Locke and Marx:
The Logic of Capitalism
What is the relationship
between capitalism and
democracy? Do you have
to have one to have
the other?
Is capitalism a triumph of
the human spirit?
Or is it a complete
degradation of the value
and meaning of human
life?
We hold these truths to be selfevident, that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator
with certain unalienable Rights, that
among these are Life, Liberty and the
pursuit of Happiness. That to secure
these rights, Governments are
instituted among Men, deriving their
just powers from the consent of the
governed, That whenever any Form of
Government becomes destructive of
these ends, it is the Right of the People
to alter or to abolish it, and to institute
new Government, laying its foundation
on such principles and organizing its
powers in such form, as to them shall
seem most likely to effect their Safety
and Happiness.
We hold these truths to be selfevident, that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator
with certain unalienable Rights, that
among these are Life, Liberty and the
pursuit of Happiness. That to secure
these rights, Governments are
instituted among Men, deriving their
just powers from the consent of the
governed, That whenever any Form of
Government becomes destructive of
these ends, it is the Right of the People
to alter or to abolish it, and to institute
new Government, laying its foundation
on such principles and organizing its
powers in such form, as to them shall
seem most likely to effect their Safety
and Happiness.
John Locke
Inventor of liberal democracy
(1632 - 1704)
Thomas Hobbes on gov’t

Human beings in the State of Nature
Human beings are naturally selfish, competitive, and
ruthless, but they are rational

Purpose of government
To protect us from one another; keep us
from behaving in the savage way we
would in nature

Form of government recommended
Absolute monarchy (totalitarianism)
Locke on government

Human beings in the State of Nature
Human beings are naturally moral, cooperative, free and
rational

Purpose of government
To protect our natural God-given rights to life, freedom, and
property. Otherwise, it should intrude in your life as little as
possible [laissez-faire]

Form of government recommended
Liberal democracy
“Self-evident” truths

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



All human beings are created equal, and in the state of
nature they tend to be moral, cooperative, and benevolent
Government serves a rational purpose, and should exist by
rational consensus
Its purpose is to protect the natural rights of individuals
Chief among these rights are life, freedom and private
property
Apart from protecting rights, government should keep its
nose out of people’s business. [laissez-faire]
If the government fails in protecting the people’s right, the
people have a right to overthrow it
The Declaration of Independence (1776)
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that
all men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that among these are Life,
Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Locke:
“Life, liberty,
& property”
The Labour Theory of Value
Locke: Anything into which I mix my labour becomes
my property.
According to Locke, the reason you have a natural right
to your property, what makes something your
property, is the work you have put into it. Your work
(investment of energy, effort) makes it legitimately a
part of you or an extension of you, your own,
something you own.
The Labour Theory of Value
Locke considered many things other than land and
personal possessions to be our “private property” –
including our lives themselves and basically anything
on which one expends one’s energy, for example
A relationship
2. A creative work (art, an idea, “intellectual
property,” etc)
3. The things one does in private (sex, religion, etc)
1.
Locke’s America
In the 1680s ...
Almost 100 years before the
Declaration of Independence;
Huron tribes where Toronto is today
Locke often uses America for an example
of “man in the state of nature”
At that time America was a land of
boundless opportunity for Europeans
looking to mix their labour with the land
and create property for themselves
This is probably one of the reasons Locke
was so popular in the American colonies ;
his ideas could be easily applied there
What is property?
Life, liberty, pursuit of property?
One could argue that when John Locke and Thomas
Jefferson came up with liberal democracy, the
freedoms they had in mind to protect were not really
the freedom to amass as much wealth as you want, to
exploit as many people as you need to in the process,
and to impinge on the freedoms enjoyed by people
even in other countries if it will allow you to continue
to amass wealth.
What Locke couldn’t foresee ...

Increasing scarcity of resources

Industrialization of workforce

Emergence of a class system which made inequalities
hereditary (education, capital, etc)

Hereditary and capitalist property that is not actually
based on labour, and where the owner may mix almost
nothing of his body or soul into the resource he is
exploiting
By the middle of the 1800s
a number of people were asking themselves ...

What if the assumptions of liberalism – that humans are
naturally moral and cooperative, that property is the result
of labour, that individual freedom is the most important
thing there is – are actually misguided?

