Karl Marx

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Karl Marx

• 1818-1883

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Background

• Was born third of seven children to a Jewish
  family in Trier, Prussia in the western province
  of the Rhineland
• Father converted to Christianity as a Lutheran
  in 1818 because of the potential loss of his law
  practice
• Father introduced the value of knowledge exposing
  Marx to Enlightenment thinkers as well as German,
  and Greek classics
• Educated at home until the age of thirteen

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Background

• Graduated from the Trier Gymnasium and enrolled
  at the University of Bonn to study law at his
  fathers advice
• He was interested in studying philosophy and
  literature but his father wouldnt allow it
  because he didnt believe he would be able to
  support himself
• A year later father forced him to transfer to
  Humboldt University of Berlin where he ended up
  studying philosophy and earning his doctorate in
  1841
• While at University of Berlin he met and joined
  the group called the Young Hegelians

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Background

• Marx did not stay with Hegelians long due to an
  opposition to the spiritual idealism of their
  philosophy
• In 1841 Marx met Moses Hess who introduced him to
  Communism and wrote for Hess paper Rheinische
  Zeitung where he wrote about social conditions.
  Hess also linked him together with Friedrich
  Engels
• In 1844 in France Marx and Engels met face to
  face for the first time. Engels would guide
  Marxs interest in economics

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• Marx and Engels formed the Communist
  Correspondence Committee. The two then in 1847
  attended the Second Congress of the communist
  league where they presented a detailed plan on
  how Communism should be organized this became the
  Communist Manifesto and was published in 1848
• The same year the Manifesto was published Marx
  was suspected in taking part in a revolt In
  Brussels and was expelled from the country with
  his wife and children
• He would move to France and be expelled from
  there, triggering his move to London where he
  would live for the rest of his life

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Family Life

• Marx married Jenny von westphalen, the educated
  daughter of a Prussian Baron in 1843. The couple
  were engaged when he was seventeen but his family
  didnt want him to get married so young so they
  waited several years
• Von Westphalens family didnt like Marx's Jewish
  heritage or his social standing and even
  threatened to cut her off financially
• Only her father, who was the follower of French
  socialist Saint-Simon, was fond of Marx

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Family Life

• Marx had seven children but only three survived
  to adulthood
• Marx's daughter became a socialist as well and
  helped edit his works
• His wife died in 1881 and he died of bronchitis
  in 1883. The messages carved on his tombstone are
  workers of all lands unite and the
  philosophers have only interpreted the world in
  various ways- the point however is to change it

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Intellectual influences

• The Enlightenment and Romanticsim
• Formative years consumed with the liberal spirit
  of enlightenment
• Many divergent doctrines of Enlightenment
  through French philosophers were rationalists,
  the British sensationalists, and others like La
  Mettrie were materialists

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Intellectual influences

• All shared common belief in the possibility of
  altering human environment in such a way to allow
  more wholesome development of human capacities
• Marx sought revolutionary change as pre-condition
  for realization of liberal idealism of
  Secularism, Universalism, and rationalism
• Marx's ideas of self-realization, human
  potential, guideline for society, and search of
  laws of evolutionary form were all influenced
  by Enlightenment and Romanticism

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Intellectual influences

• German Idealism
• Marx came to believe conflict is inevitable due
  to Kant's pessimistic view of human progress
• Kant's Second Discourse was an early source for
  Marx's notion of alienation
• Marx's philosophical studies took place in an
  intellectual climate dominated by thought of
  Hegel and his followers

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• German Idealism (cont.)
• Marx general aim was to evaluate Hegel's
  political philosophy
• In Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of right (1843)
  Marx describes his philosophical differences with
  Hegelian thought
• Hegel started with abstract ideas instead of
  concrete reality
• His defense of the Monarchy
• Disagreement on the role of bureaucracy
• Disagreement on the sovereignty of the state

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Intellectual influences

• German Idealism (cont.)..
• Marx learned of the holistic approach through
  Hegel's ides of totality
• Marx's version of Communism was free to mankind
  from the division of labor

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• Ludwig Feuerbach
• Important link between Hegel and Marx
• Marx read and was influenced by Essence of
  Christianity
• Believed that Feuerbach successfully criticized
  Hegel's concept of the spirit of man
• Was also struck by humanistic aspects of
  Feuerbach's work

