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    Karl Marx

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
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    5 views14 pages

    Marxism

    Uploaded by

    Macxine Grace Medriano
    Karl Marx

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
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    of 14
    SECTION VI MARXISM i The greatest of Socialist theoreticians and the most influential single political writer in the contemporary world is Karl Marx (1818-1883). Marx, descended from a line of rabbis but baptized as a Protestant at six, became a political journalist and editor before being exiled, first tem. porarily, and then permanently, from Germany. After short Ftays in Paris and Brussels, where he was connected with the Communist League for whom he and Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) wrote the Communist Manifesto, Marx settled in London from 1849 until his death. Leading a life of erty alleviated from time to time by generous contributions from his intimate colleague, Engels, Marx continually read and wrote in the British Museum, acted as correspondent for the New York Tribune and a Viennese newspaper and helped to found and then destroy the First International. In 1867, the fruits of his laborious research appeared in the first volume of Capital, the other volumes being published posthumously from his voluminous manuscripts. It was primarily to distinguish themselves from the utopians that Marx and Engels called their political philosophy “sci- ‘entific socialism.” Tt claimed to be scientific in its study of historical causes and events. and in its analysis of inevitable trends, But there is no systematic formulation in any coherent way by Marx of his own ideas; this has been a task per- formed, with varying success, by the epigoni, each of whom has emphasized particular aspects of the inheritance for per- sonal of tactical reasons. Dispute over the inheritance has slain its tens of thousands. claimed he was making a scientific study of the economic and social order and of its historical development. If he ended his research, as indeed he had begun, by calling for a revolution the inevitability of “que GREAT POLITICAL THEORIES 156 is was due, not to wi this as die, NOt {0 a sentime which efor yas intolerable, Bu to cone that the eT torical development led to revolution, 9M thy the laws of bistreine critical of Hegelian ideatism j, Marx on stronelY inftienced asa student of, Philotch he had been She had found Hegel upside down ang 1 and boas ‘the fundamental concept of Mary te up. Tyhat he called the “materialist cont® hs through the dialecticay n*Ption ‘and more particularly, Engels, towards meet pe fo qualify and lessen the rigidity s° oF es ‘ the formula, the starting ein he sible determin ycion material mesre! <3 mcr ter. socal Pa so ig processes of ie, 20d se, amd not the reverse i being determined corromic substructure—the forces 8 ism Bee the relations, of production ucietructure. What exactly was includec supers Pay pact fH could emantain ana ture’ atsience and exercise an influence. in the substrucy dent exten a eu inne Marxist writings. oni hy the sree Beiween cases», tatlte each ‘other in different processes of production, Marx's philosophy of hisory embraced five different set 9, Marts phicsophy ot Nommunism, slavery, feudal relationship Pr sm But since it would be vlepiac’ postulate any vision of the future ComMUnISE society, nj Bomtulte any, iio” avilly uninterested inthe ret since Mart presseuped with analysis of the capitate sae Oe nce Manes empirical research Was obtane lg Ipmigh touroes, His theory is grounded in factual dei e Bris statism. Marx praised. capitalism for its tem seh dustrial advances, bul also analyzed its period ei, indicating the increasing part played by industry in the eco. omic after, and the tendency to industrial concentration Based ow the concepts of the labor theory. of value ani e furplos value his economic theory argued the inevitability the'fall im the rate of profi, the increasing tendency 0 ‘cumulate capital and the growing monopolization of industry. ‘The dynamics of the industrial process led inevitably to pet odie economic crise, each suceesive. one increasing in tensity, the exploitation and socialization of labor, the polar: zation of classes, the growing misery of the workers, the sharpening antagonism between the classes, until the cnt dictions inherent in capitalism between the forces of prodve: Marxism 1 and the relations of production would produce revolution ang oat ton Nd prods ren bye Ppower and the apparatus of eocrcon: which the etre exercised by and in behalf of those who owned the past We production, would gradually wither anny. The golte orftnction, the coercive domination of one class over ouhers, ic pe replaced By the economic task, the administration of things ? many of Marx's predictions about the course of coer been fulfilled, The condition of the working case Sadustrial countries has grown steadily better, not worse: the Imivyggles have been reduced rather than infenstieg? ie clase class and other classes between the capitalists and the imijetriat have ot been eliminated: sate power hus. not provered away in communist countries, but has increased ip sae and nny the supposed international solidarity of ‘a as re fore bellicose national Peay the Beate iron) tha the sot revoltions ht five occurred have been, not in the most highly industri bentries when “the conditions were ripe." as the theory pee, eee an tea The ultimate paradox is reached when a “proletarian revolu. on has taken place na, county lacking proletariat. joreover, the theory hardly takes account of the Complexity of onteriprary, polis: nothing in Marxism coherently ot eine) oF totalitarian systems in any mean- ingful way. "The widespread appeal of Marxism is due less to the inci- sere of tetera and phlsopia aaa than the vigor with wt mnalysis is argued, the assurance of certainty and of wimate victory that it proves, the deceptive wi tical and economic phenomena can Sharacterized and the ultimate ends of communist society, on which injustice and oppression are to be ended. Marx was a femiabl social scent whose intuence has been et in But he was also a revolutionary and a prophet in the old Hebraic, wadition, Understanding, of phenomena was not gnough in itself; the task was to change the world. Freedom was the recognition of necessity. but it was also concerned with revolutionary action. Marx's analysis of the wretched orking conditions and poverty in_ mid-nineteenth century Europe rested on a tacit humanitarianism. His early theo of alienation, influenced by Hegel and Feuerbach, were co cerned with the elimination of the power of social and reli- institutions so that man could be emancipated