Marx & Engels
Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of
1844
The German Ideology
The Communist Manifesto
Marx & Engels
 Biographical
Background
 Dialectical Materialism
 The Critique of Capitalism
 The Critique of Liberalism
 The Communist Future
Biographical Background
Karl Marx
1818 - 1883
Freidrich Engels
1820 - 1895
Biographical Background



Marx
Born in Trier, Prussia,
large Jewish family who
converted to
Lutheranism
Entered U of Bonn
(1835) drops out
Entered U of Berlin
(1836) for Law Degree



Engels
Born in Barmen,
Germany
Father owned textile
company with
connections in England
Sent to England (1840
or so) to work as unpaid
clerk in family firm
Biographical Background
Marx
 Gets doctoral
degree (1841)
 Becomes editor of
left-wing newspaper
 Leaves paper to
protest censorship
and heads to Paris
(1844)
Engels
 Starts writing On the
Condition of the
working class in
England (1840)
 Meets Marx briefly
in Paris
Biographical Background

Begin life long
collaboration writing
in 1845
 Engels returns to
England (1850) to
run family business
and supports Marx
and his family while
Marx writes and
conducts research
Biographical Background
Marx spends most of his life
writing (including a
and
engaging
in
10
year
stint with
radical
the
New politics
York
Tribune)
researching Das
Kapital
Biographical Background

Marx dies in 1883,
buried in Highgate
Cemetery, London
 Engels continues to
write and publish
both original
material and edited
versions of Marx’s
work until his death
in 1895
I.
Dialectical Materialism
“The history of all hitherto existing
society is the history of class
struggles…”
The Communist Manifesto
I.
Dialectical Materialism
Marxist Methodology

Marx and Engels try to distinguish their
approach to socialism from More and the
“utopian” tradition by grounding their insights
in a scientific methodology
 In order to come to a “scientific” as opposed
to a “philosophical” or “ideological”
understanding of human life, we need to
examine how people actually live and
produce the means of that existence
I. Dialectical Materialism
“Men can be distinguished from animals by
consciousness, by religion or anything else
you like. They themselves begin to
distinguish themselves from animals as soon
as they begin to produce their means of
subsistence, a step which is conditioned by
their physical organization. By producing
their means of subsistence men are indirectly
producing their actual material life.”
-- The German Ideology
I. Dialectical Materialism


But in addition to assembling the “facts”
of existence, we need to understand
how to arrange and interpret those
facts.
They propose that we need a
“dialectical” understanding of the world.
I.
Dialectical Materialism
Thesis
I.
Dialectical Materialism
Thesis
Antithesis
I.
Dialectical Materialism
Synthesis
Thesis
Antithesis
I.
Dialectical Materialism
Synthesis
Becomes the new thesis…
Thesis
Antithesis
I. Dialectical Materialism
Process repeats with a new antithesis
emerging to challenge the thesis,
reaching a new synthesis, which
becomes the next thesis… and so on
How does this help us understand
human social life?
I. Dialectical Materialism

The dialectical method provides us with a
powerful tool for both organizing and
understanding social life.
 Marx and Engels’ real insight is that this
dialectical method, whose roots go all the
way back to Plato, can be put to good use
only when we strip it of its “ideological”
trappings to focus on the realities of the
physical world (hence the “materialism”)
I. Dialectical Materialism
 We
need to focus on the real material
conditions of existence; the
factors/forces which shape and drive
human social interaction:
I. Dialectical Materialism
“The premises from which we begin are
not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real
premises from which abstraction can
only be made in the imagination. They
are the real individuals, their activity and
the material conditions under which they
live, both those which they find already
existing and those produced by their
activity…” -- The German Ideology
I. Dialectical Materialism
 These
“real premises” then include the
way we make a living (that is, how we
keep ourselves alive as biological
beings).
 These
are the “means of production”
I. Dialectical Materialism
 Marx
& Engels claim that it is these
material factors which shape the ideas
we have and hold:
“Life is not determined by
consciousness, but consciousness by
life.” -- The German Ideology
I. Dialectical Materialism
Or, as they’ll claim in the Manifesto:
“What else does the history of ideas
prove, than that intellectual production
changes its character in proportion as
material production is changed? The
ruling ideas of each age have ever
been the ideas of its ruling class.”
I. Dialectical Materialism

We also need to
examine how these
means of production
are mobilized and
organized to actually
produce the means
of subsistence

