Karl Marx (1818 – 1883)

Historical Materialism, wrote Engels in 1892, seeks the ultimate cause of all important
historical events in the economic development of society, in the changes in mode of production
and exchange, in the consequent division of society into classes and in the struggle of these
classes against one another.
In the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx contended that
“economic structure of society, constituted by its relations of production, is the real foundation of
society. It is the basis on which rises the legal, political, religious, moral and ideological
superstructure and to which corresponds definite forms of social consciousness”(Emphasis
added).
Society’s relations of production themselves correspond to a definite stage of development of
society’s forces of production. In this manner the mode of production of material life conditions
the social, political and intellectual life process in general. As the society’s productive forces
develop they clash with existing relations of production, which now arrest their growth. Then
begins an epoch of social revolution as this contradiction divides society and as people become
conscious of this conflict they fight it out. The conflict is resolved in favour of the productive
forces and new, higher relations of production. A new era develops when a superior force of
production develops. These developments take place in the previous era.
Forces of production imply means of production (i.e. tools, machines, factories, etc) and
labour power (skills, knowledge, experience and other human faculties/ power used in work).
Relations of production link forces of production and human beings. It includes technical
relations necessary for actual production process to proceed (also called material work relations)
and relations of economic control (the socio-economic integument, i.e. natural outer covering, of
material work relations) that govern access to the forces and products of production. People stand
in different relations to the forces and products of production. Bourgeois purchases labour power
and means of production; the proletariat sells labour power and does not own means of
production. Mode of production imply the whole social system of production.
According to Marx, all historical societies--ancient society, feudal society and capitalist
society - contain basic contradictions/conflicts/dissonance/tensions/strains. That is why these
societies cannot survive forever. In capitalism the contradictions involve a) appropriation of
surplus value (exploitation), b) social production but individual ownership. These contradictions
would ultimately lead to conflict of interests of the classes, i.e. the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
And the proletariat would become a class for itself, i.e. it would be subjectively aware of itself. In
other words, it would develop class consciousness.
A class, said Marx, is a group whose members share the same relationship to the forces of
production and has the same subjective awareness/ class consciousness. Historically speaking,
classes emerged when the productive capacity exceeded beyond the level of subsistence. It led to
the institution of private property. Private property brought in classes which ultimately would
lead to irreconcilable conflict of interest and class struggle. Hence wrote Marx and Engels,
“History of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggle.”
Marx was of the opinion that all the previous class struggle was between minorities. In
capitalism it would be between a minority and the majority. The contradictions in capitalism (i.e.
exploitation and the fact of social production and individual ownership) would lead the workers
to become a class for itself. Further, these contradictions would lead to the homogenization of the
working class (because of use of machinery), pauperization, depression of intermediate strata into
the proletariat, concentration and centralisation of wealth. All these things would lead to
polarization/ crystallisation of society into two major classes, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
Revolution
Conflict between forces and relations of production leads to revolution.
In the past, says Marx, the fetters of relations of production were broken by the forces of
production but the revolution had been partial, political revolution. The French Revolution was a
case in point. It was a political revolution. Hence it failed to cure the social evils. Liberty was not
based on the association of man and man but rather on the separation of man from man. And
equality was merely the equal right to this sort of liberty. The contradiction between the principle
of the state (common citizenship) and the real life (asocial individual) made the French
Revolution a merely political one. The theory of the French Revolution said that everyone could
emancipate by becoming a bourgeois. But by definition this was impossible. Liberty and equality
was enjoyed by the bourgeois.
The next (socialist) revolution would, however, be a social revolution - not a political one.
This is because it would penetrate the real life of man- his socio-economic life. Further it would
be the revolution of the majority by the majority. The proletariat would bring about this
revolution. The proletariat would represent the interest of society as a whole, a society in which
class antagonisms were sharpened and simplified to a large extent.
Marx pointed out that he did not conceive of revolution as a mechanical result of the conflict
of economic forces; it was something that had to be accomplished by human beings. Not only did
the proletariat perform the revolution, it was also educated by the revolution. In making the
revolution the proletariat changed themselves. Wrote Marx, “In revolutionary activity (praxis),
the changing of oneself coincides with the circumstances”(Emphasis added). This means that a
certain degree of class consciousness is necessary before a successful revolution could be
expected: the proletariat needs to become a class for itself.
