Marx

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Marx
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• In these 2 lectures, we are taking a brief look
  at three aspects of Marxs work
• philosophy of history
• analysis of capitalist society
• prognosis for a future communist society.

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1.History (re-cap)

• Marxs philosophy of history is distinctive in
  that it also a theory for predicting future
  events in particular, the collapse of the
  capitalist economic system and its replacement by
  communism.
• Class struggle within capitalism will lead
  capitalism to destroy itself.
• But lets look at capitalism first.

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2. Capitalism

• Capitalism is an economic and political system
  that replaced feudalism (roughly in the 17th-18th
  century).
• But, it has not done away with class
  antagonisms. It has but established new classes,
  new conditions of oppression, and new forms of
  struggle. (p.143)
• In fact, it is characterised by what Marx calls
  alienation.

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• Capitalism is distinct from many other social
  systems in that it comprises only two classes
• capitalist (bourgeois)
• worker (proletariat)

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• And,
• Capitalism is characterised by the fact that the
  majority of the population (proletariat) suffer
  from alienation.
• This is a primary feature of what Marx calls the
  social relations of production under capitalism.

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• Alienation has 4 key features
• the worker does not own the means of
  production.
• The worker only owns his/her labour labour
  becomes a commodity.
• The worker does not own the things produced.
• The worker must compete with other workers.

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• In this economic system there is a constant
  economic revolution
• The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly
  revolutionizing the instruments of production,
  and with them the whole relations of society
  (p.145)
• So, curiously, from a certain point of view
  capitalism is itself revolutionary.

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• In fact
• All that is solid melts into air, all that is
  holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to
  face with sober senses his real conditions of
  life and his relations with his kind. (p.145)

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• In proportion as the use of machinery and
  division of labour increases, in the same
  proportion the burden of toil increases, whether
  by prolongation of working hours, by the increase
  of the work exacted, or by increased speed of
  machinery. (p.147)

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• This economic system is exported around the world
  via colonisation. Marx describes the phenomenon
  of globalisation, as early as the 1840s.
• Capitalism compels all nations, on pain of
  extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of
  production. (p.146)
• Compare with World Bank, IMF and World Trade
  Organisation today, which literally compel all
  nations

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• The good news, however, is that this system is
  doomed to collapse. Marx expected that working
  conditions would get worse and worse as
  capitalism developed, and that eventually this
  would lead to a spontaneous revolution.
• Many people thought that this was happening
  across Europe in 1848, the year of publication of
  The Communist Manifesto.
• When this system collapses, what will replace it?

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3. Communism

• The theoretical conclusions of the communists
  are in no way based on ideas or principles that
  have been invented or discovered by this or that
  would-be universal reformer. They merely express,
  in general terms, actual relations springing from
  an existing class struggle, from a historical
  movement going on under our very eyes. (p.151)

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• The claim is that communism is in some way
  simply happening it is not based on some
  pre-existing universal theory (such as justice,
  for example).
• It is not a programme of reform.

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• The first step
• the first step in the revolution by the working
  class is to raise the proletariat to the position
  of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.
• The proletariat will use its political supremacy
  to wrest, by degree all capital from the
  bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of
  production in the hands of the stateand to
  increase the total productive forces as rapidly
  as possible. (p.155)

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• Note that this increase of total productive
  forces shows that Communism is by no means
  opposed to industrialisation. It is in favour of
  mass production, which can raise the living
  standards of all it is simply opposed to the
  bourgeois/capitalist way of organising
  industrialisation.
• Hence, for example, the massive industrial
  development of USSR and China after their
  Revolutions.

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• This will, of course, initially require
  despotic measures (p.156).
• For example
• Abolition of land property.
• Progressive tax system.
• Abolition of inheritance.
• Etc

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• Also
• 5 6. Centralisation of banking, communications,
  transportation in hands of the state.
• 8. Establishment of industrial armies.
• 10. Free education for all children, abolition of
  child labour.

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Power and Class Struggle?

• Eventually -
• Class distinctions will disappear and public
  power will lose its political character. This is
  because political power is merely the organised
  power of one class for oppressing another. And
  since classes will disappear, so too will
  political power.

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• This will lead to an economic social system in
  which each person would contribute according to
  their ability and receive according to their
  need.
• 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
  (p.157).

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• Note that, once again, the issue of power is
  central to this political philosophy.
• Marx identifies political power as the source
  of the problem, and expects that a communist
  society will be free of this kind of power,
  because it will be free of class struggle,
  because it will be a classless society.

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• So, in a curious way he agrees with Locke that
  the origin of political power is economic
  activity or private property.
• Lockes response is to protect private property
  Marxs response is to abolish it.