Great Ideas of Philosophy

1. He is a Hegelian who stands Hegel on his head: The struggle to bring forth new forms of human lifedoes not take place on the level of the spirit or the Absolute but on the level of economics.2. If we were to classify Marx as a materialist, it would be what he himself referred to as a dialecticalmaterialist, more in the tradition of Hegel.3. Dialectical materialism accounts for all change in terms of the struggle of opposites. It is on this basisthat progress becomes possible; change comes through conflict.4. The class struggle is the engine of progress through history.II. As a “social scientist,” Marx is convinced that determinative laws operate at the level of society and throughouthistory. This determinative process is entirely materialistic, though not mechanistic, and works througheconomic forces.A. The Darwinian model was a source of inspiration for Marx, who wrote, “Darwin’s work…serves me as anatural scientific basis for the class-struggle in history,” and he dedicated his Das Capital to Darwin.B. In proposing that it is economics that imposes change on societies and on persons, Marxism represents areversal of the traditional way of looking at how systems and institutions come about.1. Aristotle, for example, argued that the political and legal framework of society shapes the moralcharacter of citizens, and that this—surely not anything “economic”—represented the decisive factorin social life.2. The Marxist version turns this around.C. Every society depends on given forces of production.1. We begin with the productive resources that a tribal enclave, a small community, or an entire empiremight claim for itself. This inevitably recruits the physical power of a laboring class.2. The laboring class becomes the instrument by which production becomes possible. In the process,things are produced more efficiently by cooperation, because the agricultural yield works to theadvantage of all.3. In time, possession of property is taken, thus establishing class distinctions between the propertiedclass and the laborers. It becomes necessary for the propertied class to devise means by which tosafeguard its possession; hence, this same class proceeds to write the laws and exact the punishments.4. For the Marxist, law is a class concept and a class tool, arising from the material interdependencies ofbourgeois and proletarian classes.D. The reaction to unionization in the 19 th century was the sort of datum that Marx could adduce in support ofsuch a theory.III. Capitalism depends for its success on selling products for more than they cost to produce. The cost is chieflylabor; the surplus is profit, which accumulates as capital. This is Marx’s labor theory of value.A. Feudalism did not follow the rules of capitalism. Social class was not a measure of ultimate personal worth;the feudal lord was not amassing capital but preserving a society that was the image of God’s providence.B. Capitalism, however, must grow to survive. Once basic needs are met, artificial desires must be created inorder to keep demand high. A consumer society must be created and enlarged.IV. Only through a revolt of the laboring class can such a system be destroyed. The owning class has the means tofend off this outcome, though not to prevent it finally.A. Those in control of the means of production also control and define the consciousness of the oppressed.B. The model for this type of control is religion, what Marx famously called “the opiate of the masses.”Religion is always handed down from upper to lower classes.C. Class consciousness is the necessary first stage in transforming the power relations, and class struggle, theinevitable next stage.1. Class consciousness becomes the necessary engine of revolutionary change and progress.2. The first thing a worker must recognize is that he has been exploited and is being manipulated, that infact, those who are availing themselves of his labor are not acting in his interests but in the interest ofpreserving a system in which they happen to be successful. Their success depends centrally on theworker’s failure, namely, his failure to change anything materially about the nature of his life andsocial arrangements.©2004 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership 21