Thought of Karl Marx

This article presents a brief summary of the thought of Karl Marx .

Karl Marx is especially known today for its political and economic writings, but it was before a whole philosopher and a historian, who tried to include/understand, interpret and especially change the world. We try here to explain the “thought” of Karl Marx. This article does not recover the article Marxisme , which is specific to those which are asserted of this “political current” multiform.

Warning: The majority of the bonds of this page will not make it possible to light the reader. The concepts of Capital, Praxis, Production, exchange, Dialectical, Distribution, etc are quite specific at Marx, and are often not described in these articles.

philosophical Materialism

Taking as a starting point the ancient Materialism (its thesis of admission to the doctorate related to the Atomisme of Démocrite and Epicure and its theory of the Clinamen, which enabled him to preserve the Liberté human Volonté within a physical theory deterministic) and wanting to be a Critique political economy, the thought of Karl Marx is resolutely materialist: “The history of any company until our days is the history of Class struggles” thus writes it in the Communist Manifesto , written one year before the Révolutions of 1848. As the Jeune Marx notices it in Thèses on Feuerbach , “the philosophers up to now interpreted only the world, it now acts to transform it. ” It is here the line of demarcation between the orthodoxe Marxisme and the Philosophie.

Marx wants to give “dialectical the hégélienne on its feet”, and thus estimates that it is the matter which is first, and not the spirit, i.e. “ the movement of the thought is only the reflection of the real movement, transported and transposed in the brain of the man ” (the Capital). It breaks thus with the idealism of the Phénoménologie of the Spirit of Hegel, like with the German Idéalisme, for which the objects are simple copies of “the Idea” and for which the “real movement” of the Absolute Spirit in the History (Hegel) becomes aware of itself only in the Conscience of the philosopher.

The materialism according to Marx does not stop with the purely physical dimension of the Man, as it was the case of these predecessors. Marx insists on the “social materialism” which makes ( carries out ) the Man, i.e. all the social relations which build it (the family, reports/ratios hierarchical, the realization (object) of sound work within the company and the formulations that it gives some, etc)

According to Ellul, there does not exist for Marx a " nature humaine" , but a " condition humaine" , which varies according to the times. Marx speaks about " Gattungwesen ".

However, Marx reproaches the old materialism the fact that it designs the human being like a Abstraction, and not like the product of the whole of all its social reports/ratios, the fact that it would not be historical, etc what it describes as “vulgar” materialism by its aspect mechanist.

The Dialectical

Dialectical the hégélienne (primarily formulated on an idealistic basis) implies the idea according to which the world can be regarded only as “ a complex of completed things ” (Engels), a succession of complex processes where the things (including the reflections which is printed there in the brain of that which thinks) are under development constant alternating between the to be and the Devenir as for a finality (God). According to Hegel, this development is a discontinuous, made evolution jumps, catastrophes, moult of internal impulses, contradictions, etc, going towards a predetermined purpose : the Absolute .

The dialectical one according to Hegel (which Marx would have taken as a starting point, while criticizing it), it is an inescapable historical sequence: assertion - negation - negation of the negation . Example:

assertion : the private property makes it possible the middle-class class to create richnesses;
negation : the working class is impoverished and cannot reach the private property;
negation of the negation : must thus be abolished the private property like forms private universality.

There exist other systems which are said dialectical: at Proudhon, at which the third stage would have been the working class reaches the private property . Marx, states on the contrary that the concept of abolition of the concept even of private property (different from the property " intime" ) is the direction of the History.

