Transcript Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels Sociology 100

Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels
Sociology 100
As individuals express their life, so
they are.
Historical Materialism
• “Reality” is the product of activity, the
relationships and practices of people and things
• Rejection of idealism (the position that ideas
precede things)
• Truth determined historically, not philosophically
• Materialism new and old
– Old (Feuerbach): things are meaningful as objects of
our contemplation
– New (Marx): the nature of things is shaped by our
practical interaction with them
2
Classes
• Aristocracy
– Land
• Bourgeoisie
– Capital
• Proletariat
– Labor
3
Method
• “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 the
find already existing and those produced by
their activity. These premises can thus be
verified in a purely empirical way.” (149)
4
Method
• The first premise of all human history is, of
course, the existence of living human
individuals. Thus, the first act to be
established is the physical organisation of
these individuals and their consequent
relation to the rest of nature.” (149)
5
Forms of Life
• Humans “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.” (150)
6
Forms of Life
• This is “a definite form of activity of these individuals, a
definite form of expressing their life, a definite mode of
life on their part. As individuals express their life, so
they are.” (150)
– “Life is not determined by consciousness, but
consciousness by life.” (155)
– “When reality is depicted, philosophy as an independent
branch of knowledge loses its existence.” (155)
• “How far the productive forces of a nation are
developed is shown most manifestly by the degree to
which the has been carried.” (150)
– Economic development always marked by further division
of labor
7
Forms of Life
• The first historical act is the production of the
goods needed for biological life. This in turn
creates new needs.
• “The production of life, both of one’s own in
labor and of fresh life in procreation, now
appears as a double relationship:
– Natural: satisfying basic biological needs
– Social: requires cooperation, in a form determined
by the means of production (156-157)
8
Material Base of Consciousness
• “Language, life consciousness, only arises
from the need, the necessity, of intercourse
with other men. Where there exists a
relationship, it exists for me: the animal does
not enter into “relations” with anything, it
does not enter into any relation at all. For the
animal, its relation to others does not exist as
a relation. Consciousness is, therefore, from
the very beginning a social product, and
remains so as long as men exist at all.” (158)
9
Division of Labor & Alienation
• As long as a division of labor exists, the individual's
labor, & thus the individual’s consciousness, is
alienated from him/her.
•
•
•
•
•
Activities determine consciousness
Activities determined by economic relations
Need to continue activities for livelihood
Own labor becomes an alien power
The individual becomes his or her job and class (199)
– Without division of labor, it would be “possible for me to
do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the
morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evenings,
criticise after dinner, without ever becoming hunter,
fisherman, shepherd or critic.” (160)
10
History
• “The form of intercourse determined by the
existing productive forces at all previous
historical stages, and in its turn determining
these, is civil society. [...]Already here we see
how this civil society is the true source and
theatre of all history, and how absurd is the
conception of history held hitherto, which
neglects the real relationships and confines
itself to high-sounding dramas of princes and
states.” (163)
11
World History
• History has become world history
– An machine is invented in England, workers of
India and China deprived of work, the
governments of India and China overthrown
• This is not due to any abstract realization of
spirit, or philosophy, or some realization of
human nature, but to “a quite material,
empirically verifiable act”. (172)
– The spread of the global market
12
Ideology
• “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the
ruling ideas: i.e., 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, so
that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those
who lack the means of production are subject to it.
The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal
expression of the dominant material relationships...”
(172)
– “Base” and “superstructure”
– Philosophy, religion, politics, economic studies
13
Ideology
• “For each new class which puts itself in the
place of the one ruling before it, is compelled,
merely in order to carry through its aim, to
represent its interest as the common interest
of all the members of society, that is,
expressed in an ideal form: it has to give its
ideas the form of universality, and represent
them as the only rational, universally valid
ones.” (174)
14
The State
• “Through the emancipation of private property from
the community, the State has become a separate
entity, beside and outside civil society; but it is nothing
more than the form of organisation which the
bourgeois necessarily adopt both for internal and
external purposes, for the mutual guarantee of their
property and interests.”
– “The modern French, English and American writers all
express the opinion that the State exists only for the sake
of private property, so that this fact has penetrated into
the consciousness of the common man.” (187)
15
The Dialectic of History
• Each stage of history, with its dominant means
of production, carries within it the seeds of its
own destruction and the birth of the next
ruling class
– Example: Kings, lords, towns, merchants, banks
(180-184)
– England first to industrialize, embrace free trade
(184)
– Competition means other nations must also do so
to compete
16
The Dialectic of History
• Universal competition “forced all individuals to
strain their energy to the utmost. It destroyed as
far as possible ideology, religion, morality, etc.
and where it could not do this, made them into a
palpable lie. It produced world history for the
first time, insofar as it made all civilised nations
and every individual member of them dependent
for their wants on the whole world, thus
destroying the former natural exclusiveness of
separate nations.” (185)
17
The Dialectic of History
• “Since [political and cultural] conditions
correspond at every stage to the simultaneous
development of the productive forces, their
history is at the same time the history of the
evolving productive forces taken over by each
new generation, and is, therefore, the history
of the development of the forces of the
individuals themselves.” (195)
18