Karl Marx

Karl Marx is best known, not as a philosopher, but as a revolutionary communist whose works inspired the foundation of many communist regimes in the twentieth century. It is hard to think of many who have had as much influence in the creation of the modern world. Trained as a philosopher, Marx turned away from philosophy in his mid-twenties, towards economics and politics. his later writings have many points of contact with contemporary philosophical debates, especially in the philosophy of history and the social sciences, and in moral and political philosophy. Historical materialism — Marx's theory of history — is centered around the idea that forms of society rise and fall as they further and then impede the development of human productive power. Marx sees the historical process as proceeding through a necessary series of modes of production, characterized by class struggle, culminating in communism. Marx's economic analysis of capitalism is based on his version of the labor theory of value, and includes the analysis of capitalist profit as the extraction of surplus value from the exploited proletariat. The analysis of history and economics come together in Marx's prediction of the inevitable economic breakdown of capitalism, to be replaced by communism. However Marx refused to speculate in detail about the nature of communism, arguing that it would arise through historical processes, and was not the realization of a pre-determined moral ideal. Marx's view of history, which came to be called the materialist conception of history and was later called the philosophy of dialectical materialism, is certainly influenced by G. W. F. Hegel's claim that reality and history should be viewed dialectically. Hegel believed that the direction of human history is characterized in the movement of things from fragments toward being complete and the real. Sometimes, Hegel explained, this progressive unfolding of the Absolute involves gradual, evolutionary accretion but at other times requires discontinuous, revolutionary leaps - episodal upheavals against the existing status quo. For example, Hegel strongly opposed the ancient institution of legal slavery that was practiced in the United States during his lifetime, and he envisioned a time when Christian nations would radically eliminate it from their civilization. While Marx accepted this broad conception of history, Hegel was an idealist, and Marx sought to rewrite dialectics in materialist terms. He wrote that Hegelianism stood the movement of reality on its head, and that it was necessary to set it upon its feet. (Hegel's philosophy remained and remains in direct opposition to Marxism on this key point.) The latter part of the nineteenth century was teeming with evolved social and economical ideas. These views of the social structure of urban society came about through the development of ideas taken from past revolutions and the present clash of individuals and organized assemblies. As the Industrial Revolution steamed ahead paving the way for growing commerce, so did the widening gap between the class structure. The development of a capitalist society was a very favorable goal in the eyes of the bourgeoisie. Using advancing methods of production within a system of free trade, the ruling middle class were strategically able to earn a substantial surplus of funds and maintain their present class of life. With the advancement of industry and the bourgeoisie's gain of wealth, a counter-action was undoubtably taking place. The result was the degradation of the working class who provided labor to the middle class only to be exploited in doing so. The persecution of one class by another has historically, and unfortunately, allowed the advancement of mankind to continue. These clashes, whether ending with positive or negative results, allow us to evolve as a species, defining us within the social structure of nature. At this time in history, mankind was moving forward very rapidly, but at the price of the working-class. Wages were given sparsely, and when capital gain improved, the money payed for labour did not reflect this prosperity. This, therefore, accelerated the downfall of the proletarians and progressed towards a justifiable revolt against the oppressive middle class. The conclusion of this revolt was envisioned to be a classless society, one in which its people benefit from and that benefits from its people. The overthrow of capitalism would create a socialist society eventually flourishing into communism. Karl Heinrich Marx (1818 - 1883) was the philosophical analysis who created communism and saw it as an achievable goal. Marx denounced religion and created what were thought to be radical ideas, which resulted in the banishment from his native land of Germany and then France, eventually ending up in England. (Compton's Encyclopedia, 121) Through dialectical processing Marx was able to synthesize a theory of a classless society. This society would be achievable through the joint union of the proletarians and overthrow of the governing bourgeois. For the working-class man does not benefit from the labour which he provides. His labour is external to himself and is not actually belonging to his essential being. Therefore in work, the proletarian denies himself and does not validate his worthiness as an individual.(Marx from Haberman, 183) The worker has no existence except to work, which furthers the employer, but degrades the labourer and eventually results in a grasping individual.
