Marx

1
Marx Engels

• Economic Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
• The German Ideology
• The Communist Manifesto

2
Marx Engels

• Biographical Background
• Dialectical Materialism
• The Critique of Capitalism
• The Critique of Liberalism
• The Communist Future

3
Biographical Background

• Karl Marx
• 1818 - 1883

• Freidrich Engels
• 1820 - 1895

4
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

5
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

6
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

7
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

8
Biographical Background

• Marx dies in 1883, buried in Highgate Cemetery,
  London
• Engels continues to write and publish both
  original material and edited versions of Marxs
  work until his death in 1895

9
I. Dialectical Materialism

• The history of all hitherto existing society is
  the history of class struggles
• The Communist Manifesto

10
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

11
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

12
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.

13
I. Dialectical Materialism

• Thesis

14
I. Dialectical Materialism

• Thesis Antithesis

15
I. Dialectical Materialism

• Thesis Antithesis

Synthesis
16
I. Dialectical Materialism

• Thesis Antithesis

Synthesis
Becomes the new thesis
17
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?

18
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)

19
I. Dialectical Materialism

• We need to focus on the real material conditions
  of existence the factors/forces which shape and
  drive human social interaction

20
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

21
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

22
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

23
I. Dialectical Materialism

• Or, as theyll 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.

24
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

25
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 ones position vis-à-vis the
  means of production
• Broadly, you either own the means of production
  or you labor on the means of production

26
I. Dialectical Materialism

• Proletariat Bourgeoisie
• (Workers) (Capitalists)

27
I. Dialectical Materialism

• The first premise of all human history is, of
  course, the existence of living individuals. --
  The German Ideology

28
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

29
I. Dialectical Materialism

• When we look back at history we see certain
  patterns emerge.
• Primitive Communism
• Slave Labor
• Feudalism
• Capitalism

30
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

31
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

32
I. Dialectical Materialism

• In other words, in capitalism, we shouldnt 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