Karl Marx

1
Karl Marx

• Ethan Fishman

2
Life

• Karl Marx has had profoundly practical impact on
  world politics in late 19th and early 20th
  century.
• He was born on May 5th, 1818 in Trier to a
  Lutheran converted family descended from Jewish
  Rabbis and Scholars.
• Marx began his education at the University of
  Bonn and then transferred to continue his studies
  at the University of Berlin where he came under
  the influence of Hegelian philosophy.

3
Life - Continued

• Georg Hegel argued that human events progress
  dialectically through periods of stability and
  violence driven by the idea or spirit of history.
• The young Hegelians, a group to which Marx
  belonged, antagonized the Prussian monarchy by
  arguing that the time of Prussian absolutism was
  over.
• Marx began a journalistic career in 1841 working
  for the Rheinische Zeitung after completing his
  doctorate. Because of its critical tone, the
  journal was shut down by the government.

4
Life - Continued

• Marx fled to Paris and began work on The Economic
  and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, a work that
  displays the influence of Ludwig Feuerbach and is
  associated with an understanding of Marx as a
  humanist as opposed to the historical determinist
  contained in later works.
• In 1843, he married Jenny Westphalen and later
  met Friedrich Engels (1820 1895), a wealthy
  textile manufacturer who became Marxs lifetime
  intellectual collaborator and financial supporter.

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Life - Continue

• For his work with the Franzoesische Jahrbuecher,
  Marx was expelled from France.
• He settled in Brussels and joined the Communist
  League.
• During this time, Marx published the Communist
  Manifesto of 1848 that explained the difference
  between the Leagues philosophy and the
  philosophy of Saint Simon, Fourier, Owen,
  Bakunin, and Proudhon.

6
Life - Continued

• The Manifesto ends with these famous words
• Let the ruling class tremble at a Communist
  revolution. The proletarians have nothing to
  lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
  Working men of all countries, unite!
• Marxs words appeared prophetic as revolutions
  and class warfare swept Europe.
• Marx emphasized practice (praxis) the
  transformative power of philosophy.
• The philosophers have only interpreted the
  world, in various ways the point, however, is to
  change it.

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Life - continued

• In 1849, Marx fled the forces of reaction to
  London where he lived in poverty and had three
  children die.
• Marxs time in London was spent in the reading
  room of the British Museum and in organizing the
  International Workingmens Association.
• Isaiah Berlin paints a picture of Marx
  highlighting his strength of convictions and his
  intolerance for those not convinced by his logic.
• Marx died in 1883. Engels noted
• Fighting was his element. And he fought with a
  passion, a tenacity and a success which few could
  rival (H)e died, beloved, revered and mourned by
  millions of revolutionary fellow workers from
  mines of Siberia to the coasts of California, in
  all points of Europe and America. His name will
  endure through the ages, and so also will his
  work.

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Questions for Reflection

• What did Marx mean by Praxis?

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Historical Materialism

• Marx turns Hegel up side down and examines the
  dialectic as a material process (historical
  materialism) as opposed to a spiritual or
  metaphysical process.
• This material dialectic unfolds in the following
  manner
• Thesis establishes stability
• Anti-thesis violently challenges existing order
• A synthesis emerges establishing a new stable
  order

10
Historical Materialism - continued

• The stages of Marxs materialist conception of
  history
• Primitive Communism
• Slavery
• Feudal Lords
• Capitalism
• Advanced Communism
• Engels Socialism Utopian and Scientific
  articulated the fundamental importance of
  economics to understanding human history.
• The final causes of all social changes and
  political revolutions are to be sought, not in
  mens brains, not in mens better insight into
  eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the
  modes of production and exchange. They are to be
  sought not in philosophy, but in the economics of
  each particular epoch.

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Historical Materialism - continued

• The forces of production (technology people use)
  and the relations of production (the division of
  labor) are exploitative as long as classes exist.
• These forces and relations are the substructure
  (economic conditions) that produces the
  superstructure of society (political, social,
  religious, legal, educational, and cultural
  institutions).
• Marxs position can be interpreted as
  deterministic or humanistic. Totalitarians have
  tended to emphasize inevitability, whereas his
  collaborator, Engels, takes a more nuanced
  approach.

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The Materialist Conception of History, From
German Ideology

• The first historical fact is the production of
  material life itself. Therefore in any
  interpretation of history one has first of all to
  observe this fundamental fact in all its
  significance and all its implications and to
  accord it its due importance. It is well known
  that the Germans have never done this, and they
  have never, therefore, had an earthly basis for
  history and consequently never a historian.

