Master and Slave

The philosophers have only interpreted the world differently; the point is, however, to change it.
- Karl Marx

Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolize all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working-class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself.
- Karl Marx, Das Kapital (1867)

Is the overthrow of the capitalist inevitable?

Consider the husband who forces his wife to cook, to sew, to mind the children, to buy groceries, to take out the garbage, to wash and clean, to cut the grass, to hold down a job. He says Do this, do that. He is the master, she is the slave. It is inevitable that sooner or later this wife will ask herself: If I have to cook, wash, work, mind the kids, etc, etc.-then what do I need with a husband?

Suppose there is a great Czar, who lives royally on the taxes he extracts from the peagants, who says to the people, Do this, do that--go fight the Germans, raise the crops, run the railroads, the factories, and on and on. It is inevitable that one day the people will look at one another and say: If we have to fight the Germans, run the railroads and factories. etc., etc,--then what do we need with a Czar? Sound familiar? These are simple examples of the working of the Marxist dialectic. Here's one more:

The capitalist says to the worker: Do this, do that. But the value of the products the worker can buy with his wages is always less than that of those he produces. The difference is the Profit that the capitalist skims off (without putting back anything of equal value). So the worker inevitably becomes poorer and more miserable, while the capitalist gets richer and richer. Sooner or later the worker will ask himself If we do all the work, what do we need with the capitalist?

A philosophical problem with Marxism is that, if the overthrow of capitalism is inevitable, then what's the point of Marxism?

Bibliography

Marx, Karl. Das Kapital, Henry Regnery Company, Chicago, 1970.