Karl Marx Ethan Fishman

Karl Marx
Ethan Fishman
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.
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.
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 Marx’s lifetime
intellectual collaborator and financial supporter.
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 League’s
philosophy and the philosophy of Saint Simon,
Fourier, Owen, Bakunin, and Proudhon.
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!”
• Marx’s 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.”
Life - continued
• In 1849, Marx fled the forces of reaction to London where he lived
in poverty and had three children die.
• Marx’s time in London was spent in the reading room of the British
Museum and in organizing the International Workingmen’s
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.
Questions for Reflection
What did Marx mean by Praxis?
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
Historical Materialism - continued
• The stages of Marx’s materialist conception of history:
–
–
–
–
–
Primitive Communism
Slavery
Feudal Lords
Capitalism
Advanced Communism
• Engel’s 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 men’s brains, not in men’s 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.
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).
• Marx’s position can be interpreted as deterministic or
humanistic. Totalitarians have tended to emphasize
inevitability, whereas his collaborator, Engels, takes a
more nuanced approach.
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.
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.
Questions for Reflection
Would you describe Marx as a humanist or a
determinist? Why?
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).
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.
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.
• Marx’s 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.
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.
Questions for Reflection
Was Marx mistaken in not calling for a strict
political accountability of the political
leadership to the rank-and-file proletariat?
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 worker’s life to a low point in human history.
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.”
Questions for Reflection
What did Marx think of democratic socialists
such as the Labor Party in England?
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.
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.
Questions for Reflection
Do you think that Marx has a realistic view of
human nature?
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.
Theory of Surplus Value
• Marx used John Locke’s 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.
Questions for Reflection
Can reform of the industrial workplace forestall
the proletarian revolution Marx predicts?
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.”
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.
• Lenin’s 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.
“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.
Questions for Reflection
Do you agree with Marx that only human labor,
and not machines, can produce economic
value?
Herbert Marcuse
• Herbert Marcuse (1898 – 1979) one of Marx’s 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.
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.
Conclusion - Continued
• There are strong parallels in Marx’s 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?
Questions for Reflection
Why is Marxism sometimes described as a
secular religion?
Questions for Reflection
To what extent have capitalist societies met the
standards of political justice outlined by Marx
in his Communist Manifesto?
New Orleans
Did the Hurricane Katrina tragedy on the Gulf
Coast illustrate the evils of capitalism about
which Marx warns?