Karl Marx Human Well-Being Analysis

Human well-being defined, is a state where the pursuit of life, liberty, and property is unhindered. It is when people within a society are free to do as they like, as long as they do not harm others. According to this definition of human well-being, the philosophies of John Stuart Mill prove to be more important in the preservation of this state. The prohibition of individual liberties, proposed by Mill, seem to be more of a threat to human well-being than the economic conditions described by Karl Marx. The teachings of Marx are rooted in one core philosophy- that people cannot cohere to their species essence in a capitalist society. He believes that society has created this circumstance of estrangement or alienation that restricts man from …show more content…
The separation between capitalist and the working class is unfair and uneven. To Marx, “If the wealth of a society is decreasing, the worker suffers most, for although the working class cannot gain as much as the property owners when society is prospering, none suffers more cruelly from its decline than the working class” (Marx, page 284, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, First Manuscript). He concludes that this makes a worker a slave to capitalism; his or her spirit chained to the robotic and mechanical motions of labor. He finds that these people become, “depressed, therefore, both intellectually and physically to the level of a machine, and from being a man becomes an abstract activity and a stomach, so he also becomes more and more dependent on every fluctuation in the market price, in the investment of capital and in the whims of the wealthy.” (Marx, page 285, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, First Manuscript). Now Marx believes this is a huge threat to the well-being of humankind, and to an extent it is. It is important for people to take pride in what they do and for people to do what they want to do, but to blame society for that, is to give every single person an out. If everyone blamed society for where they were at, then society could never grow or innovate. What Marx is asking, is the elimination of competition. He does not want people to compete for land, power, money, or anything really. The importance of competition, of a challenge to be better is what drives humankind to do better. The kind of economy Marx describes is controlled by the wealthy, but that does not mean that entry to that class is closed. If people choose to compete, if they choose to innovate, if they choose to work towards a new and better idea, then they may too rise in rank. Marx believes that everything man makes either alienates or brings them closer to