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Summary 4: “The Sources of Human Misery: Karl Marx and Centrality of Social Class” pp.1-30, by
Pampel;
The current paper aims to present a summary of Karl Marx's view on the Source of Human
Misery in the Article written by Pampel. He does also link Karl Marx's view on the social class difference
existent in his time, when Capitalism was still a new Economical System to be adjusted to plus his views
on religion, Industrialism, Materialism and the rise of Socialism.
Surely social inequality is quite noticeable by anyone worldwide; this is quite well reinforced
by the huge building gap of economical power between wealthy people and the middle class population,
let alone unskilled workers. Hitherto, Reflecting the original Ideas of Marx, Pampel writes that main
reason for the existence of Social Inequality and thus the Source of Misery is imbibed in the Capitalism
System itself. Although, Capitalism brought the idea of supply and demand which gives a great degree of
freedom to individuals to act on their self-interest, Pampel, reflecting Marx's idea, believes that the class
difference brought by the new System, where the worker and the employer belong to a separated and
segregated Social Classes would limit the freedom of the individuals to act as they would since, for
instance, an employer's need to always have an increase for his profit resulting in less payment to his
workers "lower salary"; Again, according to Pampel, one would agree that the Source of Misery is in the
competition amongst individuals in their daily economical endeavors where it is expected, at the end of
the day, to have a losers and a winners; however, Pampel believes that Marx counter to this premise,
lays in the fact that the Capitalism System has flaws and contradictions when it comes to the economic
and social relationship between classes, that there is an illusion built in the system that drives poor
people to believe if they do struggle enough they might get as higher up as the wealthiest. Nevertheless,
Marx is apologist to the creation of a society without division and segregation of classes and more
unified; it should be noted that he was not against people performing their daily job in whatever level
they might be included but for the reasons of the driven Economical Classes built up where the
wealthiest to keep his position would need to exploit continuously the poor.
Pampel also describes Karl Marx as a strong critique of any type of religion for their handling
the freedom of thought and expression; Additionally, Marx was a Prodemocratic figure and identified
himself with the freedom of speech to anyone. He believed that the Capitalism System forms the base in
which all other Social phenomena unfolds, i.e., every other social phenomenon like religion, art, state
policies and ideology will be controlled by the base which is the economical system, which in turn is also
controlled by the capitalist entities. For him, Socialism is the only scientific explanation of society.
With Capitalism surging after Industrialism, Marx criticized the way it had brought about
new kinds of misery, that it was slowly destroying the traditional family tie and lastly, that Industrialism
had created new types of social, health and economical problems. This would with easy be seen in the
great exodus that happened at the time when people were abandoning the rural life to the City one.
In conclusion, for Karl Marx, the only solution to eliminate such disparities is by admitting
Socialism as the only Economical system to the society. This would eliminate Social Class differences,
Classism, and the Society would be better off, for one would be caring about each other, respecting each
other's rights "without class exploitation", while performing their duties.
Summary by Fernando Carlos Elunda “1750355” from: “Pampel” pp.1-30, “The Sources of Human
Misery: Karl Marx and Centrality of Social Class”