Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels

Communist Manifesto:
· Originally designed as a pamphlet to express the political aspirations of the Communist
League.
· Written during a period of tension/turmoil within Europe, in which the old reactionary forces,
often monarchies restored after the Napoleonic Wars, were pushing against the forces of
modernity and change.
· Marx sets out his theory/account of history, in which society transitions through various
stages until a Communist State is reached.
· Sees all history, as he classifies it, as being dominated by class struggles, the current one being
between the bourgeoisie and proletariat, as determined by the means of production and the
distribution of property amongst different classes.
· Developed the theory of dialectic materialism: two forces, separated by different material
interests, push against each other to shape historical developments.
· Bourgeoisie is characterised as an evolving class, that is exploiting new markets (often
international) but is forced to transform the capitalist system of development (and by
extension society, because society is moulded by capitalism) in order to survive.
· Bourgeoisie has standardised/unified society and done away with individual differences.
· Greater cooperation but also untamed expansion under capitalist system.
· Capitalism is developing at a faster pace than it can sustain, and will eventually destroy itself
as a consequence. The bourgeoisie has to make its position unstable as it translates capitalism
from one phase to another, and at some stage one of these attempts will fail.
· Essentially, the bourgeoisie no longer controls the economic forces of the market, and so is no
longer able to determine outcomes.
· By transforming the means of production, the bourgeoisie has made the proletariat a
homogenous and identical mass, and taken all individuality out of labour.
· This also exacerbates sexual inequalities, as the economic value of women’s work becomes
devalued far below what is was when manufacturing happened in the home.
· The lower middle class (tradespeople, artisans) are swallowed into the proletariat as the
means of production evolve.
· Story of the proletariat’s conflict with the bourgeoisie is one of consciousness, as the
proletariat over time becomes more concentrated and more aware of itself.
· The bourgeoisie becomes stretched by conflicts with the aristocracy and proletariat.
· The proletariat is the only revolutionary class, and therefore all other disadvantaged classes
eventually join with it to overthrow the bourgeoisie.
· This struggle is initially a national one, but it could rapidly become international.
· Capitalist market forces, through competition, compel the bourgeoisie to expand and increase
the oppression of their workers, and in this way they ensure their own destruction, by
bringing the proletariat together.
· He criticises feudal and petty-bourgeois socialism for acting to reverse the process of
industrialisation rather than to improve conditions for the proletariat.
· Marx critiques German/ “true” socialists for seeking to universalise the struggle of the
proletariat, bourgeois socialism for merely trying to maintain capitalism by eliminating class
 conflict. For this reason, the Communists are the only party that fully support the
emancipation of the proletariat in its fullest extent.
· The position of the Communist in relation to other parties is described as being one that will
build coalitions to give consciousness to the working class. This is perhaps an admission that
the Communists were not yet strong enough to command any significant political following.
· “The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of
production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of
society”.
· “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.”
· “Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great
classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat”.
· “The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the
whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, [and] establish
connexions everywhere”.
· "The theory of communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private
property."
· “Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of labour, the work of the
proletarians has lost all individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman”.
· Taken from 10 pledges: “5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a
national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly”.

Capital (Volume 1):

· Marx sought to ground his views on the contradictions within capitalism.
· Capitalist economy is based on commodities. These can be classified according to their use-
value and/or exchange-value.
· The use-value of item is mostly determined by the wage-labour employed to create it, but the
exchange-value is determined by the market.
· Money is the mechanism by which exchange-values can be standardised.
· Humans are needed to take commodities to the market, which creates private property.
· Trade is characterised as a sophisticated method of production and exchange, which aids the
circulation of both money and commodities.
· When money is made the end result of these exchanges, the capitalist needs “surplus value”
in order to generate a profit, which is the end goal of capitalism.
· Capitalists use the circulation of money and commodities to make a profit, despite not putting
any wage-labour into the process.
· For commodities produced by labour, the value of labour-power is set by the minimum
amount required for the labourer to continue, because all that they are selling is their labour
in the form of the commodity.
· The capitalist provides the tools for the labourer to make the commodity and thereby
generates value that they could not have produced themselves.
· By buying both the work of the labourer and the raw materials, the capitalist gains possession
of the commodity at the end of the process.
· The capitalist makes use of the difference between the labour’s use-value and exchange-
value, as it make more value than is required to sustain it, which generates surplus-value. The
capitalist is therefore underpaying the worker.
· Value of labour has ended up somewhere between the minimum requirement to sustain the
labourer and the value of their labour.
· The relationship between capitalist and worker, which must exist for one to profit
disproportionately, is mimicked throughout society.

Marx on human nature:

· Marx writes that: “Man is directly a natural being. As a natural being and as a living natural
being he is on the one hand endowed with natural powers, vital powers – he is an active
natural being.”
· According to Marx nature is a “totality of needs and drives” – so human nature is composed
of drives and instincts that act to satisfy needs – where there are needs; humans will act
to fulfil them.
· Marx believes that humans are fundamentally different form all animals through
consciousness, religion or anything that shows them producing their means of subsidence
through physical organisation. Humans produce their own physical environments – which
is rare among animals.
· Marx believed that human nature is formed by the totality of social relations rather than
something that incarnates itself in each individual.
· Marx believed that human nature exists as a function of human labour

Marx on the state

· Marx views the state as a committee for managing the common affairs of the bourgeoisie;
the bourgeoisie control the economy therefore they control the state – so the state is an
instrument of class rule
· Marx never offers a comprehensive socialist version of the state – he believed that with the
realisation of socialism that state will become obsolete and disappear as the society will
be able to govern itself without the state and its coercive enforcement of the law.

Marx on the Economy

· Marx believed that the organisation of society depends on means of production. The means
of production are all things required to produce material goods, such as land, natural
resources and technology but not human labour.
· Like the other classical economists, Karl Marx believed in the labour theory of value to
explain relative differences in market prices. This theory states that the value of a
produced economic good can be measured objectively by the average number of labour-
hours required to produce it. In other words, if a table takes twice as long to make as a
chair, then the table should be considered twice as valuable.
· In the labour theory of value, relative prices between goods are explained by and expected
to tend toward a "natural price," which reflects the relative amount of labour that goes
into producing them.
· If goods and services tend to be sold at their true objective labour values as measured in
labour hours, how do any capitalists enjoy profits? Marx concluded that capitalists were
 underpaying or overworking, and thereby exploiting, labourers.

Marx on Society
· Society has been transformed from a feudal one to a capitalist one – a capitalist
society being based on the ruling class (bourgeoisie) who own the means of
production and the working class (proletariat) who are exploited for their labour.
Both these classes are in conflict.
· "Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into
two great classes directly facing each other": - MARX
· Marx assumes the inevitability of the revolution of capitalist society into socialist
society because of eventual discontent.