Karl Marx
MARX
I. Transition from Hegel: Agreement and Disagreement
· Marx engages with and transforms Hegel's ideas.
· He agrees that we are historical beings shaped by social structures.
· He disagrees with Hegel's estate-based system of political representation.
II. The Human Condition: Making History under Given Conditions
· A key Marxian principle: "Humans make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please... but under circumstances directly found, given and transmitted from the past."
· We are born into a world that is already existing (e.g., buildings, infrastructure, institutions).
· We express our freedom by acting upon and transforming this pre-existing world.
· This action is not solitary (like Robinson Crusoe) but is done by socially determined individuals collaborating together.
· Cooperation is key to freedom in the Hegelian-Marxist tradition.
III. Critique of the "Isolated Individual"
· Marx sharply criticizes the liberal tradition's focus on the "solitary proprietor" (the Robinson Crusoe figure).
· He calls this notion "stupid" because it proceeds from the idea of "isolated individuals" developing in a vacuum.
· In reality, social systems (like employing others, indentured labor, slavery) are shaped by history and material conditions, not by isolated individuals.
IV. Marx's Historical Materialism: Stages of History
· Marx analyzes history through the lens of:
· Property Ownership
· Division of Labor
· Conflict/Tension between Groups
· He outlines a progression of historical stages:
1. Tribal Stage
· Ownership: Joint/tribal ownership.
· Organization: Based entirely on kinship (family relationships).
· Access to resources determined by kinship status (gender, age, marital status).
· Pros: The family takes care of you.
· Cons: You own nothing individually. "Slavery is latent"—your life and labor are predetermined by the kinship system, with no individual choice.
2. Communal/Bureaucratic Empire Stage (e.g., Ottoman, Mughal, Chinese, Mayan empires)
· Development: Several tribes unite into cities/centers of power.
· Key Change: Classes emerge (aristocrats/nobles vs. commoners).
· Property: Immovable private property (palaces, big homes) develops for the elite.
· Labor: Slavery is still the basis of the production system.
3. Feudal Society / Estate Ownership
· Organization: Still based on hierarchies and personal obligations (not free choice).
· Property: More immovable private property is in the hands of feudal lords.
· Scale: "The countryside is broken up into feudal estates"—more of nature is enclosed as private property for the elite.
4. Capitalist/Bourgeois Stage (The current stage in Marx's analysis)
· Origin: Begins with a new class—the merchants and mercantilism.
· Development: Towns emerge to support trade. Manufacturing begins.
· Key Transformation: Everything is transformed into capital.
· Commerce becomes separate from agricultural production.
· All property, including land, is reconceived as traffic (commodities) and capital. We "invest" in homes and land.
· The New Force: Capital itself becomes a new, independent force in history, separate from traditional landed property.
· Capital as an Agent: For Marx, capital is not just a thing but a major historical agent—a powerful force that acts in the world.
V. The Final Stage
· The transcript notes that the final stage in Marx's theory is communism, though it is not detailed in this excerpt. The analysis ends with the establishment of the capitalist stage.
📘 PE 100 — Lecture Notes (11/18/25)
Topic: Marx, History, Civil Society, and Capitalist Production
1. Opening Points
The instructor reminds the class that facing yourself (self-reflection) is important.
There’s a lot of material to get through today.
They start by recalling last class to remember the overall plot of Marx’s ideas and the themes running through the text.
2. Marx Building on Hegel
Marx’s work as a challenge to classical economists
Marx builds on Hegel’s philosophy of history, but takes it in a more materialist direction.
He criticizes what he calls the “18th-century ideas” of classical liberal economists.
Marx offers:
A critique of capitalism
A name and description for the modern market economy
A comprehensive theory that includes:
the Criticism of 18th-century liberal classical political economy
the Criticism of capitalism itself
3. Marx’s Theory of History
History matters deeply for Marx — just like for Hegel
To understand humans, Marx argues, we must understand historical processes and how they shape:
individuals
society
class relations
Stages of History
Last class: the professor walked through the stages of history up to the “end,” meaning the bourgeois/capitalist stage.
