PHIL 1003

1
Marx and Engels' Critique of Capitalism

• PHIL 1003
• 2008-09

2
Two approaches
Communitarian vs Libertarian Philosophy
3
Communitarian philosophers

• Aristotle
• Polis regulates entire life of citizen, including
  entertainment
• For good of the whole.
• Rousseau
• Rough equality is prerequisite to freedom
• Sovereign has right to demand anything required
  by public utility, but nothing more (SC,
  II.4.4).
• Marx
• Labour deserves just compensation
• Classes and inequality should disappear
• Bourgeois/capitalist property should become
  community property.

4
Libertarian philosophers

• Locke
• Govt guarantees private domain of life, liberty,
  and property
• labour confers title to property, but you may use
  anothers labour
• Infinite accumulation and inequality are
  acceptable, even morally good!
• Mill
• only justification for interfering with the
  liberty of action of anyoneis self-protection
  (9).

5
Overview of M E

• Marx and Engels
• Are anti-libertarian
• Use labour theory of value
• Create a new communitarianism
• proletarian society
• not a state politics should disappear after the
  proletariat establishes its rule.

6
Question

• Marx talks about class struggle, in particular
  the tension between the proletariat (working
  class) and the bourgeoisie (capitalists).
• Even though communism has failed, is Marx's take
  on class struggles still relevant in today's
  time?
• What are the class struggles we see in our time
  (e.g. the widening income gap between the rich
  and the poor)?

7
An Answer

• Marx argued that the bourgeoisie always tried to
  rule over the proletariat, religion and moral
  sense are "created by man to control man" through
  socialization and upbringing.
• Therefore, "Communism abolishes eternal truths
  it abolishes all religion, and all morality".
  How far do you agree with this view?

8
Who were Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels?

• Marx
• B. 1818
• German, secular Jew
• Thesis on ancient materialists, Democritus and
  Epicurus
• Journalist
• Studied Englands industrialization in detail
• Many works Kapital
• Active in workers movement
• d. 1883

• Engels
• German, b. 1820
• Son of an industrialist
• Family owned factories in Manchester, England
• Condition of the Working Class in England (1844)
• Collaborated with Marx as writer and activist
• Worked in family firm in Manchester
• d. 1895.

9
Marx and Engels
10
How to read Marx and Engels work today?

• Without anachronistic assumptions.
• Their critique of capitalism may be valid even if
  communism has failed.

11
Materialist conception of history

• M E materialize Hegelian idealism
• Hegel spirit self-creative energy realizing
  itself in history through culture
• self-conscious being by the process of knowing
  (Tucker, p. xxi)
• repeated overcoming of alienation of spirit from
  itself
• Spirit finally finds itself at peace, having
  achieved self-knowledge, whole of creation is
  spirit!
• They use transformational criticism to invert
  Hegel
• Man is not self-alienated spirit (God) rather,
  God is self-alienated man (i.e. imaginary)
• Man must reclaim his earthly reality!

12
The Economy

• Capitalism NOT new
• existed in late Middle Ages banks, trading
  companies, stock exchanges.
• Key development Industrialization
• since late 18th cent. (also CO2 build-up)
• Marriage of capitalism with industrialization
  creates new mode of production
• unique in world history.

13
The history of all hitherto existing society
is the history of class struggles.
14
Bourgeoisie vs Feudal lords
Proletariat vs Bourgeoisie
15
Formation of the Proletariat (479-80)

• Alienated labour/de-skilling
• machine
• division of labour
• work loses all charm
• wages decrease.
• Monotonous, homogenized work
• female and child labour is used.

16
Worker Slave

• Slave
• of factory owner, bourgeois state and other
  portions of the bourgeoisie
• Proletariat increases, taking in other lower
  strata (e.g. former agricultural workers)
• Conditions equalized
• Livelihood uncertain
• recurrent crises of over-production
• does current economic crisis fit Marxs model?

