Marx1.ppt

AN INTRODUCTION
Karl Marx

Communism
“There is a spectre haunting Europe, the spectre of Communism”
Most people associate Marx with communism, which we will discuss (virtually) during this unit. But I think the best way to think about Marx is not about communism, but as a critic of capitalism.
What is communism?
First we need to understand what communism is. Here is a link that explains capitalism and socialism –

So Marx believed that the capitalist system was doomed to failure (we will get there) and communism would prevail. But the most important takeaways from Marx is his critique of capitalism , which is still relevant and useful for us today.
Marx is misunderstood
Work was never completed – he never published his work on all social structures
Also he is difficult to understand- so people have different interpretations.
We are going to try our best to understand the underlying theories of Marx and how we can apply them to contemporary problems.

A Brief Biography
Marx was born 1818 in German Rhineland
Jewish but parents converted to Protestantism, even a century before the Holocaust in Germany, the level of anti-Semitism in Germany at the time was high. Karl Marx’ father gave up his Judaism to keep his civil rights and his law practice. This meant that Karl Marx came from a secular, middle class home. We will see that this is important, since Marx disdains organized religion in his writings.
Marx went on to the the University of Bonn to become a law student, and practice law like his father.
But he got kicked out- he partied TOO hard (let this be a warning to all of you who are partying too hard– you may end up being the next Karl Marx).
He then went to the University of Jena and studied philosophy and he worked on doctoral dissertation- submitted 1841
But he did not get a university professorship, he was blacklisted for his radical views. This was a great blow to him, but in many ways is what led him outside of the ivory tower and into the “real” world.
Marx then had a brief career as journalist, censured by Prussian government.
for a quick biography of Marx’ life see –

Marx went from Prussia to Paris, back to Prussia and Paris, getting expelled from these countries as he participated in local peasant uprisings and revolutions. Eventually he settled in England.
He was married to a woman named Jenny, and this marriage allowed him the funds to work on his academic and revolutionary writings.

Marx’s Influence
So what were the big influences in Marx’ life?
One of his biggest and earliest influences was a philosopher named Georg Hegel. Marx actually took Hegel’s work and argued against it. He did what we call “turn Hegel on his head”.
A number of philosophers – Henri St. Simon was one of them, his ideas led to the creation of Christian Socialism. St. Simon was critical of the exploitation caused by Capitalism and pushed for an economic system based on Christian notions of brotherhood. Marx also read and studied the most important economists of the time Adam Smith- he was the economist which shaped most of the political economy in England at the time. He believed that markets self-regulated, or as he called it – markets were regulated by an “invisible hand”. In essence Adam Smith’s theories on economics pushed for little government regulation or interference, and he believed that both the supply and demand of goods and services and of workers and jobs were better left alone.
Marx also met and worked with his best buddy and collaborator in life – Friedrich Engels. (he wrote The German Ideology and The Communist Manifesto with him).

Marx is not forgotten- his thoughts and ideas are embedded in so many new ones that the origins have been forgotten
Communism has failed so does this mean that Marx ideas are not valid?

The Dialectic
Stems from Hegel
Very influential to Marx
It is the idea of contradictions
Ideas contradict each other
New ideas come from the resolution of contradictions
And then new contradictions follow

Marx saw contradiction in capitalism
Capitalist must exploit worker for profit
Worker wants some of that profit
Where is contradiction?
In essence what we see is that there in an inherent contradiction in this, in for capitalists to make money they must exploit the workers by paying them the least amount possible to get profit, If the workers want some of this profit then the capitalist will be eventually out of business (because the profit also goes into reinvestment) so this is the contradiction
The eventual resolution of these new contradictions is the overthrow of capitalism

Dialectical Method
Fact and Value
Are intertwined
i.e. cannot be separated
Marx was passionate and opinionated about the capitalist system
What did he believe?
How was this different from the film we saw?

