|
Marxism
Karl Marx:
Marxism
1. From which philosophical movement do both liberalism and Marxism derive? 2. How do liberal and Marxists differ in their methods of achieving social justice? 3. When and where did Marx and Engels write the Communist Manifesto? 4. Carefully explain how Marx uses the term “dialectical materialism” to describe his theory of historical progress. 5. What are the three stages through which history has progressed? 6. How does the expansion of material technology drive the progress of history through progressive stages? 7. What made the French Revolution a perfect demonstration of Marx’s belief that economic change drives political change? 8. What might Marx have said about the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917?
(excerpted from An Intellectual
History of Modern Europe by Marvin Perry, pp.254-268) The failure of the revolutions of 1848
and a growing fear of working class violence led liberals to abandon
revolution and to press for reforms through the political process. In the
last part of the nineteenth century, Marxists and anarchists became the chief
proponents of revolution. Both
liberals and Marxists shared common principles derived from the
Enlightenment. Both believed in the essential goodness and perfectibility of
human nature and claimed that their doctrines rested on rational foundations.
Both aspired to liberate individuals from accumulated superstition,
ignorance, and prejudices of the past and to fashion a more harmonious and
rational society. Both believed in social progress and valued the full
realization of human talents. Despite these similarities, the
differences between liberalism and Marxism are profound. The goal of
Marxism-- the seizure of power by the working class and the destruction of
capitalism-- was inimical to bourgeois liberals; so too was the Marxist
belief that class struggle and violence were the essence of history, the
instruments of progress, and the vehicle to a higher stage of humanity.
Liberals, who placed the highest value on the individual, held that through
education and self-discipline people could overcome inequality and poverty. Marxists, on the other hand, insisted
that, without a transformation of the economic system, individual effort by
the downtrodden would amount to very little. Karl Marx (1818-1883) was born of
German-Jewish parents (both descendants of prominent rabbis). To save his
career as a lawyer, Marx’s father converted to Lutheranism. Enrolled in a
university to study law, Marx switched to philosophy, embracing elements of
Hegel’s thought. In 1842, Marx was editing a newspaper that was soon
suppressed by the Prussian authorities for its outspoken ideas. Leaving his
native Rhineland, Marx went to Paris, where he met another German, Freidrich Engels (1820-1895), who was the son of a
prosperous textile manufacturer. Marx and Engels entered into a lifelong
collaboration and became members of socialist groups. In February 1848, they
published the Communist Manifesto, which called for a working-class
revolution to overthrow the capitalist system. Forced to leave France in 1849
because of his political views, Marx moved to London, where he spent the rest
of his life. Although supported by Engels, Marx was continually short of
funds, and at times he and his wife lived in dreadful poverty. In London,
Marx spent years writing Capital (1867) - a study and critique of the
modern capitalist economic system, which, he predicted, would be destroyed by
a socialist revolution. A Science of History Marx
believed that he had discovered the laws of nature operating in history and
society. He was a strict materialist, rejecting all religious and
metaphysical interpretations of both nature and society.
He viewed religion as a human creation-- a product of people’s imagination
and feelings, a consolation for the oppressed-- and considered the happiness
it brought an illusion. Real happiness would come, said Marx, not by
transcending the natural world but by improving it. Rather than deluding
oneself by seeking refuge from life’s misfortunes in
an imaginary world conjured up by religion or Hegelian metaphysics, one must
confront the ills of society directly and remedy them. “The philosophers have
only interpreted the world in different ways; the point is to change it.”