A reading (naive, as illustration) of the events of the revolt of the suburbs in France would be:

assertion : the current system includes/understands trades supported in term of wages and social recognition
negation : a category of nobody can reach the favoured trades
Third stage:

Marxist approach: negation of the negation : it is necessary to abolish the concept of hierarchy of the trades
traditional approach : it is necessary that the young people of suburbs reach the favoured trades

The design materialist of the History

The design materialist of the History is the application of the materialism to the study of the development histories of the companies. According to this design, it is the to be social which explains the social conscience : in the social production of their existence, the men enter in reports/ratios determined, necessary, independent of their will, reports/ratios of production which correspond to a given degree of development their material productive forces. (Contribution to the Criticism of the Political Economy)

technology, says Marx , exposes the mode of action of the man with respect to nature, the lawsuit of production of its material life, and, consequently, the origin of the social reports/ratios and the ideas or designs intellectual which result from this ( the Capital , delivers I). For the Marxien S, such a design makes it possible not to explain the history solely by the desires and wills of the men, but to seek in the social reports/ratios the causes of these desires. It also makes it possible not to neglect the action of the masses of the population, by studying the living conditions of the population and their evolution. Thus, whatever the conditions given that they carry out in the history, the men are the craftsmen of their own history, of what they are.

Thus, the History, according to Marx, is before all the transformation of Nature by the work of the Man who, into return, transforms the man himself (the " Praxis "). According to a particular interpretation of the Dialectical of the Master and the Slave exposed by Hegel in the Phenomenology of the Spirit , the Esclave is the to be which, transforming Nature, reaches immediately the object in its passive and active side. The Main , which for its part does not work but made carry out lives immediately in the pleasure of the consumable object: he knows only his passive aspect. It appears that the slave, working ( carrying out ) to transform the human world, changes itself and asserts his automomy in the natural world in his human tranformation of the world, while the Master is goes foreign to his world, that it does not recognize any more in the recognition but makes the slave of the world of it. Indeed, this one, forever, the product of its work it can reverse the report/ratio of Domination to find in the achievement of the human world : equality.

The work, by the technical improvements that its evolution implies, led to transform the structures of the company. That one thinks only of the difference between work of a peasant of last century and a data processing specialist, or, to take again an example of Karl Marx:

Extract of Misery of philosophy

By acquiring new productive forces, the men change their mode of Production, and by changing the mode of production, the manner of earning their living, they change all their social reports/ratios. The mill with arm will give you the company with the suzerain; the mill with vapor, the company with the industrial Capitalism.

The movement of the History

During the History, technological advances make it possible to increase the production. After a certain time, a conflict is born within the company, where the social reports/ratios change: the Social class which holds the novel methods takes importance on the dominant social class, founded on the old model of production. Example: feudal system where the suzerain had the grounds and those who worked it, and the role of the clergy on the company, one passed to a company dominated by the middle-class during the Industrial revolution of the XVIIIeme century. Thus according to Marx was born a new form from the economy: the Capitalism, which supposes a new form of Private property, guaranteed by a new legal institution.

Marx, in its work, summarized the human history in 4 stages (the fifth to come being, according to him, the socialist period), corresponding to techniques and modes of production different:

primitive community
the slave company (the Roman company)
the feudal mode
the capitalist mode

Marx thinks that the direction of the History is inescapable in the long term, and that it always leads to this third stage, critical, of social reorganization. The reports/ratios of production end early or late up being disputed, by not being adapted to the development more, by being unbearable for a big part of the population: the structures of the company, which appeared immutable, must then change.

The Class struggle

The idea that the company is not homogeneous, but that its members have divergent aspirations, and sometimes contradictory is not new. But Marx has for the first time advanced the idea that the oppositions between these various social classes constitute the discussion thread which makes it possible to include/understand the succession of the companies and the historical periods. The theory of the class struggle advances that except the primitive communities, all the companies are made up of classes (free man and slave, plebeian patrician and, lord and serf, owners and workmen) in constant opposition and that this opposition is the engine of the history.

Marx studies the way in which the modern middle-class was born with the center even from the feudal company, has grows until representing a social force which entered in conflict with the old dominant class of the noble ones. After having reversed the feudal mode, the middle-class upset the world, modified the social reports/ratios, the values, the ideology dominant, and developed sciences and technology with an unimaginable point before.