In the capitalist stage:
Specific forms of property
Specific division of labor
Specific class characters
all emerge.
Key Class Struggle
The main struggle of this stage:
Proletariat (working class)
Bourgeoisie (capitalists)
This conflict is the central contradiction of the capitalist phase.
Contradictions push history forward
Marx believes contradictions within each stage eventually cause:
crisis
transition into the next stage
The Next Phase
According to the professor:
Marx sees seeds of the communist stage already present within capitalism.
The communist stage would be classless, with collective ownership of the means of production.
4. Enclosure of the Commons
Why the professor brings this up
He wants students to remember the commons because it illustrates Marx’s concept of dispossession.
Key Ideas
Enclosure pushed people off land they depended on → loss of means of production.
In Marx’s view:
This dispossession marks a major turning point.
People lost the ability to take care of themselves.
In capitalism:
People no longer own means of production.
They must sell their labor power.
Marx says the worker gets very little in return compared to the value they produce.
5. Civil Society
Context
The professor references earlier discussions (Hazel’s model of civil society).
Marx approaches the term differently from:
classical economists
Hegel
Marx’s Definition
Marx associates civil society with:
the mode of cooperation
the relations of capitalist production
the specific social relations created by the capitalist economy
Key Features
Civil society features very specific social relations of production, especially:
the relationship between capitalists and workers
These relations are:
unequal
based on property ownership vs. wage labor
a productive force in themselves (not just machines!)
This is why Marx is seen as:
sociologist
anthropologist
psychologist
political economist
all at once.
6. Mode of Cooperation
What Marx means
Every mode of production (e.g., industrial stage) is tied to:
a specific mode of cooperation
specific class relations
Mode of cooperation includes:
Forced labor
Unequal class relations
This mode itself becomes a productive force.
7. Capital
Capital as a productive force
Marx adds that capital is also:
an instrument of production
a way labor becomes objectified
something created by labor but used to dominate labor
Examples:
Chairs, tables, materials — all represent objectified past labor.
8. Civil Society (Full Definition)
Marx says civil society:
is the mode of cooperation under capitalism
transcends the state and nation
expresses the relations of capitalist production
It is distinct from:
Hegel’s model
Liberal classical economics
9. Civil Society as a Global Phenomenon
Marx says civil society transcends the state and nation
Marx views capitalist civil society as already global in the mid-1800s.
Raw materials come from colonies → production happens internationally.
Global trade, global interaction, and dependence on imported materials mean:
capitalism is not contained within national boundaries.
it establishes a world historical system.
Professor's clarification
Marx does not use the modern term “globalization.”
He calls it:
world phenomenon
world-historical phenomenon
The idea: capitalist production inherently spreads across the world, creating:
global supply chains
global dependence
relationships that cross borders
Implication
Civil society → the relations of production → already global.
This global mode of production transcends individual states.
10. Marx’s Materialist Re-reading of Hegel
Marx takes from Hegel but flips him upside down
The professor says Marx is very clear:
He takes ideas from Hegel, but wants to be a materialist.Hegel: consciousness → shapes life
Marx: life conditions (material reality) → shape consciousness
This is called Marx’s materialist rereading.
Materialist focus
Look at:
production
mode of production
labor
material limits
Marx wants us to understand society as it exists materially, not idealistically.
11. Empirical Observation (quoted passage)
A student reads a passage emphasizing:
The need for empirical observation without mystification
Social and political structures evolve from:
the life process of individuals
material activity
people as they actually produce and work
Key meaning
You cannot understand society through abstract speculation.
You must look at real people, doing real labor, under real constraints.
12. Marx on Real Life Conditions
What are workers actually doing?
Marx insists we examine:
factory work
production activities
the minutes and hours spent working
material constraints
Conditions independent of their will
Workers do not choose:
workplace conditions
hours
the structure of the labor process
These conditions shape their lives.
Contrast with Hegel
Hegel: freedom unfolds through consciousness.
Marx: the worker has no freedom under capitalism.