Philosophy should seek to understand the past in order to alter the present,
Marx insisted. It should not be a disinterested speculation but a force for
social liberation. To effectively make their own history
people needed to comprehend the inner meaning of history-- the laws governing
human affairs in the past and operating in the present. Marx adopted Hegel’s
view that history was not an assortment of unrelated and disconnected events
but rather a progressive development which proceeded according to its own
inner laws. For both Hegel and Marx,
the historical process was governed by objective and rational principles; it
was intelligible. Marx also adopted Hegel’s view that history advanced dialectically, that the clash of opposing forces propelled
history to higher stages and towards a final destination: a harmonious
society. However, Marx also broke with Hegel in
crucial ways. For Hegel, history was the unfolding of the metaphysical Spirit
or Idea. According to Marx, Hegel’s system suffered from mystification. It
downgraded the realities of the known world which became a mere attribute of
the Spirit. Marx saw Hegel’s abstract philosophy as diverting attention from
the real world and its problems, which cry out for understanding and
solution. For Marx, history was
explainable solely in terms of natural processes, empirically verifiable
developments; reality could not be reduced to something metaphysical or
spiritual. For Marx, the starting point and
ultimate significance of history is found in the human social and economic
environment, the natural conditions of life; thought is a product of these
conditions. It is the ‘real man’, the person who lives in and is conditioned
by the objective world, who is the only true reality and the center of human
history. History is the action of humans becoming fully human, fulfilling
their human potential. The moving forces in history, said Marx, were economic
and technological factors: the ways in which goods are produced and wealth
distributed. The clash of opposing classes, what he called dialectical
materialism, accounted for historical change and progress. Marx
divided past history into three broad stages: slavery, feudalism, and
capitalism. Each stage constitutes a thesis that in turn gives rise to an
antithesis in the form of a class that feels deprived by the existing
socioeconomic relations. During the Middle Ages, feudalism constituted the
thesis, and an emerging middle class, the bourgeoisie, hostile to the
established order, represented the antithesis. The victory of the bourgeoisie
over the feudal aristocracy produced a synthesis, capitalism, which marked a
higher stage in history. Constituting the new thesis, capitalism gave rise to
its own antithesis, the working class, or proletariat.
Like the bourgeoisie in relationship to the feudal aristocracy, the
proletariat is a productive class that is denied the fruits of its labor. The
clash between the working class, awakened to its revolutionary goal, and the
bourgeoisie will produce a still higher synthesis and another stage of
history- socialism. Marx
said that material technology-- the methods of cultivating land and the tools
for manufacturing goods-- determined society’s social and political
arrangements and its intellectual outlooks. For
example, the hand mill, the loose yoke, and the wooden plow had given rise to
feudal lords, whereas power-driven machines had spawned the industrial
capitalists. As material technology expanded, it came into conflict with
established economic, social and political forms, and the resulting tension
produced change. Thus, feudal patterns could not endure when power machinery
became the dominant mode of production. Consequently, medieval guilds,
communal agriculture and even the domestic production of goods gave way to
free labor, private property, and the factory system of manufacturing. As
Marx put it, the expansion of technology triggered a change from feudal
social and economic relationships to capitalist ones. Ultimately, the change
in economic-technological conditions becomes the cause for great social, political
and cultural changes. This process was most clearly
demonstrated by the French Revolution. Radical changes in the economic
foundations of society had taken place since the Middle Ages without
corresponding political changes, said Marx. However, the forces of economic
change could not be contained in outdated political forms which protected the
power and privilege of the aristocracy. In France, this tension exploded into
revolution. Whatever their conscious intentions, said Marx, the bourgeois
leaders of the French Revolution had scattered feudal remnants to the wind;
they had promoted free competition and commercial expansion, destroyed the
special privileges of the aristocracy and the clergy, and transferred power
from the landed aristocracy to the leaders of finance and industry. Whenever
major economic changes take place, said Marx, political, social and cultural
changes must follow. Thus, the French revolution and the political upheavals
of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were attempts of the
bourgeoisie to gain political power commensurate with the economic power it
had derived from changing modes of production. Bibliography:
Karl Marx, 1818-1883 (History Guide) Karl Marx, 1818-1883 (Victorian Web) The Age of Ideologies: Reflections on Karl Marx (History Guide) Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848) Marxism Page (Australia National) Marx and Engels Internet Archive
The Aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution (History Guide) |