The conditions necessary for bringing about a successful socialist revolution are a) there
should be a bourgeois revolution pre-existing and b) a new revolution could only be possible in
consequence of a severe economic crisis.
The revolution would occur, said Marx, in the most advanced industrial countries. In
Germany, which Marx considered to be underdeveloped vis-à-vis America, France, Holland and
Britain, a bourgeois revolution would spark off a proletarian revolution. Revolution may not
occur automatically in these advanced countries because communism would come about by
peaceful means. Working class can bring about communism by gaining majority in Parliament or
Congress.
But Marx did say force is midwife of communism. Although he did approve of physical
force, he did not support revolutionary terror. He said if the socio-economic conditions were not
right, then the revolution would lead to a reign of terror.
He was also of the opinion that a successful revolution is impossible if confined to one
country. Hence Marx and Engels wrote, “ Workers of the world, unite!”
The government after the revolution would be the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Here
dictatorship meant legal concentration or centralisation of power. This period of Dictatorship is
also known as socialism, a period of transition between capitalism and communism. Private
property would be abolished and would be replaced by “communal ownership of the means of
production.” The motto of socialism would be – from each according to his ability, to each
according to his work.
This phase would ultimately give way to communism. In communism, according to Engels,
the state would wither away. And for the first time in history, it would be a classless society.
Production would be geared to such an extent that the motto of communism would be - from each
according to his ability, to each according to his need. Moreover, the communist society would be
one free of alienation.

Alienation
 Work/labour- the production of goods and services is the primary human activity. Work
provides the vital means for man to fulfil his basic needs, his individuality, and his humanity. In a
community in which everyone works to satisfy both their individual needs and the needs of
others, work is a completely fulfilling activity. But, says Marx, this ideal has never been reached.
According to Marx, the origin of alienation is to be found in the economic system involving
the exchange of goods. During the barter period products of labour became commodities, articles
of trade. With the introduction of money, products of labour became articles of commerce. They
became mere “objects”- no longer a means of fulfilling the needs of the individual and
community. From an end in themselves, the products of labour became a means to an end.
Marx argues that although private property appears to be the cause of alienated labour, it is
rather a consequence of the latter. Once the products of labour are regarded as commodity
objects, it is only a short trip to the idea of private ownership. Further, the system of private
property heightens the level of alienation. Not only do products of labour i.e., “commodities,”
lead to alienation originally, but also the fact that workers don’t own the goods they produce,
heightens the level of alienation.
Thus the worker is alienated from the product of his labour. In other words, he is cut off
from/estranged from/cannot put his heart into the products of his labour. The worker is also
alienated from labour or the act of production. He feels himself at home only during his leisure
hours. Work does not remain an end in itself; it becomes a means of survival. Since work is
primarily a human activity, the worker becomes alienated from himself. Finally, he becomes
alienated from his fellow-beings.
Thus the worker works to maintain his existence, the existence of his family but not for the
benefit of the community. Self-interest becomes more important than the concern for the social
group.
The bourgeoisie is also alienated. But they consider it as their power whereas the workers feel
ruined because of alienation.
Mechanisation of production and specialisation of division of labour contribute to the
alienation of the worker. Mechanisation removes from work the need for skill and hence all
individual character and charm for the workmen. The worker becomes as appendage of the
machine. Although division of labour was there before industrial society, the industrial revolution
brought about a further extension of division of labour. Freedom is not possible when a worker is
imprisoned in a single occupation.
Marx says that alienated labour can be solved only in a communist society where there is
communal ownership of the means of production and specialised division of labour is abolished.
Man can hunt in the morning, fish in the day, rear cattle in the afternoon and criticise after dinner.
In a communist society, workers would at one and the same time produce goods for themselves
and the community.

State
Marx and Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto, “The executive of the modern state is
but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” In the Critique of
Hegel’s Philosophy of the State(1842), Marx wrote that the state does not stand for the general
interest but defends the interests of property. He advanced mainly political remedy, namely the
achievement of democracy. But he soon moved on to the view that much more than this was
required and that ‘‘political emancipation’’ alone could not bring about ‘‘human emancipation.’’
