Karl Marx

# Key points in biography

After moving to Berlin in 1836 Marx joined the group the **young Hegelians**, a group of radical thinkers who developed a critique of the philosophy of George W.F. Hegel. Marx's very own theoretical system, historical materialism was developed based on an inversion of Hegel's philosophy of social change. After earning his PhD in 1941 Marx became editor of the liberal newspaper *Rheinische Zeitung* which was being published in Cologne. After being forced to resign, Marx married Jenny von Westphalen and in 1943 the two moved to Paris. There Marx was especially inspired by the study of the texts written by **Henri de Saint Simon** the founder of the Christian Socialist Movement, he also studied **Adam Smith** and **David Ricardo**. Especially from a critique of Smith and Ricardo did Marx derive his own humanist philosophy and economic theory. It was also in Paris where Marx and Engels began their friendship and collaboration which would both last for all of Marx's life. In 1845 Marx was expelled from France as response to a request by the Prussian government and they settled in Brussels. There he extended his ties to revolutionary working class movements and Engels and Marx wrote two of their most important works, the *German ideology* and the *Communist Manifesto*. In 1849 Marx moved to London. There he proceeded to publish the *Capital* (1867), "considered a masterpiece critique of capitalist economic principles and their human costs". In 1864 Marx helped to found the **International**, the International Working Men's Association.

# Contributions to Sociology

## Key Concepts

**Class**, classes are groups of individuals who share a common position in relation to the means, or *forces* of production. Each class is distinguished according to what it owns with regard to the means of production. In the Capitalist mode of production, Marx distinguished 3 different classes: *wage laborers*, *landlords* and *capitalists*.
Wage laborers are owners only of labor-power getting an income, land-owners of land getting a ground-rent and capitalists of capital getting the profit. According to Marx private ownership of the means of production leads to class relations of domination and subordination

**Class struggle** is the competition among the classes for control over the means of production, the distribution of resources and profits. Marx regards class struggle as the catalyst for social change and the central moving force of history. "The history of all hitherto existing society, is the history of class struggle" (Communist Manifesto, 1848: 473).

**Alienation**: Workers sell not only their labor-power, but also their souls, their work is devoid of any human quality and they have no control over the final product their work has produced. Whenever a human action is no different from that of a machine, the worker is dehumanized.

**Proletariat**, denominates the class of propertyless wage-earners.

**Class Consciousness**, an awareness of on the part of the working class of their common relationship to the means of production. Marx's belief was that class consciousness would be the ultimate tipping point to spark a revolution that would then lead to the overthrow of Capitalism (the last society that would ever be based on class struggle and then to the establishment of a Communist society.

**Superstructure**, Marx believed that emanating from the economic bases established by property relations with regards to the means of production, a superstructure consisting of all non-economic in nature would come into being. This structure comprised political and legal system as well as moral conceptions, traditions and the like. An individuals values and ideas would, thus, not be determined by its own subjective feelings but by the objective class position the individual occupies. (their social being determines their consciousness, Marx).

## The German Ideology

The German ideology is a reformulation of the works of Hegel. Hegel regarded *change* to be the motor of history. This change is driven by a **dialectical process**, a given idea or state of being contains in itself the seeds for a directly opposite state of being or idea and thus bears in itself an inherent conflict. As soon as this conflict is resolved the emerging idea bears again the seeds for its direct opposite and so on and so forth. This series of changes, however, is not endless according to Hegel. He believed in the perfectibility of humankind, which could be reached through God as the absolute truth and thus human history would follow a predestined course to a final utopia. Reality is only defined by the concepts and ideas that humans have, so by their knowledge, expanding and perfecting this knowledge humanity passes through various stages of development, the recognition of the one absolute truth being the final state.
In the German ideology, Marx follows Hegel in arguing that history follows a predestined course with each stage being a necessary consequence of the previous one and the final stage being freedom and self-realization. However, he departs from Hegel in arguing that it is not consciousness that fuels historical change but instead material existence. In this book we find one of Marx's key contributions, being the belief that no ideas or interests can ever exist completely independent from the physical reality. The essence of individuals would thus be determined by material, economic conditions, what and how they produce. This leads to the crucial point that the ruling ideas in each historic stage are always the ideas of the ruling class, by controlling the society's means of material production they also control the production of ideas.