13
Marx and Determinism, From A Contribution to the
Critique of Political Economy

• In broad outlines Asiatic, ancient, feudal, and
  modern bourgeois modes of production can be
  designated as progressive epochs in the economic
  formation of society. The bourgeois relations of
  production are the last antagonistic form of the
  social process of production antagonistic not
  in the sense of individual antagonism, but of one
  arising from the social conditions of life of the
  individuals at the same time the productive
  forces developing in the womb of bourgeois
  society create the material conditions for the
  solution of that antagonism. The social
  formation brings, therefore, the prehistory of
  human society to a close.

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Questions for Reflection

• Would you describe Marx as a humanist or a
  determinist? Why?

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Marxist Anthropology

• Lewis Morgan (1818-1881), an American
  anthropologist argued that primitive peoples
  lived in communism offering Marx a starting point
  for his understanding of dialectical evolution.
• Specialization led to slavery and technological
  innovation led to feudalism.
• Capitalism replaced feudalism because of similar
  technological advances creating two conflicting
  classes, the bourgeoisie (the exploiters) and the
  proletariat (the exploited).

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Marxist Anthropology - Continued

• As economic crises multiply, the proletariat will
  unite and overthrow the bourgeoisie ushering in
  advanced communism.
• Advanced communism will be similar to primitive
  communism with the addition of material abundance
  supplied by a higher technological base.
• The false consciousness of exploitative
  morality will be replaced by an authentically
  human morality.
• Religion will be unnecessary since it was merely
  a tool exploiters used to control the exploited.

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Marxist Anthropology - Continued

• Traditional family relationships will also go by
  the way side as the material reality of those
  relationships is displaced by the new mode of
  production and distribution.
• The new mode of production will enable each to
  contribute according to ability and take
  according to need.
• There will be an interim period before advanced
  communism involving the dictatorship of the
  proletariat where violence and force are used to
  bring about advanced communism.
• Marxs embrace of the necessity of revolution and
  the ensuing violence and force led him to reject
  thinkers who did not see such a necessity as
  utopian socialists.

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Engels, Anti-Duhring, 1878

• We therefore reject every attempt to impose on us
  any moral dogma whatsoever as an eternal,
  ultimate and forever immutable ethical law on the
  pretext that the moral world, too, has its
  permanent principle which stand above history and
  the differences between nations. We maintain on
  the contrary that all moral theories have been
  hitherto the product in the last analysis, of the
  economic conditions of society obtaining at the
  time A really human morality which stands above
  class antagonisms and above any recollection of
  them becomes possible only at a stage of society
  which has not only overcome class antagonisms but
  has even forgotten them in practical life.

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Questions for Reflection

• Was Marx mistaken in not calling for a strict
  political accountability of the political
  leadership to the rank-and-file proletariat?

20
Theory of Alienation

• Humans find the cosmos as a hostile place.
• For Hegel, thinking about the universe and
  framing it within concepts offers the peace of
  mind we seek.
• For Marx, creative labor to produce what we need
  for survival is the way for overcoming this
  alienated experience. Class structure and the
  division of labor negate possibilities of
  creativity and exacerbate human creativity.
• Capitalism combats creative labor in three ways
• By separating labor from its products, capitalism
  robs workers of pride in their craft.
• Avaricious competition turns workers against each
  other and replaces quantity for quality as
  innovation and creativity are excluded from work.
• The bourgeoisie maximally exploits the worker
  bringing the quality of the workers life to a
  low point in human history.

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Theory of Alienation - Continued

• Despite his criticisms, Marx does not consider
  capitalism an immoral system.
• According to his understanding of history,
  capitalism is a necessary stage to bring about
  advanced communism.
• After the dictatorship of the proletariat passes,
  the alienation of the workers will cease.
• Machines will deal with the tedium and boredom of
  labor and man will become the real, conscious
  lord(s) of Nature.

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Questions for Reflection

• What did Marx think of democratic socialists such
  as the Labor Party in England?

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The Alienation of Labor, From Economic and
Philosophic Manuscripts

• As a result, therefore, man (the worker) no
  longer feels himself to be freely active in any
  but his animal functions eating, drinking,
  procreating, or at most in his dwelling and in
  dressing-up, etc. and in his human functions he
  no longer feels himself to be anything but an
  animal. What is animal becomes human and what is
  human becomes animal.

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Engels On The Kingdom of Freedom, from
Socialism Utopian and Scientific

• With the seizing of the means of production by
  society, production of commodities is done away
  with, and, simultaneously, the mastery of the
  product over the producer. Anarchy in social
  production is replaced by systematic, definite
  organization. The struggle for individual
  existence disappears. Then for the first time
  man, in a certain sense, is finally marked off
  from the rest of the animal kingdom, and emerges
  from mere animal conditions of existence into
  really human ones. The whole sphere of the
  conditions of life which environ man, and which
  have hitherto ruled man, who for the first time
  becomes the real, conscious lord of Nature,
  because he has now become master of his own
  social organization.

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Questions for Reflection

• Do you think that Marx has a realistic view of
  human nature?

