Karl Marx

Key Terms:

Heart of Marx’s Philosophy: the idea. that all processes of the world are governed by physical material forces. Humans contribute to the material condiitons of the world and in turn are affected by them

Historical Materialism: Every moment of history is materialist or physical process working towards harmony, which then collapses and has to be rebuilt. This historical process is often referred to as historical materialism, which is an aspect of Marx’s more general view of the world referred to as historical materialism.

Karl Heinrich Marx was born on 5 May 1818 in Trier in western German, the son of a successful Jewish lawyer. In 1843, after a short spell as editor of a liberal newspaper in Cologne, Marx and his wife Jenny moved to Paris, a hotbed of radical thought. There he became a revolutionary communist and befriended his lifelong collaborator, Friedrich Engels. Expelled from France, Marx spent two years in Brussels, where his partnership with Engels intensified. They co-authored the pamphlet 'The Communist Manifesto' which was published in 1848 and asserted that all human history had been based on class struggles, but that these would ultimately disappear with the victory of the proletariat (working class)

In 1849, Marx moved to London, where he was to spend the remainder of his life. For a number of years, his family lived in poverty but the wealthier Engels was able to support them to an increasing extent. Gradually, Marx emerged from his political and spiritual isolation and produced his most important body of work, 'Das Kapital'. The first volume of this 'bible of the working class' was published in his lifetime, while the remaining volumes were edited by Engels after his friend's death. Marx did not live to see his ideas carried out in his own lifetime, but his writings formed the theoretical base for modern international communism.

Marx’s teaching on Alienation

What is Alienation?

Alienation is the separation or estrangement of human beings from some essential aspect of their nature or from society, often resulting in feelings of powerlessness or helplessness. Today, the concept of alienation has become part of ordinary language, much used in the media. We may be told, for example, that who groups are becoming alienated from society, or that young people are alienated from mainstream values. With such usage of the concept we get the impression of the feeling of separation of one group from society, but the concept has traditionally been used in sociology, mainly by Karl Marx.

Marx’s Theory

Marx's ‘Theory of Alienation’ was that in modern industrial production under capitalist conditions workers will inevitably lose control of their lives by losing control over their work. Workers thus cease to be autonomous beings in any significant sense. Under pre-capitalist conditions a blacksmith or a shoemaker would own his own shop, set his own hours, determine his own working conditions, shape his own product, and have some say in how his product is sold. His relationships with the people with whom he worked and dealt had a more or less personal character. 

Under the conditions of modern factory production, by contrast, the average worker is not much more than a replaceable cog in a gigantic and impersonal production apparatus. Where armies of hired operatives perform monotonous and closely supervised tasks, workers have essentially lost control over the process of production, over the products which they produce, and over the relationships they have with each other. As a consequence they have become estranged from their very human nature, which Marx understood to be free and productive activity. 

Human beings cannot be human under these conditions, and for this reason the implication was obvious for Marx: Capitalism has to be abolished as much as any political oppression if a society is to be set free from the social restrictions.

Marx describes the situation in his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 as follows: 

“In what, then, consists the alienation of labour? First, in the fact that labour is external to the worker, i.e., that it does not belong to his nature, that therefore he does not realize himself in his work, that he denies himself in it, that he does not feel at ease in it, but rather unhappy, that he does not develop any free physical or mental energy, but rather mortifies his flesh and ruins his spirit. The worker, therefore, is only himself when he does not work, and in his work he feels outside himself. He feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home. His labour, therefore, is not voluntary, but forced--forced labour. It is not the gratification of a need, but only a means to gratify needs outside itself. Its alien nature shows itself clearly by the fact that work is shunned like the plague as soon as no physical or other kind of coercion exists.”

Marx’s theory suggests capitalist production creates alienation in four main areas:

1. Workers are alienated from their own labour power – they have to work as and when required and to perform the tasks set by their employers.

2. They are alienated from the products of their labour – which are successfully claimed by capitalists to be sold as products on the marketplace for profit, while workers only receive a fraction of this profit as wages

3. Workers are alienated from each other – they are encouraged to compete with each other for jobs.

They are alienated from their own species being – according to Marx, satisfying work is an essential part of being human, and capitalism makes work a misery, so work under capitalism thus alienates man from himself. It is no longer a joy, it is simply a means to earn wages to survive.

God and Religion

Marx argued that a major cause of alienation is belief in God. The reason is twofold:

• He rejected that god is the driving force of history. The material forces to history are blind; belief that God controls history is false-consciousness and leads to false hopes and illusions

• The places of religion gives power to the state or ruling group to control the population by stating that God’s natural order is that some humans are both to be rulers and other servants.

