing because the murdered person had something they wanted or because the person was in their way of advancing to the next position in a job. In many ways Marx’s thinking that getting rid of classes would help create a less violent social climbing kind of world, but I believe that without classes the world would be less productive. When there are no classes then there would be no competition to try to better mankind. If people were not struggling to get to the better class then there would not be as many great ideas thought of to get from class to class. For example when Steve Jobs started thinking of the apple company he was not a very wealthy man and he thought up a product to better mankind and to boost him to the next class. Therefore I believe that without classes it would be less violent but the world would have less productive ideas.