However, according to Marx, it also made emerge a new social class, the modern proletariat, i.e. the class of all those which have only their labor force to sell, and whose interests enter directly in conflict with those of the middle-class. Marx estimates that of all the existing classes in the modern society, only the working class is really able to transform the company.

The Capitalism

It is born from the development of the craft industry in the feudal mode and the appearance of the middle-class class. The development of the technique requires more and more of the craftsman to call upon new Travailleur S, which is then under the aegis of the lord (serfs, peasants).

The capitalist mode is characterized then by the continuous development of the techniques, which make it possible to produce more and more. The prices decrease then and make disappear the least profitable companies, increasing the proletarian class. This class has more and more evil to buy the goods produced by the system, which enters in contradiction. Another contradiction is the concentration of the capital in a small number of hand, situation which cannot last vis-a-vis the organization of the proletarian class.

The economy according to Marx

Note: The reader will be able to also read the article economic Marxisme, more detailed

Marx was not satisfied to denounce the misdeeds of capitalism incipient from the time (like the extreme misery of the English workmen of then), but it sought to analyze the conditions which allowed the birth of capitalism, and the laws which guide the production of goods. For that, it was based on work of the economists of its time, and recognized the value of some their observations, but found them incomplete. He reproached the political economy for being formed like an exact science, which had eliminated the Man from his parameters, and had reduced it to its qualities of producing S and Consommateur S. Another reproach was the lack of questioning of its bases:

the political economy starts from fact of the private property. She does not explain it to you. She expresses the material process which actually the private property describes, in general and abstract formulas, which then have for her value of laws. She does not seize these laws, i.e. she does not show how they result from the gasoline of the private property.

The work and the Private property

In its philosophical design, according to Marx, work is the prolongation of the Man, it is part of its individual existence, and it leads to a recognition by the other men, and it created a solidarity between individuals. It closely binds the worker and that which profits from this work. It is also a means of subsistence, direct in the systems pre-capitalists (country companies), indirect in the capitalist system.

In the capitalist company, work changed nature: it became alienating, it subordinates the individual to the means of private production. It is deprived of its human values. It has other finalities only one production of venal goods, intended for economic exchanges. The producer becomes an anonymity with the eyes of the purchaser. Work becomes abstract then.

Marx differentiates the property from the objects (property objectifies) which exist independently of human work (a ground, a tree, a horse), subjective property induced by the capitalist system.

The subjective property exists when human work in the production of an object intervenes. Goods contain human work. The subjective private property (subjective, because it contains the idea that a subject - the man - produced) is an appropriation of human work. To have goods (a house, a company, a machine), it is to hold human work, therefore that creates a domination of the man by itself. Let us not forget that work is, at Marx, a part and a prolongation of the man.

The Consumption and the Production

These concepts are closely dependant at Marx. Consumption, at Marx, does not have the common direction of the economists. It gathers at the same time the consumption of objects (raw materials, manufactured goods, etc) and the consumption of the work of the man. The man is always present in the reflection of Marx, that belonged to his originality compared to the classical economists. The production, it is in particular the consumption of work. Reciprocally, the act to consume (with the common direction) an object, it is the final stage of the production. There is an identity between the two concepts.

Production, Distribution and exchange

In the capitalist company, there is no more direct relationship between the producer of a good, and that which will consume it. The distribution, intermediate function, depend on the social structure (reports/ratios of social domination, wages, etc).

In its concept of distribution, Marx once again, also included social distribution, to include/understand within the meaning of proportions of people in the various social classes.

The final exchange of the good, which takes place with money in the capitalist company, finalizes the cycle.

Origins of capitalism

Capitalism requires the release of work. That what is a worker " libre" according to Marx? It is a worker available to be used as means of production, unlike the country companies, where the individuals were the property of the lord, and thus inalienable for industrial activities. A person " not libre" according to Marx will be for example an housewife, or reprocessed elderly and being prevented from working, or a minor that laws protect. The Institution S (for example the States, by the laws) can play a part preventing or decreasing this " libération". The Habit S and the Religion S also (refusal of the work of the women, for example).