This is why Marx argued that the abolition of religion should be the first move in overcoming exploitation and alienation. Next to religion, capitalism was a main source of alienation and exploitation.

Marx’s opinion is that religion is an illusion that provides reasons and excuses to keep society functioning in a certain way. He suggests that religion, in the face of real oppression on earth, offered spiritual blessings in heaven. People would therefore put up with their present suffering in the hope of a spiritual reward – using it like a drug to ease the pain of their situation. Marx is saying that religion creates illusory fantasies for the poor. Economic realities prevent them from finding true happiness in this life, so religion tells them this is acceptable because they will find true happiness in the next life. 

Religion does not fix the underlying causes of people’s pain and suffering — instead, it helps them forget why they are suffering and causes them to look forward to an imaginary future when the pain will cease instead of working to change circumstances now. Even worse, this “drug” is being administered by the oppressors who are responsible for the pain and suffering. Marx famously described religion as:

“The sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The people cannot be really happy until it has been deprived of illusory happiness by the abolition of religion.” - Marx

Praxis

Praxis is one of the most important ideas derived from histroical materialism. Praxis is the belief that as a history is constantly changing, then humans have ability to understand the material condition of any situation and change them. Praxis begins by analysing a situation where there is oppression or injustice, working out what has caused it and them changing it. The problem with philosophy, Marx said, is it may analyse the world but it does nothing to change it.

Marx’s aim was to investigate the causes of social instability. He shared some of Rousseau’s assumptions that there was a stage in a ‘state of nature’ when families all shared the means of production without anyone being exploited. Since that time many factors have led to competition and alienation - the degrading of the human person into a thing or object, rather than a valued and purposeful individual subject.

Means of Production

Primary cause of exploitation and alienation is ownership of the means of production. In a capitalist society (the communist manifesto) when what matters is production of goods, everyone becomes alienated and dehumanised.

Bourgeoisie and Proletariat

At points in history the exploited have come to realise that their position is not ordained by God or nature and have attempted to free themselves - such moments have been met with violent oppression by their masters who feared that their power and easy way of life would be lost. Slave and master heightened by the industrial revolution.

• Marxism sees religion as a form of social control as it creates false consciousness. This allows for the proletariat to be exploited by creating mistaken beliefs about the nature of social life which justifies the position of the bourgeoisie. 

• Marx is saying religion and the belief in god reduced pain and creates illusions, such as the afterlife with religion in place as a tool used by the bourgeoisie.

• Marx believed that revolution could never take place and the proletariat could not free themselves from alienation an oppression.

Alienation and Exploitation

1. In a capitalist society there are two basic classes of people: The Bourgeois (Property owning class) and The Proletariat (working-class people)

2. The relationship between these two classes is exploitative: The amount of money the employer pays the worker is less than the total value of goods that worker produces. To Marx, Profit is basically the accumulated exploitation of workers in capitalist society.

3. Control of the Economic Base means control of the superstructure: According to Marx those who have economic power control all other institutions. Religion was one such institution that Marx said had this power. 

4. The Bourgeois use their control of institutions to keep the masses ignorant of their exploitation: This is known as ideological control. According to Marx this was mainly done through the Mass Media and Religion and left people in state of illusion.

5. Capitalism causes alienation: Under Capitalism the worker becomes alienated from the process of production, from the people he works with and from the products they produce. This is because he lacks control over his work and becomes a ‘machine’, and thus work appears as ‘alien’ to him.

6. Competition leads to increasing levels of exploitation: Marx argued that the Capitalism had within it the seeds of its own destruction – it would eventually create the social conditions that would lead to its downfall. In order to stay competitive, Capitalists would have to sell goods at lower prices, which would mean reduced profit. This would then encourage Capitalists to seek to reduce wages and increase efficiency– making the working conditions of the proletariat ever worse. Marx theorised that increasing numbers of increasingly exploited proletarians crammed into ever expanding cities (where factories were based) would eventually lead to a violent revolution – in which the proletariat would throw off their oppressors.

7. Revolution and Communism: Marx argued that following the overthrow of the Bourgeois – society would eventually organise itself along Communist lines – where the means of production are collectively owned (no private property) and everyone has equal wealth. Marx was vague about exactly what the Communist society would look like but argued that in this society ‘each would give according to their ability and take according to their needs’and that there would be a lot more free time for all.