Marx is unique from other philosophers in that he chooses to regard man as an individual, a human being. This is evident in his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. There he declares that man is a “natural being” who is endowed with “natural and vital powers that exist in him as aptitudes and instincts.” Humans simply struggle with nature for the satisfaction of our needs. From this struggle comes our awareness of ourselves as an individual and as something separate from nature. So, he seeks to oppose nature. He sees that history is just the story of man creating and re-creating himself and sees that man creates himself, and that a “god” has no part in it. Thus, the communist belief in no religion. Marx also says that the more man works as a laborer, the less he has to consume for himself because his “product and labor are estranged” from him. Marx says that because the work of the laborer is taken away and does not belong to the laborer, the laborer loses his
“rightful existence” and is made alien to himself. Private property becomes a product and cause of “alienated labor” and through that, causes disharmony. “Alienated labor is seen as the consequence of market product, the division of labor, and the division of society into antagonistic classes.”
So, capitalism, which encourages the possession of private property, encourages alienation of man. Capitalism, which encourages the amassment of money, encourages mass production, to optimize productivity. Mass production also intensifies the alienation of labor because it encourages specialization and it makes people view the workers not as individuals but as machines to do work. It is this attitude that incites the uprisings of the lower classes against the higher classes, namely, the nobility.
Marx realized that with the unification of the working-class, they would be able to better themselves and their lives, and in doing so, better society on the whole. The aspiration to achieve this was purely theoretical and though Marx felt attainable, it was undoubtedly flawed. The communist ideals are purely a utopian dream which cannot be reached because of humans inescapable desire to satisfy their own egos. A proletarian society would not remain harmonious without individuals seeking personal satisfaction, and without a governing body chaos would result, paving a road which would lead to totalitarianism. Marx's views were of the proletarian class rising to crush the bourgeois ideals which governed their lives. This would result in a proletarian dictatorship, through which ends would have to be met in order to rid the community of the existing means of production and prosperity. The abolition of private property would be achieved by ridding the bourgeoisie's ownership of lands, and allowing them to be publicized. This would enable the removal of selfish individualism which splits society into segregated portions, and allow the rich and poor to become more economically equal in status. This however is only partially attainable, for one cannot undo what has already taken place. Marx states that the faster industry progresses, the weaker the proletarian becomes. Eventually storming the top of the social pyramid in order to reconstruct and overthrow the bourgeois assembly. This revolt would take place as a result of the demands of the labourers not being met, and wages not increasing with the increase of profit. The proletarian would feel worthless, and with nothing to lose, revolt against their employers. The vision of a capitalist state neglecting its workers and allowing them to use their mass of people to simply reverse the ways of society is ridiculous. In a capitalist state, the class which finds itself in the position of dividing up labour to produce a marketable product is the one which benefits the most. The bourgeois in this case would be in this class, and in ruling, would not allow the organized overthrow of their established system. In order to increase net profit, the employer must exploit the labour provided by his workers to ensure the increase in overall revenue. In a capitalist society, the expansion of markets and growth of production allows for the unfortunate increase between classes and their economical value. Having acquired business sense which has allowed them to maintain their more than satisfactory lifestyle, the bourgeois would have unquestionably not have exploited the work of proletarians to the extreme. Not increasing wages and allowing the workers to become restless would have been a grave mistake on the part of the employers. A solution in preventing an outcry at a revolutionary level would be to i! ncrease wages sufficiently in providing maximum surplus capital, but at the same time creating a payroll which would satisfy the workers. While raising the level of pay would create wage wars amongst different proletarian groups, it would stabilize the lifestyle which the bourgeois were living. If wages did not increase at least a minute amount, then the middle-class lifestyles would become threatened, eventually resulting in personal instability which would not be worth the money saved in keeping payrolls at such a low level.

