CAPITALISM: KARL MARX

Introduction:

The early Enlightenment question – how had liberty, equality and commercial society emerged, up to Adam Smith

The Later Enlightenment question – how could liberty and equality survive along industrial organization – De Tocqueville

My reading of Marx sees him as a late Enlightenment thinker, deeply versed in classics and a polymath wrestling with the deepest questions such as:

What is the basic nature of man
How did the modern world emerge, the shift from agraria to industria
What is the nature of our modern world, especially social relations
What is the future hope?

In this he took the old 4 stage Enlightenment model based on forces of production (HG, pastoral, agrarian, commercial) and re-adapted it by filling it with more detail esp. re the property relations.

He also added the complexity that the sequence might be

HG/Tribal then one of the following Asian/Ancient/Germanic and only the last of these (feudal) would lead to capitalist and then to socialist

Thus there was an added set of divisions in ‘agraria’ and only one led to capitalism. And there was something beyond capitalism.



Life

[For fuller Life see sheet F]

born 1818

Manifesto of the Communist Party 1848

A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 1859

Capital vol I in 1867

died 1883



Some contemporary events that influenced him:

Darwin( 1859), Wallace, Chambers(1844) and the theory of evolution: Marx thinks Darwin applied his theory to the animal world and wanted to dedicate ‘Capital’ to him

decline in formal religion - a secular world, a religion needed to replace Christianity, a religion of secular progress, which Marx supplied (Marxism a religion – cf. modern practitioners)

Imperial conquests by European powers; India, China etc. : tilting of the balance of power again; from progress to full-blown evolutionism (multi-dimensional, moral, economic, etc etc.

social and economic effects of technology (industrialism) : start of improvement and escape from the Smithian trap; world progress possible; a feeling of growth, science (knowledge) growing as well as control over material world

1848 Revolution in Europe, the continuing effects of the French Revolution; Marx involved but a failure

urban squalor and rise of a working class: horrors of Manchester, Engels, drainage, reform starting, growing confidence.

power of Britain, growth of America


QUESTIONS, METHODS AND THEORIES

Theoretical methodology:

comparative methodology: drew on data from everywhere, esp. anthropology

historical methodology: very deep history back before Romans, and deeply aware that change is important.

holistic approach to civilizations: all aspects of life, see DIAG of the modes of production

dialectical methods: Hegel’s dialectic of thesis, antithesis, synthesis, but now applied to a different area – a motor for history

materialism: Hegel inverted, the material base

teleology: a goal in history, movement towards a Second Coming, Messianic, an Old Testament prophet

evolutionary stages and progress: took the Enlightenment stages and fleshed them out

structural and relational approach: it is the relations of production, not production, everything lies in relations

world history: all civilizations encompassed within the framework

his concept of the individual: the social being [see sheets D]

the original, primitive, communal mode of production and the original primitive egalitarian community [see sheets E]

[Read out the hand-out passage as a summation of his philosophy]

A few of his conclusions:

the importance of property relations as basic relation: property at the base

importance of struggle, especially class struggle as the motor of history

infra and super structures – J.Friedman diagram

modes of production and stages theory: diagram of stages

laws of replacement of humans by capital (machines): the reason for the inevitable failure of capitalism

alienation and the division of labour and loss of meaning: extension of Adam Smith and Tocqueville, the meaninglessness of life, based on his concepts of the individual: [see diagram, sheet A]

theories of where true value lay – labour theory of value and attack on Smith [see diagram, sheet b]

deviations from the path 'stationery' Asiatic modes, no dialectic in them (but ignores outside forces)

importance of feudalism as gateway to capitalism

future Utopia of communism, where the state and private property will be wiped away

productive and dynamic tensions and inevitable change: a theory of history

effects and importance of technology, a degree of technological determinism

[If needed, p. C – a summary of change from feudalism to capitalism – but only if necessary]


Some criticisms in hindsight

An enormously liberating, exciting and challenging view and a praiseworthy undermining of complacency and humbug. An attack on vested interests and power. Many good effects. Here concentrate on criticisms.

As a political philosophy: the paradox of the good leading to disaster.

Based on a totally mistaken notion of man (Rousseau) as naturally perfect and perfectible. Hence disaster.

Based on an idealistic notion of Stateless societies – withering away of the State leads to disaster

Based on a brutal acceptance that the ends justify the means, especially through revolution, rather than evolution. Hence terrible cost.

The results: Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, North Korea now.

Compare to the cynical and realistic view of Hobbes, Smith and co, lead to our world.

As a basis for history and anthropology: inadequate

The base-superstructure model only a half-truth, as Godelier and others realized. For anthropology, ideology, law, religion not just a residual category. ‘In the last instance’ a weasel word (weapons related programmes…) Anything, in fact, can be base; and in most human societies it is not economics, however defined, but kinship, religion and sometimes politics. Strangely ethnocentric.

The idea of primitive equality and absence of private property a delusion and false. In fact inequalities and private property and power relations from the start. There is no return to that Eden.

The idea of necessary stages through which all societies must go is just a nineteenth century adaptation of a crude version of the C18 ideas of progress. There is a half truth, that one can arrange societies in this way – but no individual civilization has to follow this path – especially by the nineteenth century.