Marx on the RPF

Bio

Karl Heinrich Marx was an influential German political philosopher and
social theorist. Although Marx addressed many issues in his career as a
journalist and philosopher, he is most famous for his analysis of history
in terms of class conflict, summed up in his assertion that, "The interests
of capitalists and wage-laborers are diametrically opposed to each other"
(Wage Labor and Capitol). His writings formed the basis of later
communist and socialist movements.

Marx was born into a progressive Jewish family in Prussian Trier (now in
Germany). His father Herschel, descending from a long line of rabbis,
was a lawyer; his uncle Samuel was - like many of his ancestors - chief
rabbi of Trier. As advancement opportunities for Jews were rather limited
in early 19th century Prussia, and as they were not extremely religious,
Herschel decided to change his name to Heinrich and convert the family
to the Prussian state religion of Lutheranism, after which his legal career
prospered. The Marx family was very liberal and the Marx household
hosted many visiting intellectuals and artists through Karl's early life.

Education
Marx received good marks in high school, and enrolled in the University of
Bonn in 1833 to study law, at his father's behest. Bonn was a notorious
party school, and Marx did poorly as he spent most of his time singing
songs in beer halls. The next year, his father made him transfer to the far
more serious and academically oriented Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität
in Berlin (now known as the Humboldt University). There, his interests
turned to philosophy, much to his father's dismay, and he joined the circle
of students and young professors known as the "Young Hegelians", led
by Bruno Bauer.

It would be difficult to understand the genesis of Marx’s thought without
understanding something of Hegel, who was extremely influential on
German philosophy, and who had only recently died in 1831. But there is
no space here for a fair treatment of Hegel. See the Internet Encyclopedia
of Philosophy’s article on Hegel for more information. In a nutshell, Hegel
viewed history as an inexorable conversation, progression, or
reconcilliation of opposites. Virtually any proposition, or even a world
event, could be viewed as an initial position, or thesis. Against this thesis,
a counter-proposition, or reactionary event, would arise: the antithesis.
These two extremes (as Hegel viewed them) would be resolved into a
compromising solution: the synthesis. This synthesis would itself
constitute a brand new thesis, which would be eventually countered by a
new antitheses, etc., etc. But Hegel viewed these different movements as
simply cultural manifestations of the will of the State, and in fact equated
the State with “the Spirit of the People itself” (from The Philosophy of
History). Thus society would progress through this historical “dialectic,” by
a staggering march, toward the realization of the State as the “Absolute
Spirit” of a culture. (This should explain, at least somewhat, how Hegel’s
philosophy could have led to political systems so radically opposed as
Nazi fascism and Marxist communism, which both required virtually
absolute state authority.)

The Hegelian establishment (known as the Right Hegelians) in place at
the University maintained that the series of historical dialectics (or social
progressions) had been completed, and that Prussian society as it
existed was the culmination of all social development to date, with an
extensive civil service system, good universities, industrialization, and
high employment. The Young Hegelians with whom Marx was associated
believed that there were still further dialectical changes to come, and that
the Prussian society of the time was far from perfect as it still contained
pockets of poverty, government censorship was in place, and non-
Lutherans suffered from religious discrimination.

Career
When his mentor Bauer was dismissed from the philosophy faculty in
1842, Marx abandoned philosophy for journalism and went on to edit the
Rheinische Zeitung, a radical Cologne newspaper. After the newspaper
was later shut in 1843, in part due to Marx's conflicts with government
censors, Marx returned to philosophy, turned to political activism, and
worked as a free-lance journalist. Marx soon moved, however, something
he would have to do often as a result of his radical views.

Marx first moved to France, where he re-evaluated his relationship with
Bauer and the Young Hegelians, and wrote On the Jewish Question,
mostly a critique of current notions of civil-rights and political
emancipation. It was in Paris that he met and began working with his life-
long collaborator Friedrich Engels, who called Marx's attention to the
situation of the working class, and guided Marx's interest in economics.
After he was forced to leave Paris for his writings, he and Engels moved
to Brussels, Belgium.

There they co-wrote The German Ideology, a critique of the philosophy of
Hegel and the Young Hegelians, and then Marx wrote The Poverty of
Philosophy (1847), a critique of French socialist thought. These works lay
the foundation for Marx and Engels' most famous work, The Communist
Manifesto, first published on February 21, 1848, which was
commissioned by the Communist League (formerly, the League of the
Just), an organization of German émigrés whom Marx had met in London.

That year Europe experienced revolutionary upheaval; a working-class
movement seized power from King Louis Philippe in France and invited
Marx to return to Paris. When this government collapsed in 1849, Marx
moved back to Cologne and restarted the Rheinische Zeitung, only to be
swiftly expelled again. Marx's final move was to London.

In London Marx dedicated himself, among other things, to historical and
theoretical works, the most famous of which is the multi-volume Das
Kapital (Capital: A Critique of Political Economy), the first volume of which
was published in 1867. Throughout the London period of Marx's life his
family were generally impoverished and depended on generous
contributions from Engels to get by.

