Another fundamental element of liberal theory and ideology is the right for each individual to pursue and hold private property. According to Locke, each individual has the opportunity and the right to work to better oneself through the accumulation and improvement of their own private property, "it is allowed to be his goods who hath bestowed his labor upon it," (Locke, 21).
This is also a crucial feature in the foundations of capitalism as well. It ensures that as long as one works and labors hard enough, he or she will be entitled to a certain amount of private property to compensate for that labor, "As much land as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivates, and can use the product of, so much is his property," (Locke, 22). It is with this idea that many societies have promised their underprivileged or poor the chance to rise above their inherited ranks and reach the American dream of turning rags to riches.
To a Marxist, this is close to blasphemy. They view the drive for private property as being the source of the perils seen in the capitalist structure. It provides the environment in which labor is divided as to attain more property, and therefore makes wage slaves out of laborers, "the division of labor and private property are, moreover, identical expressions," (Marx, 53). As the desire for private property grows, the bourgeois was formulated as the exploited those of the lower class to sustain and immense their wealth....
According to Karl Marx, this is "the contradiction between the individuality of each separate proletarian and labor, the condition of life forced upon him, becomes evident to himself, for he is sacrificed from youth upwards, and, within his own class, has no chance at arriving at the conditions which would place him in the other class," (Marx, 85). The desire for property, and therefore capitol, makes many work their entire lives for the gain of someone else with the false hope that they will overcome their class lines. Rather than private property becoming part of liberation then, Marxists see it as the shackles which enslave thousands of proletarians for life.
Despite all the hope ad promise liberalism has to offer, the Marxist view destroys the fantasy with its critique of some of the most fundamental elements of liberal theory and practice. Two major ideals, individual rights and the right to pursue private property, are seen by Marxists as some of the essential causes of the extreme economic and social divide between the classes. Karl Marx and his followers posit that these two features, however idealistic and opportunistic, are essentially what keep the lower class in their exploited status.
Works Cited
Locke, John. The Second Treatise on Civil Government. Prometheus Books. Amherst,
New York. 1986.
Marx, Karl, Engels, Frederick. The German Ideology. International Publishers. New York. 2004.