from Gusar POLITICAL THEORIES rue Gi nis of the principle of the diviy alysis nomic ste hich boca 9 it the basis of {MF man must submit, showeg Cet ~ et ripe opportunity for the developmen’? ee that there yraniity in 8 society in wh | faculties tych was the condition for the free qu of em of freedom lay beyond the spt rection. Embedded deep in Mary" % utmantarian and psssonnte ay any + conteal. His 3 thee development fp MARX The Communist Manifesto cundamental Proposition of Marxism rendre etn of Mec (From he English Edition of 1888) sto being our joint production, 1 con, Toe Mani et the fundamental proposition, wig, inyself ound tr ngs to Marx. That proposition is hap forms its nucle Phe prevailing mode of economic we very historical ¢POee and the social Organization neces, duction and exch The hacis upon which is built up. seh following (ove can be explained, the political and iy Fo sof that epoch: that ‘consequently the ssc lectual bison) hd (since the dissolution of primitive tri bistory et tuimg. fend in common ownership) “has been Ty aoa struggles, contests between exploiting and ex aise elaine and oppressed classes; that the history of thee Fetes: forms.a series of evolutions in. which, nox sees er tage has been reached where the exploited and op- stead class—the proletariat—cannot attain its emancipatin Bem the sway of the exploiting and ruling class—the ou frowe—othout, at the same time, and once and for al Eancipaing society at large {rom all exploitation, oppes Sion class distinctions, and clas struggles. “This proposition, which, in my opinion, is destined todo for history what Darwin's theory has done for biology. ve both of us, had been gradually approaching for some yean before 1845. The Theory of Class Struggles in History The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles, Manxism 159 man and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, Free Meer and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and op. uild God in Constant opposition to one another, carried preset. errerrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that on an We ended either in a revolutionary reconstitution of qiat large oF in the common ruin of the contending slier epochs of history we find almost everywhere a rrangement of society into various orders, a ion of social rank. In ancient Rome we have Knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, pager a td aces ut a Ae in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate grada ‘Ihe modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ine of feudal society has not done away with class antag Tune. It has but established new classes, new conditions af onntesion, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones, oPBrtr epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie. possesses, how- ex this distinctive feature: it has simplified the class an fagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up {a two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: bourgeoisie and proletariat. From the serfs of the Middle ‘Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first clements of the bourgeoisie were developed. ‘The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East Indian and Chinese markets, the colonization of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to naviga- tion, to industry an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development. ‘The feudal system of industry, under which industrial pro- duction was monopolized by closed guilds, now no longer sufficed for the growing wants of the new markets. The manu- facturing system took its place. The guild masters were Pushed on one side by the manufacturing middle class; divi- sion of labor between the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labor in each single workshop. Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even manufacture no longer sufficed. Thereupon steam and machinery revolutionized industrial production. The place cf manufacture was taken by the giant, modern industry, the Place of the industrial middle class by industrial millionaires, “que Great POLITICAL THEORIES 160 in ‘ndustrial armies, the tnodern bour the faders of whole ingostablished the world market 9 Modern industty ‘7 Tperica paved the way. This marty wich the discovet) °F vercement to commerce, 10 nay has given an im and. This development has. iy tion, t0 60! jon of Indust: and in propotn ensiepation, railways extended, n'a ge industry, commer goose veloped, inreased i the sie porto bacharound Mey las handed doy tal and pus from the Middle AG the modern bourgeoisie is itself the We see. terefore, Rf development, of a series of revo, product of 8 [ong Cr ction and of exchange. tions in the modes of Feeiopment of the bourgeoisie was ac. ach step in thee re oitical advance of that clas campagne snc, the elle wr the, BoUaeO, TT he word market, conquered or modern industry 2m epresentative state, exclusive politica self, in the moder of the modern state is but a commitce sway. The ext™common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie. for managing isi, sterically, has played a most revolution. are ynerever it hus got the upper hand, has “ga oma te atk ote Sunder the motley feudal ties that bound man Piety torn ne and has eft remaining no other to his Srween man and man than naked self-interest, than settee seach payment.” It has drowned the most heavenly cettes of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of Phil See Sotimentalism in the icy water of egotistical calcula tan ft has resolved personal worth into exchange value and, {irplace of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, thas set up that single, unconscionable freedom—free trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and politcal illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation. ‘The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science into its paid wage laborers. The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its senti- mental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a “vere money relation ‘The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display of vigor in the Middle Ages, which reactionists so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most Marxism ie indotence. It has been the first to show what man’ sion ian bring about. It has accomplished ene far clit, CO gyptian pyramids, Roman aqueduets, aud Gothic ‘pafals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade eaiterexoduses of nation and crusades all oe bourgeoisie €2! without constantly revolution- The borsruments of production, and thereby ths relations ig (oetion, and with them the whole relations of society, of prod’tion of the old modes of production in unaltered onsets, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for ster industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of pro- rie‘yninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, ig uncertainty and agitation distinguished the bour. in from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen rela. seo rth their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and ons ms, are swept away, all new-formed ones become an- opined before they can Ossi. All that is solid melts into ai, liNinat is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to al aith sober senses his real conditions of life and his tela- as with bis kind mm enced of a constantly expanding market for its products chavs the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It ce nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connec- tions everywhere. "The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and mnsumption in every country. To the great chagrin of reac- fonists, it h3s drawn from under the feet of industry the na- tional ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. ‘They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilized nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the productions of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sulfi- ciency we have intercourse in every direction, universal in- terdependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intel- lectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and fom the numerous national and local literatures there arises a world literature, all a duction, everlasting is eF by the rapid improvement of ymmunication, draws all, even the most barbarian, Nat Seman a ama heavy artilery with which it batters, down all Chinese, ‘The bourgeoi all ins ments of production, tu meat Sof tie hese wae cay artilery wide the barbatians’ intensely obstinats jy ait wre to capitulate, t compels all nations, on pant i ° Sant the bourgeols mode of produch extinction, to adopl Oe what it calls civilization iseo™: it fompels them t0 in calls civilization into tet compels the fecome bourgeois themselves. In one wont weestes a world after its own image. aes ogeoinie has subjected the COUNTY £0 the Fue of ty tone Her aeersated enormous cities, has greatly increas towns. Ie has lation as. compared with the rural, ang the urban poP\oasiderable part of the population from fas a rere al life, Just as it has made the country depengers \dlocy etwas. 20 it has made barbarian and semi-barbarct on the tovasengent on the civilized ones, nations of pease seutttions of bourgeois, the East on the West. ages cpcoise keeps more and more doing away with the scattired state of the population, of the means of producti Shu of property. It has agglomerated population, entrained areas df production, and has concentrated property ina fee Frade Tye necessary consequence of this was politcal esp tralzation, Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, wrth separate interests, laws, governments and systems of tx. Mion, Became lumped together into one nation, with one ger. rament, one code of laws, one national class interest, one frontier, and one customs taf. “The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjec tion of nature's forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam navigation, rai- ways. electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for Cullvation, canalization of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground—what earlier century had even a pres ment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labor? ‘We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgcoisie built itself up, were gener ated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions lunder which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feadal organization of agriculture and manufacturing indus tty, in one word, the feudal relations of property. became 90 Mawoisoe 168 x compatible with the alteady developed productive fee yee uae aden THY bad 18 be burst asunder Cir place stepped free competition, a tno the Tie cote et to i tad tye he soci ant politcal sway of the bourgeois cats, enetmlar movement is Going On before ur oon eyes, Mod. echnargeois society with its relations of produces oy oe fn ge and of POPETY, a society that has conjured ch chant means of production and of exchangerse Vpeouch sfeerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the seifer world whom he has called up by his spell, For gts aatngt past, the history of industry and commerce ee ory of the revolt of modern productive forces aye hae conditions of production, against the progenies mess tha are the conditions for the existence Of the Reuter otaf its rule. It is enough to mention the commana sco ft by their periodic return put on ils tral, each ese aes threateningly, the existence of the entire boursests sence fa these rises a great part not only of the existing prea be flo of the previously created productive forces ure serion fatly destroyed. In these crises there breaks out an ernest that in all earlier epochs would have seemed an aberelig the epidemic of overproduction. Society suedenly fue elf put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it apres ce ie Mamine, a universal war of devastation had cut of the sae ply of every means of subsistence; industry and commnente feem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too mach eivlization, too much means of subsistence, too much imlar try, too much commerce. The productive forces at the die, posal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and as soon as they overcome theve fetter they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, see danger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth cre. ated by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand, by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces: on the other, by the conquest of new mar- kets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That i to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby stises are prevented init Weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to } ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself Tun GREAT POLITICAL THEORIES Se aa tl oe win Slt ee “enter eee the proletarian®” 15 the bourgeoisie, ic, capital, is i proportions ff the proletariat the mass Ps, in the same prepofy clas of laborers, who live only goo" class, develoPe A who find work only 80 long as quesOM8 they find wort ese laborers, who must sell thes Jabs 164 Nes capital themaae Increase Pe a commodity, like every other atl gf =e piecemeal re consequently exposed 10 all the vieisitygea™ merce, 204 fp all the fluctuations of the market. ot extensive use of machinery and to divs he ee "the proletarians has lost. all indivigat abort wteomequently all charm for the workman character sr

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