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• Ludwig Feuerbach (cont.).
• Didnt agree on everything. Eleven points
  summarize Marx's disagreements with Feuerbach
• Doesn't conceive human activity as objective
  reality
• The question whether objective truth can be
  attributed to human thinking is not a question of
  theory, but a practical one
• The coincidence of changing circumstances can be
  conceived only as a revolutionary practice
• Feuerbach starts from fact of religious self
  alienation and believes the world should be
  secular

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• Ludwig Feuerbach (cont.).
• -Feuerbach, not satisfied with abstract thinking,
  wants contemplation
• - Feuerbach resolves the religious essence into
  the human essence
• - Feuerbach doesn't see that the religious
  sentiment is itself a social product
• - All social life is essentially practical

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• Ludwig Feuerbach (cont.).
• - The highest point reached by contemplative
  materialism is the contemplation of single
  persons in civil society
• - The stand point of the old materials is civil
  society, the standpoint of the new human society
• - Marx states the philosophers have only
  interpreted the world, in various ways the
  point, however is to change it.

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• Friedrich Engels
• Most important influential person in Marx's life
• Marx and Engels demanded a better order of
  society
• Their famous, Manifesto of the Communist Party,
  discusses the main principles of the socialism
  they worked out
• The two friends were the heart and soul of the
  revolutionary-democratic aspiration throughout
  Europe

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• Friedrich Engels (cont.)..
• Through Engels, Marx was introduced to the
  concrete conditions and misery of the working
  class
• They were the first to show that the working
  class and their struggles were a result of the
  ruling classs attempts to oppress the
  proletariat
• Marx and Engels attempted to organize the working
  class into revolution, so that they could attain
  economic and political freedom

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Marxist Concepts

• Human Potential
• Marx believed that societies prior to capitalism
  were too oppressive of humans to realize their
  full potential
• He thought that capitalism was still too
  oppressive for most people to realize their full
  potential, but saw capitalism as a necessary evil
  for the sake of Communism

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Marxist Concepts

• Human Potential (cont.)..
• Marx thought Communism would provide the type of
  environment for people to start realizing and
  expressing their full potential
• Marx used the concept of species being when
  talking about human potential to separate man
  from animals

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German Ideology

• This was a written piece that Engels and Marx
  said was to settle accounts with former
  philosophical ideas.
• In this account, they critique Feuerbach, Max
  Stirner, the Holy Family, and the Young Hegelians

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German Ideology

• Said that the Young Hegelians were fighting
  phrases with phrases dubbing them heroes of the
  mind Marx said Hegelian thought did not address
  the relationship between consciousness or thought
  and the reality which the thought or
  consciousness is about
• This is said to be one of their major
  achievements in which they set out to cut through
  the metaphysical of the young Hegelians and sets
  out the Materialistic conception of history

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Historical Materialism

• The concept of Historical Materialism was
  established in The German Ideology
• Marx wanted to reconcile materialism and idealism
  by combining critical and scientific aspects of
  materialism with the dynamic and historical
  components of idealism
• He rejected the ideas of simple non-belief and
  Hegel's view of reality accepting a materialist
  view and combining in it with Hegel's dynamic and
  dialectical process this is what is referred to
  as historical materialism

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Class Consciousness and false consciousness

• Marx said that people are different from animals
  because we have consciousness as well as the
  ability to link consciousness to their activities
  
• Class consciousness is the sense of common
  identification among members of a given class

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Class Consciousness and false consciousness

• False consciousness refers to the inability to
  clearly see where ones own best interest lie
• Class consciousness is illustrated by ones
  relative position to the means of production and
  access to scarce resources
• Marx was speaking of consciousness in the terms
  as society as a whole and not on an individual
  level

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Religion

• Marx saw religion as an example of false
  consciousness. He also thought it was another
  abstract creation that had become reified
  throughout time
• Thought was one of the biggest factors preventing
  full human potential

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Religion

• Said that the power elites encouraged the weak
  masses to keep them in power and he even referred
  to religion as the opiate of the masses
• Marx was against religion for three reasons
• Thought it was a distraction keep man from his
  essence
• He felt that while man was in this distracted
  state, he allowed himself to be exploited and
  controlled

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Class Theory

• The critical issue in an industrial society is
  production and the distribution of land. Those
  who controlled the land would control through
  means of production
• Classes were formed to control the means of
  property possession. This would in turn result in
  class conflicts

