Marx- The Key Ideas

by Gill Hands

  Marx, on the other hand, believed that ‘labour is the essence of man’ and that people are labouring creatures; humans are basically producers and being able to work in purposeful creative activity brings us contentment. In this way we might be seen to be similar to ants or bees, but for Marx we differ greatly from them because we possess consciousness. Marx saw that humans, like animals, are a part of nature; we have similar needs for food, shelter and a desire to reproduce our species, but our consciousness means we are aware of what we are doing. We are aware of who we are and we see ourselves in relation to the rest of our species. This is important, for unless we are conscious of these things in the first place we cannot feel alienated from them. In fact some existentialist philosophers would maintain that is precisely because we are self-conscious that we feel alienated; they argue that it is part of the human condition and it would not matter what kind of society we lived in. Marx did not believe it was only consciousness that distinguishes us from animals and he develops this idea in The German Ideology. Here he writes that is not just consciousness or religion that distinguishes us from animals but that human beings differentiate themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their ‘means of subsistence’. Meaningful work is important to all humans. For Marx, labour is an important part of social development and fundamental to human beings, for through it we change nature and society and in the process we change our selves.

  The opposite of alienation is actualization, or affirmation of the self, which Marx believed humans achieved from the purposeful use of their consciousness. He did not believe that work was supposed to be drudgery to be done away with, as many of the Utopian Socialists believed. Work is an integral part of humanity and unless people are in right relation to it then they will be alienated; according to Marx, labour is essential to the ‘species being’ of man but the new capitalist system changed the ways that people worked so that they were not in a ‘right relation’ to their labour. The factory system, and the society that had grown up around that, had perverted the natural relations of people to the products of their labour and to each other.

  The capitalist system of working alienates all those in it, both rich and poor. Workers are alienated from the products they make because they do not benefit from them. They see the products of their labours as ‘alien and outside them’. ‘Labour produces fabulous things for the rich but misery for the poor’, Marx wrote in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts.

  Workers are alienated and depersonalized by the capitalist system because of the way in which the capitalist obtains surplus value from their labour. The capitalist system also means that they are told when to work, how to work and they derive very little personal satisfaction from their labours.

  The environment of some parts of the capitalist system, the factory system, is dehumanizing: it is hostile to the workers and physically and mentally damaging to them. The constant repetitive nature of the work is not harmonious with human nature. The division of labour and the way the factory system is set up is also not natural, according to Marx, because it encourages competition instead of co-operation and it alienates people from each other.

  Exploitation

  Alienation is connected to exploitation by the capitalist. Marx saw the exploitation of one class by another as a fundamental part of an industrialized capitalist society. Marx believed that there had always been exploitation but it was only under the capitalist system that exploiting others became the normal way of working. In Chapter 4 we saw that the capitalists hold the balance of power. They are able to make a profit from the surplus value because they own the means of production. The worker is not aware of the fact that he is being exploited. He believes the capitalist has a right to the surplus value that is produced because he believes that is just the way things are, or part of human nature. This kind of exploitation is not really visible, unlike the more common forms of exploitation such as making people work long hours, child labour and difficult and dangerous working practices and conditions.

  In the introduction to Das Kapital Marx says that he has not painted a picture of capitalists and landlords in a ‘rosy light’. There are many examples of explicit exploitation of workers given as examples in the book. Chapter 10, The Working Day, consists of mountains of evidence that Marx collected from reports and newspaper articles. Evidence includes children working in mines and heavy industry in appalling conditions, engine drivers working 21-hour shifts, and dressmakers and milliners forced to work in overcrowded sweatshops where they died of consumption. Capital is ‘vampire like’, writes Marx in the introduction, and it ‘sucks living labour’.

  In the Victorian era the average age for death among the working classes was just 19 years. Marx records descriptions of the physical state of many of the workers in British industrial cities in Das Kapital; many of the examining doctors report on the undernourished and progressively stunted growth of the working classes.

  Marx believed that a shorter working day would greatly benefit those people and in most democratic countries today there are laws to regulate the hours that people have to work. The workers who had to fight for improvements in working conditions by uniting against the capitalists found their inspiration in the works of Marx.

