Classical Marxism

Classical Marxismis the body of economic, philosophical, and sociological theories expounded byKarl MarxandFriedrich Engelsin their works, as contrasted withorthodox Marxism,Marxism–Leninism,andautonomist Marxismwhich emerged after their deaths.The core concepts of classical Marxism includealienation,base and superstructure,class consciousness,class struggle,exploitation,historical materialism,ideology, revolution; and theforces,means,modes,andrelations of production.Marx's politicalpraxis(application of theory), including his attempt to organize a professional revolutionary body in theFirst International,often served as an area of debate for subsequent theorists.

Karl Marx

Karl Marxin 1861

Karl Marx(5 May 1818,Trier,Germany– 14 March 1883,London) was an immensely influential Germanphilosopher,sociologist,political economistandrevolutionary socialist.Marx addressed a wide range of issues, includingalienationand exploitation of the worker, thecapitalist mode of productionand historical materialism, although he is most famous for his analysis of history in terms of class struggles, summed up in the opening line of the introduction toThe Communist Manifesto:"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles". The influence of his ideas, already popular during his life, was given added impetus by the victory of theRussianBolsheviksin 1917October Revolutionand there are few parts of the world which were not significantly touched by Marxian ideas in the course of the twentieth century.

As the American Marx scholarHal Draperremarked: "[T]here are few thinkers in modern history whose thought has been so badly misrepresented, by Marxists and anti-Marxists alike".

Early influences

Main article:The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism

Further information:Influences on Karl Marx

The early influences on Marx are often grouped into three categories, namelyGerman philosophy,English/Scottish political economyandFrench socialism.

German philosophy

Main influences includeImmanuel Kant,Georg Wilhelm Friedrich HegelandLudwig Feuerbach.

Marx studied under one of Hegel's pupils,Bruno Bauer,a leader of the circle ofYoung Hegeliansto whom Marx attached himself. However, in 1841 he and Engels came to disagree with Bauer and the rest of the Young Hegelians about socialism and also about the usage of Hegel's dialectic and progressively broke away fromGerman idealismand the Young Hegelians. Marx's early writings are thus a response to Hegel, German idealism, and a break with the rest of the Young Hegelians. Marx, "stood Hegel on his head", in his own view of his role by turning the idealistic dialectic into a materialistic one, in proposing that material circumstances shape ideas instead of the other way around. In this, Marx was following the lead of Feuerbach. Histheory of alienation,developed in theEconomic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844(published in 1932), inspired itself from Feuerbach's critique of the alienation of Man in God through theobjectivationof all his inherent characteristics (thus man projected on God all qualities which are in fact man's own quality which defines the "human nature"). But Marx also criticized Feuerbach for being insufficiently materialistic.

English and Scottish political economy

Main influences includeAdam SmithandDavid Ricardo.

Marx built on and critiqued the most well-known political economists of his day, the British classical political economists.

Marx critiqued Smith and Ricardo for not realizing that their economic concepts reflected specifically capitalist institutions, not innate natural properties of human society, and could not be applied unchanged to all societies. He proposed a systematic correlation between labor values and money prices. He claimed that the source of profits under capitalism is the value added by workers not paid out in wages. This mechanism operated through the distinction between "labor power", which workers freely exchanged for their wages; and "labour", over which asset-holding capitalists thereby gained control. This practical and theoretical distinction was Marx's primary insight, and allowed him to develop the concept of "surplus value", which distinguished his works from that of Smith and Ricardo.

French socialism

Main influences includeJean-Jacques Rousseau,Charles Fourier,Henri de Saint-Simon,Pierre-Joseph ProudhonandLouis Blanc.

Rousseau was one of the first modern writers to seriously attack the institution ofprivate propertyand is sometimes considered a forebear of modernsocialismandcommunism,though Marx rarely mentions Rousseau in his writings.

In 1833, France was experiencing a number of social problems arising out of theIndustrial Revolution.A number of sweeping plans of reform were developed by thinkers on thepolitical left.Among the more grandiose were the plans ofCharles Fourierand the followers ofSaint-Simon.Fourier wanted to replace modern cities with utopian communities while the Saint-Simonians advocated directing the economy by manipulating credit. Although these programs did not have much support, they did expand the political and social imagination of Marx.

Louis Blancis perhaps best known for originating the social principle, later adopted by Marx, of how labor and income should be distributed: "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs".

Pierre-Joseph Proudhonparticipated in theFrench Revolution of 1848and the composition of what he termed "the first republican proclamation" of the new republic, but he had misgivings about the new government because it was pursuing political reform at the expense of the socio-economic reform, which Proudhon considered basic. Proudhon published his own perspective for reform,Solution du problème social,in which he laid out a program of mutual financial cooperation among workers. He believed this would transfer control of economic relations from capitalists and financiers to workers. It was Proudhon's bookWhat Is Property?that convinced the young Karl Marx thatprivate propertyshould be abolished.

