Lecture 4: Karl Marx

Karl Marx

· A journalist, who achieved a fusion of:

1. Hegelian Philosophy

2. British Empiricism

3. French ~Revolutionary politics, especially socialist politics.

· He was an economist central to the understanding of human life and motive power of history.

· For Marx man is the productive animal. Mankind creates the environment it inhabits- ‘Not a figure in the landscape, but the shaper of the landscape.’

· His method was scientific.

Hegel, Philosophy and History

· ‘The young Hegelians’- Feuerbach- God is created in the image of man- the Garden of Eden is an ideal place- an ideal society.

· Marx’s thesis on Feuerbach- “Philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways, but the point is to change it.”- It will not evolve perfectly- men must create such a society.

· He uses a Hegelian system to criticism “mechanistic materialism”- describes not as a science but “bourgeoisie ideology”.

· “Crude materialism” and mechanistic materialism” is criticised on “The Thesis of F”.

· Marx also believed that personality was not the result of social circumstance. - “The materialist doctrine concerning circumstances and upbringing forgets that circumstances are made by men and the educator and the educator must himself, be educated.”

· “The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking us not a question of theory, but a practical question.”

· In the German Ideology young Hegelians and liberals are ridiculed. There are no natural rights; there is no Hegelian-type-built-in progression in History.

· Hegel is right about dialectical change. - The dialectic is the way history unfolds, but not as a result of a clash between contending ideas, but the clash between classes.

· ‘The means of production’. Relationship determines class. There were two classes; Owners and Workers.

· The Proletariat says Marx is the “universal class”. As a result of the dynamics of the economy (capitalist) all men will eventually be pauperized and forced down into the proletariat because of the law of capital concentration.

· Thesis: The bourgoise

Antithesis: The proletariat

Synthesis: Socialism

· The system Marx calls, ‘The Materialist Conception of History’

Ideology

· In preface to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx says that eternal universe laws are not universal; they are the ‘ideology’ of the ruling class and in the German Ideology he says, “In every age, the ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class.”

· Religion is only ‘ideology’ and ‘mysticism’ and it is rejected by the empiricists and economists because they have the contending ideology of natural laws, natural rights. Malthus explicitly sees religion as a way of controlling the population, restricting population growth and so on.

· Marx says that religion is, “the heart of a heartless world, the soul of soulless times, the opium of the people”.

The Communist Manifesto

· “Society as a whole is more and more splitting into two great classes directly facing each other - bourgeoisie and proletariat”

· The proletariat is not the peasantry or “the poor” - the ‘lumpen proletariat’ - “a recruiting ground for thieves and criminals of all kinds, living on the crumbs of society, people without a definite trade, vagabonds, people without hearth or home”. These people have no historical significance and are as a whole ‘the reactionary mob’ (e.g. during The Terror in France). The proletariat is those who are concentrated in cities and factories “fortresses of the proletariat” or down a coal mine. Rioting by the lumpen proletariat or by peasants is not the same thing as revolution. Proletariat has to be “class conscious” and organized as a conscious social force through a trade union or a political party.

Economics

· The Critique of Political Economy and Das Capital

· Marx had high regard for Adam Smith and David Ricardo who discovered the reality and dynamic of society and history (profit, wages, competition, investment, value - these are the “motive forces” of history - not morals, religion, geist, etc = “mysticism”).

· Adam Smith’s market mechanism is bourgoise ideology because it axiomatically assumes completely reliant individuals (Marx ridicules this in the critique of political economy, he calls it ‘Robinson Crusoe-ism’.

· Marx also writes about Hobbes - says that Hobbes model of ‘the war of all against all” in the state of nature is the purest form of bourgeoisie ideology; “the atomic theory of human nature”.

· Marx, if he was alive would say that criticism was bourgeoisie ideology of course... Marx brings Smith back in - goods exchange at their market value (law of supply and demand). But the price of goods is higher than the labour power expended on them (e.g. an iPod - a few seconds of “live” labour needed to make one) but sells for £100). The difference between the market price, (utility value) and the cost of production, (labour value) is the profit added by the capitalist (owner of the means of production). When aggregated across the whole economy, this profit becomes “surplus value”.

Contradictions of Capitalism

· “Capitalism produces all things in profusion, but most of all it produces its own grave-diggers”

· The entire workforce makes the widget and they get paid £1 - put the capitalist sells it for £2. The workforce cannot buy the widget and as a result it is unsold. Order to the widget factory for fewer widgets, or for cheaper widgets. Widget workers are unemployed. Unemployed workers buy even fewer widgets, so unemployment gets worse. The economy collapses - it's a Widget Crunch.