  Marx did not make overt moral judgements on the capitalists; he tried to distance himself from any moral commentary in his writing and tried to keep true to the idea of objective materialism. He saw Das Kapital as a scientific study. However, anyone who writes in such an emotive way as Marx does, comparing capitalists to ‘werewolves’ and ‘vampires’ (as he does in Das Kapital) is obviously not in favour of capitalism as a system and is making a moral statement. Marx applauded those who did their best to alleviate working conditions but he believed that both worker and capitalist alike are victims of the system. The capitalist is only a part of the society around him and has no choice but to continue with things the way they are, for even if a factory owner were to give away his goods and his factory somebody else would take his place. In the Grundrisse Marx appears to disagree with the Romantic ideal that believes life was better in some pre-capitalist rural idyll. He saw capitalism as a great civilizing influence but believed it was only a part of the progression of history and not the final stage of development as others at the time believed. Marx thought that it would give way to communism and that it is only under a communist system that there would be no exploitation of any kind. He believed this society would only come about when people become aware of the true nature of society and their alienation.

  Marx believed that capitalism seduces consumers by giving them desires which enslave them. The goods that a worker produces eventually enslave him because he is trapped in a cycle of working for money to buy goods; fetishism of goods means that people want to buy and consume more. The fetishism of money means that people have to sell themselves to obtain it and then desire money for its own sake. Private property also alienates people because they believe that an object only has worth if they can possess or use it. Marx even went so far as to say that people do not appreciate objects for their aesthetic beauty but only in relation to their commercial value.

  Private property, wage labour, surplus value, and market forces are structures that have been constructed by people in society. These structures manipulate everyone in society but in subtle ways so they don’t realize what is happening. Because people are not aware of the way in which they are manipulated by the economy they feel alienated and do not know why. Marx believed that even capitalists are alienated but they are ‘happy in their alienation’. Their power, wealth and privilege are substitutes for true happiness.

  On the other hand, the alienation of the workers is oppressive. They are the ones who truly suffer from alienation as they have nothing – neither the means of production nor the end products. All they hold is their labour power. The capitalist cannot exist without the worker; the worker believes he cannot survive without the capitalist because of the hold that money and wage labour have
over him. In The German Ideology Marx describes how the abolition of private property and regulation of labour would abolish alienation between them and their products and would let them be in control of their lives again. Marx believed that realization of alienation was a vital step towards the revolution that would bring about communism. Capitalism was in crisis due to its internal conflicts, and it would go through a series of crises that would bring it to its knees. Once the workers understood their alienation and exploitation they would rise up and help to finish it off. A revolution would take place.

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  THINGS TO REMEMBER

  Marx was interested in the ways in which the economy affected society.

  Capitalism spread around the world through imperialism.

  Communism could also spread around the world, but colonies would only be ready for revolution after industrialization had taken place.

  Marx described how fetishism of money, capital and commodities alienated people.

  Alienation is connected to exploitation.

  People are alienated by a society that they have constructed but they don’t realize this.

  Workers are oppressed by their alienation because they do not own the means of production.

  Capitalists are alienated but are happy in their alienation because they have material possessions.

  Realization of alienation would lead to class struggle and revolution.

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  6

  Class, class struggle and revolution

  In this chapter you will learn:

  how Marx defined class

  how capitalist society developed

  about ideology and false consciousness

  about workers’ power and organization

  how class consciousness could lead to revolution.

  Introduction

  Long before Marx, historians had discovered the existence of social classes, but class awareness and classification became more important in Europe at the end of the eighteenth century as a result of the French Revolution. Adam Smith was one of the first English writers to look at class, in an economic sense, in The Wealth of the Nations: here he describes class conflict between ‘masters’ and ‘labourers’. Today there are many ways of defining class in society. Sociologists might see class as defined by the functions of people in a society, for example managerial workers, white-collar workers, blue-collar workers, etc. or they may define class according to income or by cultural tastes and habits.

  Marx did not define class in any of his works and used the term rather loosely to mean different things at different times but he believed that class is defined purely by economic factors. He saw that classes are made up of individuals who share a common relationship with the means of production. At the time he was writing, he saw that the capitalist economy had divided society into two opposing camps: ‘two great classes opposing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat’. Those who owned the means of production were the bourgeoisie, those who owned no means of production were the proletariat.

