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

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 Marxist Methodology  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

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 Bourgeoisie (Workers) (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