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Marx

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Marx & Engels Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 The German Ideology The Communist Manifesto Marx & Engels Biographical Background Dialectical Materialism The ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Marx


1
Marx Engels
  • Economic Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
  • The German Ideology
  • The Communist Manifesto

2
Marx Engels
  • Biographical Background
  • Dialectical Materialism
  • The Critique of Capitalism
  • The Critique of Liberalism
  • The Communist Future

3
Biographical Background
  • Karl Marx
  • 1818 - 1883
  • Freidrich Engels
  • 1820 - 1895

4
Biographical Background
  • Marx
  • Born in Trier, Prussia, large Jewish family who
    converted to Lutheranism
  • Entered U of Bonn (1835) drops out
  • Entered U of Berlin (1836) for Law Degree
  • Engels
  • Born in Barmen, Germany
  • Father owned textile company with connections in
    England
  • Sent to England (1840 or so) to work as unpaid
    clerk in family firm

5
Biographical Background
  • Marx
  • Gets doctoral degree (1841)
  • Becomes editor of left-wing newspaper
  • Leaves paper to protest censorship and heads to
    Paris (1844)
  • Engels
  • Starts writing on the conditions of the working
    class in England (1840)
  • Meets Marx briefly in Paris

6
Biographical Background
  • Begin life long collaboration writing in 1845
  • Engels returns to England (1850) to run family
    business and supports Marx and his family while
    Marx writes and conducts research

7
Biographical Background
  • Marx spends most of his life researching Das
    Kapital, writing (including a 10 year stint with
    the New York Tribune), and engaging in radical
    politics

8
Biographical Background
  • Marx dies in 1883, buried in Highgate Cemetery,
    London
  • Engels continues to write and publish both
    original material and edited versions of Marxs
    work until his death in 1895

9
I. Dialectical Materialism
  • The history of all hitherto existing society is
    the history of class struggles
  • The Communist Manifesto

10
I. Dialectical Materialism
  • Marxist Methodology
  • Marx and Engels try to distinguish their approach
    to socialism from More and the utopian
    tradition by grounding their insights in a
    scientific methodology
  • In order to come to a scientific as opposed to
    a philosophical or ideological understanding
    of human life, we need to examine how people
    actually live and produce the means of that
    existence

11
I. Dialectical Materialism
  • Men can be distinguished from animals by
    consciousness, by religion or anything else you
    like. They themselves begin to distinguish
    themselves from animals as soon as they begin to
    produce their means of subsistence, a step which
    is conditioned by their physical organization.
    By producing their means of subsistence men are
    indirectly producing their actual material life.
  • -- The German Ideology

12
I. Dialectical Materialism
  • But in addition to assembling the facts of
    existence, we need to understand how to arrange
    and interpret those facts.
  • They propose that we need a dialectical
    understanding of the world.

13
I. Dialectical Materialism
  • Thesis

14
I. Dialectical Materialism
  • Thesis Antithesis

15
I. Dialectical Materialism
  • Thesis Antithesis

Synthesis
16
I. Dialectical Materialism
  • Thesis Antithesis

Synthesis
Becomes the new thesis
17
I. Dialectical Materialism
  • Process repeats with a new antithesis emerging
    to challenge the thesis, reaching a new
    synthesis, which becomes the next thesis and so
    on
  • How does this help us understand human social
    life?

18
I. Dialectical Materialism
  • The dialectical method provides us with a
    powerful tool for both organizing and
    understanding social life.
  • Marx and Engels real insight is that this
    dialectical method, whose roots go all the way
    back to Plato, can be put to good use only when
    we strip it of its ideological trappings to
    focus on the realities of the physical world
    (hence the materialism)

19
I. Dialectical Materialism
  • We need to focus on the real material conditions
    of existence the factors/forces which shape and
    drive human social interaction

20
I. Dialectical Materialism
  • The premises from which we begin are not
    arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real premises
    from which abstraction can only be made in the
    imagination. They are the real individuals,
    their activity and the material conditions under
    which they live, both those which they find
    already existing and those produced by their
    activity -- The German Ideology

21
I. Dialectical Materialism
  • These real premises then include the way we
    make a living (that is, how we keep ourselves
    alive as biological beings).
  • These are the means of production

22
I. Dialectical Materialism
  • Marx Engels claim that it is these material
    factors which shape the ideas we have and hold
  • Life is not determined by consciousness, but
    consciousness by life. -- The German Ideology

23
I. Dialectical Materialism
  • Or, as theyll claim in the Manifesto
  • What else does the history of ideas prove, than
    that intellectual production changes its
    character in proportion as material production is
    changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever
    been the ideas of its ruling class.

24
I. Dialectical Materialism
  • We also need to examine how these means of
    production are mobilized and organized to
    actually produce the means of subsistence
  • They refer to these as the forces of production

25
I. Dialectical Materialism
  • Finally, we need to know how the various members
    of the society stand in relation to the means of
    production.
  • Class defined as ones position vis-à-vis the
    means of production
  • Broadly, you either own the means of production
    or you labor on the means of production

26
I. Dialectical Materialism
  • Proletariat Bourgeoisie
  • (Workers) (Capitalists)

27
I. Dialectical Materialism
  • The first premise of all human history is, of
    course, the existence of living individuals. --
    The German Ideology

28
I. Dialectical Materialism
  • The various stages of development in the
    division of labor are just so many different
    forms of ownership, ie., the existing stage in
    the division of labor determines also the
    relations of individuals to one another with
    reference to the material instrument, and product
    of labor.
  • -- The German Ideology

29
I. Dialectical Materialism
  • When we look back at history we see certain
    patterns emerge.
  • Primitive Communism
  • Slave Labor
  • Feudalism
  • Capitalism

30
I. Dialectical Materialism
  • But remember the connection between the material
    conditions of existence and the ideas of the
    age.
  • As they note in the German Ideology

31
I. Dialectical Materialism
  • The ideas of the ruling class are in every
    epoch the ruling ideas ie., the class which is
    the ruling material force of society, is at the
    same time its ruling intellectual force. The
    class which has the means of material production
    at its disposal, has control at the same time
    over the means of mental production

32
I. Dialectical Materialism
  • In other words, in capitalism, we shouldnt be
    surprised to find media and other institutions
    extolling the virtues of the market and the
    factors that contribute to its existence
  • For example, Freedom in capitalism means we are
    all free to say or print anything, but that
    means whoever has more money has more freedom
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