PHIL102 Week 9 Lecture - Marx

Karl Marx (1818-1883)

Human Freedom

• Freedom as collective autonomy (influenced by Hegel).
• Requires arranging material social life to afford collective autonomy.

Young Marx

• Studied at University of Bonn and Berlin.
• Involved with Young Hegelians, focusing on Hegel's ideas.

Hegel's Influence

• History as development of humanity's self-awareness and freedom.
• Some cultures provide greater degrees of freedom.
• Freedom as collective self-determination via social structures (Spirit/Geist).

Young Hegelians

• Interpreted Hegel as implicitly atheistic, critiquing religion as a human construction.
• Ludwig Feuerbach: God as projection of human potential ('species-being').

Marx's Early View

• Humans are historical, social, and material constructions.
• Work is fundamental, mediated by social structures.
• Social structures can escape collective control, leading to subordination.
• Alienation: separation from actions, community due to flawed social organization.
• Money as an 'alien mediator'.

Alienated Labour

• Separation from activity, product, other workers, and species-being (capacity to shape itself).

Critique of Young Hegelians

• Religion as "opium of the masses" arising from flawed material conditions.
• Critical philosophy must transform social conditions, uniting with the proletariat.

Historical Materialism

• Theory of historical change based on changing capacities of social formations.
• Forces of production (technology, labour) vs. relations of production (organization, ownership).
• Tensions lead to class conflicts.
• Capitalist society's potential for communism.

Communist Manifesto (1848)

• Class struggles are the basis of history.
• Society split into Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.
• Proletarians unite to win the world.

Value and Commodity in Marx's Capital

• Capitalist society reproduces itself through commodities and capital.
• Commodities: items for sale.
• Capital: value that has the capacity to grow.

Requirements for Capital

• Private property, value, means of adding value, a market system, and exploitation of workers.
• Capital as a social relation mediated by things.

Fetishism

• Capitalist production governs people through their own creations (commodities), like religion governs through mental projections.
• Builds on Feuerbach's critique of religion.

Commodity Characteristics

• Commodities are qualitatively distinct but quantitatively equal.
• Value determined by socially average labour time.
• Commodities reflect social character of labour as objective characteristics.