Marxism – universally admired by intellectuals, misunderstood by most people

Few thinkers have had such a profound impact on the world

1.5 bln people, 1/3 of the world’s population at mid-20 Century, affected

**metaphor: contrast between Marx’s  two graves in England
 1st – modest, flat
 represents Marx in his time
 2nd – huge statue, giant beard
represents what Marx has become over time; larger than life; mythic
 
 
Historical Materialism

 theory of human history, progress
 
 what is the engine of history???
  class struggle!!!!!

what determines social organization, forms of authority?

The Dialectic
 thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis

Marx, Engels
writing in England mid-19th Century
 conditions??
  urban slums, industrialization
  rise of working class
 

Capitalism latest stage of economic production

Previous stages?

Marx’s Critique of Capitalism

End of Capitalism?

Key Concepts:
 Class –
bourgeoisie
  proletariat
  petty bourgeoisie
  lumpen proletariat

alienation - from what?

 surplus value/expropriation of

 commodification (of labor)

 division of labor
 
 capital as a collective product

Program of the Communists:
 (101) abol priv prop, progressive income tax, abol of inheritance, state owned single bank, state owned transport/communications, state owned industry, industrialization of agriculture, free public education

Criticisms of the bourgeoisie:
 abolition of private property

 the family

 socialized (and industrial) education

 marriage vs. “community of women”

 nationality
 
 
Key passages from The Communist Manifesto:

86 – The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.

87 – The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.

87 – The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe.

87 – In place of the old wants, satisfied by the productions of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations.

88- The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls…it creates a world after its own image.

89 – But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons – the modern working class – the proletarians.

95- The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all the other proletarian parties:  formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.

95- The distinguishing feature of the Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property…

96- We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring property….which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity and independence.
  Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property of the petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property that preceded the bourgeois form?  There is no need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent already destroyed it…

Why didn’t revolution happen in the West?
 
 

Why did it happen in the East???