Communism does not allow for man's own gratification, that is why it is an impractical way of thought. To strive towards a society which everyone is equally represented does seem pleasant, but it becomes an inaccurate way of reasoning. For once the ideal communist society is reached, what would be the point of working? Labour and work are to advance society as a whole, though not all at the same rate, varying on the type of work and strength at which one strives. Therefore once communism has been reached, essentially the evolution of man ceases. This would be an impossibility. Since man is born into an imperfect world, he too is imperfect, changing to meet his own needs within the needs of the environment in which he lives. Since the only consistentcy in the universe is change, then man cannot expect to become the controlling factor of change and govern its principles. In living in a communist society, man believes that all are equal, contributing to the advancement of the ra! ce as a whole. But the error here is that not all believe that all are equal. Many feel that their own personal goals are correct, and they set out to reach them. Consequently, a society of classess begins to develop, where one voice gains followers while another speaking out against the first creates his own aswell. What then results from these cries is a clash between various groups, leading to the establishment of a class system. Communism is an idealists utopian dream. It is only achievable through the unification and agreement of all who populate a state. Only when an entire populace lose their own individuality will a communist society then take form. Man continuously strives to prove his own self worth, to himself and not humanity. Humanity on a whole will continue to progress regardless of personal achievements great men rise while others fall. It is therefore seen that a communist society due to the facts regarding social evolution, cannot exist. For a communist society moves ahead together, yet remains idle when looking at an individual. This is illogical, for we are just that, individuals. We as humans are imperfect individuals, and selfishly stride towards justifying our personal goals, collaborating with others only when knowing it will strengthen our own grip.
Capital Volume 1 begins with an analysis of the idea of commodity production. A commodity is defined as a useful external object, produced for exchange on a market. Thus two necessary conditions for commodity production are the existence of a market, in which exchange can take place, and a social division of labour, in which different people produce different products, without which there would be no motivation for exchange. Marx suggests that commodities have both use-value — a use in other words — and an exchange-value — initially to be understood as their price. Use value can easily be understood, so Marx says, but he insists that exchange value is a puzzling phenomenon, and relative exchange values need to be explained. Why does a quantity of one commodity exchange for a given quantity of another commodity? His explanation is in terms of the labour input required to produce the commodity, or rather, the socially necessary labour, which is labour exerted at the average level of intensity and productivity for that branch of activity within the economy. Thus the labour theory of value asserts that the value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of socially necessary labour time required to produce it. Marx provides a two stage argument for the labour theory of value. The first stage is to argue that if two objects can be compared in the sense of being put on either side of an equals sign, then there must be a ‘third thing of identical magnitude in both of them’ to which they are both reducible. As commodities can be exchanged against each other, there must, Marx argues, be a third thing that they have in common. This then motivates the second stage, which is a search for the appropriate ‘third thing’, which is labour in Marx's view, as the only plausible common element. Both steps of the argument are, of course, highly contestable.

Capitalism is distinctive, Marx argues, in that it involves not merely the exchange of commodities, but the advancement of capital, in the form of money, with the purpose of generating profit through the purchase of commodities and their transformation into other commodities which can command a higher price, and thus yield a profit. Marx claims that no previous theorist has been able adequately to explain how capitalism as a whole can make a profit. Marx's own solution relies on the idea of exploitation of the worker. In setting up conditions of production the capitalist purchases the worker's labour power — his ability to labour — for the day. The cost of this commodity is determined in the same way as the cost of every other; i.e. in terms of the amount of socially necessary labour power required to produce it. In this case the value of a day's labour power is the value of the commodities necessary to keep the worker alive for a day. Suppose that such commodities take four hours to produce. Thus the first four hours of the working day is spent on producing value equivalent to the value of the wages the worker will be paid. This is known as necessary labour. Any work the worker does above this is known as surplus labour, producing surplus value for the capitalist. Surplus value, according to Marx, is the source of all profit. In Marx's analysis labour power is the only commodity which can produce more value than it is worth, and for this reason it is known as variable capital. Other commodities simply pass their value on to the finished commodities, but do not create any extra value. They are known as constant capital. Profit, then, is the result of the labour performed by the worker beyond that necessary to create the value of his or her wages. This is the surplus value theory of profit.