13. Key Social Group: The Worker
Lack of freedom
Workers must work because:
they own no property
they must sell labor to survive
No freedom in capitalist stage → a core problem Marx is pointing out.
This motivates Marx’s critique
Lack of freedom
→ need for something different
→ revolutionary possibility emerging from workers’ conditions
14. Consciousness in Different Stages of History
Marx says consciousness is shaped by material conditions:
Tribal Stage
Consciousness focused on:
reciprocity
generosity
sharing
Feudal Stage
Focused on:
honor
loyalty
hierarchy
estates
Bourgeois (Capitalist) Consciousness
Focused on:
freedom
equality
rights
property
BUT — Marx says these rights only apply to the bourgeoisie
Not the proletariat.
The freedom described in capitalist ideology is not universal.
15. Emergence of Worker Consciousness
Worker consciousness arises only because of:
the unequal class relations
the capitalist mode of production
workers interacting with each other in shared exploitation
Important point
Consciousness does not create life conditions.
Life conditions create consciousness.
16. Workers Living a Contradiction
What Marx says
Workers live a contradiction in bourgeois society:
They do all the labor.
They produce all value.
Yet they do not enjoy property rights, the primary bourgeois ideal.
This contradiction is fundamental
They embody bourgeois values (freedom, property, rights) without access to them.
This contradiction:
shapes worker life
motivates revolutionary possibility
Workers are excluded from the “common will”
In Hegel, the common will is realized through the state.
Marx says:
the state is fake, an illusory tool for the bourgeoisie.
It represents the bourgeois common will, not the workers’.
17. Remaking the State
Why the state must be remade
The current state:
excludes workers
enshrines bourgeois private property
expresses only bourgeois interests
Marx’s argument
We need a state where:
workers’ interests are included
common property replaces bourgeois private property
the commonwealth is truly common
18. Communist Manifesto Context
Workers must rise up
Marx says workers should overthrow the bourgeois state.
Replace the regime of:
unequal private property
with a society where:property is common
all have access
Professor’s reminder
Marx is NOT opposed to all property.
He distinguishes:
pre-bourgeois property (artisan, peasant)
bourgeois private property (capitalist property)
Marx wants to abolish bourgeois property, not all forms.
1. Marx on Civil Society
Civil society = mode of cooperation in the capitalist stage
Marx uses “civil society” to describe the relationships, interactions, and cooperation formed under capitalism.
It transcends the state and nation, meaning:
It’s not limited by borders.
It operates globally.
Capitalism was already global in the mid-1800s (raw materials from colonies, global trade, production relying on global inputs).
Difference from Hegel
Hegel sees civil society as unfolding from ideas/spirit.
Marx sees civil society as emerging from material conditions and economic relations.
For Marx, unequal relationships define civil society, and these are not isolated but global.
2. Capitalism as Already Global
Marx repeatedly notes industrial capitalism is world-historical.
Global trade and multinational networks mean:
Production isn’t contained to one nation.
Civil society operates on a global scale, not just within national economies.
3. Marx’s Materialist Rereading of Labor
Marx flips Hegel “on his head”
Hegel: consciousness determines life.
Marx: life determines consciousness.
Our ideas and values come from the material conditions we live in.
Materialist approach = focus on what people are actually doing
Look at what real individuals do in factories.
Life processes under definite material conditions.
Social structure and the state evolve from material life, not imagination.
4. Conditions Independent of Workers’ Will
Workers act under constraints
People operate under material limits they don’t choose.
Workers don’t act as free individuals but as people shaped by:
Wage labor
Industrial discipline
Production systems
This contrasts with Hegel’s idea of free individuals expressing their judgment and will.
5. Lack of Worker Freedom
Key Marxist point: Workers lack freedom
Workers are forced to work under capitalism.
They perform all the labor but cannot enjoy the rights to property.
Capitalist freedoms (property, equality, rights) apply only to the bourgeoisie.
Workers live a contradiction
They create value and property but do not enjoy property rights.
They are excluded from the “common will” (the collective political/ethical will Hegel described).