Dialectical Method cont.
Reciprocal Relations
This method of analysis does not see a one way cause-effect relationship
Rather one factor has an effect on another,
Factor A affects factor B while at the same time Factor B affects Factor A
Example:
The increasing exploitation of workers may make workers react by becoming militant– yet their militancy will influence capitalists to become even more exploitative in to crush the workers.

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Dialectical Method Cont
Past Present and Future
For dialectical thinkers the past and its influence on the present is very important

“Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please: they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly related to the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living” (Marx 1852, 1963:15)

What does he mean by this?
One of Marx’ most important contributions is that the past and history has a direct bearing on what happens today. That even though people have some agency (agency refers to the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices) the choices they make, how they act and their capacity for change is directly related to the past.

Dialectical Method Cont.
No Inevitabilities
Marx believed that present influences but does not determine future
Because factors keep changing and affecting one another.
This point is important because it allows for the possibility of change- something that Marx foresaw in the future (a revolution to throw over the Capitalist system)
People make choices- but are constrained (choices are limited)
What kind of choices do you think workers had in 17th cent. Britain?
This is how we have – thesis, antithesis and synthesis

Marx’s Model of Social Change
This was precisely the purpose of Marx’s political activities: He sought to generate class consciousness—an awareness on the part of the working class of their common relationship to the means of production.

Key Marxist Terminology
When we think about and study Marx we need to understand what he meant with some key words:
Bourgeoisie – these were the middle class owners of capital – (capital is everything needed to produce something, raw material, machines, money to pay for utilities, etc. – for example if I am the producer of shoes – the capital is the leather, the machines for production, the building, the electricity, etc – the only thing that is not capital is LABOR). So the people that have capital are the bourgeoisie and Marx puts them in a class of their own, where they are pitted against another class- the workers

Key Marxist Terminology
Economic classes– Marx developed a theory of how the world works and he saw his theory as one that could incite social change. Social change would be led by CLASS revolt. So Marx divided the world into economic classes. How people fell into each class had to do with their relationship to the forces of production (important Marxist term!!). This means that if people own the forces of production (capital) they are the capitalists and if people do not own it they are the working class – all they own is their OWN labor. We also have landowners in there as another economic class- remember this is still in England where the aristocracy basically lives of rent from their land. The lords and kings (nobles) do not work “real jobs”. I highly recommend seeing an episode or two of “Downton Abbey” so you can have an idea what the aristocracy was like. (and it is a fun show)

Capital, Capitalists, and Proletariat
The Proletariat
Workers who sell their labor and do not own the means of production
They would eventually lose their skills- how?
Also consumers
So they must use their wages to what they produce
The Capitalist
Owners of the means of production
Capital-money that produces more money
It is money that is invested rather than used to fulfill human needs
This is what Marx calls the circulation of commodities

Exploitation
A necessary part of the capitalist economy
Accomplished by impersonal and objective
Workers only appear “free”
Only appears because workers must take the terms offered to them by capitalists
There is a reserve army
A group of unemployed that is always ready to take the jobs if someone does not want to do them
“Only later I realize that the want ads are not a reliable measure of the actual jobs available at a particular time. They are… the employer’s insurance policy against the relentless turnover of the low-wage workforce. Most of the big hotels run ads almost continually if only to build a supply of applicants to replace the current workers as they drift away or are fired… (Erenreich 2001:15).

Exploitation cont.
Surplus Value
The capitalists pay the workers less than the value of what they produce and keep the rest for themselves
This is called surplus value
This the value of when it is sold – the value of how much it cost to produce
This surplus value is re-invested – but it is not just about economics
It’s also about domination- because the real value is the labor
General law of capitalist accumulation
Capitalists are led to compete and get as much capital as possible but the only way to do this is to exploit the workers more and more- which leads to class conflict

Marx’s Model of Social Change continued
Marx believed that people did not share a feeling of being “in the same boat” or “solidarity” with other people of their same social class. This was especially true among the working class. There were few jobs, no job security, people needed to work to live. So people were always in competition. Marx believed that this was something that the capitalists wanted. They wanted to pit workers against each other, so they would not understand that they were being exploited or that they (the workers) actually had power as a group.
Once workers realized that the capitalist was the enemy and his fellow worker was a comrade, she would develop what Marx called class consciousness. The development of class consciousness was a vital key in the evolution of society toward an ultimate, utopian end: communism.

