Communist Manifesto-Karl Marx

"It has resolved personal worth into exchange value..."

The above is an excerpt from Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto. In this paragraph, he is describing in his view how the bourgeiousie has exploited personal worth into an economic means. According to Karl Marx, whenever the bourgeiousie have gained the upper hand in the attempt to create a better life, all they ended up doing was create a capitalist system where personal worth was bought and sold on the market place. The Communist Manifesto outlines what is percieved to be wrong with the aristocracy and capitalism based economies.

I would have to say that I agree with this statement to an extent. All to often do we see a person's sense of worth plumet in the pursuit of capitalistic gains. Simply put, money can't buy everything. However, we see this trend most often in the visible minority. By this I mean the small amount of people that are visible only because of their gains. Celebrities, CEO's, bankers, and the generally wealthy are the few in the public eye because of their money. That being said, I am still in support of a capitalist based economy and government, which is ironic because in my younger days I was a staunch supporter of socialist/communist system. However, through numerous history courses, readings, movies, and all other matter on the subject consumed between then and now I have seen the light. A purely socialist/communist country can not exixt on the scale that America does on the world stage. China is becoming a capitalist sate little by little each day. North Korea's economy is in shambles as well as Cuba's. The Soviet Union collapsed because of the rampant corruption that ran through the system, and now today Russia and old Soviet Bloc countries are a gold mine for any business minded capitalist with a dream. But this does not mean that socialist and/or communist principles can be applied to certain aspects to how a country is run. Say what you will about the new health care reforms, but a generalized health care system is the way of the future. Everyone should have the right to the same healthcare as everyone else, and medical aid should not be resereved for the priveleged.

But I digress. To say that personal worth has been resolved into economic value is right only in the cases of industrialists and businessmen run amok.