Another condition so that the capitalist system exists, it is that the means of the production are also " libérés" , i.e. available for the capitalists. It is not necessary that they are held regularly by people. The people should not be closely related to these means of production, as could the being the serfs with respect to the ground of the lord to the Middle Ages, or the slaves in Antiquity or the colonial empires. A slave is directly an object for the production. In the same idea, it is not necessary that the worker has his instruments of work (if not, it could provide itself for his needs, without intermediation).

When these conditions are met, the men are available, the work can then be bought.

The Capital

See also the article detailed on the book of Marx: the Capital

It gathers several forms: capital-object (machines, products), profit-sharing (men with which one can buy work), capital-money.

The formation of the richnesses had several origins before Marx: the Physiocrate S saw there the productivity of the ground (cultures, breedings), the Socialiste S of the time saw there an exploitation of the workmen by the owners, and the liberals saw a taking away there on the selling price of the goods.

Marx denies all that. Enrichment comes from the creation of the richness. This creation of the richness comes from work (the Value-work). The employee offered his work to an owner, who remunerates it for his right furnished effort. But work makes it possible to release an additional value, which will be recovered by the owner, it is the appreciation. It is not strictly speaking a flight: the Salaire covers truly the means of subsistence of the employee.

This mechanism of production of capital will concentrate by the circulation of capital: The owners as a whole release a benefit, can reinvest and profits thus from an infinite growth in capital. However, some will go bankrupt, reducing the number of capitalists. They will join the working class and will make it possible to increase the employable labor force for the capitalists. This phenomenon of concentration of the capital is constant, and with necessarily a limit, beyond which the capitalist company will disappear.

It should be noted that the Working class according to Marx is the class of the people who work for a capitalist. It would be said today that represents the whole of the Salarié S. a framework in data processing is a " ouvrier" according to Marx, a paid leader of a company in is also: he works for the Actionnaire S, which are them the capitalists. An employee of a bakery is not a capitalist, but its owner is one. According to the Marxist analysis, the capital related to the activity of bakeries, like any capital, concentrates. One could thus estimate that the modern appearance of the bread distribution networks (like the company Banette (undertaken)) belonged to the direction of the History. The former bakers owners disappear, and join the working class, whereas the capital concentrates.

The theory of value

to see the principal article: theory of value

The appreciation

to see the principal article: appreciation

Money, the currency, richness

The currency (to be included/understood within the meaning of coins) is the objective shape of the money.

In the system of thought of Marx, the money (concept) occupies an important place.

Initially, the money appears during the exchanges (purchase-sale of goods). Then, it is the substance of the richness. The richness and the money are above all the abstractions. The currency, it, is its objective form.

At Marx, all is goods in capitalist system (manufactured object, like human work). In the capitalist system, any goods thus have a equivalent-money.

However, in the philosophical design of Marx, work is closely related to the Man. Work is an essential characteristic of the man, and is what forms the relations between them. The consumer is related to the producer, and vice versa.

As this work can be bought with the money (abstraction), in the capitalist system, the relations between the men disappear.

The money destroys the reality of the man by destroying the mediations between them. It is the money which becomes the mediation between the men (by the wages, and the economic exchanges).

Marx even thinks that the relations between the serfs and the lords with the Middle Ages were from this human point of view much more that of the workmen of the industrial era.

The money also comprises several contradictions of which here is important: the money is at the beginning only one means of exchange of goods. But, in the capitalist system, it will become the goal of the capitalist. However a means cannot be a goal.

The man has a dependence with respect to the money: The man cannot anything, on the other hand the money can all: he is the capacity, he is the equivalent of the goods. The man thus invented an abstraction which he venerates and which exceeds it.

The money also has an effect on morality of the men. As one can exchange any goods against very other (of which human work, i.e. the man), the ultimate form of capitalism is the generalized prostitution of the man.

