Survey of Karl Marx / Marxism

CHILTON NOTES FOR CLASS

Chronology and Context

Negative connotations of Marx: "infamous"; "commies"; USSR. Not the real Marx.

All serious modern political theory goes through Marx. Whether it agrees or disagrees with him, it has to come to terms with him.  I am not counting ideological work that spends time — wasted time — trying to "disprove" his work.

Recall the dialectic of construction and critique. Political theory must deal with Marx's critique, even if many of the socialist constructions seem weak. (What Marx called "Utopian socialisms".) After Marx's work, we can't put the toothpaste back in the tube.

"Marx had the good fortune, combined, of course, with the necessary genius, to create a method of inquiry that imposed his stamp indelibly on the world. We turn to Marx, therefore, not because he is infallible, but because he is inescapable. Everyone who wishes to pursue the kind of investigation that Marx opened up, finds Marx there ahead of him, and must thereafter agree with or confute, expand or discard, explain or explain away the ideas that are his legacy."

— Robert Heilbroner, Marxism: For and Against [via Kit Sims Taylor, Human Society and the Global Economy (1996), Chapter 11 "Capitalism's Crises and Critics"]

So just as Milton Friedman said, "We are all Keynesians now" (Time, 12/31/65), so we can say that we are all Marxians now.

But Marx is still little understood.

• The USSR dominated by an orthodoxy — a state religion
• The United States dominated by anti-Marxist trivializers.  Many or most philosophy and economics departments have no Marxist (or radical) scholars on their faculty;  often Marx (or radical philosophy generally) is not taught at all.
• Serious study of Marx is fairly recent (which to me, born in 1946, may mean something different than it does to my younger readers).

Question:  To what extent is his perspective relevant today?

Marx Himself

Historical setting: poverty; Chartist movement; revolutions; unions starting to organize (illegally)

Got a Ph.D. in Philosophy at Jena University (where Hegel taught).

As editor a a newspaper (1842-1844), confronted practical-political questions for which his philosophical training had not prepared him.  Thus he was "in the arena", in Teddy Roosevelt's phrase.  However, even though Marx knew he disliked utopian socialism, he lacked the theoretical resources to rebut it.

Prussian "death sentence" on his paper;  his resignation from the paper (due to the publisher's attempts to soften its stand)

Critical study / review of Hegel in 1844.

[Read his outline of his conclusions on pp.4-5 of the Tucker reader.]  [Terms:  contradictions;  forces of production vs. relations of production;  the owl of Minerva;  scientific Marxism]

Utopian socialism (Robert Owen, Henri de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, among many others) shared certain assumptions

• Capitalism is morally bad, ...
  • Liberty? — economic enslavement;  the right to starve by yourself;  dictatorship by owners [See Walzer's essay on J-Town.]
  • Equality? — great and growing inequalities of both wealth and power
  • Fraternity? — none
  • Justice? — [Racing with backpacks image;  not fair.]
  • Material/economic benefits? — not to everyone;  removal of autonomy;  relative deprivation
• ... and thus moral education will end it.
• Industrialization is the problem, which implies a return to basic agricultural and crafts production.
• "Islands of rationality" (moral education + the force of example) will spread.
• All of this is Hegelian in its focus on thinking.
• [Note that utopian socialism has a long history:  Plato's Guardians;  Christian communities;  religious orders;  Sir Thomas More's Utopia (1516).]

The philosophy of history:  what does history consist of?

• Plutarch & Herodotus:  great men & events (biography, invasions, battles, tactics).  I consider such "history" merely the chop on the ocean.
• Hegel:  great philosophies.
• Marx:  material base & the social forces it unleashes (products produced;  work organization;  land tenure;  technology).  History is one of class struggles.

Dialectical materialism:

• "Materialism" not in the sense of "greed" but rather in Marx's focus on forces in the material world (as opposed to abstract, intellectual philosophies and ideals)
• "Dialectical" in the sense that every system has within it the seeds of its own transformation.  The law of qualitative & quantitative change.  (But:  managed capitalism and the end of history?)

THE ROOT OF MARXISM IN THE CONCEPT OF EXPLOITATION

One basic insight of Marxism is the existence & nature of exploitation. In particular:

• Relations are not transparent / natural / objective, though they appear to be so; they have been "naturalized"."The silent compulsion of economic relations" (Capital Ch. 28, approx. three pages into it).  In other words, "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!"
   
• Organization of a form of life, this form of life being more important than otherwise sacrosanct values like competition. Social class not as "status" but as economic / power relations.
   
• For Marxists who focus on exploitation, the central issue is that workers (or, in othere societies, similar classes) don't get their due.
   
• How to define exploitation, though?  Isn't it all fair exchange?  "There is no oppression, just whining losers."
   
• Surplus value is expropriated from the worker. [Terms: "forces of production; "means of production"; "relations of production".]
   
• Control of means of production ==> control of relations of production ==> expropriation of surplus value.
   
