Western Political

Thought
Karl Marx
 Dialectical materialism
• Dialectical materialism is a materialist theory based upon the writings of
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels that has found widespread applications in a
variety of philosophical disciplines
• Marx and Engels understood materialism as the opposite of idealism, by
which they meant any theory that treats matter as dependent on mind or
spirit, or mind or spirit as capable of existing independently of matter
• Marx developed Marxist dialectics, which emphasized the materialist view
that the world of the concrete shapes socioeconomic interactions and that
those in turn determine sociopolitical reality.
• Marx and Engels concluded that alienation from economic and political
autonomy, coupled with exploitation and poverty, was the real culprit
1. Materialism Versus Idealism
The question of the relations between mind and matter has divided philosophers
into two main schools of thought.
Marx rejected pure idealism for substituting material reality with the idea of reality
Idealism therefore leads to the false assumption that alienation or estrangement
can be overcome in the realm of thought alone, as if we could change our material
reality by changing our ideas and beliefs.
In other words, Marx‘s method entails the examination of the relationship between
ideas and material reality, specifically as it pertains to class struggle and the
emancipation of the proletariat. Marx‘s dialectics are called ―dialectical
materialism in contrast with Hegel‘s dialectics
2. Revolution of working class under dialectal materialism
• To realize this revolution the working-class must not only understand the interaction
of forces behind the development of society, but it must understand itself as one of
those forces.
• The dialectic is a powerful weapon because it breaks through the capitalist illusion of
individualism and atomism and disrupts the idea that isolated facts speak for
themselves
• Dialectics presents reality as an ongoing social process; nothing is ever static or fixed.
3. Capitalism abolishing traditional systems
Capitalism concentrates and centralizes property, tending towards monopoly.
Bigger capitalists buy out or otherwise out manoeuvre smaller capitalists. At the same
time, capitalism creates its antagonist: the working class
The logic of the feudal system and exchange created the agencies of its own annihilation
While feudalism was overcome in capitalism, aspects of it were preserved but
reconfigured in a way to facilitate economic growth.
For example, the private property of peasants was abolished, but private property itself
was not
4. The inherently unequal relationship between labour and capital
• Violence of expropriating peasants from their means of production.
• Without direct access to the means of production, former peasants were forced
to sell their ability to work for a wage, thereby becoming part of the working
class.
• The competition between capitalists drives technological development.
• devising new technologies that can reduce the number of labour hours it takes
to produce whatever commodity is a tendency internal to capitalism
• new labour-saving technologies can be super profitable for individual capitalists
in the short term, in the long term it reduces the number of labour hours
simultaneously set into motion.
• It also means that more capital is invested into machinery rather than workers
Historical Materialism
• Historical materialism is Karl Marx's theory of history.
• Marx located historical change in the rise of class societies and the way humans labor
together to make their livelihoods.
• Karl Marx stated that technological development can change the modes of production
over time.
• This change in the mode of production inevitably encourages changes to a society's
economic system
• historical materialism is the "view of the course of history which seeks the ultimate cause
and the great moving power of all important historic events in the economic
development of society, in the changes in the modes of production and exchange, in the
consequent division of society into distinct classes, and in the struggles of these classes
against one another’’
• Historical materialism asserts that economic forces are the primary forces that propel
man through history as social classes interact.
• Economic interactions are how man relates to the material world.
1. Primitive Communism
• Early man -and it must be remembered that modern man has a very long ancestry - lived
in what are called hunter-gatherer societies
• For many thousands of years existing tribes were based on a primitive communal form of
social organisation
• men learned how to make and use fire, the level of the productive forces was still very
low.
• This necessitated common labour.
• Common labour entailed common ownership of the means of production, with relations
of equality, co-operation and mutual assistance amongst members of the tribe
• Because there was no surplus product, no individuals could appropriate it and turn it into
private property in the means of production.
• Thus there was no exploitation of man by man, and therefore no economic classes of
exploiters and exploited.