At Marx, the currency makes it possible to mislead the employee. The slave is paid by the vital subsistence which its Master gets to him, while the employee believes to obtain monetary wages which offer a freedom of choice in its consumption to him. But this freedom is only one illusion which comes to mislead the employee on his real situation: in fact its monetary wages only enable him to buy the vital minimum which the Master got directly for the slave. This illusion is the essential contribution of the currency in the social reports/ratios of the capitalist system of production.

Political designs of Marx

The Ideologies and the Domination

For Marx, the ideologies are theories produced by the men, in a conscious way. But they are at the same time mystifications, collective illusions, which the men have of themselves, because they are determined by the reports/ratios which the man has with the world, they are determined by the social context in which the man lives. If the theorist does not do a work of self-analysis, it will not be able to build relevant ideas and concepts, describing truly reality.

Why the men build do ideologies, according to Marx? Primarily to justify, and to give clear conscience.

For example, a world where the dominant class exploits the dominated class will produce an ideology which not will highlight the exploitation, but quite to the contrary will justify the relationship between the classes (with principles, institutions, laws, habits, etc which are products of the ideology of justification of the Inégalité S of class).

If the ideology is especially produced by the dominant class, it is necessary that the whole of the men believe in the ideology thus installation, as well the dominated dominant class as. It must be universally allowed. The dominated class should not see the product of the ideology like a Manipulation, but rather like the destiny, the product of the history.

Thus Marx considers that “one time the dominant ideas were never but the ideas of the dominant class” (Manifeste of the Communist party). Against the alienating ideologies resulting from the dominant classes to the wire of time, Marx estimates that Humanity must found a company without division in Social classes, thus preventing the domination of a dominant class.

The religion

Marx strongly criticizes the role of the religion. He criticizes the philosophical and social aspects of the religion. Marx is atheistic and asserts itself some, without making atheism a new “religion”.

Marx is interested especially in the religion because of the role which she exerts on the company. For Marx, the religion is a structure created by the dominant class, and which evolves/moves according to its needs. The religion and the men who do it (priests, bishops, etc) are objective allies of the dominant class (and, as regards the high clergy, in is directly member). He analyzes the evolution of the religion in Europe: pagan religious structures, which made it possible to the men to justify climatic phenomena that they did not include/understand. The gods were local gods, each people had to them his, they were often related to phenomena of nature.

Then, the Roman expansion through Europe gave birth to a wider geographical conscience, and the local religions disappeared with the profit from Christianity. During the Middle Ages, the transition to Catholicism structured the Church: structured hierarchies appeared (Pope, bishops, priests), with which the capacity (kings and the nobility) dialogued regularly for the division of the capacity on the people. The dîme, taken with the people with the profit of the Church was founded. The education of the children were dealt with directly by the Church.

The birth of capitalism revealed a will of reform of Catholicism through Protestantism and “judaïque capitalism”. This term was worth criticisms with Marx and a debate on its possible anti-semitism, although Marx is Jewish of origin, but atheistic. In the facts, Marx is opposed to the Judaism as a religion, because it is an oppression as according to him all the other religions. He also recalls that the majority of the Jews poor and were exploited. He thus criticizes the Judaism, like generally Christianity, to have helped the capitalist system to appear. On the other hand it militates and petitions near its provincial Parliament to obtain the political emancipation of the Jews without those not having to disavow their religion.

According to Marx, the religion makes it possible to justify the social inequalities, and makes it possible the proletariat to better support them. It leaves the people in the illusion which its condition is not so terrible, by giving him examples of religious morals, benefits of the suffering, etc

Marx thinks that if the religion is eliminated, the working class will become aware of its misery, will refuse it, and will allow the birth of a socialist company.

What challenges before any Marx, it is the effect anaesthetizing, alienating and mystifying religions on collective mentality. From there its famous expression: “The religion is the opium of the people”.

The Democracy

In Communist Manifesto, Marx considers that the first need for the proletariat is “the conquest of the democracy” (chapter 2).