• But what is "surplus"? There really is no such thing when we speak in terms of exchange value; it's merely that the exchange value of the goods are divided among those who provide the factors of production (land, labor, and capital), with the shares determined by fair bargaining. So how can there be any expropriation of surplus value?
   
• More basic question: how to define value independent of exchange value?
   
• Distinguish "use value" from "exchange value". There is a difference, as Ollman's example of the deodorant shows. Just because people can be fooled into buying something does not make that thing useful to human life. And exchange value is circular — as witness the pseudo-"appraisal" of my house for the bank.
   
• "Exchange is market-clearing" — but so what, if no use value is provided? "Exchange creates maximum production" — but so what, if the production is not of things that are humanly useful?
   
• But how to measure use value independent of exchange? (An important problem for Middle Age theology.) Marx defines it through the labor theory of value. (Much like Locke.)
   
• Define surplus value, not forgetting to subtract out expenses of production beyond labor (raw materials, repair & replacement of machinery, management labor, taxes for socially necessary functions, etc.). What is left over is surplus value and in our form of life it belongs to the capitalist as "profit", even though s/he does not labor for it.
   
• But doesn't capital itself deserve to be compensated? No, Marx says, because if labor is the source of value, then capital is not an independent factor but just frozen (and previously expropriated) labor.
   
• This implies that the capitalist's seizure of the profit on the grounds that "he is contributing capital" is just a continuation of his previous expropriation of earlier workers' surplus value.
   
• So: the capitalist has no right to the profit but is able to keep it by naturalizing the economic relations.
   
• The system creates "alienation" — a central concept — in several ways:
  • of workers from other workers
  • of workers from the products of their labor
    • they don't own the products at any point
    • they don't own them psychologically either
  • of workers from owners
  • of humans from their inherent humanity
  • through "colonization of the lifeworld"
  • [Note that this will lead us to a second stream of Marxian critique.]
     
• This whole system is a sweet deal for capitalists, so they join in support of this system. Class consciousness. Versus false consciousness.   (However, "false consciousness" is a dangerous concept.)
   
• "Ideological" and governmental superstructure; economic base. [Note that religion is seen as just another ideological disguise: the opiate of the people. But Marx does have a morality, just not one based on God.] Federalist #10. says that government is to protect property. Yes, replies Marx, but that's bad, not good.

Two views of oppression:

1. unfairness of the system; stealing" / "expropriation" of surplus value; exploitation of workers; envy, resentment, levelling
2. alienation of humans; an inhuman system, regardless of its other supposed virtues

These give rise to two different traditions in Marxism ...

• Marxism-Leninism
• Humanistic Marxism;  Frankfurt School

... and two different strategies of revolution.

• Lenin
• [Gandhi?]

REVOLUTION

Capitalism is itself revolutionary:  it transforms all without our agreement or even recognition.  (The changes are "naturalized", "inevitable".)   Note the analogy of grading on the curve, where an irrational, unjust system can be hidden in blame, either the teacher's blame or, even better for system maintenance, self-blame.

• slide rule manufacturers; buggy whip manufacturers; canal workers
   
• expansion & contraction ---> concentration of wealth ---> lottery mentality (win big or lose all).
   
• colonization of the lifeworld; "mining the lifeworld".

Capitalism is good in many ways, says Marx: enormous productivity gains, levelling of all workers, and thus the creation of a true proletariat and class consciousness.

The concept of "contradictions":

• def'n: opposing, unreconciled forces or tendencies; not logical contradiction. Marxism does not throw out logic.
   
• Ex: worker as producer vs. worker as consumer
   
• Ex: "law" of the falling rate of profit; low labor costs vs. workers' need for survival. [Not really a law, but assuming it were, we get ...]

Revolution:

• workers see what's going on
• they identify the root cause
• they come to class consciousness
• they realize they must act; they thus come to revolutionary consciousness
• they act

The [ambiguous] role of the Communist Party:

• No role, because the revolutionary path is objective?
• "Vanguard" party to clarify issues?

NEOCLASSICAL ECONOMICS VS. MARXISM [BROADLY CONSTRUED]

[Adapted from Howard J. Sherman Foundations of Radical Political Economy, pp.5-7]

THE READINGS' PURPOSES

• Karl Marx (1859) "'Preface' to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy" [OVERVIEW] 
   
• Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels (1848) The Communist Manifesto [THE BASIC THEORY]
   
• Karl Marx (1867) Capital Part VIII "The So-Called Primitive Accumulation" [THE NATURE AND EXERCISE OF POLITICAL-ECONOMIC POWER]
   
• Karl Marx (1875) "Critique of the Gotha Program" [CAREFUL CRITIQUE, NOT SLOPPY & SENTIMENTAL B.S.]
   
• Karl Marx (ca. 1847) Wage Labour and Capital [XX]
   
• Karl Marx (ca. 1851) The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon [A SAMPLE OF MARX'S POLITICAL ANALYSIS]
   
• Karl Marx (1877) "Letter to the editor of Notes on the Fatherland"; Karl Marx (1881) "Letter to Vera Zasulich" [MARX'S VIEWS ON THE SUITABILITY OF RUSSIA FOR A PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION]