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

Marx & Engels  Biographical Background  Dialectical Materialism  The Critique of Capitalism  The Critique of Liberalism  The Communist Future

Biographical Background Karl Marx Freidrich Engels

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

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 Condition of the working class in England (1840)  Meets Marx briefly in Paris

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

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

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

I.Dialectical Materialism “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles…” The Communist Manifesto

I.Dialectical Materialism  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 Marxist Methodology

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

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.

I.Dialectical Materialism Thesis

I.Dialectical Materialism ThesisAntithesis

I.Dialectical Materialism ThesisAntithesis Synthesis

I.Dialectical Materialism ThesisAntithesis Synthesis Becomes the new thesis…

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?

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”)

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

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

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”

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

I. Dialectical Materialism Or, as they’ll 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.”

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”

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 one’s position vis-à-vis the means of production  Broadly, you either own the means of production or you labor on the means of production

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

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

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

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

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…

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”

I. Dialectical Materialism  In other words, in capitalism, we shouldn’t 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

II. Critique of Capitalism 1  In capitalism, the 2 main classes are: ( proletariat ) Workers Capitalists ( bourgeoisie )

Critique of Capitalism WorkersCapitalist Labor time Wages During the work day, the above exchange seems to occur

Critique of Capitalism WorkersCapitalist Labor time Wages

II. Critique of Capitalism WorkersCapitalist Labor time = 8 hours Wages = $/hour worked

II. Critique of Capitalism WorkersCapitalist Labor time = 8 hours Wages = $/hour worked Where does the capitalist’s profit come from?

II. Critique of Capitalism “If one day’s work were necessary in order to keep one worker alive for one day, then capital would not exist, because the working day would then exchange for its own product, so that capital could not realize itself and hence could not maintain itself as capital…”

II. Critique of Capitalism “If, however, only half a working day is necessary in order to keep one worker alive one whole day, then the surplus value of the product is self-evident, because the capitalist has paid the price of only half a working day but has obtained a whole day objectified in the product; thus has exchanged nothing for the second half of the work day.

II. Critique of Capitalism “The only thing which can make him into a capitalist is not exchange, but rather a process through which he obtains objectified labour time, i.e., value, without exchange.” -- The Grundrisse (1857/58)

II. Critique of Capitalism WorkersCapitalist Labor time = 8 hours Wages = $/hour worked

II. Critique of Capitalism WorkersCapitalist The worker is exploited by the capitalist Worker labors 8 hours…But produces value worth 12 hours Capitalist pays for 8 hours, gets 4 hours free!

II. Critique of Capitalism 1 “The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and range. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates. With the increasing value of the world of things proceeds in direct proportion the devaluation of the world of men.” Manuscripts

II. Critique of Capitalism 2  Alienation  By alienation, Marx & Engels mean that we feel estranged from ourselves, that we no longer feel any connection to the basics of our life

II. Critique of Capitalism 2 “…[T]he object which labor produces – labor’s product – confronts it as something alien, as a power independent of the producer. The product of labor is labor which has been congealed in an object, which has become material: it is the objectification of labor.” Manuscripts

II. Critique of Capitalism 2 “It is true that labor produces for the rich wonderful things – but for the worker it produces privation. It produces palaces– but for the worker, hovels. It produces beauty– but for the worker, deformity. It replaces labor by machines– but some of the workers it throws back to a barbarous type of labor, and the other workers it turns into machines. It produces intelligence– but for the worker idiocy, cretinism.” Manuscripts

II. Critique of Capitalism 2  Recall the earlier point about the importance of labor in the evolution of the human species.  It is labor which helped separate human beings from nature; it is a creative, essential part of our being

II. Critique of Capitalism 2  But in capitalism, the nature of the work day experience makes us hate and detest this essential human activity; such that…

II. Critique of Capitalism 2 “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....”

II. Critique of Capitalism 2 Or, as Marx & Engels note in the Manifesto: “Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of labor, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and consequently, all charm for the workman…

II. Critique of Capitalism 2 “He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him… as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases.” -- The Communist Manifesto

II. Critique of Capitalism 2  Not only are we estranged from ourselves, but capitalism also severs our connection with each other

II. Critique of Capitalism 2 “The bourgeoisie … has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous ‘cash payment.’ It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation…”

II. Critique of Capitalism 2 “In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation… The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage-laborers.” -- The Communist Manifesto

II. Critique of Capitalism “[Capitalism] compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image...”

II. Critique of Capitalism “The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.” -- Communist Manifesto

III. The Communist Future  So, where do we go from here?  Recall the dialectical method  Within capitalism itself, we see the seeds of its own destruction  The Proletariat is the first “universal” class

III. The Communist Future “All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interests of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interests of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air.” -- The Communist Manifesto

III. The Communist Future  Unlike all previous classes in history, the proletariat is the only class that doesn’t need the existence of other classes  Human history has been moving, inexorably, towards a communist future

III. The Communist Future  We need to abolish the division of labor, the system of wage- labor, and private property in general* *Not small-scale private property, but private control of the means of production. “Capital is, therefore, not a personal, it is a social power.” -- The Communist Manifesto

III. The Communist Future “You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non- existence in the hands of those nine-tenths.” -- The Communist Manifesto

III. The Communist Future  By that, Marx & Engels mean to create a classless society that is free of exploitation and alienation And the source of the problem is the division of labor so essential to capitalist development

III. The Communist Future “The division of labor offers us the first example of how… man’s own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him…

III. The Communist Future “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. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic, and must remain so if does not want to lose his means of livelihood…”

III. The Communist Future “while in a communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd, or critic.” -- The German Ideology

III. The Communist Future  A communist society is then based on the following principle: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

III. The Communist Future  In other words, we’ll establish a system where:  “In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” -- Communist Manifesto

“The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” Thesis XI Theses on Feuerbach

Conclusion  How do we get there?