EMERGING FORMS OF LITERATURE Sir Amir Kareem Shb

What is Marxism?
Marxism is a political-philosophical system based on the ideas of Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels, the founders of Marxism. The economic and political theories of Karl Marx
and Friedrich Engels that hold that human actions and institutions are economically determined
and that class struggle is needed to create historical change and that capitalism will ultimately be
superseded by communism.

A clear political-philosophical goal particularly emerges from the works of Marx and
Engels: stopping the alienation that capitalism brings about by freeing the oppressed classes in
this system.

Exploitation and alienation

In economic and social terms, Karl Marx saw capitalism as a curse for society, especially
for the working class. The difference in capital between the worker and the owner was
increasing, as a result of which the worker became relatively more impoverished. While Marx
was convinced that labour was a crucial part of a man’s social life, he saw that in capitalism,
labour was subordinate to profit. As a result, labour was no longer a crucial part of the working
class, but only the main reason for their misery. The former philosophical phenomenon of
alienation then changed into a social phenomenon. He saw that the workers were alienated in the
economic field, they had no value anymore, but also in politics and religion. According to Karl
Marx, religions themselves were created by the people and worked as an opium for the workers.
Belief in God was a way for the workers to make unbearable life bearable, but Marx thought that
religions would disappear in communism because the workers would then no longer need the
support.

Marx also stated that a commodity has a product, a value for use and an exchange value.
The use value is only the value that the product has for consumption without including labour.
The difference between the value in use and the exchange value, the selling price, was so high
because of the low labour costs, that the labour was no longer relevant. Because so much more
was produced than before the industrialisation, the products were more easily replaced. As a
result, products were also seen differently by society. Marx called this the fetish character. Karl
Marx wrote, rather poetically in the first part of Das Kapital, that he saw two fetishes emerge: a
commodity and a capital fetish. Later he decided to use the term exploitation. The second and
third parts of Das Kapital were completed and published by Friedrich Engels after the death of
Marx.

The downfall of democracy and capitalism

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EMERGING FORMS OF LITERATURE Sir Amir Kareem Shb
Marx completely disagreed with Adam Smith’s theory, who was a pioneer in the field of
political economy. Adam Smith was of the opinion that the capitalist system, with the free play
of social forces, would bring the most benefit to everyone. Marx, however, saw that the majority
of the population was losing out, and was convinced that the way that then-used method of
production was the final stage before a new political and economic system with ideals such as
absolute freedom and equality would emerge; communism. Marx described this vision in Das
Kapital. He predicted that the capitalist system would collapse and make way for a collectivist
society. Marx wrote in Das Kapital about the factors and forces that, according to him, would
ensure this.

First, Marx described how the big companies would always take over the smaller ones.
He called this the concentration law. The larger companies could produce at a lower cost and
thus the law of the strongest would determine which company would last the longest. He
attributed the cause of this phenomenon to the accumulation law: the capitalists would reinvest
the added value, the profit, in order to increase the size of the companies. Since the vast majority
of capital would fall into the hands of a small number of capitalists, the workers did not stand a
chance according to Marx. Because the working class, the proletariat, continued to lag behind,
Marx foresaw that more poverty would arise than ever before. Beyond that, Marx predicted that
companies would continue to make less profit due to mechanisation and automation. He was
convinced that labour was the only value-creating element in the production process.

This decline in profit would ensure that companies were forced to dismiss the cheap
workers, resulting in a social disaster. Despite the fact that Marx did not develop a crisis theory,
he described the dangers of the under-consumption crisis and the over-consumption crisis, in his
view a consequence of exploitation, with all the consequences such as unemployment.

All these factors would cause the capitalist system to collapse. Crises would follow each
other more and more quickly and the position of the working class would permanently
deteriorate. Until the moment that the tension would become untenable. Then it would be time
for a revolution.

Karl Marx’s ideal and the role of the State

With his call ‘Workers of the world, unite’, Marx hoped the proletariat would organise
itself against the capitalist process of exploitation. This socialist movement, also called the
dictatorship of the proletariat, would establish itself until the moment when communism was to
be introduced. At the end of this revolution, all means of production had to be taken out of the
hands of the capitalists and come into common possession. If that were to happen, Marx
described, capitalism would be stopped and the class society would disappear. The communist
system that would be introduced after the proletarian revolution was based on views of Rousseau
and the Paris Commune of 1871. Small communities would send a delegation of representatives

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EMERGING FORMS OF LITERATURE Sir Amir Kareem Shb
to larger units that would in turn form a national delegation. This system is also known as the
pyramid structure of direct democracy, essentially different from liberal democracy. However,
this democracy would not have a parliament and did not have a separation of powers that the
French enlightenment philosopher Charles de Montesquieu warned about with his theory on the
trias politica. Since in communism everyone would live in equality and freedom, Marx did not
require that the state still be able to exercise influence. Not much came of the death of the state.