They refer to these
as the “forces of
production”
I. Dialectical Materialism
 Finally,
we need to know how the
various members of the society stand in
relation to the means of production.
– defined as one’s position vis-à-vis
the means of production
 Broadly, you either own the means of
production or you labor on the means of
production
 Class
I. Dialectical Materialism
Proletariat
(Workers)
Bourgeoisie
(Capitalists)
I. Dialectical Materialism
“The first premise of all human history
is, of course, the existence of living
individuals.” -- The German Ideology
I. Dialectical Materialism
“The various stages of development in the
division of labor are just so many different
forms of ownership, ie., the existing stage in
the division of labor determines also the
relations of individuals to one another with
reference to the material instrument, and
product of labor.”
-- The German Ideology
I. Dialectical Materialism
 When
we look back at history we see
certain patterns emerge.
 Primitive
Communism
 Slave Labor
 Feudalism
 Capitalism
I. Dialectical Materialism
 But
remember the connection between
the material conditions of existence and
the ideas of “the age.”
 As they note in the German Ideology…
I. Dialectical Materialism
“The ideas of the ruling class are in
every epoch the ruling ideas: ie., the
class which is the ruling material force
of society, is at the same time its ruling
intellectual force. The class which has
the means of material production at its
disposal, has control at the same time
over the means of mental production”
I. Dialectical Materialism
In other words, in capitalism, we shouldn’t be
surprised to find media and other institutions
extolling the virtues of the market and the
factors that contribute to its existence
 For example, “Freedom” in capitalism means
we are all “free” to say or print anything, but
that means whoever has more money has
more freedom

II. Critique of Capitalism 1
 In
capitalism, the 2 main classes are:
Workers
Capitalists
(proletariat)
(bourgeoisie)
Critique of Capitalism
Labor
time
Workers
Capitalist
Wages
During the work day, the above exchange seems to occur
Critique of Capitalism
Labor
time
Workers
Capitalist
Wages
II. Critique of Capitalism
Labor time =
8 hours
Workers
Capitalist
Wages =
$/hour
worked
II. Critique of Capitalism
Labor time =
8 hours
Workers
Capitalist
Wages =
$/hour
worked
Where does the capitalist’s profit come from?
II. Critique of Capitalism
“If one day’s work were necessary in
order to keep one worker alive for one
day, then capital would not exist,
because the working day would then
exchange for its own product, so that
capital could not realize itself and hence
could not maintain itself as capital…”
II. Critique of Capitalism
“If, however, only half a working day is
necessary in order to keep one worker
alive one whole day, then the surplus
value of the product is self-evident,
because the capitalist has paid the price
of only half a working day but has
obtained a whole day objectified in the
product; thus has exchanged nothing for
the second half of the work day.
II. Critique of Capitalism
“The only thing which can make him into
a capitalist is not exchange, but rather a
process through which he obtains
objectified labour time, i.e., value,
without exchange.”
-- The Grundrisse
(1857/58)
II. Critique of Capitalism
Labor time =
8 hours
Workers
Capitalist
Wages =
$/hour
worked
II. Critique of Capitalism
Worker labors 8 hours…
Workers
But produces value
worth 12 hours
Capitalist
Capitalist pays for 8 hours, gets 4 hours free!
The worker is exploited by the capitalist
II. Critique of Capitalism 1
“The worker becomes all the poorer the more
wealth he produces, the more his production
increases in power and range. The worker
becomes an ever cheaper commodity the
more commodities he creates. With the
increasing value of the world of things
proceeds in direct proportion the devaluation
of the world of men.”
-- 1844 Manuscripts
II. Critique of Capitalism 2
 Alienation
 By
alienation, Marx & Engels mean that
we feel estranged from ourselves, that
we no longer feel any connection to the
basics of our life
II. Critique of Capitalism 2
“…[T]he object which
labor produces – labor’s
product – confronts it as
something alien, as a
power independent of
the producer. The
product of labor is labor
which has been
congealed in an object,
which has become
material: it is the
objectification of labor.”
-1844 Manuscripts
II. Critique of Capitalism 2
“It is true that labor produces for the rich
wonderful things – but for the worker it
produces privation. It produces palaces– but
for the worker, hovels. It produces beauty–
but for the worker, deformity. It replaces
labor by machines– but some of the workers
it throws back to a barbarous type of labor,
and the other workers it turns into machines.
It produces intelligence– but for the worker
idiocy, cretinism.”
-- 1844 Manuscripts
II. Critique of Capitalism 2
 Recall
the earlier point about the
importance of labor in the evolution of
the human species.
 It is labor which helped separate human
beings from nature; it is a creative,
essential part of our being
II. Critique of Capitalism 2
 But
in capitalism, the nature of the work
day experience makes us hate and
detest this essential human activity;
such that…
II. Critique of Capitalism 2
“As a result, therefore,
man (the worker) no
longer feels himself to
be freely active in any
but his animal functions
– eating, drinking,
procreating, or at most
in his dwelling and in
dressing-up, etc....”
II. Critique of Capitalism 2
Or, as Marx & Engels note in the
Manifesto:
“Owing to the extensive use of machinery and
to division of labor, the work of the proletarians has
lost all individual character, and consequently,
all charm for the workman…
II. Critique of Capitalism 2
“He becomes an
appendage of the
machine, and it is only
the most simple, most
monotonous, and most
easily acquired knack,
that is required of him…
as the repulsiveness of
the work increases, the
wage decreases.”
-- The
Communist Manifesto
II. Critique of Capitalism 2
 Not
only are we estranged from
ourselves, but capitalism also severs
our connection with each other
II. Critique of Capitalism 2
“The bourgeoisie … has left remaining
no other nexus between man and man
than naked self-interest, than callous
‘cash payment.’ It has drowned the
most heavenly ecstasies of religious
fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of
philistine sentimentalism, in the icy
water of egotistical calculation…”
II. Critique of Capitalism 2
“In one word, for exploitation, veiled by
religious and political illusions, it has
substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal
exploitation… The bourgeoisie has stripped
of its halo every occupation hitherto honored
and looked up to with reverent awe. It has
converted the physician, the lawyer, the
priest, the poet, the man of science, into its
paid wage-laborers.”
-- The Communist Manifesto
II. Critique of Capitalism
“[Capitalism] compels all nations, on
pain of extinction, to adopt the
bourgeois mode of production; it
compels them to introduce what it calls
civilisation into their midst, i.e., to
become bourgeois themselves. In one
word, it creates a world after its own
image...”
II. Critique of Capitalism
“The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the
rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has
greatly increased the urban population as compared
with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable
part of the population from the idiocy of rural life.
Just as it has made the country dependent on the
towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian
countries dependent on the civilised ones, nations of
peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the
West.”
-- Communist Manifesto
III. The Communist Future
 So,
where do we go from here?
 Recall the dialectical method
 Within capitalism itself, we see the
seeds of its own destruction
 The Proletariat is the first “universal”
class
III. The Communist Future
“All previous historical movements were
movements of minorities, or in the interests of
minorities. The proletarian movement is the
self-conscious, independent movement of the
immense majority, in the interests of the
immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest
stratum of society, cannot stir, cannot raise
itself up, without the whole superincumbent
strata of official society being sprung into the
air.” -- The Communist Manifesto
III. The Communist Future
 Unlike
all previous classes in history,
the proletariat is the only class that
doesn’t need the existence of other
classes
 Human history has been moving,
inexorably, towards a communist future
III. The Communist Future

