Marx and Carnegie
Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels published their tract, The Communist
Manifesto, in February 1848, just months before much of Europe was to erupt in
social and political turmoil, and the Manifesto reflects the politics
of the period. In the summer of that year, youthful revolutionary groups, along
with the urban dispossessed, set up barricades in many of Europe’s capitals,
fighting for an end to political and economic oppression. While dissenters had been
waging war against absolutism and aristocratic privilege since the French
Revolution, many of the new radicals of 1848 set their sights on a new enemy
that they believed to be responsible for social instability and the growth of
an impoverished urban underclass. That enemy was capitalism, the system of
private ownership of the means of production.
In The Gospel of Wealth, Andrew Carnegie that describes the
responsibility of philanthropy by the new upper class
of self-made rich. Carnegie proposed that the best way of dealing with the new types
of wealth inequality was for the wealthy to redistribute their surplus means in
a responsible and thoughtful manner. This approach was contrasted with the traditional
patrimony, where wealth is handed down to heirs. Carnegie argued that surplus
wealth is put to best use when it is administered carefully by the wealthy.
Carnegie also argues against wasteful use of capital in the form of
extravagance, irresponsible spending, or self-indulgence, instead promoting the
administration of said capital over the course of one's lifetime toward the
cause of reducing the stratification between the rich and poor. As a result,
the wealthy should administer their riches responsibly and not in a way that
encourages "the slothful, the drunkard, the unworthy."