6. Consciousness Across Historical Stages
Marx describes different kinds of consciousness shaped by material conditions:
Tribal consciousness
Based on reciprocity, sharing, generosity.
Feudal consciousness
Based on loyalty, honor, estates, hierarchy.
Bourgeois consciousness
Based on freedom, equality, property rights — but only for the bourgeoisie.
7. Remaking the State
Marx’s critique of the state
Current state = “illusory state” serving bourgeois interests.
Not the true “common will.”
Workers’ interests are excluded.
Solution
The state must be remade so:
Workers’ interests are included.
The commonwealth includes all, not just the bourgeoisie.
8. Property: Pre-Bourgeois vs Bourgeois
Pre-bourgeois property
Hard-won, self-acquired property (small artisans, peasants).
Marx says: industrial capitalism already destroyed much of this.
No need to abolish it — capitalism itself eroded it.
Communism doesn’t deprive anyone of personal appropriation
It only deprives one person of the power to exploit another’s labor.
Marx is not anti-property
He is anti-bourgeois private property, which allows exploitation.
Pre-bourgeois and post-bourgeois forms of property differ from capitalist property.
9. Wage Labor & Minimum Wage
Marx’s big issue: wage earning as domination
System reduces people to wage earners.
Minimum wage = symptom of deeper exploitation.
Wage labor keeps workers dependent on selling their labor power.
10. Commodity Exchange
Commodity exchange changes everything
Under capitalism, goods are exchanged as commodities, not based on needs or relationships.
Reveals “the contradictions at the heart of capitalism.”
Use Value vs Exchange Value
Pre-capitalist exchange = use value + barter (concrete).
Capitalist exchange = exchange value (abstract).
Beaver example
Use value:
Indigenous people used beavers for meat, fur, warmth.
Exchange value:
In capitalism, beaver fur becomes a commodity, valued for what it can be exchanged for, not its usefulness.
11. Social Character of Things Changes
Commodity exchange depersonalizes goods
Household furs = objectified family labor.
Surplus furs for market = alienated, calculated, impersonal commodities.
We stop caring about who made it
Meaning of objects shifts.
Cultural meaning becomes utilitarian and cost-based:
“I don’t care where it’s from, just how much it costs.”
12. Market Relations Replace Social Relations
Capitalism dissolves pre-existing social bonds.
Market logic replaces cooperation, reciprocity, and social meaning.
Supply and demand become more important than community ties.
13. Pre-Capitalist Exchange
Marx acknowledges pre-capitalist selling
Small artisans sometimes sold items but:
This is not capitalist commodity exchange.
It’s concrete, need-based, personal.
Barter vs commodity
Barter = use value.
Commodity exchange = abstract market value.
14. Alienation
A student asks if Marx is pointing toward alienation — yes, he is.
Alienation includes:
Disconnection from one’s labor.
Disconnection from objects produced.
Disconnection from social relationships.
Losing the moral or personal meaning behind the product.
Marx: Money, Capital, Commodity Circulation, C–M–C vs M–C–M′
1. Estrangement & Money Becoming Capital
Marx is explaining how workers become estranged
Estranged/alienated from:
Their labor
The products they make
This estrangement happens through the process of money becoming capital.
Money → Capital
Money in capitalism isn’t just a neutral medium of exchange.
Money expands, becomes an actor of its own, and escapes human control.
Capital is treated by Marx as:
A historical force
A productive force
Something “larger than life”
Capital replaces humans as the main agents shaping history.
Capital can “push people aside”
Marx warns that if people don’t take stock of what capital is doing, capital becomes the “history-maker,” not humans.
This is part of why his book is named Capital.
2. Circulation of Commodities = Starting Point of Capital
Speaker 5 describes:
C–M–C = the basic cycle
C = Commodity
M = Money
C = Another commodity you want
This is:
The starting point of capital
The earliest form of commerce
The circulation of goods people produce themselves
16th century world market
Marx marks the birth of modern capitalism around 1571.
Why?
Europeans finally find a commodity Asian markets want: silver.