What if liberal democracy doesn’t necessarily serve to bring
happiness to the greatest number of people, and in fact has
come to gloss over what is actually an oppressive system
that allows most people to live powerless and largely
meaningless lives while a small number of other people
exploit them?
Next week: Debate
Resolved:
Private property*
should be abolished
* Private property, in Marx’s sense, as
opposed to personal property.
Marx
What do you
know about
Marx?
Marx
German philosopher
(1818 – 1883)
You don’t know
shit about Marx.
Karl Marx

Marx disapproved of capitalism.

Marx hated class inequality.

Just like Locke and Thomas Jefferson,
Marx actively advocated revolution
to overthrow unjust government.

Marx wanted the workers (as
opposed to an elite) to have the
power and control over their own
labour and the products of it.
Karl Marx

Marx did not believe there should be
a single strong dictator.

Marx was not against freedom of
speech.

Marx did not think everyone should
dress the same or be the same.

Marx would not have liked the
centralized bureaucracies of the
Soviet Union and Red China.
Karl Marx
Marx on human nature:
Marx didn’t think that human
beings were born with any
“state of nature” attributes or
rights – he thought that social
and economic relations created
human nature, and changing the
structure of society would
change human nature.
Isn’t Marxism dead?
With the collapse of the
Soviet Union and the new
capitalism of China and
Cuba, hasn’t Marx been
proven wrong forever?
The Critique of Capitalism
Even if his historical predictions
were wrong and the two most
famous governments created in
his name both became
oppressive regimes that denied
human freedom, Marx’s analysis
of capitalism is still the most
complex and detailed ever made,
and one that is still read and
studied by friends and enemies
of capitalism alike.
The Critique of Capitalism
Capitalist democracy is often
assumed to serve the best
interests of the individual.
In what ways might that be a
false assumption?
Crash course in Marxist ideas

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

Private property
Bourgeoisie and proletariat
Work: exploitation, alienation, the means of production,
opiates
Exploitation and alienation
Division of labour
Commodification
Private Property
Locke (liberal democracy): Private
property is one of the three essential
rights that government is there to
protect.
Marx (communism): Private property is
the first thing a good government must
abolish.
“Personal” Property
Marx sometimes distinguished between “private property”
and “personal property.”
Personal property is stuff you actually use in your life: your
car, your furniture, your appliances, maybe even your house
and your land if you actually use it (e.g., for raising
vegetables).
Private property is something you own but don’t use (except
as an investment or in order to make profit or interest); often
other people use it, e.g. an apartment building, a factory, a
plantation worked by slaves, etc.
Private Property
Marx didn’t want to abolish personal property;
he wanted to abolish private property.
Why?
Private Property

Marx thought that private property was the main thing
that made possible the latest version of a division of
human beings into HAVES and HAVE-NOTS. There has been
three basic forms of this division in the course of human
history:
1.
Owners/slaves (ancient world)
2.
Nobility/serfs (medieval world)
3.
Bourgeoisie/proletariat (modern world)
Bourgeoisie & proletariat
(owners)
With thanks to Nathan Radke
(workers)
Pimps & prostitutes
Exploitation
The pimp makes money from the labour of the prostitute
 Alienation
The prostitute is separated from her fellow workers, from true
investment in the work she does, and from her own body
 Means of production
The pimp “owns” the neighbourhood or the brothel
 Opiates
Rampant drug use

Bourgeoisie & proletariat
(owners)