This required a much more thorough reorganization of society, of which the main feature was the
abolition of private property.
This view of the state as the instrument of a ruling class, so designated by virtue of its
ownership and control of the means of production, remained fundamental throughout for Marx
and Engels. The state, wrote Engels, is ‘‘as a rule, the state of the most powerful, economically
dominant class, which through the medium of the state, becomes also the politically dominant
class, and thus acquires new means of holding down and exploiting the oppressed class.’’ This,
however, leaves open the question why and how the state, as an instrument separate from the
economically dominant class or classes, plays this role.
One approach, articulated by Ralph Miliband, tried to answer this question by saying that
there is an ideological congruence between these classes and those who hold power in the state.
The second approach, led by Nicos Poulantzas, emphasized the “structural constraints” of the
state: its policies must ensure the accumulation and reproduction of capital. In the first approach,
the state is the state of the capitalists; in the second, it is the state of the capital.
However, both the approaches make the state an instrument or means. But Marx and Engels
attributed to the state a considerable degree of autonomy. In the Eighteenth Brumaire( 1852),
Marx said that France seemed as a result of the coup d’e`tat (of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, also
known as Napoleon III, in 1852) to have escaped the despotism of a class only to fall back
beneath the despotism of an individual. He went on to say that all classes fall on their knees,
equally mute and equally impotent, before the rifle butt. In The Civil War in France (1871 ),
Marx wrote, “ Bonapartism was the only form of government possible at a time when the
bourgeoisie had already lost, and the working class had not yet acquired, the faculty of ruling the
nation” (Emphasis added). Engels also had noted elsewhere that “ periods occur in which the
warring classes balance each other so nearly that the state power…acquires…a certain degree of
independence of both.”
The absolute monarchies of the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, and the regimes of
Napoleon I and Napoleon III, were examples of such periods.
These formulations come very close to suggesting not only that the state enjoys a “relative
autonomy,” but that it has made itself altogether independent of society, and that it rules over
society as those who control the state think fit and without reference to any force in society
external to the state. This, however, does not contradict the notion of the state as concerned to
serve the purposes and interests of the dominant class or classes: what is involved, in effect, is a
partnership between those who control the state, and those who own and control the means of
economic activity. The political and the economic realms retain a separate identity and the state is
able to act with considerable independence in maintaining and defending the social order of
which the economically dominant class is the main beneficiary. This independence is implied in
the sentence Marx and Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto: the state manages the common
affairs of the whole bourgeoisie. This clearly implies that the bourgeoisie is made up of different
and particular elements; that it has many separate and specific interests as well as common ones;
and that it is the state which must manage its common affairs. It cannot do so without a
considerable measure of independence.
A major function of the state in its partnership with the economically dominant class is to
regulate class conflict and to ensure the stability of the social order. The class rule that the state
sanctions and defends assumes many different forms, from the “democratic republic” to
dictatorship. In a context of private ownership and appropriation, however, it remains a class rule,
whatever its form.
In State and Revolution (1917), Lenin, however, completely obliterated the distinction
between “bourgeois democracy” and other forms of capitalist rule, for instance fascism. This may
well have contributed to the baneful Marxist neglect of such distinctions in subsequent years.
Lenin’s concern, in State and Revolution, was to combat the “revisionist” notion that the
bourgeois state might be reformed. He said it must be smashed. This was the point which Marx
himself had made in the Eighteenth Brumaire. The state would then be replaced by the
Dictatorship of the Proletariat. The private means of production would be taken over by the state.
The state finally would wither away. Engels wrote in Anti-Duhring (1878): “ The government of
persons is replaced by the administration of things…The state is not ‘abolished.’ It withers
away.”
 Marxism always stressed the coercive role of the state: the state is essentially the institution
whereby the dominant and exploiting class imposes and defends its power and privileges against
the class or classes which it dominates and exploits. One of Gramsci’s major contributions to
Marxist thought is his exploration of the fact that the domination of the ruling class is not only
achieved by coercion but is also elicited by consent. He called this domination by consent
hegemony. Gramsci also insisted that the state played a major role in the cultural and ideological
fields and in the organization of consent.
The establishment of the Soviet state was bound to offer a major conceptual challenge to the
Marxist theory of the state. Stalinist thought on the state insisted on its paramount and enduring
importance: far from “withering away”, said Stalin, the state must be reinforced as the prime
motor in the construction of socialism, and also in order to deal with its many enemies at home
and abroad. Stalin said the “revolution from above” was made “on the initiative of the state.” This
state, Stalin also claimed, was a state of a new type, which represented the interest of the workers,
the peasants and the intelligentsia. It was in this sense no longer a class state, seeking to maintain
the power and privileges of a ruling class to the detriment of vast majority; it was rather, in a
phrase which came to be used under Khruschev, ‘‘a state of the whole people.’’
This claim has been strongly contested by the Marxist critics of the Soviet regime. Some
critics viewed the Soviet society as class society and took the state as an instrument of “new
class”- the class of nomenklatura. This way the Soviet society, they said, is no different from
other class societies. Other critics like Trotsky saw the Soviet society as a “transition” between
capitalism and socialism, and rejected the notion of a new class and spoke of the state as a
“deformed worker’s state,” under the control of a bureaucracy avid for power and privilege,
which a worker’s revolution would eventually dislodge.

Criticism of Marxism
Max Weber, the famous German sociologist, was of the opinion that historical materialism is
just one possible perspective of history. Weber said that other perspectives are also equally
possible. He illustrated this by showing the part that religious ideas (the Protestant ethics) might
have played in the development of capitalism. Similarly, Bertrand Russell was of the opinion that
had there been no idea of communism, the Bolshevik Revolution of Russia would not have been
possible.
Weber attributed a particular importance to the growth of bureaucracy, and based part of his
criticism of communism on the contention that the socialist movement would more likely to
produce a “dictatorship of the official” than a “dictatorship of the proletariat.”
Eduard Bernstein(1899), the evolutionary socialist, said that a polarization of classes was not
taking place in the West, due to the rising levels of living and the growth of the middle class. This
theme has since been prominent in the writings of other critics. Karl Renner(1953) talked of the
growth of the service class. The debate about class in recent years have given rise both to
conceptions of a “new working class,” and to the study of non-class social movements such as
racial movements or the women’s movements in relation to class conflict.
Raymond Aron denied the claim of the “economic interpretation” to be a science of history
and emphasised the independence of politics from the economy. C Wright Mills took a similar
view of the separation between the economic and the political spheres, and preferred the term
“power elite” to “ruling class” (which he thought presupposed a correspondence between
political and economic power).
Critics like S M Lipset, proceeding from the “democratic pluralist” perspective sought to
show that Marxist political theory represents a false picture of western political systems. There is
no ruling class able to impose its will on the state and turn it into its “instrument.” In any case, the
nature of Western political systems, with the political and electoral competition which they make
possible, prevents the state from pursuing for any length of time policies unduly favourable to
any particular class or group.
 Theda Skocpol pointed out that state, situated in an international context, and competing with
other states, had its own concerns, above and beyond the interests of all classes and groups in
society.
American functionalist sociologists like Talcott Parsons are of the opinion that societies do
not contain the seeds of their own destruction. Rather societies try to perpetuate themselves.
Many socialists have rejected revolution as a method of change. Starting with Bernstein,
many of them – including Fabians, Guild Socialists – pinned their faith in peaceful methods for
bringing about change. Parliamentary democracy was thought to be ideal for bringing about far-
reaching changes.
Karl Popper in The Poverty of Historicism criticised the idea that there are historical laws
which it is the business of social sciences to discover – and which should dictate our policies. The
book is dedicated to countless victims of the fascist and communist belief in historical destiny.
Popper distinguished between genuine laws and historical trends. There can be no law of
“historical process” as a whole, since it is a unique occurrence. So-called laws, such as the “law
of the increasing concentration of capital” are not laws, but at most statements of a trend.
Extrapolation from a trend is the weakest form of prediction. The self-confidence of historicists
is thus at odds with the feebleness of their results.