Marx first draft

Benjamin Franklin Looks His Best in Green

When I was in elementary school I wished I had a 100 dollars. Then I did not want to be unfair so I would wish my friends also had 100 dollars, not wanting to hurt anyone’s feelings I’d wish all of my friend’s friends had 100 dollars, and eventually wished everyone in the entire world had 100 dollars. I remember the day I realized this was a pointless wish, because if everyone had 100 dollars then 100 dollars would have absolutely no value. I started wishing for a puppy. As I look back on my wasted wishes I realize how paper currency changed exchange value. While reading Communist Manifesto I disagreed with Karl Marx prediction of the world economy’s downfall because He did not incorporate how “invisible” money (green slips of Benjamin Franklins) would influence the bases of economy.
Karl Marx did not recognize paper money as a valid form of private property. In The Communist Manifesto Marx states, “private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths.” It is important to understand Marx was not under the impression that nine-tenths of the population had no money, but rather he believed that nine-tenths of the population had no wealth. Ironically enough in the United States two thirds of the nations wealth is controlled by the top ten percent of the population. The other ninety percent share the remaining third. Yet, in the United States ninety percent of the population is not impoverished, because they have valuable money.
Marx underestimated how valuable dollars would be considered across every social class. In The Communist Manifesto it reads that the labourers (factory workers) are all, “slaves of the bourgeois class,” and that “he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker.” The prediction of labourers living in slavery might be true if the bourgeoisie class did not depended on the exchange value of money also. My one hundred dollar is worth the same as Paris Hilton’s one hundred dollar. Even the wealthiest investor depends on the ‘invisible’ value of the dollar. And although it is not what Marx wanted our economy is based on exchange value. When was the last time that you went to the store and saw someone pay without a credit card, better yet, when was the last time you went to the store and saw someone pay for their groceries with a bushel of wheat. Image the Wal-Mart security guards trying to counsel that poor customer. Not only would you never expect to see this at Wal-Mart, but we would not accept it as a means of payment.
The Communist theory “may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property,” but it did not take into consideration my childish wish. Today, private property does not simply included land, houses, and cars but also Benjamin Franklins. Read in the context of a world were private property is only valuable if it rings up a cash value The Communist Manifesto is simply a description of my childish wish to give everyone one hundred dollars. Marx failed to predict that the world would embraced Benjamin Franklin in green, and if he gave everyone one hundred dollars the exchange value would be entirely lost.