17
Engels analysis of industrialization

• The evolution of the modern system of
  manufacture has reached its climax in Manchester.
  It was in the South Lancashire cotton industry
  that water and steam power first replaced hand
  machines. It was here that such machines as the
  power-loom and the self-acting mule replaced the
  old hand-loom and spinning wheel. It is here that
  the division of labor has been pushed to its
  furthest limits. These three factors are the
  essence of modern industry. In all three of them
  the cotton industry was the pioneer and remains
  ahead in all branches of industry (CWC, ch. 3).

18
Engels description of class war

• Everywhere one finds on the one hand the most
  barbarous indifference and selfish egotism and on
  the other the most distressing scenes of misery
  and poverty.
• Signs of social conflict are to be found
  everywhere. Everyone turns his house into a
  fortress to defend himself--under the protection
  of the law--from the depredations of his
  neighbors.
• Class warfare is so open and shameless that it
  has to be seen to be believed. The observer of
  such an appalling state of affairs must shudder
  at the consequences of such feverish activity and
  can only marvel that so crazy a social and
  economic structure should survive at all (CWC,
  ch. 3).

19
Labour Theory of Value Marx as Lockes disciple

• Locke labour input confers property title
• this can be labour of your employee.
• Marx disagrees
• labour must be your own for it to confer
  ownership.
• Labour of workers usurped by owners
• Hence their rightful property is usurped
• By right, it should be returned to them.

20
The Working Day

• AB..C
• Where A-B time necessary to provide minimum
  support to worker
• Where B-C surplus value, extracted by employer
  (capitalist)
• AB..C
• AB.C
• As B-C increases, surplus value increases.

21
Ownership of the means of production
This is ours!
22
Human nature

• Like Rousseau, M E believe HN can be changed
• Rousseau social pact and legislator (II.7)
  effect this change
• Locke
• are we more industrious where there is property ?
• M E we are what our conditions make us
• mans consciousness, changes with every change
  in the conditions of his material existence
  (489).

Do you agree?
23
What is the difference
between mode and means
of production?
24
The bourgeoisie is admirable

• The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one
  hundred years, has created more massive and more
  colossal productive forces than have all
  preceding generations together.
• Subjection of Natures forces to man, machinery,
  application of chemistry to industry and
  agriculture, stream-navigation, railways,
  electric telegraphswhat earlier century had even
  a presentiment that such productive forces
  slumbered in the lap of social labour? (477).

25
"the bourgeoisie...must
nestle everywhere, settle everywhere..." (476).
26
The sorcerers apprentice (478)

• New industries/modes of production
• New towns, entirely new populations
• Subjection of East to West
• World literature (477)
• Creation of proletariat
• Family, nation undermined.

The genie is out of the bottle
27
Globalization

• Cash nexus (475)
• Freedom of commerce
• cheap pricesbatter down all Chinese walls
• compelsall nationsto adopt the bourgeois mode
  of production (477).
• Discovery of America world market (475)
• McDonalds, Benetton, Starbucks, Levis jeans.
• Uniformity
• Mode of production Nike, Adidas
• Conditions of life TV, electricity, bfast
  cereal.

28
Key Economic Arguments

• Recurrent world crises of over-production (478)
• Products and productive forces destroyed
• Too much of everything.
• Capitals answer?
• Labourer sinks lower and lowera slave w/out
  adequate subsistence! (483)
• Expanison requires conquest of new markets.
• Seeds of bourgeoisies destruction therefore
  found within capitalist mode of production.

29
Charges against Communism

• Abolition of family
• Through public education ending child labour.
• Community of women
• has always existed
• bourgeois uses women of all classes
  (prostitution)
• bourgeois marriage sham.
• Abolition of property
• 9/10 have none anyway.
• Universal laziness will follow
• what is the argument? (Hint Locke, ch. 5)
• Unpatriotic
• workers have no country globalization abolishes
  national differences!

30
Demands of the proletariat

• Abolition of private property in land rents go
  to public purposes (yes, public lands)
• Heavy, progressive income tax (yes, in many
  states but in HK?)
• Abolition of right of inheritance (yes,
  partially death duties in many states)
• Free education (yes)
• Centralization of credit (central banks in some
  states, e.g. U.S. Federal Reserve, and EU)
• Centralization of transport, communication (yes,
  in some states).

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Working men of all countries, unite!