Silver from Central and South America enters global trade.
This creates the first true world market.
3. Explaining C–M–C: The Apple Pie Example
Example used by the professor
You bake apple pies (your commodity).
You sell the pie for money (M).
Then you use that money to buy carrots, turnips, etc., that you did not grow.
So:
C = apple pie
M = money gained from selling the pie
C = the vegetables you buy
Purpose of C–M–C
To satisfy needs.
It’s personal, small-scale, non-capitalistic.
4. C–M–C vs. Commerce Proper
C–M–C is not yet capitalism
It is simple circulation, not “proper commerce.”
The goal is use-value, not profit.
You sell something only to buy something you need.
5. Transition into Capitalism: M–C–M′
M–C–M′ is the capitalist cycle
Money → buys commodity → sells it → ends with more money (M′)
M′ = M + profit
The goal is PROFIT
Not needs
Not use-values
Not personal consumption
This is where capitalism proper emerges:
Money becomes capital.
Capital becomes something that must grow for its own sake.
You buy raw materials, produce surplus, and sell at a profit.
6. Why C–M–C ≠ M–C–M′
Simple circulation (C–M–C)
Goal = satisfy needs
Based in use-values
Finite
Capitalist circulation (M–C–M′)
Goal = infinite accumulation
Money becomes capital
Exchange values > use values
The process can grow forever
This is the core shift that Marx is concerned with.
7. Classical Economists Misunderstood This
Ricardo & Smith were mistaken
Ricardo assumed C–M–C described the whole marketplace.
He believed all production becomes consumption.
Malthus disagreed: shortages and gluts can happen.
History proved Malthus right.
Marx’s take
Ricardo failed to see:
Commerce is not about use-values.
Capitalism is about the relentless pursuit of profit.
8. Capital Accumulation & Neoliberalism
Money becomes capital
Not just a medium of exchange.
Capital demands growth for its own sake.
This leads to:
Investment
Speculation
Stock markets
Global trading companies
Professor links this to:
Neoliberalism → belief in prioritizing capital growth above everything else.
9. Speculation
What Marx calls “speculation”
In the mid-1800s: trading companies, investment schemes.
Today:
Stocks
Bitcoin
Buying and selling for profit with no regard for human needs
Speculation disconnects money from material life
Profit-seeking becomes an end in itself.
Marx calls this “infinite.”
10. What Happens When the Commodity Is Labor Power?
This is MASSIVE for Marx.
Labor power becomes a commodity
In industrial capitalism, the “C” in M–C–M′ can be labor power.
The capitalist buys labor power (wages).
Uses labor to produce goods.
Sells goods for M′ (profit).
Capitalist formula in this case
M → C(labor power + raw materials) → M′
Goal of the capitalist
Always profit, not meeting anyone’s needs.
Workers are paid only enough to survive, but their labor produces far more value.
11. Capitalists Don’t Care About Use-Value
Once we enter M–C–M′:
No one cares whether the product is useful.
What matters is:
Can it be sold?
Does it create surplus value?
This is capitalism’s essence.
Marx on Commodity Exchange, Use Value → Exchange Value, Cultural Meaning of Objects, and Alienation
1. Marx Is NOT Anti-Property — He’s Against Property That Lets Some Exploit Others
Marx is not arguing to take away everyone’s personal belongings.
What he wants to abolish is bourgeois private property:
Private ownership that lets one class dominate another’s labor.
His goal:
Everyone should have access to production, not a system where only a few get wealth and others are reduced to wage earners or minimum-wage laborers.
2. Why Marx Focuses on Wage Labor & Minimum Wage
Wage labor is Marx’s biggest concern.
Minimum wage represents:
The forced reduction of people into laborers with no control.
A symptom of a system where labor is commodified.
3. Commodity Exchange Changes Everything
Commodity exchange = the heart of capitalism’s contradictions.
Marx wants us to analyze:
How things are exchanged in capitalism.
How use-values become exchange-values.
How this transforms society culturally, morally, and economically.