• In one of the first works of mature Marxism, the ‘Communist Manifesto’ of 1848, Marx
and Engels begin: ‘The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class
struggles’
2. Slavery (THE ANCIENT MODE OF PRODUCTION)
• New crafts developed: weaving, tanning and carpentry which also helped on the development of construction and
shipbuilding.
• With these, there came a growth of commerce and new towns, and at some point, written languages.
• The small populations of the new slave owning societies did not allow for more than a few slaves from within
them.
• While the level of the productive forces made exploitation possible, it was still relatively low, so the slave-owner
left the slave only enough to keep him from starvation, appropriating the main part of the slave’s production.
• In time, however the economic basis of slave society, that is, the production relations of the main opposing classes
of slave-owners and slaves, exploiters and exploited, which formerly enabled the growth and development of the
productive forces
• The great slave empires which grew up in Asia Minor, on the banks of the Nile, and later in Greece and Rome, were
rent with divisions.
3. Feudalism (SERFS AND THE GROWING NEED FOR MARKETS)
The new productive forces acquired under the slave owning mode of production demanded for their further progress
a new type of society, a new framework of property relations
The great slave-owners’ estates fell into the hands of a few big land and money owners
Small-scale farming again became the only profitable form.
Under feudalism, production was very largely individual, each producer working for himself where possible, owning
his own means of production
16th century capitalism underwent a rapid expansion, stimulated by the great explorations which vastly expanded
trade and commerce
4. CAPITALISM: COMMODITIES AND INVISIBLE COERCION
Capitalism is the current mode of production. It is a mode dominated by private
property and markets.
It is also a mode characterized by the takeover of commodity-forms and rapid growth
in productive forces
Essentially sell their labour to the business
The increase in productive forces provided by these incentives help the businesses in
the pursuit of profits and the incentives themselves help the workers to provide for
themselves
The capitalist lower class is coerced into working for the capitalist ruling class. Even
though members of the lower class have their choice of which employer to sell their
labor
5. THE END OF HISTORY
• According to Marx and Engels, capitalism is the product of a long course of
development with social revolutions transitioning between modes of
production
• Marx did not believe that capitalism was the final resting point of history.
• Marx thought this cycle would continue until capitalism was overthrown
and replaced with communism
• According to Marx, this is the form of society that will end all alienation and
bring about the true Absolute.
• The true absolute is freedom.
• Freedom meant the abolishment of classes and coercion. In communism
nobody would be forced, implicitly or explicitly, into any role.
• Nobody would be consumed with the extraction of surplus.
Karl Marx Theory of Communism
• Karl Marx (1818-1883)
• In 1848, Marx and fellow German thinker Friedrich Engels published
“The Communist Manifesto,” which introduced their concept of
socialism as a natural result of the conflicts inherent in the capitalist
system.
• In 1867, he published the first volume of “Capital” (Das Kapital), in
which he laid out his vision of capitalism
• Marx's ideas have greatly impacted societies, most prominently in
communist projects such as those in the USSR, China, and Cuba
1. Unequal socioeconomic relations under capitalism
• The first aspect of Marx's philosophy is his analysis of existent socioeconomic relations
under capitalism.
• In Marx's view, capitalism is not just an economic system, but one that presupposes unequal
relations between the working class and Capital (big business or industrialists).
• Big business benefits by exploiting the working class and using the fruits of its labour.
• Marx also examined the role of the middle class (petite bourgeoisie) which expanded with
the Industrial Revolution.
• Marx's analysis of social relations is still relevant in the 21st century.
2. Exploitation and Surplus Value
• Marx's work on understanding capitalism as a social and economic system remains a valid
critique in the modern era.
• Capitalists are the business owners who organize the process of production and who own
the means of production such as factories, tools, and raw materials
• Labourers do not own or have any claim to the means of production
• Instead, labour works only in return for a monetary wage. Marx argued that because of this
uneven arrangement, capitalists exploit workers.
3. Class Struggle
• Karl Marx viewed history as one of class struggle even before the rise of
capitalism in Early Modern Europe.
