What Did Marx Say About The State Of Nature

REFLECTION #9 – Marx After reading Marx, I am thinking a lot about the state of nature. Locke and Rousseau had some very clear ideas about what the state of nature looks like and I am wondering how Marx might respond to their ideas. I am also wondering about the critique Marx provides of capitalism. I am thinking a lot about what Marx might say about our labor and economic systems.
Because Marx’s ideas on communism center around a withdrawal from government to a place of communal living, I think Marx views that state of nature as a place where everyone has what they need and only what they need. People want for nothing and share everything. There is service without servitude and everyone has interest in the general will because personal
On this point, that private property is unnatural and corrupting, Rousseau and Marx agree. Rousseau and Marx both see property as negative because Rousseau argues that property yields government which yield corruption of the natural virtue of the human condition. Rousseau also wrote a lot about personal and general will. He believed that prioritizing the general will was more important because it would ultimately benefit the individual. Marx is more radical on this front because he claims that the general will and private, individual will are much more closely related, and maybe one in the same. In Marx’s communist state of nature, helping the general population directly translates to helping the individual. I believe that Marx would think Rousseau was on the right track in thinking about the general will and in believing that government and civilization are corrupting forces, but I believe he would find him too moderate. Marx is more radical on the issues that Rousseau addressed because he proposes universal service to the general population and a
Our class system, our distribution of wealth, and our means of production are all areas that do not fit with the utopic vision Marx outlines in the text. He proposes very clear step on proper withdrawal from corrupt governmental and societal practice and we have not taken many of those steps. Though some areas are on their way through various governmental actions and unions as we talked about in precessional, Marx would still find many faults. In this country there exists a huge disparity of wealth. The majority of money is in the hands of a very small number of people and Marx would find this to be a huge problem. Capital is what allows this to happen. Money itself is a creator of many problems. In the text Marx outlines why money is an alienating factor because it does not provide for equal exchange. Money has no inherent value and so distorts the system of trade. It also makes alienation from labor possible because workers and wages are so estranged from product. They are all pillars of a capitalist system and Marx finds them abhorrent. The existence of money creates classes and alienation of labor. Money rules America and keeps us from attaining the utopia that Marx envisions. Money perpetuates greed which tells us that we need much more than we do, which keeps us from an ideal in which we all work collectively to meet the needs of the community and live in harmony with each other and the earth. The environmental impacts