The Socio-Economic Link Between Town and Country Essay example -- Karl

Nowadays, nine tenth of the global population are residents of cities. This implies that urbanization reduced modern world to a state where the vast majority of population dwells in the urban areas. Nevertheless, peripheral regions constitute a substantial segment of a state`s socio-economic pattern. One of the most prominent philosophers of the nineteenth century, Karl Marx, in his extraordinary 1848 political treatise The Communist Manifesto, wrote, â€Å"The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. [†¦] it has made the country dependent on the towns† (366). In fact, Marx establishes the idea that bourgeoisie by exploiting proletarians of rural areas encourages an essential social and economic inequality between town and country. Contrariwise, Ad am Smith, one of the most influential economic thinkers of the eighteenth century, in his distinguished 1776 work Of the Natural Progress of Opulence, asserted, â€Å"The great commerce is that between town and country, which is obviously advantageous to both† (351). Inherently, Smith states the concept that country and town exist in a ‘mutual and reciprocal’ socio-economic causation and consent, in which both participants succeed in a relevant mode. To sum up, there is a significant discrepancy in Marx`s and Smith`s opinions. Specifically, Marx maintains that the country is obliged to submit to the absolute dominion of the town, or, by means of Smith`s formulation, ‘the gain of the town is the loss of the country,’ and oppositely Smith argues that there is country modifying... ...nt mode, whereas Marx suggests that in these circumstances the country acts as a defeated party. Particularly, Smith might agree that there is inequality in lifestyles between country and town, nevertheless this inequality is determined not by the town exploiting the country, but is created by the disproportional distribution of opulence between them. The other disagreement manifests in the idea that despite Marx suggests that urban lifestyle is more acceptable than rural, Smith asserts that rural lifestyle is ‘original’ and more preferable for the ordinary citizen. However, despite obvious dissensions between Marx`s and Smith`s argumentations, generally they converge to the ideological balance, since, both Marx and Smith agree that the nature of socio-economic relationships between town and country is fundamentally positive for the general population of the state.