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  Insight

  Modern definitions of class are much broader than Marx’s definition and society can be seen to be structured in different ways depending on whether you are studying social issues, looking at economic factors, or doing market research.

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  Marx wanted to understand how this situation had come about and spent many years studying the development of the capitalist system that had grown up in Europe after the Industrial Revolution. He believed a scientific study of the ways in which society had developed would help prepare the working classes to overthrow the system by showing them the historical perspective of their position. He believed that capitalism was the latest form of exploitation in a series of oppressive rules throughout history and that if people were shown this then they could be persuaded to take action against their oppressors. It was only in this way that a classless communist society would eventually come about.

  The development of capitalist society

  In the earliest societies, when people lived as hunter-gatherers and small-scale farmers, there were no real classes as society was organized on the basis of common labour and mutual protection and there was no private property. People scratched out an existence at subsistence level and had just enough food for basic survival. In Marxist theory this type of society is known as ‘primitive communism’.

  As societies became more efficient in producing food, the surplus products often came under the control of a ruling elite. The surplus products allowed the ruling elite to live off the labour of those below them in the class structure without having to produce anything themselves. This elite was often only a minority of the society as a whole. Throughout history the ruling elite has changed: slave owners, religious leaders of many types, feudal lords and, finally, capitalists.

  In The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels defined capitalists as the owners of the means of production and the employers of wage labourers. Because the factory system that sprang up after the Industrial Revolution was based on the purchase of large items of machinery, it was only a minority of the population who could afford to invest in it, so they became the new ruling elite.

  Dialectical materialism and class structure

  Marx saw history as a series of dialectical conflicts. Each type of society, whether based on slavery, feudalism or capitalism, contains contradictions inside its structure which can only be expressed through conflict. These conflicts eventually lead to the downfall of the system. A new system then takes its place. Marx said this had been demonstrated throughout history.

  In the original hunter-gatherer societies there was no real division of labour; everybody could do any job that needed to be done and could use any of the tools that were available. These societies were classless in a Marxist sense, but then they developed into slave-owning societies which became unstable and collapsed due to internal contradictions. The ownership of slaves was dependent on warfare, which put pressure on the economy. Eventually, this undermined the power of the state, allowing barbarian invasion, which then led to the collapse of the system.

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  Insight

  This is a simplified version of complicated Marxist theory on the fall of slave-owning societies. For more detail read Origin of the Family by Engels.

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  Feudalism replaced slavery in Europe and it allowed people to develop skills and talents under the patronage of the landed nobility. However, feudalism was eventually overthrown by revolutionary struggles which continued into the nineteenth century when the rise of capitalism began.

  Capitalism was necessary to allow the development of the factory system and mass production. People had to be legally free to move to where the work was, instead of being tied to the land. The landowners also had to be legally free to accumulate wealth and to be able to invest it to make a profit.

  According to Marx, no social system has appeared accidentally, but when it was historically necessary. Each new system outlives its usefulness. Within every process, internal contradictions take place, which bring down the system. Nothing can remain stable as the social structure is dependent on the economic base. This is the basic premise of dialectical materialism.

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  Insight

  The economic base of any society is the way the economy is structured. It influences the whole of the structure of society in Marx’s view.

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  Marx believed that the basic key to understanding the history of human society was exploitation. To Marx, class divisions were not simply between rich and poor. Classes were defined by how people stood in relation to the means of production. Those who produced food, clothing, shelter and so on have always been exploited. The surplus products they made were always controlled by a class of non-producers, except in very primitive societies. For example, in medieval, feudal societies everyone had to give a tenth of their produce (a tithe) to the Church.

  To Marx, the history of the w
orld was the history of class warfare. Classes must always be in competition with those that are above or below them. Because Marx believed in a dialectical structure to society, he saw it as a construction of opposites that would always be in conflict. He believed that classes only really existed because of their antagonism to each other, that they were defined by that antagonism and that people who lived in such a society could never live harmoniously together. He believed the course of history was economically determined and capitalism could only end in revolution.