Lecture 4: Marxism and Karl Marx

Marxism is very Hegelian in nature. Marx himself, who died in 1883, is said to have achieved a fusion of Hegelian philosophy (especially of history and dialectics), British empiricism (especially the economics of Smith and Ricardo) and French revolutionary politics (especially socialist politics). He was a journalist, working as an editor in 1841 and the London correspondent for the New York Tribune in the 1850s.

He was also an economist, viewing the subject as essential to the understanding of human life and the motive power of history. Men were seen as the productive animal (as opposed to Plato’s political animal, Kant’s moral animal and Hegel’s historic animal). He also believed that we create the environment that we inhabit, therefore we are “not a figure in the landscape, but a shaper of the landscape”.

Marx believed in scientific techniques and evidence, believing that politics were scientific socialism.

Hegel, Philosophy and History

The “Young Hegelians”, such as Feuerbach, believed that God is created in the image of man and that the Garden of Eden is a real place; an ideal society. Marx said that “philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways, the point is to change it”. Therefore, the world does not evolve naturally in to a perfect society, we must create it. The Hegelian system criticises “mechanistic materialism”, Karl Marx describes this as not science, but “bourgeois ideology”. He writes of his “master”, Hegel, “I have taken the liberty of adopting a critical attitude towards my master, to rid his dialectic of mysticism and thus to subject it to profound change”. He criticises “crude materialism” (for example, Locke’s empiricism) and “mechanistic materialism”. This apparently “forgets that circumstances are made by men and the educator must himself be educated”. Therefore, personality is NOT just the result of social circumstances. This is an example of dialectical materialism. “The question of wether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but a political question.” Marx is dismissing empiricists, such as Descartes.

The German Ideology

We have no natural rights, or Hegelian-type built in progression of history (no geist or “spirit of the time”. BUT, Marx did agree with Hegel’s theory about dialectical change; this IS the way that history unfolds, but as a result of CLASHES of ideas and there is a history of CLASS STRUGGLE. This is between 2 classes, with the state there as either a means by which one is dominant OR as a broker, with neither strong enough to control the state. This is how Marx viewed the French revolution, with Napoleon as a broker because the bourgeoise was not strong enough to dominate the whole country.

The bourgeoise are factory workers, free from feudal obligations and therefore with a sort of autonomy as they own a means of production of wealth. Marx saw that your relationship to a “means of production” determines your social class. Therefore there are two classes; those that own factories/ farms/ shops etc and the workers in these places. He thought that in a capitalist economy, everyone will be pauperised eventually as businesses go bust and merge to form a monopoly. He welcomed the “proletariat”, an emerging class in the 19th Century which had the most revolutionary potential as they have no means of production and therefore “nothing to lose but your chains”; all they have is “worthless” constitutional rights.

To tackle this, Marx developed a “materialist concept of history”, using historic logic. It consists of:

Thesis: bourgeoise (free market capitalism, liberal state, individual rights)

Antithesis: proletariat

Synthesis: socialism

Marx’s definition of socialism is also objective. He wants to see social ownership of the means of production, and the establishment of an equal social system that can only happen through a proletariat revolution (violent or otherwise) on an international basis. Until this happens, the proletariat will be alienated, e.g., the workers in Smith’s pin factory where the object you produce enslaves you. After this revolution, the state will be “the dictatorship of the proletariat” in which all means of production would be communalised and a system of communism would be instilled. This is similar to the Kantean Kingdom of Ends, Hegel’s “fully rational society”/ “organic society” and the Garden of Eden or Heaven.

In 1843 Marx published a criticism of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right in which he complained about the complexity but like the key idea of dialectical change and progression to a perfect society; he proclaimed that “I have stood Hegel on his feet”. He said that universal laws are the ideology of the ruling class and the religion is only “ideology” and “mysticism” of a feudal society which thrives on alienation. It also, according to Marx, reinforces the irrational authority of feudal society, culminating in the divine right of Kings. It is rejected by empiricists and economists (such as Smith, Hume and Ricardo who were all atheist). Religion is also seen as a way of controlling and restricting the population (Malthus). Liberals are generally atheist or consequentialists (meaning people that believe that religious ideas are beneficial, wether true or not) and Marx believed that the “individualism” of bourgeoise religion (Protestantism) has replaced the system of family loyalty and obligation in the feudal village.

Communist Manifesto

This is the most famous work of marx, containing a prediction of world economy, world culture (globalisation brought about by dynamics of the capitalist economic movement). It said that the bourgeoise will spread, and communism will spread and that the proletariat has to be “class conscious” and organised as a social force (for example, as trade unions or political parties), with everyone treated as worthwhile.

Economics

Marx had a high regard for Smith and Ricardo, especially Smith’s market mechanism as it is a bourgeoise ideology. He also agreed with Hobbes, whose model of “the war of all against all” in the state of nature is the purest form of bourgeoise ideology.

Unfortunately, I could not keep up with the last of the lecture because we rushed through very fast.