· But this crisis is avoided because “surplus value” is spent on:

Investment- (making more widget factories and hiring unemployed widget makers to make widget factories). This solves the problem in the short term and makes the economy much more productive. But in the long term it makes the crisis worse - the trade cycle.

Export the widgets - the widget workers can’t but all their widgets, but production can be increased and they can keep their jobs if the widgets are exported. Constant need for new markets - hence “Imperialism” forcing free trade on India, China, Africa, South America – supplies ever expanding markets for the producers. But like investment this is a short term solution. It will also force the capitalist powers to fight with each other for markets and colonies (Marxian analysis of war, particularly First World War) V.I. Lenin - “Imperialism - the highest stage of capitalism”.

Surplus value can be expended on the state (particularly military, to secure more markets) or on “the ideological superstructure” - education, arts, religion, theatre, social security, National Workshops etc used to underpin ‘ideology’. This too only delays the inevitable crisis.

Alienation and Class Consciousness

The process of investment and increasing mechanization and automation leads to the de-skilling of all professions and the proletarianization of everyone except a tiny number of monopoly capitalists.

However, the proletariat are thrown together in factories and in slum areas and they will tend to form trade unions and their illusions will be overcome and will realize that they are a class and not individual paupers. Work in a capitalist society becomes increasingly pointless and alienated. In Das Capital, Marx writes an especially powerful passage on ‘alienation’: “All development of the means of production transforms themselves into the means of domination over and exploitation of the producers; they mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a man, degrade him to the level of a fleshy appendage to the machine.”

Politics

The nature of the state - instrument for the domination of one class by another or as an independent force which holds two evenly balanced class forces in stalemate, and tries to delay crisis by postponement of reform or change of any sort (Bonapartism)

‘Utopian Socialism’ - Fourier and Robert Owen and ideal communities.

These utopians have made the mistake of thinking the state is neutral or a thing in itself. In the Communist Manifesto: “political power is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another… The executive of the modern [liberal] state is but a committee for managing the affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.

Communism

The proletarian revolution will be international and it was abolish capitalism, but this is not communism. After revolution the socialist state will own the means of production in common. It will be a “dictatorship of the proletariat” just as bourgeoisie democracy is just a façade for capitalist dictatorship (as he believed the Paris Commune of 1871 showed).

Once the bourgeoisie has been dissolved as a class, the ideological superstructure (priests, university professors, ideologists of all sorts) is dismantled and his peasantry incorporated into the proletariat - then the state with “wither away” (Das Capital) because there will no longer be contending classes, and the state is only needed because of class conflict.

The proletariat itself will also be dissolved and become the same thing as “the whole human race” - this is a highly Hegelian idea similar to the geist coming to know itself, but it a materialist version of that idea of the end of history.

Described by Marx (Das Capital) thus:

“The antithesis between physical and mental labour will be abolished” - a person would be a fisherman in the morning, a factory worker in the afternoon and musician and philosopher in the evening - and all these activities would have equal worth as equal aspects of human personality.

Communism is a kingdom of ends in strictly Kantian terms, also the same as Hegel’s organic society or rational society where no duty is onerous, and all laws are obeyed because there is no difference of interest.

(In a communist society)… “Work becomes not only a means of life, but life’s prime want; (technology will be tremendously advanced but will no longer enslave people but will have advanced)… “in proportion with the all-round development of the individual (mechanization as a servant, not a master) and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly (because no more trade cycle or destruction of surplus value in war, unemployment)

“Only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois rights be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe upon its banners: From each - according to ability
to each - according to need.

Lecture 3: Dickens and Cobbett

A tale of two revolutions- and two perspectives- Urban (Dickens) and Rural (Cobbett)

· England/ UK did very well out of the French Revolution- although during the period of the Napoleonic War it was very expensive and income tax was created in 1799 to pay for the war effort.

· British Naval power was absolute (especially after 1805) and the blockades of the French ports destroyed French trade and created a boom for British Exports- to such an extent that British manufacturers were actually clothing the French Army.

· With the other European armies occupied, the British started building its Empire- India, Singapore, South Africa, Sri Lanka- trading monopoly with South America.

· The Transatlantic Triangular Trade was extremely profitable for Britain- In the 16^th Century 1 million slaves were transported from Africa; in the 17^th century 3 million were transported and in the 18^th century 7 million. As a result if this, the abolition of Slavery was in 1833.

· Textiles made up 60% of exports. Coal outputs doubled between 1750 and 1800.

· In Manchester it went form 17-180000 people in 1760-1830 and the city was seen as revolutionary. This had never been seen before.

