Transcript Marx (1) - York University

Lecture 2
• Karl Marx (1)
KARL MARX 1818-1883
Marx’s Life
• Karl Marx was born on May 5, 1818 , in the city of Trier in
Prussia.
• His family was Jewish, but converted to Protestantism in 1824.
• The family was petty-bourgeois; his father was a lawyer.
• He was a law student at the university of Bonn at the age of
17
• In 1841 he received his doctoral degree [age: 23]
• After graduating from university, Marx moved to Bonn, hoping
to become a professor.
• However, the reactionary policy of the government made
Marx abandon the idea of an academic career
• Marx was persecuted by the Prussian state.
• He moved to Paris first [1843] and then to
Brussels [1845] and finally England [1849]
where settled until he died at the age of 65
[1883].
Marx had an enormous effect on the
Recent History
• Some important historical events associated
with Marx’s ideas:
• The Russian Revolution [1917]
• The revolution in China, [1949]
• Until the 1990s, nearly four out of every ten
people in the world lived under governments
that at least claimed to follow Marx’s ideas.
• In this lecture I will be using an essay by Paul
Paolucci, a Professor at the University of
Kentucky, as an example of a Marxist analysis
of society.
– Please note that by assigning this article I do not
necessarily mean that I and You should agree with
his views!
Two common errors!
• In explanations of human behavior
1.the reversal of causal mechanisms (the
camera obscura effect), and
2.the fallacy of individualistic reductionism
What is the “camera obscura effect”?
• An image and explanation of the social world
that presents a vision of it that is the inverse
of its real historical development.
• For example, as we discuss next, that
individuals relationships and ties are shaped
by their ideas (e.g. social order is based on
consensus over values and beliefs)
• On several occasions Marx himself used the
metaphor to illustrate the mistaken views of
both social thinkers and ordinary people in
explaining social life.
Hegel in the camera obscura!
• In his essay “Contribution to the Critique of
Hegel’s Philosophy of Law”, Marx gives us an
example of this metaphor in the Hegel’s
idealism:
Hegel’s Idealism (according to Marx):
1. Ideas have their own independent existence,
2. The relationships of human beings are
products of their ideas,
3. Ideas constitute the true bonds of human
society.
Hegel turned right side up!
• For Marx:
• “on the contrary the ideal is nothing else than
the material world reflected by the human
mind…”
The fallacy of individualistic
reductionism
• Means explaining social phenomena (e.g. the
market economy) as an outcome of an
assumed natural characteristics of individuals
(e.g. human beings like to trade, exchange and
compete)
An Example:
• Poverty (as a social phenomenon) analyzed
from the Conservative and Liberal points of
view.
Modern conservatism
• Assumption:
• people are justly rewarded for both the merit
and the functional importance of the work
they do.
• Poverty: reducible to individual level
explanations (e.g. lack of accomplishment,
intelligence, effort).
Three conservative themes:
• 1. society at large reflects the nature of
humans
• 2. the market is the inevitable result of the
naturally determined human propensity to
barter and trade.
• 3. Social inequality is an inevitable outcome of
our natural traits.
• Therefore there are limits as to what can be
done about it.
• Governmental intervention can only hurt and
unjustly penalize the meritorious.
The liberal frame
• Holds that individuals tend to be victims of
1. (economic capital) poverty
2. (human or social capital ): limited access to
hegemonic language, mathematical, and
academic skills
3. (culture of poverty) access to drugs, sex, and
other supposedly morally dysfunctional
enticements
• The result is a general inability to compete
• Since liberalism often admits that the market
cannot rid itself of poverty some sort of
activist state intervention is advocated.
Liberalism and Conservatism
Compared:
• The Shared assumption:
• Competition for resources is a normal state of
human affairs.
• They differ only to the extent that either the
market or the state, are entrusted to assure
“the highest level of good to the largest
number of people.”
Marx’s View:
• He asked us to suspend the question of the
extent to which human imperfection, or
otherwise error, produces social malaise,
poverty, war.