• Class struggle is the unequal relationship between the labourers and those at
the top of the social hierarchy in which the latter exploit the former.
• Capitalism is a mere stage in this linear historical trajectory.
• capitalists were underpaying or overworking, thereby exploiting labourers to
drive down the cost of production
4. Private Property
• Marx believed that private property is an aspect of unequal social relations
throughout history and, especially, under capitalism.
• He predicted that an eventual erosion of the state would occur after a social
revolution. In a new egalitarian society, property would be shared.
• the inherent inequalities and exploitative economic relations between these two
classes will lead to a revolution in which the working class rebels against the
bourgeoisie, takes control of the means of production, and abolishes capitalism.
5. Withering Away of the State
The disappearance of the state is a crucial feature of Marx's historical forecast:
• Proletarian misery boils over and leads to a revolution
• The working class establishes the so-called dictatorship (rule) of the
proletariat
• Eventually, the state withers away, and an egalitarian, classless society emerges
China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam are the only nations that have
communist systems today
The Soviet Union was an experiment in communism that was created in 1921
and collapsed in 1991, leaving behind 15 former Soviet Socialist Republics to
rebuild their economies from scratch. None chose communism as a model.
Marx’s Theory of Alienation
Marx discusses four aspects of the alienation of labour, as it takes place in capitalist society
: one is alienation from the product of labour; another is alienation from the activity of labour; a
third is alienation from one’s own specific humanity; and a fourth is alienation from others, from
society.
hey do not own the means that are necessary to produce and reproduce their lives. The means of
production are, instead owned by a relatively few.
1. Alienation from the product of labour
• In capitalist society, that which is produced, the objectification of labour, is lost to the producer.
• In Marx’s words, “objectification becomes the loss of the object”
• Alienation here, takes on the very specific historical form of the separation of worker and
owner.
• the workers, produce, the more productive power there is for someone else to own and
control.
• They produce someone else’s power over us
2. Alienation from the activity of labour
• Alienation from my life-activity also means that my life-activity is directed by another
• Activity is not life-activity. It is merely the means of self-preservation and survival.
• In alienated labour, Marx claims, humans are reduced to the level of an animal, working only for the
purpose of filling a physical gap, producing under the compulsion of direct physical need.
• more detailed separation of hand and brain, of sense and intelligence, manifested in the truncated
capacities of both masters and wage-slaves.
3. Alienation From the Self
• According to Marx, satisfying work is an essential part of being human. Since workers under capitalism
feel alienated from the product and the process, it is not satisfying.
• Karl Marx asserted that capitalism is a system that alienates the masses and that workers do not have
control over the goods they produce for the market.
• Marxism is critical of capitalism because that the people who are the labourers behind the goods and
services lose their value over time.
• When once the workers would have crafted the whole product, they may now be reduced to
producing one component on the production line.
• Work under capitalism alienated individuals from themselves since work is no longer a joy, but simply
a means to earn wages to survive.
4. Alienation From Other Workers
• Under capitalism, workers are encouraged to compete against each
other for jobs, better products, and higher profits.
• This pits individuals against each other in a competition to sell their
labour for the lowest possible value.
• Under capitalism, workers become profit-maximizing and self-
interested individuals.
• Workers treat others as objects and as instruments to reach an end
goal.
How to Overcome Alienation According to Marx
• A reorganization of society is required. According to his historical materialist
approach, this is the next step to liberate workers.
• A proletariat revolution that would put an end to capitalism and bring about
communism. The continued exploitation of the capitalists would cause the
revolution.
• A proletariat revolution is a social revolution in which working-class labourers
attempt to overthrow the capitalist bourgeoisie. In the Communist Manifesto,
written in 1848, Marx and Engels proposed that the proletariat revolution was
inevitable and would be caused by the continued exploitation of the capitalists
• In a communist society, there would be shared resources, wealth, and no
social classes. The accumulated labor would widen and enrich the laborer’s
existence rather than exploit it.
• Would be no private property, it can be assumed that the workers would have
control over their work, meaning that feelings of alienation would lessen.