· Cotton was a key product for the industrial revolution and this raw material came from the slave plantations in the American South- but modern Lancashire produced the finished article- mainly for exporting.

· Inventions (gaslight) allowed the process to be done in enormous factories, usually by women and children.

· The end of the war meant the end of the boom. This caused unemployment and a decrease in wages. In response the government brought in Corn Laws- meaning they put a tariff on imported grains; this pushed people beyond the breadline.

· Conditions in many towns and cities were extremely poor. People lived in slums and cholera was common. These towns and cities were not built for large populations and this showed.

· The policy of brutal repression on any sort of dissent and strict penal penalties was effective in the short term.

· Peter Loo massacre- Manchester 1918- the cavalry charged a crowd of 60,000 demanding parliamentary reform- 11 people died.

· Protestors demanded that growing industrial towns in Britain should have rights to elect MPs. Less than 2% had vote and resentment was sharpened by “rotten boroughs” e.g. Village, Old Sarum had 11 voters and 2 MPs whereas Manchester and Leeds didn’t have any. The Reform act came in, in 1832.

· Repeal of the Corn Laws in 1840- bread was cheaper but wages could be lowered as workers could survive on less.

Farming

· Enclosures ended the idea of landholding peasantry- nothing to stop transfer of workforce from non-industrial to industrial.

· Population had been slowly rising- from 5 million at the end of the 17^th Century until the middle of the 18^th century. After 1770, it started to increase dramatically- doubling every 50 years after that. Cobbett disputed that.

	1801	1831	1851
England	8.3	13.1	16.92
Wales	0.39	0.91	1.06
Scotland	1.63	2.37	2.90
Ireland	5.22	7.77	6.51

· Swing riots- rural labourers opposed to use of new advanced technology e.g. threshing machines- run luddites. Riots across South in 1830.

The Poor

· Looked after by the Speenhamland system devised as a means to alleviate distress caused by high grain prices.

· Means tested- top up for wages- depends on number of children and bread prices.

· Immediate impact of paying this poor rate fell on landowners of the Parish concerned.

· New Poor Law Act 1834- No able-bodied person was to receive money/ help from the Poor Law authorities except in workhouses.

· Rentham- argued that people do what’s pleasant and don’t do what’s unpleasant- people didn’t claim relief, it had to be unpleasant. The core argument for “stigmatising” relief, making it, “an object of wholesome horror”.

· The Act effectively criminalized the poor.

Ireland (Act of union 1801)

· Duke of Wellington passed Catholic Emancipation in 1829 due to the threat of an Irish uprising after Daniel O’Connell was elected MP for County Clare in 1828 but as a Catholic was debarred from taking his seat.

· Monster meeting- 1843- Tara (million people?) Clantarf

· Famine: between 1845-1850 more than 1 million died of malnutrition and 2 million emigrated.

· Handling of famine was criticized – “The Almighty indeed, sent the potato blight but the English created the famine”- John Mitchell, deported for 14 years.

· During the years of the famine, Ireland was a net exporter of food. Armed troops escorted the crops to the ports to export to England. The export of livestock actually increased during the famine years.

Cobbett

· Anti-radical who became a radical- what changed him was the plight of farm workers in the early 19^th century. The thought rapid industrialization was going to destroy traditional ways of life.

· Heroic agitator- convinced farmers faced ruin.

· 20 years abroad in army- chocked by state of countryside on return. Farm workers reduced to “walking skeletons”

· “When farmers became gentlemen, labourers became slaves.”

· No time for farmer taxing government or army- free loaders attacked them or for Church and its tithes.

· He was nearly 60 when he started ‘rural rides’

· He wrote the political register- read by working class.

· Tax on newspapers- Cobbett to publish the political register as pamphlet- circulation of 40,000

· Put in Newgate for sedition- fled to USA to void jail, was term-charged with libel 3 times after returning- including when he write in support of swing riots.

Dickens

· London was the largest city at the time – in terms of population in the world, economically, politically, industrially/

· Overcrowded- population doubled in 50 years Poverty, cholera outbreaks, sanitation problems. Interested in particular times of reform.

· Oliver Twist- Concerned with Poor Law and oppressive regime for people.

· Nicholas Nickleby- Criticised Yorkshire schools- people were treated terribly.

· Bleak House- Particular abuse bothered him, was the court of chancery – law cases went on for generations and cost a fortune.

· Becomes a metaphor for all that’s wrong with Victorian society.

· State only got involved when criminalized and imprisoned them.

· Poor should have decent homes and education.

· Kafka was interested in Bleak House- very clear in his journals and novels, he tries to stir up the middle classes into action.