• He encouraged analysts to consider the extent
to which social phenomena are structurally
and historically produced.
Historical Analysis:
• Capitalism is a historical Product and not the
outcome of humans’ natural propensities to
compete and trade
• How was capitalism put in place?
• Most often by force, i.e. with a great deal of
death, violence, and expropriation of feudal
peasants, ordinary urban plebs, and modern
indigenous peoples from their lands and/or
means of production.
• The present case of East Timor, according to
Paolucci, demonstrates the historical use of
violence to keep the world-economy
expanding in the present.
The genocide taking place in East
Timor.
• Fearing Timorese independence would
“destabilize” the region, military leaders of
Indonesia, with massive assistance from the
United States (as well as Australia, Japan,
France, Britain, Canada, and other core
societies) invaded this tiny island nation,
killing upwards of one third of the population
between 1975 and 1998.
The historical Background:
• The CIA worked to destabilize the Indonesian
government, succeeding in a 1965 military
coup, replacing Sukarno with Suharto, and
resulting in between half to one million
deaths, and 750,000 imprisoned within an
eight month period.
Why the need for a military coup in
1965?
• After WWII, under Sukarno, Indonesia was
reluctant to handover its resources to
multinational corporate interests.
Why the invasion of Timor?
• The Timor Gap Treaty, signed by Indonesia and
Australia, consigns East Timor’s oil to western
multinational interests.
“The Primitive Accumulation”
• The violent origin of Capitalism, is studied in
Marx’s work “Capital” under the concept of
“the primitive accumulation”
The legend of the first capitalist!
• Marx, sarcastically, mocks the idea put forth
by people that once upon a time “in times
long gone-by there were two sorts of people;
one, the diligent, intelligent, and, above all,
frugal elite; the other, lazy rascals, spending
their substance.”
• Thus it came to pass that the former sort
accumulated wealth, and the latter sort had at
last nothing to sell except their own skins.
Who was the first
capitalist?
• To generate and
accumulate capital
one needs to make
profit, and to make
profit one needs to
have capital to
invest.
• Vicious Circle 
Profit
Accumulated
Capital
Accumulated
Capital
Profit
How to get of the vicious circle?
• only by supposing a primitive accumulation
preceding capitalistic accumulation (not the
result of the capitalistic mode of production,
but its starting point.
• Primitive Accumulation  profit -capital
profit  ….
How the “primitive accumulation” was
gained?
• By the expropriation of the great mass of the
people from the soil, from the means of
subsistence, and from the means of labor, this
fearful and painful expropriation of the mass
of the people forms the prelude to the history
of capital.
• It comprises a series of forcible methods
Structural Analysis of poverty
• Paoluuci:
• “Poverty is a historically constant and
structurally general feature of capitalism.”
• Thus we need to analyze the structure of
Capitalism.
• Creation of surplus-value (profit)
– Created by the working class
– Appropriated by the capitalist class
Creation of Surplus-Value
• The idea that in the capitalist mode of
production, the socio-structural constant is
creation of value, and thus wealth, by the
many and its appropriation to the few, was
developed by Marx in his work “Capital”
Buying in order to sell M-C-M
• When money is invested as capital the goal is
to increase the money (profit):
• When we buy in order to sell, Marx writes:
• “the movement becomes interminable,”
• $100  $110  $120 .....
• money ends the movement only to begin it
again the circulation of capital therefore has
no limits.
• M-C-M' ...this increment or excess over the
original value I call "surplus-value."
• Marx argues that surplus-value (profit) is created
by what he calls surplus labor:
• Assuming one hour work is paid $30
The number
of hours worked
8 hours
•
240$
The number of
of hours needed to work
-
5 hours
150$
= 3 hours (surplus labour)
= 90 $ (profit)
The number of hours needed to work
• what a worker needs in average for living, i.e.,
food, house, etc..