Marx says that the main distinguishing factor between different stages of development is the extent of the division of labor. Division of labor first leads to a separation of industrial an commercial production from agriculture and, thus, separates town and country (leading to a conflict between their interests). The division of labor in the different branches of production then lead to a division among individuals cooperating in the production of a certain good.

"Division of labor only becomes truly such, when a division of material and mental labor appears", "Division of labor and private property are, moreover, identical expressions: in the one and the same thing is affirmed with reference to activity as is affirmed in the other with reference to the product of activity"

This development of division of labor also entails a development in ownership of material, instruments and products. Marx defines the stages of ownership as follows

1. tribal ownership (no private property)
2. ancient communal and state ownership (hardly any private property)
3. feudal or estate property (landed property with serf-labor, the labor of the individual with small capital commanding labor of others)

"The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life"

Marx clearly distinguishes himself from a top-down process, by saying that ideas always emanate from the real people, actual persons and not from an idealized image of man - however, he emphasizes that these ideas are necessarily shaped by the material conditions of men, and product of their circumstances. (Material conditions and production determine men, men determine ideas)

"Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life", "Consciousness is, therefore, from the very beginning a social product".
There is a materialistic connection of men determined by their needs and mode of production that holds them together.

"Civil Society as such only develops with the bourgeoisie", "not criticism but revolution is the driving force of history", "each new class which puts itself in the place of one ruling before it, it compelled, merely in order to carry through its aim, to represent its interest as the common interest of all members of society."

## Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

This section especially considers the essay *Alienated labor* from the 1844 manuscripts. In this essay Marx considers the phenomenon of **alienation** (or estrangement). Marx regards alienation as an inevitable consequence of capitalism as it confronts the worker as a dominating power through the process of production and the result of the labor.

Alienation comes about since the worker in the capitalist mode of production is reduced almost to a part of a machine, his work does not represent an end in itself anymore, does not provide any fulfillment or identification but is rather just a means to earn money and, thus, gain the necessary means of subsistence. The worker has no control over the production process and is therefore rather controlled by it. Since the worker is alienated from his former role as the actual producer of a product, he is now also alienated from the product itself. Through this alienation first, from the process of production and, second, from the product as result of production the worker consequently becomes alienated from himself. Dedicated to meaningless work, the worker soon becomes more machine than human and is alienated from humanity as such.

This section now looks at the essay *The Power of Money in Bourgeois Society* also from the 1844 manuscripts. Marx here analyzes how the possessor of money is subsequently transformed into anything that the money he possesses can buy. The individual is no longer distinguished by characteristics or capabilities but rather what the individual *has* becomes what the individual *is*. As such money becomes exchangeable not only for goods but also for human characteristics and thus alienates us further from one another by defining our relationships to others through the things that we are able to buy.

# References

1. ↑  Appelrouth, Scott, Desfor Edles, Laura, *Classical and Contemporary Sociological Theory*, pp. 22-25
2. ↑  Appelrouth, Scott, Desfor Edles, Laura, *Classical and Contemporary Sociological Theory*, pp. 25-31
3. ↑  Appelrouth, Scott, Desfor Edles, Laura, *Classical and Contemporary Sociological Theory*, pp. 35-37
4. ↑  Appelrouth, Scott, Desfor Edles, Laura, *Classical and Contemporary Sociological Theory*, p. 46
5. ↑  Appelrouth, Scott, Desfor Edles, Laura, *Classical and Contemporary Sociological Theory*