4. The Beaver Example: Use Value vs Exchange Value
Use Value (before capitalism)
Indigenous people hunted beavers:
for meat
for fur for warmth
They used them directly.
This is use-value: the concrete usefulness of a thing.
What happens when beavers become commodities?
When beaver pelts are produced in surplus to sell in markets:
Their meaning changes.
They become exchange-value objects.
People no longer see the beaver as:
Food
Clothing
Household survival
Instead, they see:
How much it sells for
Its price
Its profitability
5. Transforming Use-Value Things → Exchange-Value Things
Marx says:
A LOT happens when more and more things in society shift from use-value → exchange-value.
EVERYTHING changes:
Social meaning
Cultural meaning
The “spirit” of objects
Our relationship to objects
Our relationship to each other
Nothing about this change is natural
Adam Smith believed humans are naturally commercial (“truck, barter, exchange”).
Marx says no — this transformation is historically specific to capitalism.
6. Social Character of Objects Changes
Before capitalism
Household items = objectified family labor
They carry personal meaning:
“My mom made this.”
“This came from our home.”
After commodity exchange
Surplus furs made for profit are:
impersonal
alienated
calculated
treated as market objects
Marx says: the object becomes ALIENATED
Weber would later call it “alienated.”
The object no longer expresses personal labor.
7. Meaning of Objects Changes
With capitalist exchange:
We forget who made it.
It doesn’t matter anymore.
What matters is:
its price
how much it sells for
whether we want to buy it
This is the collapse of moral, social, and personal meaning of objects.
8. Cultural Meaning → More Naked & Utilitarian
The meaning becomes:
stripped-down
utilitarian
cost-based
disconnected from relationships
Modern example:
“I don’t care where this shirt came from — how much does it cost?”
9. Social Relations Get Replaced by Market Relations
Before capitalism
People exchanged goods through personal relationships.
Social ties shaped production.
With capitalist exchange value
Supply and demand replace:
cooperation
shared moral norms
community relations
Capitalist relations replace social relations
Market logic becomes dominant.
Society becomes “subsumed under market relations.”
(Your professor links this to Polanyi.)
10. Pre-Capitalist Exchange DID Exist
A student asks about pre-capitalist societies.
Marx DOES acknowledge:
Petty artisans sold goods occasionally.
Barter existed:
“I’ll trade my art for your grain.”
BUT Marx sees this as:
Concrete
Local
Based on use-value
Not abstract, profit-driven commodity exchange
Pre-bourgeois exchange ≠ capitalist exchange.
11. Difference Between Pre-Bourgeois Exchange & Capitalist Exchange
Pre-bourgeois (concrete)
Barter
Use-value
Local
Driven by needs
Personal relationships
Capitalist exchange (abstract)
Exchange-value
Profit
Surplus production
Distanced from producers
Anonymous market
12. Student Question About Alienation
A student asks:
“Is Marx describing the disconnection between people and the moral meaning of objects?”
Professor says:
YES.
Marx is showing how people lose connection with:
their own labor
the products of their labor
the moral/social meaning of objects
the cultural character of things
This is the foundation of alienated labor.
13. Returning to Money Becoming Capital
(These lines repeat from the end of your screenshots but I included the meaning again so it flows.)
Money → becomes capital
Capital becomes a force
It subsumes humanity
People get pushed aside
Unless we critically understand what capital is doing, we’re controlled by it
I. Marx on Property, Production, and Capitalist Exchange
1. Misreadings of Marx
Marx is often misread as being fanatically anti-property.
The professor emphasizes this is wrong — Marx’s critique is more nuanced.
Marx’s issue isn’t “property” itself but:
How property becomes a means to subjugate the labor of others.
How capitalist systems allow only some people to enjoy production while others are reduced to wage labor.
II. Commodity Exchange as the Heart of Capitalism
1. Marx’s central claim
Commodity exchange changes everything.
When people exchange goods as commodities, the entire social structure shifts.
2. “Use value” vs. “Exchange value”
Use value = how we use something to live (e.g. food, clothing, warmth).