Other influences on Marx

Main influences includesFriedrich Engels,ancient Greekmaterialism,Giambattista VicoandLewis H. Morgan.

Marx's revision ofHegelianismwas also influenced by Engels' bookThe Condition of the Working Class in Englandin 1844, which led Marx to conceive of the historical dialectic in terms of class conflict and to see the modern working class as the most progressive force for revolution.

Marx was influenced by Antique materialism, especiallyEpicurus(to whom Marx dedicated his thesis,The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature,1841) for his materialism and theory ofclinamenwhich opened up a realm of liberty.

Giambattista Vicopropounded acyclical theoryof history, according to which human societies progress through a series of stages from barbarism to civilization and then return to barbarism. In the first stage—called the Age of the Gods—religion, the family and other basic institutions emerge; in the succeeding Age of Heroes, the common people are kept in subjection by a dominant class of nobles; in the final stage—the Age of Men—the people rebel and win equality, but in the process society begins to disintegrate. Vico's influence on Marx is obvious.

Marx drew onLewis H. Morganand hissocial evolutiontheory. He wrote a collection of notebooks from his reading of Lewis Morgan, but they are regarded as being quite obscure and only available in scholarly editions. (However Engels is much more noticeably influenced by Morgan than Marx).

Friedrich Engels

Friedrich Engelswas a co-founder and proponent ofMarxism

Friedrich Engels(28 November 1820,Wuppertal,Prussia– 5 August 1895,London) was a 19th-century Germanpolitical philosopher.He developedcommunisttheory alongside his better-known collaborator,Karl Marx.

In 1842, his father sent the young Engels to England to help manage his cotton factory in Manchester. Shocked by the widespreadpoverty,Engels began writing an account which he published in 1845 asThe Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844([1]).

In July 1845, Engels went to England, where he met an Irish working-class woman namedMary Burns(Crosby), with whom he lived until her death in 1863 (Carver 2003:19). Later, Engels lived with her sister Lizzie, marrying her the day before she died in 1877 (Carver 2003:42). These women may have introduced him to theChartistmovement, of whose leaders he met several, includingGeorge Harney.

Engels actively participated in theRevolution of 1848,taking part in the uprising atElberfeld.Engels fought in theBaden campaignagainst thePrussians(June/July 1849) as theaide-de-campofAugust Willich,who commanded a Free Corps in the Baden-Palatinate uprising.

Marx and Engels

Marx and Engels first met in person in September 1844. They discovered that they had similar views onphilosophyand oncapitalismand decided to work together, producing a number of works includingDie heilige Familie(The Holy Family). After the French authorities deported Marx from France in January 1845, Engels and Marx decided to move to Belgium, which then permitted greaterfreedom of expressionthan some other countries in Europe. Engels and Marx returned to Brussels in January 1846, where they set up the Communist Correspondence Committee.

In 1847, Engels and Marx began writing a pamphlet together, based on Engels'The Principles of Communism.They completed the 12,000-word pamphlet in six weeks, writing it in such a manner as to make communism understandable to a wide audience and published it asThe Communist Manifestoin February 1848. In March, Belgium expelled both Engels and Marx. They moved to Cologne, where they began to publish a radical newspaper, theNeue Rheinische Zeitung.By 1849, both Engels and Marx had to leave Germany and moved to London. The Prussian authorities applied pressure on the British government to expel the two men, butPrime MinisterLord John Russellrefused. With only the money that Engels could raise, the Marx family lived inextreme poverty.The contributions of Marx and Engels to the formation of Marxist theory have been described as inseparable.

Main ideas

Marx's main ideas included:

