Marxist Economic Theory - Essay Example

Marxist Economic Theory Name: Instructor: Course: Institution: Date: Marxist Economic Theory Introduction Jack the ripper is a name that was given to an unidentified serial killer who was active in areas around the Whitechapel district in London between the month of August and November of the year 1888. The name is said to have originated from a letter that was written by someone who was claiming to be the murderer and then disseminated in the press. The killings associated with the Ripper involved female prostitutes from slums whose throats were cut prior to abdominal mutilations. Internal organs were removed from some of the victims which made the residents believe that the killer had surgical or anatomical knowledge. As time went, the world’s attention was drawn to this case yet Ripper’s identity could not be revealed (Gordon, 2008). There were so many theories that were put in place to explain Ripper’s identity. Facts about Jack the Ripper Murder case In this murder case, five women were murdered in nine weeks and thus it appeared to have been a plot to kill certain individuals. In addition, all the victims had their throats cut while four of them were cut in the abdomen and intestines removed. The murder of the last victim was termed to have been gruesome with skin removed from one of the knees and all his jewelry removed. In one of the incidents, a message was found beside one of the victims that was thought to link the murder to the “Juwes” that was erased very fast by the then head of London police force (a prominent freemason) despite protest from the investigations team. The question that many remained asking was whether these killings had any connection with Masonic activities. Britain was experiencing a political turmoil at the time of these murders. The explanation of this was that queen Victoria’s grandson named Prince Eddy had fathered a baby and married the mother. The mother was an illiterate catholic shop girl by the name of Anne Crook. The news that a prince had a child with a member of low class and an illiterate member of the society could have toppled the England monarchy. According to this version of the story, the nanny later on turned to prostitution and shared this information about Prince Eddy with other three prostitutes. The three later threatened to go public with the story. The Queen and the British Prime Minister invited Sir William Gull, a physician to try and find ways of eliminating this threat. Gull is then alleged to have invited other Masonic followers to assist him eliminate these women and thus many claimed that he was the Ripper (House, 2011). Since then, various facts have been tabled about the case. Whereas many argue that Dr. Gull was a central man to the ripper killings, he was already at the age of 72 years and had experienced a heart stroke once. Allegations were that he had killed five strong women on a public street and discarded their mutilated bodies in a public place. This story was based on the theory that citizens of Britain would have rebelled against the monarchy if the story became public yet worse scandals had been there before but none led to the overthrow of the Monarchy. Careful examination of this case therefore shows no evidential link between the masons and the Ripper murder. The working condition in Britain (1888) and the rise of capitalism It is good to note that the British government experienced plenty of problems at this time. However, the rise of capitalism can be traced back to the 16th and the 17th century. The main theme that underlies capitalism is the use of wealth to create more wealth and the simplest of this being to lend money for the purpose of gaining interest. This was associated with the sin of usury and therefore the church never supported the idea. Workers were therefore mishandled by their employees and there existed a social stratification in the community. There existed three kinds of people in the community. These were the rich, the middle class and the poor. Even among the poor, there were separate social classes. There were those who were “Unfortunate” (A Euphemism for Prostitutes). This group of the unfortunate was common in places that were referred to as the doss or lodgings located at the Whitechapel area called the “evil quarter mile”. This area was classified as the most dangerous part in the whole of England. The area was seen as the only place that could be used to escape spending the whole chilly night on the streets. However, the kind of treatment that women received from managers beyond 11pm for their single night bed was gruesome. The police officers were also not left behind in brutalizing women in this region since they kept track of their movement within the region. The East End district of WhiteChapel was a place of those who were desperate. There was no work to do, little food to eat and crime was out of control. Life for those who were living in slums was hard and the general conditions were filthy. The wages provided to the workers could barely sustain them for the rest of the period. The population in this region was estimated to be over 75,000 and half of this lived under the poverty line. The earnings that they received were not enough to save for later investment or allow them to move out of slums. Family lives in these regions were also very harsh and education was a luxury good since not so many could afford. Those who were lucky and got employed had to spend most part of the day in sweat shops just to ensure that they kept their jobs. The working conditions were very hard at the time when these murders took place. This is proved by the kind of testimony that was presented by George Cross and Robert Paul who discovered the body of Mary Ann Nicholls while walking to their work at 3: 40AM. The two had risen up very early in the morning to go to work at Pickroad in the City road. This sparked an increased interest in the affairs of workers. The international workingmen’s educational club was founded in 1885 on Berner Street with the main aim being to advocate for the rights of all the working and underpaid men. William Wess became the secretary of the movement .This group held a meeting and dance on the Sunday night that Liz Stride was murdered. The main theme in the meeting was why the Jews should be socialists. At the meeting, the picture of Karl Marx, a capitalist was present yet he had died long time ago. The main problem at the moment was exploitation of workers by the feudal regimes. While the capitalistic mode that was gaining popularity at the moment produced individuals who were rich, others were made poor by the system and this was a fact that many were yet to discover. This kind of thinking greatly put a lot of emphasis on working men while neglecting the plight of women. This led to the question, did capitalism kill women? To answer this question, the capitalist approach to economy is examined and the pros and cons explained in details. This is done in relation to the murders in 1888 and beyond when the working conditions of Britain workers were poor and the serial murder case of five women in WhiteChapel. In the Marxist thinking, commodities are the objects that are used to satisfy human wants and therefore very fundamental capitalism units. There has to be an intense accumulation of commodities