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Grundrisse

• Grundrisse is a manuscript of seven notebooks
  compiled from 1857-1858
• It was published in 1941 and was the culmination
  of his economic studies
• A lot of Marxs themes appear in Grundrisses
  book

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Alienation

• Alienation, according to Marx, is a condition in
  which humans become dominated by the forces of
  their own creation
• The first stage of alienation is alienation from
  the product that the workers produce. The
  laborers also do not know the aspects of the
  production process they are working in

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Alienation

• Second, workers are alienated from the process of
  production. They are not involved in productive
  activity meaning that they are not working to
  satisfy their own needs. They become alienated
  because it is not satisfying and becomes
  monotonous eventually becoming alienated from
  ones self
• Last, the worker becomes alienated from his
  fellow workers

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Means of Production Capitalism

• Karl Marx
• Marx defines the Means of production as the
  combination of the means of labor which include
  equipment, tools, ect and the subject of labor or
  the actual material worked with for an item
• He defines capitalism as a mode of production or
  the means under which capitalists own the means
  of production and the workers sell them their
  labor power to produce an item

• G.W.F Hegel
• Two concepts represents the essence of Hegel's
  philosophy which are Dialectic and Idealism
• Dialectic is considered to be an image of the
  world that stresses the importance of processes,
  relations, conflicts and contradictions
• Idealism emphasizes the importance of the mind
  and mental processes
• Hegel would have considered capitalism an mental
  bi product

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Commodities and the production of surplus value

• A commodity is an object that is capable of
  satisfying some want or need
• Object are products that cannot achieve
  independent existence
• Use value are objects that produced for use by
  ones self
• Exchange value happens when the product produced
  is for trade and not personal use

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Fetishism of commodities

• Fetishism of commodities occurs when actors dont
  recognize that their labor gives commodities
  their value
• The value is believed to come from natural
  properties
• Exchange value of a commodity is expressed by its
  use value

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Capital

• Capital involves the social relationship between
  buyers and sellers
• Marx felt that since the workers labor gave the
  product value they also had the capacity to
  change the system
• He also believed that a superstructure existed
  composed of raw materials, labor, technology and
  those who control the means of production

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Private Property

• Private property is made from the labor of
  workers and reified by capitalism
• Private property is defined as the private
  ownership of the means of production
• Marx felt that if human potential was to be
  realized that the notion of private property must
  be suppressed
• Felt that the means of production should be
  shared equally through public ownership

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Division of labor

• In the German ideology the roots of labor
  division were traced and Marx equates the family
  as the earliest model describing the wife and
  children as slaves
• The capitalist system surplus was created and
  controlled production and the surplus as well,
  making it possible for divisions and classes to
  create
• The surplus of materials comes with the unequal
  sharing of the surplus creating a struggle
  between peoples. Marx believed that Communism
  would eliminate the division of labor

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Communism

• Communism is a form of government which attempts
  to empower workers and eliminate social class.
  Its socioeconomic structure promotes the
  establishment of a classless, stateless society
  based on common ownership of the Means of
  production. It is usually considered a branch of
  the broader socialist movement that draws on the
  various political and intellectual movements that
  trace their origins back to the work of theorists
  of the industrial revolution and the French
  Revolution. Communism attempts to offer an
  alternative to the problems believed to be
  inherent with representative democracy,
  capitalist economies and the legacy of
  imperialism and colonialism. The dominant forms
  of communism, such as Leninism, Trotskyism and
  Luxemburg's, are based on Marxism. Karl Marx is
  sometimes known as the "father of Communism", but
  non-Marxist versions of communism (such as
  Christian communism and anarchist communism) also
  exist.

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Relevancy

• Marxist thought is very controversial
• Despite lack of complete understanding of the
  role of capitalism in the future, many contumacy
  authors use Marxist economic analysis in their
  own attempts to understand modern Capitalism
• Marx's analysis of the differences between use
  value and exchange value are relevant in the
  criticism of globalization

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Relevancy

• Reaching ones full human potential has never been
  a more important goal especially in American
  society
• Marx has been proven correct that religion
  continues to serve as a higher barrier against
  peace and accord
• Many people still suffer from forms of alienation
  and have gone after leisure pursuits as a means
  to attain a level of identification and form a
  sense of community
• Marx would be happy with the Internet, it is the
  consumer- the proletariat that is using the net
  to gain control

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