Exchange value = when we produce surplus and use objects to trade for profit.
Beaver Example (Adam Smith + Marx)
Indigenous people hunted beavers for use value:
Eat the meat
Use the fur for warmth
In capitalism: the same beavers become exchange value, traded for profit.
This shift radically transforms:
The meaning of objects
Social relationships
Human behavior
III. What Happens When Goods Become Exchange-Value Objects
1. Change in social character of objects
Items for household use = personal, tied to the person who made them.
Items for market exchange = impersonal, abstract, alienated.
We no longer know who made them or how — we only know the price.
2. Cultural meaning changes
Objects become more utilitarian, detached, and commodified.
We start valuing objects based purely on cost, not origin, maker, or meaning.
IV. Commodification Changes Human Relationships
1. Pre-capitalist relations
People once exchanged goods within community relationships.
Social relations guided exchange.
2. With capitalism
Exchange value dominates.
Social relations become market relations.
Supply and demand override personal relationships.
People relate to each other (and to objects) as commodities.
V. Pre-capitalist Exchange (Clarification Question)
A student asks:
Did Marx think no exchange existed before capitalism?
Professor clarifies:
Yes, exchange existed (exchanging art for grain, etc.).
But this was use-value-based barter, not capitalist commodity exchange.
Capitalist exchange is:
Large-scale
Abstract
Rooted in profit
Based on labor becoming a commodity
VI. Alienation of the Worker
1. Labor Power as a Commodity
Workers own only their labor power.
They must sell it to survive.
Labor is alienated because:
It is sold like any commodity.
Workers are reduced to physical bodies trying to survive.
Labor is no longer an expression of creativity or human essence.
2. Estrangement occurs:
In the labor process itself
In the product
In the relationship between workers
In the worker’s relationship to their “species-being” (coming next)
VII. “Species-Being” (Marx’s Concept)
What Marx means by species-being:
Humans are distinct from animals because we:
Create the world we inhabit
Reflect on that world
Are capable of art, creativity, imagination
Transform our environment intentionally
In capitalism:
Workers are reduced to animals concerned only with subsistence.
Creativity is killed.
Labor becomes unfree, mechanical, survival-oriented.
Key idea:
Being human means producing freely and creatively — capitalism destroys this.
VIII. The Secret of Profit: Surplus Value
1. Marx’s worker-needs formula (mid-1800s example)
Marx assumes:
A worker needs a certain amount of food, clothing, milk, meat, etc.
Some needs are daily, some weekly, some yearly.
This total becomes the subsistence cost of the worker.
2. Calculation:
Marx estimates it takes about 6 hours of labor to produce value equal to a worker’s daily needs.
3. Key contradiction
Capitalists pay the worker just enough to survive (value of 6 hours).
But force the worker to labor 12 hours (or more).
The extra 6+ hours become:
Surplus labor
Surplus value
Profit for the capitalist
4. The worker is reduced to:
A physical body
Paid to reproduce themselves (just survive)
Deprived of creativity, autonomy, and species-being
IX. Mr. Moneybags Example
Marx uses a character “Mr. Moneybags” to illustrate:
Wage laborers receive only sufficient wages.
Workers are paid 3 shillings to meet subsistence.
Capitalists extract extra labor (the source of profit).
X. Key Takeaways
Commodity exchange transforms:
Objects
Social relations
Cultural meanings
Human identity
Labor
Value
The very structure of society
Marx’s ultimate argument:
Capitalism estranges humans from:
Their labor
Their creativity
Each other
Their own species-being (human essence)
And it does this through:
Commodity exchange
Alienation
Surplus value extraction
Market domination of social life
🔹 1. Daily Labor, Wages & “Moneybags”
Marx explains that the average worker’s daily labor contains six hours of socially necessary labor.
Half a day’s labor is needed to reproduce (maintain) the worker’s labor power.
Capitalists (Mr. Moneybags) assume that workers need only “sufficient wages” to:
Buy basic necessities
Recover enough to work the next day
Workers are reduced to bare physical maintenance.