The real democracy is according to Marx one of the goals and the essential means of the action of the proletariat. That is illustrated by its famous formula of 1864: “The emancipation of the workers must be the work of the workers themselves”.

The Alienation

The Aliénation has different directions according to its applications.

Alienation in work

Work is in the capitalist system simple sold goods. Work kills the man by killing his life time.

“a man who does not have any Loisir, of which very whole life, apart from the simple purely physical interruptions for the sleep, the meals, etc, is monopolized by its work for the capitalist, is less than one beast of burden. It is a simple machine to produce the richness for others, crushed physically and moron intellectually. And yet, all the modern history shows that the capital, if one does not put obstacle at it, works without regard nor pity to lower all the working class to this level of extreme degradation”

Alienation in the money

The money, in the capitalist company, is the only sign of power, and the only need. The men fight for the money. It is the object of all covetousnesses. However the money is a pure abstraction. The money cuts reality of the world, and at the same time becomes the single vector to be able to act on him. The company of the money is an alienation especially for those which miss some, but also for those which have some much (thanks to the poverty of other human beings).

Moral alienation

Moral alienation is alienation by the State and the religion. The State maintains the myth the " citoyens" equal (whereas the inequalities remain), and the religion created an artificial morals which in general serves the interests of certain human beings (: of male sex, rich person, old, etc).

To destroy the objects of alienation

To leave this system, Marx recommends the destruction of the objects of alienation, i.e. the destruction of the State, the religion, the money, the work.

This destruction is partly ideological: no violence is to be feared. It is enough to an awakening. One day, the men can decide to stop accepting the state, they can decide not to accept the religion more, they can decide that the currency does not have any more a value and to refuse to make use of it like means of exchange, and they can decide to stop working as goods. That does not mean the stoppage of the work, of course, but the stop of the idea that it should be done against wages. With this awakening must join a radical change of the institutions and structures of the company, to exceed the capitalist stage and to create the Communisme.

“In the place of the old middle-class company, with its classes and its antagonisms of classes, an association emerges where the free development of each one is the condition of the free development of all”

Theory of the Proletariat

At Marx, the Prolétaire S are not only the poor.

The proletarians are the result of the dynamics of the capitalist system, and an irreversible historical movement.

Proletarianization is the double conjunction of the transformation of the man into a proletarian and the increase in their numbers.

What is what a proletarian? It is an individual who has only his only labor force, and not the means of the production. It is consequently obliged to sell its labor force to the capitalist in the form of wages to provide for its needs. Any employed person is a proletarian.

Marx had anticipated very well the development of the Taylorisme on this subject. The division of the labor is indeed a constant movement of capitalism. It is due to the improvement of the techniques and in particular of the machines, which revealed the semi-skilled workers. It is also the consequence of a research of increased profitability.

Each employee of the capitalist system only becomes able to ensure a negligible part of the production. Its work does not have a direction in itself. It is only one wheel of an immense mechanism. It cannot have individual life any more.

Moreover, thanks to this continuous division of work, and the development of the techniques, unemployment has to develop. It is the “reserve army”, and this one, by its simple presence, exerts a pressure on the employees, who are afraid to find themselves with unemployment. The Chômage prevents the workers from revolting. The wages thus have a continuous tendency to the fall in the long run relative with the possibilities that the time offers in which the workers live, and the concentration of the capital is also inescapable.

Proletarianization is thus the “correlation between the accumulation of richnesses and the accumulation of miseries”.

The proletarian also has other characteristics, such as the absence of property.

How to leave this misery (sometimes material, but also especially psychological)? One needs, according to Marx, that the company is released from capitalism by the revolution. This revolution must release the proletariat, but also all the social classes, in particular the classes dominant, which are also alienated (by the money in particular, as one saw higher). It is thus a revolution for all the classes aiming at abolishing divisions of classes. This revolution must be total.

The class struggle

To read the detailed article: Class struggle

References

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