(workers)
Exploitation
We have to sell our bodies and our work, the owners make the
profit
Alienation
Most of us don’t feel our work belongs to us; we may not put
ourselves into our work or be allowed to make it our own
Means of production
We don’t have control over the company, the factory, the store,
the restaurant etc
Opiates
Religion and other forms of fantasy & escapism keep us from
dwelling on these unhappy facts of our present real existence
The bourgeoisie has only
one ideal: exploitation
“The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all
feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley
feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and 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 fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in
the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into
exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered
freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Free Trade. In
one word, for exploitation that was veiled by religious and political illusions
it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.”
- Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto
False Consciousness
But – this exploitation and greed are not out in the open all the
time. Instead, Marx argued, the actual social domination inherent
in the system is hidden, reinterpreted, legitimized, and
“naturalized” by capitalist culture.
The workers live in a state of false consciousness, believing that
they can become owners and that this is a worthwhile ambition,
believing that the capitalist system is natural and inevitable,
perhaps believing the absolute value of work gives them moral
status, and believing that the commodity relationships that inform
life under capitalism are real, natural, and eternal, when in fact
they are created by humans, disconnected from social and
material reality, and can be changed.
The Division of Labour
The Division of Labour
The Division of Labour
In making each individual responsible for only a small part of
the production or service process, capitalism distributes and
mystifies responsibility and control of what happens. No one
is entirely responsible for – or often even aware of – all the
steps in the process.
This takes away from the meaningfulness and reality of what
is actually happening, and from each person’s feeling of
emotional involvement and personal investment in the
labour.
We are oblivious to the origins, ultimate motives, and final
consequences of the work we do.
The Division of Labour
Marx: “With the division of labour the worker is
depressed spiritually and physically to the condition of a
machine.”
Efficiency or expediency are prized above human potential
and spirit.
Money is more important than a meaningful existence.
“Progress” is at the expense of full and meaningful work for
people during their actual lives.
Commodities
A commodity is a good or service thought of in terms of its
exchange value as though that were its intrinsic value.
= $1.50
= $250.00/hr
=
= $11/hour
=
Commodification
Disregards the real use value of a good or service to
concentrate on its exchange value
Commodification
Ignores the real labour value that went into a good
or service
Commodification
Fetishizes the products of labour and the relations between
the commodities at the expense of the labour itself and the
relations between the humans involved
Commodity fetishism gives commodities a mystified status that can be
almost religious and that abstracts them from the human meaning they
have in the real ways they are produced and used
= $2.00
What’s so bad about capitalism?
1.
Private property
is wrong, because it is not based on labour, because it wastes
resources, and because nobody should own anything that doesn’t
also “own” them
2.
Workers
are exploited and alienated from their labour – you are a prostitute
3.
The division of labour
removes individuals from the full meaning, the motives and origins,
and the consequences of their work – you don’t experience the
chicken dying and you don’t experience the customer eating it
4.
Commodification
of goods and services empties them of their material and human
value and meaning – wake up and smell the Starbucks
What’s so bad about capitalism?
Capitalism turns you into a machine and a commodity in the
name of profit. It has no belief in the value of a human being
beyond their exchange value. It has no higher goals for
humanity. It divides humans into haves and have-nots and
tends to keep them there. It makes greed and exploitation the
ideals of humankind.
The Socialist Future
Marx viewed social history as a series of socioeconomic
systems that gradually replace each other:
slavery ==> feudalism ==> capitalism ==> socialism
Under socialism, the means of production would be held
collectively, the welfare of the people would come before
profit, and each citizen would share in society's resources and
be expected to contribute to society: "from each according to
his abilities, to each according to his needs.“
Workers of the world unite!
Marx called for a revolution to abolish private
property and to redistribute social, economic, and
political power.
Those who do the work would “own” the means of
production (farms, forests, factories, patents,
technologies, etc). Everyone would work and
everyone would share in the fruits of labour in this
life.
Some people tried it
What happened?
So now that Marxism is dead
... and “communism” has been proved wrong in Russia and
China and Cuba ...
There is no alternative to
being a pimp or a prostitute

Social institutions under capitalism reinforce the existing
power structures, which are based squarely on exploitation

The media and our culture tell us there is no other
acceptable and viable way of living as humans
(capitalism is the one true “world religion” today)

Resistance (from hippies to hiphop) is difficult, as capitalism
embraces and exploits even the methods and expressions
of resistance
There is no alternative to
being a pimp or a prostitute

At least up to middle management – in fact, if we work for
anyone else at all – we are with very few exceptions living
the lives of alienated prostitutes in our work
 Most people’s main goal in life is to
become a pimp instead of a prostitute
Be sure you understand
(not just memorize) these terms and concepts:
Assumptions of liberal democracy (“self-evident
truths”)
 Locke’s labour theory of value
 Personal property vs private property (Marx)
 Bourgeoisie and proletariat
 Exploitation and alienation
 Division of labour
 Commodification (as something bad)

Quiz (worth 2 marx)
Quiz (worth 2 marx)
1. What does Locke think property is? How does this
differ from what property actually is under
modern capitalism?
2. Marx distinguished between private property and
personal property. Explain.
3. Explain each of these concepts in terms of Marx’s
view of capitalist labour: Exploitation, Alienation,
Means of Production, Opiates.
4. What is bad about the division of labour?