Marx was married to Jenny von Westphalen, who came from an
aristocratic background. They had many children, several of whom died
young - perhaps from the family's extreme poverty and poor living
conditions in London. Their daughter Eleanor (1855-1898), born in
London, was also a committed socialist and helped edit her father's
works. Jenny Marx died in December 1881. Marx himself, who had
suffered deteriorating health for the last decade of his life and had
travelled to various European spas to attempt a cure, died in London in
1883, and is buried in Highgate Cemetery. The remaining volumes of
Capital were published by Engels posthumously from notes.

Influences on Marx's philosophy
In general, Marx's thought has been influenced by two often contradictory
elements: determinism and activism. On the one hand, Marx believed that
he could study history and society scientifically, and derive laws that
explain and predict the course of history and the outcome of social
conflicts. Some followers of Marx conclude that a communist revolution is
inevitable. On the other hand, Marx famously asserted that "philosophers
have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it,"
and dedicated himself to trying to change the world. Consequently, some
followers of Marx conclude that dedicated revolutionaries must organize
Social Change.

Marx's theory, which he called "historical materialism" and which Engels
called "scientific socialism" or "dialectical materialism", is based on
Hegel's claim that history occurs through a dialectic, or clash, of opposing
forces. Engels' book, The Condition of the Working Class in England in
1844, led Marx to conceive of the historical dialectic in terms of class
conflict, and to see the modern working class as the most progressive
force for revolution.

Marx's philosophy
The notion of labor is fundamental in Marx's thought. Basically, Marx
argued that it is human nature to transform nature, and he calls this
process of transformation "labor" and the capacity to transform nature
labor power. For Marx, this is a natural capacity for a physical activity, but it
is intimately tied to the human mind and human imagination. But Marx
also argued that work is a social activity, and that the conditions and
forms under and through which people work are socially determined and
change over time.

Marx's analysis of history is based on his distinction between the means
of production, literally those things—like land, natural resources, and
technology—that are necessary for the production of material goods, and
the social relations of production, the social relationships people enter
into as they acquire and use the means of production. Marx understood
the "social relations of production" to comprise not only relations among
individuals, but between or among groups of people, or classes.

Marx was especially concerned with how people relate to that most
fundamental resource of all, their own labor-power. For Marx, the
possibility that one may give up ownership of one's own labor—one's
capacity to transform the world—is tantamount to being “alienated” from
one's own nature; it is a spiritual loss. “The worker places his life in the
object; but now it no longer belongs to him, but to the object” which is
given over to those who own the means of production (“Estranged Labor,”
Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844). Marx felt that this, quite
literally, resulted in man’s fundamental “loss of his self.”

Marx argued that this alienation of labor power is precisely the defining
feature of capitalism. Prior to capitalism, markets existed in Europe where
producers and merchants bought and sold commodities. According to
Marx, a capitalist mode of production developed in Europe when labor
itself became a commodity - when peasants became free to sell their
own labor-power, and needed to sell their own labor because they no
longer possessed their own land or tools necessary to produce. People
sell their labor-power when they accept compensation in return for
whatever work they do in a given period of time (in other words, they are
not selling the product of their labor, but their capacity to work). In return
for selling their labor power they receive money, which allows them to
survive. Those who must sell their labor power to live are "proletarians."
The person who buys the labor power, generally someone who does own
the land and technology to produce, is a "capitalist" or "bourgeois." While
the proletarians inevitably outnumber the capitalists, the capitalists
invariably possess the great majority of the means of production.

Marx described unchecked capitalism as an inevitable cycle of growth,
collapse, and growth, and believed it would be punctuated by increasingly
severe crises. Moreover, he believed that the long-term consequence of
this process was necessarily the empowerment of the capitalist class
and the impoverishment of the proletariat. He believed that were the
proletariat to seize the means of production, they would encourage social
relations that would benefit everyone equally, and a system of production
less vulnerable to periodic crises. In general, Marx thought that peaceful
negotiation of this problem was impracticable, and that a massive, well-
organized and violent revolution was required. Ultimately, he theorized
that to maintain the socialist system, a proletarian dictatorship must be
established and maintained.

The economy, for Marx, would have reached its just equilibrium when
labor and distribution of goods went according to the principle: "From
each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!" (Critique of
the Gotha Programme).

Marx’s influence on human rights philosophy is interesting. On the one
hand, he advocated nothing less than the abolishment of personal
property rights and the institution of forced labor. But he argued that these
would in fact help man restore his dignity, worth, and self. The only thing
that would suffer, he felt, was the very “bourgeois individuality, bourgeois
independence, and bourgeois freedom” which perpetuated the
capitalistic system so harmful to the masses (Communist Manifesto). On
the other hand, Marx’s arguments for the abolition of these traditional
Lockean freedoms has encouraged the support of social or cultural
rights, which, because they represent the whole of society, are felt by
some philosophers to be more important than the rights of a single
individual, at least in many senses. Indeed, the repressive communist
governments of Stalinist Russia and Maoist China were ostensibly
founded upon some of the same principles as the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights, whose Preamble argues for the “freedom from fear and
want” of the “common people”—as opposed to emphasizing the rights of
the elite owners of the means of production.

(Excerpts adapted and portrait taken from the Wikipedia article on Marx. Click here
for complete article.)

Works

Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844

Wage Labor and Capitol

The Communist Manifesto

Capital, Volume I

Critique of the Gotha Programme