Paid just enough to return to work.
Demonstrates worker impoverishment and minimal subsistence wages.
🔹 2. Surplus Value
Capitalists make workers work longer than the time needed to reproduce labor power.
“This is where surplus comes from.”
Surplus value = the excess labor time taken from workers once they’ve created enough value to cover their wages.
This is the secret of profit-making:
The capitalist squeezes the production process
Extracts surplus labor
Keeps the excess as profit
🔹 3. Question: Is This Related to Other Surplus Theories?
A student asks about connections to surplus theories.
Ricardo focused on landlords or capitalists extracting surplus from capital, not labor.
Marx shifts focus:
Capitalists extract surplus by squeezing labor, not by owning land or capital.
Marx believes the landlord vs merchant distinction becomes less important in the mid-1800s because:
“More and more all things are capital.”
Landlords, merchants, industrial capitalists = all part of capital.
🔹 4. Social Power & Labor Value
Marx says capitalism is incapable of describing social power because it hides real labor relations.
Determining the value of labor:
Smith: Combination of labor theory of value + supply and demand + market supply.
Marx: Says this mixture is fuzzy and capitalism alienates labor.
In capitalism:
Labor becomes abstract labor (labor valued socially, in the market).
Abstract labor transforms human activity into numerical, market-based units.
Concrete labor (housework, care work) becomes devalued because it is unpaid.
🔹 5. Abstract vs Concrete Labor
Abstract labor = socially necessary labor, measurable, exchangeable.
Concrete labor = real, physical, creative human activity.
Capitalism transforms the value of labor into prices, removing human meaning.
This is part of alienation:
Workers lose the connection between themselves and what they produce.
Human capacities become irrelevant to capitalist exchange.
🔹 6. Alienation & Exploitation
Marx’s “life work” is to show:
The capitalist system estranges workers from their own labor.
Workers produce value that is extracted from them.
Workers receive none of the surplus they create.
They are reduced to mere subsistence, “like animals.”
Their creative potential is destroyed.
Their work becomes dehumanizing.
🔹 7. Review of Key Topics Covered
The professor summarizes major ideas:
✦ Liberal freedom is a fiction
Marx + other theorists argue that freedom under capitalism is illusory.
✦ The state is an instrument of class rule
The “actually existing” state protects capital, not neutral freedom.
✦ Use value → exchange value
Capitalism replaces usefulness with market price.
✦ Alienation of labor
Students are encouraged to reread Marx’s Estranged Labor excerpt.
✦ Capitalist exploitation
Capitalists profit by appropriating workers’ surplus labor.
🔹 8. Capitalist Crisis
Marx argues capitalism will always fall into crises:
Things go wrong
Systems break
Contradictions sharpen
Some argue Marx was correct:
Recurrent financial crises
Instability driven by contradictions in production & consumption
Googling “Marx periodic crises” returns many discussions of this.
🔹 9. Marx vs Adam Smith
Adam Smith:
Capitalism can create general prosperity.
Sees potential for abundance.
Marx:
Capitalism destroys the social fabric.
Famous quote: “All that is solid melts into air.”
Capitalism annihilates old social structures and values.
But this destruction contains the seeds of the next mode of production:
Dialectical movement
New social relations emerge as old ones collapse
🔹 10. “All That Is Solid Melts Into Air” Explanation
From the Communist Manifesto:
Fixed, traditional social relations are swept away.
Feudal relations collapse.
Capitalism creates new relations — also temporary — before they become outdated.
Social relationships become transactional:
No spiritual or communal bonds
Only economic exchange
A student notes:
Religion and political identity become tools to justify relationships under capitalism.
Speaker adds:
Even before capitalism there was exploitation (feudalism).
Capitalism replaces old exploitation with a new form.
🔹 11. Working Class & Sober Senses
Working class experiences contradictions directly:
Brutal work
Endless labor
No ability to buy a home
Eventually they are compelled to face:
Their material conditions
Their relationship with time and labor
From this:
They develop class consciousness.
They recognize shared interests.
They can organize and fight back.