KARL MARX: 1818 - 1876.  

German - ousted.  1843 Paris - ousted.  1844 London

He and Engels - called upon to write Manifesto.  Pamphlets, speeches, etc.

Correspondent for NY Daily Trib

Philosophically:    Young Hegelian, turned Hegel on his head .  Hegel wanted an analysis of how things are and as they have the potential to be in the future....

European History of 1848-1863:  showed revolu of 1848 failed.  Difficult for Marx, because was "supposed" to bring communism.  Still .... he toiled on "Das Capital"

1863 new audience:  the international - org of European worker parties dedicated to bring about the prevailing system of economic domination.

 

Man makes history, but history makes man

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas.

"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle"

Society always examined in terms of MODE OF PRODUCTION:  The class that controls the means of production is the dominant pol and id'l force of society.

"Consciousness is ... therefore, from the very beginning a social product."

 

material base:  substructure    ideational superstructure:  ideas (religion, philosophy, art)

YOUR VERY CONSCIOUSNESS IS NOT DETERMINED by your subjectivity but by your position in the social organization." 

ideological:  Content of consciousness under cap'ism centers on liberal ideas of individual rights -so, this is principally property rights!  our consciousness is that we have the right to property . . . In feudal times, the ideals were honor and loyalty

Both sets of ideas are related to the material base.

TOP 10

  1. relationship to means of production:  ownership, or not.  Pvt. Prop.

  2. 3 interests always combine:  economic, political, ideological
           one nation   one code of law   =one tariff

  3. class names:  bourgeoisie and proletariat (and petite bourgeoisie and lumpen proletariat).  "The reserve army of labor" (the mass of unemployed), act as a constant threat to workers who may try to organize themselves & demand wages.

  4. single cause:  class warfare - WHY?? Human Potential ! !

    • class warfare (always a repeat:  history is the history of class warfare)

    • historical stages:  Ancient slavery, serfs-lords, bourgeois-prole

  5. dialectic:  strains in the machine - stretched like a "rubber band":  endless, until final class war erupting in the grounds for human potential

  6. why this one final?  capitalism & technology worst, lead to best

  7. all materialist:  no idealism.  (no to Plato, no to Hegel, no to Engels)
     base is substructuer:  determins the superstructure. 
    - the content of our consciousness and our ideological orientation to the world are a function of the material, or productive, base of society.

  8. PRAXIS:  do.  internat'l movement:  "workers of the world unite"

  9. PLAN (this is on his list of 10) gotta have a plan.  Question:  who (which boss, which leader?) gets to decide on the redistribution of income?

  10. inevitability:  power maintained by ruling class because proletariat not yet in "true consciousness" inevitable conflicts - irreconcilable interests.

BELIEFS:   w the dialectic, he fused his philosophical views about human emancipation with his sociological and historical analyses of social change and revolution.  his objective:  to bring people to fuller realization of their free and creative potentialities.

"feudalism gave way to capitalism when economic conditions were ripe; so too will capitalism give way to socialism and later communism."

thru labor, humans would realize 'species being', i.e., potential for creative & purposeful activity thru work.   

 

 

The Manifesto of the Communist Party 1848

"A specter is haunting Europe--the specter of Communism.  All the power of old Europe have entered into a hold alliance to exorcise this specter."

We assembled in London-& we'll publish in English, French, German, Italian, Flemsh, Danish-hey!  EVERYONE WILL KNOW:   new-found HEARTS & MINDS of the populace

I.  Bourgeois & Proletarians:  

single cause of historical stages:  dialectical materialism

each era ends in revolution. 

"idyllic relations.  torn asunder ... left no other bond between man and man than naked self-interest, 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."    

 DIALECTIC ...

2 classes-work out-inexorably-towards revolution & classlessness

class
one

 cap owners of pvt property   over-produce  profits mergers closures monopolies shrinking size of cap class  

economy - rels of production

   conflicting class based interests       revolution

class
two

 proles -
owners of labor power		   survival alienation and immiseration    
          devel class consciousness  
immiseration... "as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases."

 

CHARLIE CHAPLIN MODERN TIMES 
 .... people are extensions of machinery (computers).

"MacDonaldization"

 

THE COMMUNIST PARTY PLATFORM (from Manifesto)

  1. ABOLISH all prop

  2. heavy graduated income TAX

  3. ABOLISH all inheritance

  4. confiscate prop of all emigrants and rebels

  5. central credit in state - national bank

  6. central means of communication

  7. factories owned by state

  8. equal obligation of all to work - industrial armies, especially for agriculture

  9. abolish distinction btw town and country

  10. free education

  •  ... workers of the world, unite!

  • the 'dangerous' class, the social scum (lumpenproletariat), that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of old society, may...be swept into the movement ... but... more the pt of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.

  • A class in itself becomes a class for itself

Use-Value   If objects could speak ....they would say "Our use-value may interest man, but it is no part of us as objects

Value is given, imposed, based on production relationships.

 

MARX ON WOMEN and FAMILY

Marx on women/men:  the div of labor "was originally nothing but the division of labor in the sexual act

Pvt Prop and Comm'ism

lnatural div of labor in the family

lFIRST FORM OF PROPERTY is the Wife  property:  the first form of which lies in the family where wife & children are slaves of the husband. ...

lthen separation of fams - isolation

lthen fams in opp to one another in distribution - distribution is unequal