• Alienation:Marx refers to the alienation of people from aspects of their "human nature" (Gattungswesen,usually translated as "species-essence" or "species-being" ). He believed that alienation is a systematic result of capitalism. Under capitalism, the fruits of production belong to the employers, who expropriate the surplus created by others and in so doing generate alienated labour.Alienation describes objective features of a person's situation in capitalism—it is not necessary for them to believe or feel that they are alienated.
• Base and superstructure:Marx and Engels use the “base-structure” concept to explain the idea that the totality of relations among people with regard to “the social production of their existence” forms the economic basis, on which arises a superstructure of political and legal institutions. To the base corresponds the social consciousness which includes religious, philosophical and other main ideas. The base conditions both, the superstructure and the social consciousness. A conflict between the development of material productive forces and the relations of production causes social revolutions and the resulting change in the economic basis will sooner or later lead to the transformation of the superstructure.For Marx, this relationship is not a one way process—it is reflexive and the base determines the superstructure in the first instance at the same time as it remains the foundation of a form of social organization which is itself transformed as an element in the overall dialectical process. The relationship between superstructure and base is considered to be adialecticalone,ineffablein a sense except as it unfolds in its material reality in the actual historical process (whichscientific socialismaims to explain and ultimately to guide).
• Class consciousness:class consciousness refers to the awareness, both of itself and of the social world around it, that asocial classpossesses and its capacity to act in its own rational interests based on this awareness. Thus class consciousness must be attained before the class may mount a successful revolution. However, other methods of revolutionary action have been developed, such asvanguardism.
• Exploitation:Marx refers to the exploitation of an entire segment or class of society by another. He sees it as being an inherent feature and key element of capitalism and free markets. The profit gained by the capitalist is the difference between the value of the product made by the worker and the actual wage that the worker receives—in other words, capitalism functions on the basis of paying workers less than the full value of their labor in order to enable the capitalist class to turn a profit.
• Historical materialism:historical materialism was first articulated by Marx, although he himself never used the term. It looks for the causes of developments and changes in human societies in the way in which humans collectively make the means to life, thus giving an emphasis through economic analysis to everything that co-exists with the economic base of society (e.g. social classes, political structures, ideologies).
• Means of production:the means of production are a combination of themeans of laborand thesubject of laborused by workers to make products. The means of labor include machines, tools, equipment, infrastructure and "all those things with the aid of which man acts upon the subject of labor, and transforms it".The subject of labor includes raw materials and materials directly taken from nature. Means of production by themselves produce nothing—labor poweris needed for production to take place.
• Ideology:without offering a general definition for "ideology",Marx on several instances has used the term to designate the production of images of social reality. According to Engels, “ideology is a process accomplished by the so-called thinker consciously, it is true, but with a false consciousness. The real motive forces impelling him remain unknown to him; otherwise it simply would not be an ideological process. Hence he imagines false or seeming motive forces”.Because the ruling class controls the society's means of production, the superstructure of society as well as its ruling ideas will be determined according to what is in the ruling class's best interests. As Marx said famously inThe German Ideology,“the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force”.Therefore the ideology of a society is of enormous importance since it confuses the alienated groups and can createfalse consciousnesssuch as commodity fetishism (perceiving labor as capital—a degradation of human life).
• Mode of production:the mode of production is a specific combination ofproductive forces(including human themeans of productionandlabour power,tools, equipment, buildings and technologies, materials and improved land) and social and technicalrelations of production(including the property, power and control relations governing society's productive assets, often codified in law, cooperative work relations and forms of association, relations between people and the objects of their work and the relations between social classes).
• Political economy:the term "political economy" originally meant the study of the conditions under which production was organized in the nation-states of the new-born capitalist system. Political economy then studies the mechanism of human activity in organizing material and the mechanism of distributing the surplus or deficit that is the result of that activity. Political economy studies the means of production, specifically capital and how this manifests itself in economic activity.

Marx's concept of class

Marx believed that class identity was configured in the relations with the mode of production. In other words, a class is a collective of individuals who have a similar relationship with the means of production (as opposed to the more common idea that class is determined by wealth alone, i.e. high class, middle class and poor class).

Marx describes severalsocial classesin capitalist societies, including primarily:

• Theproletariat:"those individuals who sell theirlabor power,(and therefore add value to the products), and who, in the capitalist mode of production, do not own the means of production ". According to Marx, the capitalist mode of production establishes the conditions for thebourgeoisietoexploitthe proletariat due to the fact that the worker'slabor powergenerates anadded valuegreater than hissalary.
• Thebourgeoisie:those who "own the means of production" and buylabor powerfrom the proletariat, who are recompensed by a salary, thusexploitingthe proletariat.

The bourgeoisie may be further subdivided into the very wealthy bourgeoisie and thepetty bourgeoisie.The petty bourgeoisie are those who employ labor, but may also work themselves. These may be small proprietors, land-holding peasants, or trade workers. Marx predicted that the petty bourgeoisie would eventually be destroyed by the constant reinvention of the means of production and the result of this would be the forced movement of the vast majority of the petty bourgeoisie to the proletariat. Marx also identified thelumpenproletariat,a stratum of society completely disconnected from the means of production.

Marx also describes thecommunistsas separate from the oppressed proletariat. The communists were to be a unifying party among the proletariat; they were educated revolutionaries who could bring the proletariat to revolution and help them establish the democraticdictatorship of the proletariat.According to Marx, the communists would support any true revolution of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. Thus the communists aide the proletariat in creating the inevitable classless society.

Marx's theory of history

Main article:Marx's theory of history

The Marxist theory of historical materialism understands society as fundamentally determined by the material conditions at any given time—this means the relationships which people enter into with one another in order to fulfill their basic needs, for instance to feed and clothe themselves and their families.In general, Marx and Engels identified five successive stages of the development of these material conditions in Western Europe.

1. Primitive communism
2. Asiatic
3. Ancientslavesociety
4. Feudalism
5. Modernbourgeoissociety

See also

• Marxian economics