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Industrial Reform

• The theme and reality of alienated labor was a
  powerful enough reality to be captured in the art
  work of Charlie Chaplin in the film Modern Times.
• After World War II, some companies organized
  workers into small teams that shared
  responsibility for creating a final product.
• This innovation was adopted in the Scandinavian
  countries, Japan, and the United States.
• Marx would likely reject such reform as a
  deceitful practice by capitalists to enhance
  profits that would merely delay the inevitable
  evolution of advanced communist society.

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Theory of Surplus Value

• Marx used John Lockes labor theory of value to
  demonstrate how capitalists were taking the
  surplus value of labors efforts to empower
  themselves.
• As the capitalists sought to increase profits,
  they would rely more and more on constant capital
  (machinery, buildings, and raw materials).
• As competition intensifies more and more workers
  will be released and many defeated capitalists
  will join the ranks of the proletariat.
• Eventually the masses in desperate circumstances
  will rebel and overthrow the capitalist mode of
  production and transfer economic ownership and
  political control into public hands.

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Questions for Reflection

• Can reform of the industrial workplace forestall
  the proletarian revolution Marx predicts?

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Marxism-Leninism

• Marxists in Russia were faced by the problem that
  their society was too backward for a communist
  revolution.
• V.I. Lenin (1870-1924) and Leon Trotsky (1877
  -1940) argued some societies could skip
  capitalism and move toward advanced communism.
  Lenin further argued discontented peasants could
  substitute for the proletariat as the engine of
  the necessary revolution.
• Lenin argued a dictatorship of the communist
  party over the peasants and the proletariat would
  be necessary to prevent them from sliding into a
  stagnant trade union mentality.

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Marxism-Leninism - continued

• Lenin opposed anarchists dismantlement of
  administrative apparatuses and argued that the
  communist were ready to subordinate, control, and
  manage human beings as they were into advanced
  communism.
• Lenins unleashing of force and violence with no
  definitive end point created a legacy that would
  become increasingly dark as Stalin (1879-1953),
  Mao Zedong (1893 -1976), Kim Il-Sung (1912-1994),
  Ho Chi Minh (1890-1969), Fidel Castro (1926
  today), and Pol Pot (1925 1998) unleashed
  murder and oppression to bring complete equality
  to the earth.

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The Knell of Capitalist Private Property, From
Capital, 1867

• Along with the constantly diminishing number of
  the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolize
  all advantages of the process of transformation,
  grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery,
  degradation, exploitation but with this too
  grows the revolt of the working class, a class
  always increasing in numbers, and disciplined,
  united, organized by the very mechanism of the
  process of capitalist production itself. The
  monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the
  mode of production, which has sprung up and
  flourished along, and under it. Centralization
  of the means of production and socialization of
  labor at last reach a point where they become
  incompatible with their capitalist integument.
  This integument is burst asunder. The knell of
  capitalist private property sounds. The
  expropriators are expropriated.

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Questions for Reflection

• Do you agree with Marx that only human labor, and
  not machines, can produce economic value?

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Herbert Marcuse

• Herbert Marcuse (1898 1979) one of Marxs most
  original late twentieth century interpreters
  imagined the life after alienation as being
  dedicated to creative labor, immersed in
  satisfaction of a dynamic culture, and
  characterized by a liberated sexuality.
• The proletariat has been barred from this
  potential by being bought off by a
  one-dimensional consumer society.
• The marginalized in that society offered a
  potential source for the needed Marxian
  revolution.
• Needless to say, Marcuse was immensely popular
  with the Hippie generation of the 1960s and 1970s.

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Conclusion

• If Marx is a humanist critical of human evils, he
  is not original.
• If Marx is an economic determinist, he is
  original but is troubled by necessary role of
  technological and economic forces to make a new
  mode of production recognizable within the
  superstructure of society.
• It is also interesting to ponder why the dynamic
  force of the dialectic, so active throughout
  history would eventually stop.

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Conclusion - Continued

• There are strong parallels in Marxs thought with
  the religion he rejects.
• The dictatorship of the proletariat and the Jews
  40 years in the desert to be prepared for the
  promised land.
• The communist revolution is an apocalypse
  followed by advanced communism, which is an
  earthly heaven.
• Man saves himself and Marx is the prophet of this
  self-salvation.
• Does life always get better and have
  technological innovations tended toward progress
  or have there been regresses in human history.
• Holocaust
• Atomic Bomb
• Many positive changes have occurred without
  revolution. Must a revolution inevitably come?

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Questions for Reflection

• Why is Marxism sometimes described as a secular
  religion?

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Questions for Reflection

• To what extent have capitalist societies met the
  standards of political justice outlined by Marx
  in his Communist Manifesto?

38
New Orleans

• Did the Hurricane Katrina tragedy on the Gulf
  Coast illustrate the evils of capitalism about
  which Marx warns?