Karl Marx v. Adam Smith
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1. Background. 1818 (May 5) Karl Marx born at Trier,
Prussia (now part of West Germany). Marx entered
University of Bonn, faculty of law. Marx transferred to
University of Berlin, faculty of law. Marx studied law,
philosophy, history, and English and Italian languages at
Berlin. 1839-41 Marx studied Greek philosophy and
wrote doctoral dissertation, “The Difference Between the
Dernocritean and Epicurean Philosophies of Nature.”
Received Ph.D. Robert C. Tucker, editor Princeton
University, The Marx-Engels Reader (New York: WW
Norton & Company Inc., 1972), xi.
Marx was born in the Rhineland and in his youth his mind
was shaped at German universities, notably that of Berlin.
Marx was the son of an attorney and he himself chose the
study of law, which he pursued as a subordinate subject
along with philosophy and history. He earned a doctorate
in philosophy at the University of Jena in 1841. Henry
William Spiegel, Professor of Economics at Catholic
University of America, The Growth of Economic Thought
(Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1971),
458.
As the London correspondent of the New York Tribune
and from other journalistic jobs Karl Marx made a
precarious living, seldom enough to escape dire poverty.
Karl Marx and his family’s main support was derived
from the generosity of Engels, who helped unstintingly,
more liberally in later years as his own financial condition
improved, out of his earnings from a profitable textile
business in Manchester. Henry William Spiegel, 459.
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2. History. “All history has been a history of class
struggles, of struggles between exploited and exploiting,
between dominated and dominating classes at various
stages of social development. This struggle, has now
reached a stage where the exploited and oppressed class
(the proletariat-the workers) can no longer emancipate
itself from the class which exploits and oppresses it (the
bourgeoisie-the rich factory owners), without at the same
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time forever freeing the whole of society from
exploitation, oppression and class struggles.” Karl Marx,
Henry William Spiegel, 459-60.
“In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost
everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into
various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In
ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians,
slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals,
guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost
all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations. The
modern bourgeois society that has sprouted -from the ruins
of feudal society has not done away with class
antagonisms. It has -but established new classes, new
conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place
of the old ones. Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie,
possesses, however, this distinctive feature: it has
simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is
more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps,
into two great classes directly facing each other:
Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.” Karl Marx, Robert C.
Tucker, 336.
“The history of all existing society is the history of class
struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord
and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word,
oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to
one another. They carried on an uninterrupted, now
hidden, now open fight. A fight that each time ended,
either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large,
or in the common ruin of the contending classes.” Karl
Marx, Robert C. Tucker, 335-6.
History is a social struggle for control of the means of
production. Richard L. Greaves, Robert Zaller, Jennifer
Tolbert Roberts, Civilizations of the West (New York:
HarperCollins Publishers, 1992), 692.
All previous historical movements were movements of
minorities or in the interest of minorities. The proletariat
movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of
the immense majority, in the interest of the immense
majority. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of
the Communist Party (1911) reprinted by Brian Tierney,
Donald Kagan and L. Pearce Williams, Great Issues in
Western Civilization, Volume Two (New York: Random
House, 1967), 276.
3. Dialectic. To give progressive change the appearance
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of inevitability, Marx adapted another idea of Hegel's to
his own use, the dialectics or paradoxical logic. This is a
form of thought that has long figured in the history of
philosophy. In the Hegelian dialectics the struggle
between opposite or contradictory elements is considered
as the force making for progressive change and
evolutionary development. These elements may at times
become united but in the ensuing tension the union will
eventually be dissolved, with one of the opposing forces
emerging as the victor. Henry William Spiegel, 462.
To Karl Marx, history was replete with inexorable
dialectical processes serving as instruments of progress.
Thus individual private property, founded on the labor of
the proprietor, was seen as negated by capitalist private
property, the result of the capitalist mode of production.
This would in turn beget communal property, the negation
of the negation. The class struggle itself was a dialectical
movement in which successive ruling classes were
replaced by the classes that they dominated, a process that
would culminate in the classless society. The ruling class
itself called into being the forces of its own undoing. The
bourgeoisie produced its own gravediggers by: setting the
stage for the rise of the proletariat, educating its members
politically and otherwise, arming them in the struggle with
foreign bourgeoisies, and assembling them in large
factories where they could join in collective action. Henry
William Spiegel, 463.
