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Wealth and poverty; infamous juxtaposition! To measure the wealth of nations, men have weighed gold, silver, pepper; counted oxen and acres; collected shells, even. But is wealth a finite commodity? As the rich get richer, do the poor necessarily have to get poorer? Karl Marx would have us believe this to be immutable law. Even today, during the midst of a contentious election cycle, we hear it asserted that one party siphons wealth from the “poor” and uses it to inflate the bank accounts of the “wealthy.” This is class conflict in all its Marxist glory—the workers exploited; the wealthy enriched.
Indeed, if wealth is finite, then perhaps Marx is correct. Eventually, those who are held down, those who toil for the enrichment of others, will rise and cast off their chains. They will be led by an enlightened band of “bourgeois ideologists” who have forsaken their class roots in order to change the flow of history. No longer will men be dehumanized by mindless labor aimed at increasing capital; no longer will craftsmen sink into the abyss of the proletariat, pushed under by an inability to compete with ever-growing industries.
Or, is wealth infinite? Is it something which expands and consequently allows all men to enjoy more and more of life’s treasures? Does the division of labor result in the continuing creation of wealth, so that I can grow wealthier without having to take anything from you? This is the fundamental idea which underlies capitalism: wealth is not stagnant; it increases through the interplay of supply and demand (which will be called the “invisible hand of the market”).
As the mass production of one commodity commences, new needs and opportunities are spawned; whole new industries arise; horizons are expanded and it is possible for a member of the bourgeois or the proletariat to rise. This is what Marx misses; this is what allows capitalism to thrive. To Marx and his disciples, the only economic movement is a generally downward one; with Smith, the sky becomes the limit. Wealth no longer is something which can be guarded by a class of people; it no longer is something which can be measured or contained; it no longer is the privileged property of the “haves.” To have is something to which all people can aspire; to have not is no longer a permanent condition.