He believed that the epoch of capitalism was a necessary stage in this evolution and the last historical period rooted in class conflict.

Marx’s Model of Social Change continued
Capitalism, with its unleashing of immense economic productivity, would create the capital and technology needed to sustain a communist society, the final stage of history. In this utopian society, the production of goods would be controlled collectively and not by private business elites.
While Marx believed that capitalism was not good for the masses and would also self destruct, it did serve a purpose. To create the sort of technology (remember the BBC documentary) to allow for the efficient and advanced production of goods and services.

Marx’s Theoretical Orientation
Marx pursued themes that, taken as a whole, underscored his vision of a social shaped by broad historical transitions and classes of actors (collectivist) pitted against one another in a struggle to realize their economic interests (rationalist).

Marx’s Theoretical Orientation: Grouped by Major Concepts
Remember, these charts are based upon ideal types (which means absolute pure types used for analysis – real life has much more gray in it); thus while Marx’s work overall is characterized as rational, collective (previous slide), this does not necessarily mean every piece of his work will fall into that area. See chart below.

Introduction to The German Ideology (1845-46)
The most detailed account of Marx’s theory of history.

Marx set out to reformulate the work of the eminent German philosopher Georg W. F. Hegel.

Hegel saw change as the motor of history. Take a look back at the earlier slides on the dialectic- this is Hegel’s theory that Marx took and applied to his own theory.
But Marx saw historical periods as ones where each one contradicted the one before to try to get a resolution where society would be just and work eventually culminating in a period of utopia (this is his socialist or communist state). He saw each period (for example capitalist period) as necessary to happen so people learn and take from each economic period until eventually ending in the best possible outcome. I think a good analogy is the bible story – how the Jews walked for 40 years in the desert, learning and failing along the way before they reached the promised land. The 40years had to happen or they would not have been ready (according to the Bible). Capitalism Marx argues, is a necessary evil so people learn how to produce efficiently and gain class consciousness that eventually leads to a revolution and then a communist state.

Marx’s materialist conception of history
Marx’s conviction that ideas or interests have no existence independent of physical reality.
What he means by this and this is a pivotal point in Marx’ work is that that the physical world, the capitalist state, the economy is responsible for how and what we think. Our minds are products of the time that we are living in and what is going on in the world.

Most of his writing concentrates on how capitalism and the capitalist system determines WHO we are and HOW we think

Marx’s materialist conception of history continued
In short, Marx argues that the essence of individuals, what they truly are, is determined by the material, economic conditions—“what they produce and how they produce”—in which they live out their very existence
So what we mean by this is that the material or economic condition of a worker is that he or she only owns her labor, she does not have any power in society, especially during the industrial revolution. So her individuality is closely related to her status as a worker.

This perspective, moreover, yields a radical conclusion: “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas” (ibid.:172).
Unlike the worker, who has little power, the ruling class are those that own the means of production- the capitalists/producers. They have the power (economic) and therefore also political and cultural power. The ideas of the capitalists are the main ideas in society.

Key Quotations from The German Ideology (1845-46)

“Division of labour only becomes truly such from the moment when a division of material and mental labour appears” (37)
Marx was very concerned with the division of labor. Remember people were coming from working on the lands, where they produced most everything they needed to live to working in factories. In the factories they produced one part of one thing (say just the button hole for a pair of jeans). Their labor becomes only physical, they no longer have to think and this makes people feel less than human. I might argue that many of us have or have had jobs where you do the same repetitive action all day and there is no thinking involved. How does this make you feel?

Key Quotations from The German Ideology (1845-46)
“For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape.” (37)

“The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas: i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.” (40)

Please see this video– it is long– leave yourself time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v
=Yu8Os4EWBI8

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