Wage-labor rests exclusively on competition between the
laborers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary
promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the
laborers, due to competition, by their revolutionary
combination, due to association. The development of
modern industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the
very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and
appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore,
produces, above all, is its own grave-diggers. Its fall and
the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable. Robert
C. Tucker, 345.
Karl Marx's dialectic came from Hegel, the struggle
between thesis and antithesis leading to a synthesis as the
next stage in historical evolution. Marx said that any
society rests fundamentally on the organization of its
economy, the mode of production. Mortimer Chambers,
University of California, Los Angeles, Raymond Grew,
University of Michigan, David Herlihy, Brown University,
Analysis:
Theodore K. Rabb, Princeton University, Isser Woloch,
Columbia University, The Western Experience, Fifth
Edition Since 1600 (New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1991),
1025.
The word "dialectic” comes from the Greek word
"dialego" to discourse, to debate. In ancient times
dialectics was the art of arriving at the truth by disclosing
the contradictions in the argument of an opponent and
overcoming these contradictions. The clash of opposite
opinions was the best method of arriving at the truth.
Joseph Stalin, Dialectical and Historical Materialism
(New York: International Publishers Co., 1940), 5.
Dialectics holds that internal contradictions are inherent in
all things, for they all have their negative and positive
sides. Joseph Stalin, 1940.
Dialectics holds that nature is not a state of rest and
immobility, stagnation and immutability, but a state of
continuous movement and change, of continuous renewal
and development, where something is always arising and
developing, and something always disintegrating and
dying away. Joseph Stalin, 676.
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4. Class Struggle. Every form of society has been based
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on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes.
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But in order to oppress a class, certain conditions must be
assured to it under which it can, at least, continue its
slavish existence. The serf, in the period of serfdom,
raised himself to membership in the commune. The petty
bourgeois, under the yoke of feudal absolutism, managed
to develop into a bourgeois. The modern laborer, on the
contrary, instead of rising with the progress of industry,
sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence
of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism
develops more rapidly than population and wealth. It
becomes evident, that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer
to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its
conditions of existence upon society as an over-riding law.
It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an
existence to its slave within his slavery. It cannot help
letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him,
instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live
under this bourgeoisie, their existence is no longer
compatible with society. Robert C. Tucker, 345.
By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern Capitalists,
owners of the means of social production and employers
of wage-labor. By proletariat, the class of modern
wage-laborers who, having no means of production of
their own, are reduced to selling their labor-power in order
to live. Robert C. Tucker, 335.
One class controlled all the wealth, political power and
factors of production. The other group did all the work.
Karl Marx argued that in the ancient world the slaves were
exploited by the nobles. The struggle between them went
on for centuries. In time, capitalism developed out of the
struggle between landed aristocrats and serfs. Richard M.
Hodgetts, Florida International University, Terry L. Smart,
Trinity University, San Antonio, Economics (Menlo Park,
New Jersey: Addison Wesley, 1993), 350.
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of
class struggles. Oppressor and oppressed stood in
constant opposition and now openly fight. Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party
(1911) reprinted by Brian Tierney, 338.
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5. Capitalism. “Capitalists must compete with each
other, and to do so, they are forced to lower prices, which, Key Words:
Analysis:
in turn, reduce profits. This has two effects. First, the
capitalist must exploit labor more harshly, cutting wages
to the minimum required for subsistence. Second, the
smaller producers will fail, which will lead to increased
concentrations of capital and force more and more
members of the middle class into the proletariat,
composed of people with nothing but their labor to sell.
Thus a shrinking capitalist class suffering from declining
profits will face a growing proletariat.” Karl Marx,
Mortimer Chambers, 1026.
“Capitalism therefore lays the basis for socialism by
depriving all but a few of property. The contradictions
will be resolved when the whole system fails.” Karl Marx,
Mortimer Chambers, 1026.
“The development of modern industry, therefore, cuts
from under its feet the very foundation on which the
bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the
bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own
grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are
equally inevitable.” Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels,
Manifesto of the Communist Party (1888), reprinted by
Brian Tierney, 276.
The stimulus behind empire building (colonialism) was
basically economic and that the essence of colonialism
was exploitation. Imperialist ventures, Lenin argued, grew
not just from the policies of a few but from the very
dynamics of capitalism itself. Competition produced
monopolies and lowered profits, forcing surplus capital to
seek overseas investments. The alternative, to enlarge the
domestic market by raising wages, would be
uncompetitive and thus further reduce profit. Imperialism
was therefore the last "stage” of capitalism, the product of
its internal contradictions. Mortimer Chambers, 1062.