It appears to follow from this analysis that as industry becomes more mechanised, using more constant capital and less variable capital, the rate of profit ought to fall. For as a proportion less capital will be advanced on labour, and only labour can create value. In Capital Volume 3 Marx does indeed make the prediction that the rate of profit will fall over time, and this is one of the factors which leads to the downfall of capitalism. (However, as pointed out by Marx's able expositor Paul Sweezy in The Theory of Capitalist Development, the analysis is problematic.) A further consequence of this analysis is a difficulty for the theory that Marx did recognise, and tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to meet also in Capital Volume 3. It follows from the analysis so far that labour intensive industries ought to have a higher rate of profit than those which use less labour. Not only is this empirically false, it is theoretically unacceptable. Accordingly, Marx argued that in real economic life prices vary in a systematic way from values. Providing the mathematics to explain this is known as the transformation problem, and Marx's own attempt suffers from technical difficulties. Although there are known techniques for solving this problem now (albeit with unwelcome side consequences), we should recall that the labour theory of value was initially motivated as an intuitively plausible theory of price. But when the connection between price and value is rendered as indirect as it is in the final theory, the intuitive motivation of the theory drains away. But even if the defender of the theory is still not ready to concede defeat, a further objection appears devastating. Marx's assertion that only labour can create surplus value is unsupported by any argument or analysis, and can be argued to be merely an artifact of the nature of his presentation. Any commodity can be picked to play a similar role. Consequently with equal justification one could set out a corn theory of value, arguing that corn has the unique power of creating more value than it costs. Formally this would be identical to the labour theory of value.
Although Marx's economic analysis is based on the discredited labour theory of value, there are elements of his theory that remain of worth. The Cambridge economist Joan Robinson, in An Essay on Marxian Economics, picked out two aspects of particular note. First, Marx's refusal to accept that capitalism involves a harmony of interests between worker and capitalist, replacing this with a class based analysis of the worker's struggle for better wages and conditions of work, versus the capitalist's drive for ever greater profits. Second, Marx's denial that there is any long-run tendency to equilibrium in the market, and his descriptions of mechanisms which underlie the trade-cycle of boom and bust. Both provide a salutary corrective to aspects of orthodox economic theory.
Marx speaks of capitalism as an unstable environment. He says that its development is accompanied by “increasing contradictions” and that the equilibrium of the system is precarious as it is to the internal pressures resulting from its development. Capitalism is too easy to tend to a downward spiral resulting in economic and social ruin. An example of the downward spiral in a capitalist society is inflation. Inflation involves too much currency in circulation. Because of inflation and the increase in prices of goods resulting from it, the people of the society hoard their money which, because that money is out of circulation, causes more money to be printed. The one increases the effect of the other and thus, the downward spiral. Marx views revolution with two perspectives. One takes the attitude that revolution should be a great uprising like that of the French revolution. The other “conception” is that of the “permanent revolution” involving a “provisional coalition” between the low and higher classes. However, an analysis of the Communist Manifesto shows inconsistencies between the relationship of permanent and violent revolution; that Marx did not exactly determine the exact relationship between these two yet. Aside from the small inconsistencies in Marx’s philosophy, he exhibits sound ideas that do seem to work on paper but fail in the real world where millions of uncertainties contribute to the error in every social experiment on Earth. Communism never gets farther than socialism in its practice in the real world and that is where the fault lies, in the governments that try to cheat the system while still maintaining their ideal communist society.

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Karl Marx and Bourgeois Economics
Prabhat Patnaik
Social Scientist , Vol. 12, No. 6 (Jun., 1984), pp. 3-22
Published by: Social Scientist
Marx and Simmel Revisited: Reassessing the Foundations of Conflict Theory
Jonathan H. Turner
Social Forces , Vol. 53, No. 4 (Jun., 1975), pp. 618-627
Published by: Oxford University Press
Major Traditions of Economic Sociology
Richard Swedberg
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