• In terms of salary it means what in average a
worker is paid.
Criminalization of the Population
•
•
•
•
Paolucci argues:
1) Criminality (who commits crime)
2) Crime (what behavior is criminal)
are the outcomes of social conditions rather
than “individual responsibility.”
Who commits crime: Crime in the USA
• Population in jail, on probation, or on parole
(from 1980 to the mid-1990’s)
• one-third of black men,
• one-eighth of Latino, and
• one-fifth of white men in their 20’s,
The racial factor
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Drug users:
Whites 75%
Blacks 13%.
Percent of arrests for drug possession,
blacks 35%
Percent of all convictions,
Blacks: 55%
Crime and Criminalization
• The origin of Crime is the Criminalization of
some groups by the dominant groups in
society.
• Crime’s function:
• to bring more and more of the population
under some sort of bureaucratic control,
surveillance, and discipline
The rich gets richer and the poor gets
more prison!
• The state has used police as a method for sending
the poor to prison (street “criminals”) while
ignoring the more socially harmful behavior of
the capitalist class (white collar and corporate
crime).
Drugs and Crime
In the nineteenth century, drugs such as opium
and morphine were commonly used
throughout society, and addiction was viewed
as a personal problem.
Until certain users were seen as problems
• In the United States around 1900, the drug
addicts were middle-class women and
returning northern soldiers addicted to
morphine about 2% of the population, a
higher rate than today.
• Late in the 1800’s opium smoking was
associated with the Chinese, and attempts to
control this group as well as their behavior
were to provide the justification for their
legislative controls
The late 1960’s
• Hispanics, blacks, and young people started to
demand the US stop imperialist warfare and
extend democratic participation,
• Each group was then associated with a
particular drug and its presumed/claimed
evils.
“war on drugs”
• Broadened the state’s exercise of techniques
of maintaining class domination by increasing
repression of these groups
• Policing and prisons are there to make sure
that the working class does not threaten
property or, more importantly, capitalist
property relations.
Marxists have generally agreed that the state is
created with the primary function of securing
the conditions of constant accumulation of
capital.
Marx’s and Engels’ assertion:
• in The Communist Manifesto: “The executive
of the modern State is but a committee for
managing the common affairs of the whole
bourgeoisie.”
Paolucci’s view contested
• not all Marxists agree with it.
• Neo-Marxists – as you should study in the
winter term–believe that the state has both a
“relative autonomy” and at the same time an
“ethical” or “educative” function.
Marx’s Materialist View:
•
Paolucci’s views (shared by many Marxists)
on poverty and crime are based on the
following assumptions developed by Marx:
Marx’s frame of analysis
• 1. Social structure is defined in terms of relations of
production (economic relationships)
• 2. In the Capitalist system the main relation of
production is between the Capitalist class and the
working class
• 3. There is an inevitable conflict between these two
classes. (e.g. “poverty is an outcome of this conflict)
•

Continues…..
Continue…
• 4. Individuals’ ideas (e.g. we like to compete!) are the
products of social structure rather than being part of
human nature
• 5. The nature of the state, the law, and social
institutions in general depend on the social structure
(e.g. crime, criminality and criminal law are all
created in order to promote the interests of the
capitalist class).
• Here are the graphics!
Mode of Production
Forces of
Production
Legal, Political,
Ideal
Relations of
Production
Class conflicts
Forces of Production
The Means of
Production
land, machines,
tools
Labor
Power
Raw Materials
The Relations of Production
• In the capitalist system this consists in the
ownership of either:
•
The means of
production Or
Capitalist
Class
Labor
Power
Working
Class
Super
Structure
Legal,
Political,
Ideal,
consciousness
Means of
Production:
Steam power,
Big factories
Relations of
Production:
Capitalist
Relations
Structure
In his words”
• “In the social production of their existence,
men enter into definite relations……
• Real foundation, on which arises a legal and
political superstructure and to which
corresponds definite forms of social
consciousness.” (Marx)