Despite the fact that there never were any Marxist countries, there have been some
attempts to create such a communist system. These were set up so differently that the original
Marxism was unrecognisable in it. According to Marx, a proletarian revolution was needed to
bring the means of production into joint hands in order to form collectivist equality and a free
state. After the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the founding of the Soviet Union in 1922,
however, it turned out that these revolutions only opened the door for a few power-hungry
individuals who wanted to maintain an oppressive apparatus of power in a dictatorship drenched
with a dressing of socialism. Examples include Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Fidel Castro and
Pol Pot.

Psycho Analytic Theory of Sigmund Frued

Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of personality argues that human behavior is the
result of the interactions among three component parts of the mind: the id, ego, and superego.
This theory, known as Freud’s structural theory of personality, places great emphasis on the role
of unconscious psychological conflicts in shaping behavior and personality. Dynamic
interactions among these fundamental parts of the mind are thought to progress through five
distinct psychosexual stages of development. Over the last century, however, Freud’s ideas have
since been met with criticism, in part because of his singular focus on sexuality as the main
driver of human personality development.

Freud’s Structure of the Human Mind

According to Freud, our personality develops from the interactions among what he
proposed as the three fundamental structures of the human mind: the id, ego, and superego.
Conflicts among these three structures, and our efforts to find balance among what each of them
“desires,” determines how we behave and approach the world. What balance we strike in any
given situation determines how we will resolve the conflict between two overarching behavioral
tendencies: our biological aggressive and pleasure-seeking drives vs. our socialized internal
control over those drives.

Conflict within the mind: According to Freud, the job of the ego is to balance the
aggressive/pleasure-seeking drives of the id with the moral control of the superego.

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EMERGING FORMS OF LITERATURE Sir Amir Kareem Shb

The Id
The id, the most primitive of the three structures, is concerned with instant gratification
of basic physical needs and urges. It operates entirely unconsciously (outside of conscious
thought). For example, if your id walked past a stranger eating ice cream, it would most likely
take the ice cream for itself. It doesn’t know, or care, that it is rude to take something belonging
to someone else; it would care only that you wanted the ice cream.

The Ego
In contrast to the instinctual id and the moral superego, the ego is the rational, pragmatic
part of our personality. It is less primitive than the id and is partly conscious and partly
unconscious. It’s what Freud considered to be the “self,” and its job is to balance the demands of
the id and superego in the practical context of reality. So, if you walked past the stranger with ice
cream one more time, your ego would mediate the conflict between your id (“I want that ice
cream right now”) and superego (“It’s wrong to take someone else’s ice cream”) and decide to
go buy your own ice cream. While this may mean you have to wait 10 more minutes, which
would frustrate your id, your ego decides to make that sacrifice as part of the compromise–
satisfying your desire for ice cream while also avoiding an unpleasant social situation and
potential feelings of shame.

Freud believed that the id, ego, and superego are in constant conflict and that adult
personality and behavior are rooted in the results of these internal struggles throughout
childhood. He believed that a person who has a strong ego has a healthy personality and that
imbalances in this system can lead to neurosis (what we now think of as anxiety and depression)
and unhealthy behaviors.

The id, ego, and superego: According to Freud’s structural model, the personality is
divided into the id, ego, and superego. On this diagram, the smaller portion above the water
signifies the conscious mind, while the much larger portion below the water illustrates the
unconscious mind.

The Superego
The superego is concerned with social rules and morals—similar to what many people
call their ” conscience ” or their “moral compass.” It develops as a child learns what their culture
considers right and wrong. If your superego walked past the same stranger, it would not take
their ice cream because it would know that that would be rude. However, if both your id and
your superego were involved, and your id was strong enough to override your superego’s
concern, you would still take the ice cream, but afterward you would most likely feel guilt and
shame over your actions.

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EMERGING FORMS OF LITERATURE Sir Amir Kareem Shb

Psychosexual Stages of Development

Freud believed that the nature of the conflicts among the id, ego, and superego change over time
as a person grows from child to adult. Specifically, he maintained that these conflicts progress
through a series of five basic stages, each with a different focus: oral, anal, phallic, latency, and
genital. He called his idea the psychosexual theory of development, with each psychosexual
stage directly related to a different physical center of pleasure.

Across these five stages, the child is presented with different conflicts between their
biological drives (id) and their social and moral conscience (supereg0) because their biological
pleasure-seeking urges focus on different areas of the body (what Freud called “erogenous
zones”). The child’s ability to resolve these internal conflicts determines their future ability to
cope and function as an adult. Failure to resolve a stage can lead one to become fixated in that
stage, leading to unhealthy personality traits; successful resolution of the stages leads to a
healthy adult.

Although Freud’s theories have many advantages that helped to expand our
psychological understanding of personality, they are not without limits.

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