We need to abolish
the division of labor,
the system of wagelabor, and private
property in general*
*Not small-scale private property, but private control of the means
of production. “Capital is, therefore, not a personal, it is a social
power.” -- The Communist Manifesto
III. The Communist Future
“You are horrified at our intending to do away
with private property. But in your existing
society, private property is already done away
with for nine-tenths of the population; its
existence for the few is solely due to its nonexistence in the hands of those nine-tenths.”
-- The Communist Manifesto
III. The Communist Future

By that, Marx &
Engels mean to
create a classless
society that is free of
exploitation and
alienation
And the source of the problem
is the division of labor so essential
to capitalist development
III. The Communist Future
“The division of labor offers us the first
example of how… man’s own deed
becomes an alien power opposed to
him, which enslaves him instead of
being controlled by him…
III. The Communist Future
“For as soon as the distribution of
labour comes into being, each man has
a particular, exclusive sphere of activity,
which is forced upon him and from
which he cannot escape. He is a
hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a
critical critic, and must remain so if does
not want to lose his means of
livelihood…”
III. The Communist Future
“while in a communist society, where nobody
has one exclusive sphere of activity but each
can become accomplished in any branch he
wishes, society regulates the general
production and thus makes it possible for me
to do one thing today and another tomorrow,
to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon,
rear cattle in the evening, criticize after
dinner, just as I have a mind without ever
becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd, or
critic.”
-- The German Ideology
III. The Communist Future
A
communist society is then based on
the following principle:
“From each according to his ability, to each
according to his needs.”
III. The Communist Future
 In
other words, we’ll establish a system
where:
 “In place of the old bourgeois society,
with its classes and class antagonisms,
we shall have an association, in which
the free development of each is the
condition for the free development of
all.”
-- Communist Manifesto
“The philosophers have only interpreted
the world in various ways; the point is to
change it.”
Thesis XI
Theses on Feuerbach
Conclusion
 How
do we get there?