according to this form of economy. What is so important in a commodity is the way it satisfies a human want and labor time is what is common to all of them. According to the Marx labor value theory, commodities are only comparable at the time of exchange and therefore have a social dimension. This is because the exchange does not depend on the commodities but the society in which they are produced. Different people produce different commodities that are sold on the same market. He argued that products have a value that can be viewed from two angles. The first on one is the obvious monetary value while the second one that is obscured by the first one is the labor value or the work force that was put in place to generate the commodity. According to the classical economists, the price of a commodity is a reflection of the amount of labor that went in when creating the product. The contribution of women in the production of these products is the subject of concern in the capitalistic approach to the economy. Global Capitalism and the Urban Proletariat In the Marxist definition, a social class is a division or order of the society according to the social status. In addition, a social class is not determined by the amount of wealth an individual owns but what is so important is the source of his income and his relation to labor market and the means of production. Capitalism created large groups of people that differ from each other by the place they occupy in the society which is as a result of a system of production that is historically determined. In the Marxist – Lennist understanding, there exists three different kind of social classes in the society. They include the proletariat or the working class, the bourgeoisie or capitalist class and lastly the landlord class. In the year 1888 when the five prostitutes were killed in the WhiteChapel district, conditions of workers in Britain demonstrated this kind of social stratification (Scott, 2005). Many of the citizens had no means of production of their own and therefore had to sell labor to the main economy in order to survive and so they received low wages. The proletariat was a modern class wage laborers who lacked their own means of production and embarked on selling their labor in order to survive. Whereas those in higher classes continuously accumulated wealth, agony and toil of misery was what characterized the lower social classes. In addition to this, slavery and moral degradation continued to build up in the lower social classes and thus necessitated the rise of low paid urban workers or the proletariat. The class also excluded those who were not working because they were not ranked as members of the working class. This is to mean that if an employee was engaged in any form of activity, its productivity was not the point of concern. The rising question is whether global capitalism really favors women. Feminism and Marxism Explaining the Marxist capitalism and the effects it had on the current state of women can be tricky because of the different understanding that many scholars have taken. To begin with, the idea of reproduction is firmly grounded in the Marx’s capitalism. Many scholars view this as the beginning of oppression on women as passive participants in the growth of economy. This was spurred by the social feminism that was rampant in the United States and the idea of materialistic feminism (De Soto, 2000). The relationship between the social feminism and materialistic feminism is however not clear despite many female scholars favoring the social feminism at the expense of Marxism. According to Wolf (1990), capitalism acted as an incubator of gender norms and not ideological norms. It therefore dictated the way families should look like and in the process, men and women became polarized in a way with women being painted as passive participants in the development arena. As many may argue, the benefits of capitalism outweigh the imperfections. This can be proven by the way people with high incomes provide valuable goods and services to their fellow men. The wealth of many rich entrepreneurs is a reflection of the contribution these individuals make to the society. Capitalism also rewards hardworking individuals in the society. The initial assumption is that everybody has an equal chance of prospering but as usual, the cream would always rise to the top. Through serving another man and not being enslaved, capitalism can be seen as the best way of ridding the world poverty and state of joblessness since it narrows the gap between the wealthy and the poor. To add on that, capitalism provides an opportunity for individuals to realize their goals and desires since the market is not restricted and exploitation is to one’s own potential. Impact of capitalism on women As earlier noted, capitalism define a social stratification that is based on the source of income an individual has. Even among the working class, there are still social divisions on the upper, middle and lower proletariats. Historically, women have been degraded in all spheres of life with many scholars arguing that the Marxist model of economy did not put into consideration the gender differences that exist among the working class. With the main focus being accumulation of wealth and using it to acquire more, this kind of approach was not lenient on women since the acquisition of wealth had been perceived to be mainly a man’s task (Lowe, 2006). Women were not seen as active participants in the acquisition of wealth but rather observer who were there just for the purpose of waiting for readymade. With this kind of scenario and the need to be active participants, women resorted to activities like prostitution that is seen in WhiteChapel district so as to make ends meet. The capitalistic approach to the economy therefore worked against women. It has been seen that the working conditions in Britain were not favorable at the time when serial killings took place in East End. Workers had to do a lot while their salary did not pay for all the hard work they did. The Marxist thinking worked to motivate workers who decide that they wanted their rights respected by those who were in the positions of leadership. The result was a social stratification that saw many workers being underpaid and living in poor conditions. The capitalistic requirement of wealth accumulation did not favor women since they had traditionally been categorized as inactive members of the economic world (Mohanty, 2003). This can be attributed to the present day status of women in the modern society. Therefore, capitalism works to suppress women in their participation in economic activities. References Gordon, R. M. 2008. The Poison Murders of Jack the Ripper: His Final Crimes, Trial and Execution. New York: McFarland. House, R. 2011. Jack the Ripper and the Case for Scotland Yard's Prime Suspect. New York: John Wiley and Sons. Scott, J. 2005. Industrialism: A Dictionary of Sociology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. De Soto, H. 2000. The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else. New York: Basic Books. Lowe, D. E. 2006. The anti-capitalist dictionary: movements, histories & motivations. London: Zed Books. Mohanty, C.T. 2003. Feminism without borders: decolonizing theory, practicing solidarity. Durham NC: Duke University Press. Read More