Karl Marx (1818 – 1883)

Karl Marx (1818 – 1883)

Study of philosophy, especially G.W.F. Hegel

Karl Marx (1818 – 1883)

Study of philosophy, especially G.W.F. HegelPhilosophy of history, of historical developments:

Civilization is moving through different stages in a way that can be understood philosophically, as so many incarnations of the spirit.Idealism

Karl Marx (1818 – 1883)

Study of philosophy, especially G.W.F. HegelJournalism

Karl Marx (1818 – 1883)

Study of philosophy, especially G.W.F. HegelJournalismRadical clubs

Karl Marx (1818 – 1883)

Study of philosophy, especially G.W.F. HegelJournalismRadical clubsExile in Paris (1843-1845), where he meets

Friedrich Engels

Karl Marx (1818 – 1883)


Friedrich EngelsExile in Brussels (1845 – 1847)

Karl Marx (1818 – 1883)


Friedrich EngelsExile in Brussels (1845 – 1847)Exile in London (1849 – 1883), mostly funded by

Engels

Highgate Cemetery, London

Communist Manifesto (1848)


Revolutions of 1848


Revolutions of 1848Written in Brussels and Paris


Revolutions of 1848Written in Brussels and ParisPublished in London, in German


Revolutions of 1848Written in Brussels and ParisPublished in London, in GermanTranslated into English

Communist Manifesto, world best seller

The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production 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. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow- mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.

The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production 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. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.

Communist Manifesto, world best seller “Communists of various nationalities have assembled in London and sketched the following manifesto, to be published in the English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish languages.”

Communist Manifesto, world best seller “Communists of various nationalities have assembled in London and sketched the following manifesto, to be published in the English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish languages.” Communist Manifesto as world literature

The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production 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. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow- mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.

Communist Manifesto as world literature

Revolutionary character of the bourgeoisie, creating a globalized world

The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground – what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?



Sublime force of bourgeois capitalism

Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property.



Sublime force of bourgeois capitalism

But the bourgeoisie creates its successor: the proletariat (dialectics)

All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air.

Grand history (“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class

struggles”)


struggles”)Culminating in the present

In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole? The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties. . .

• Do you mean the property of 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, and is still destroying it daily.

• Or do you mean the modern bourgeois private property?

• But does wage-labour create any property for the labourer? Not a bit. It creates capital, i.e., that kind of property which exploits wage-labour, and which cannot increase except upon condition of begetting a new supply of wage-labour for fresh exploitation.


struggles”)Culminating in the presentOld stratum of dialogue (credo) replaced by manifesto

A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies. Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries? Two things result from this fact: I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be itself a power. II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism with a manifesto of the party itself. To this end, Communists of various nationalities have assembled in London and sketched the following manifesto, to be published in the English, French, German, Italian, Flemish and Danish languages.

Manifesto form:- Making the hidden manifest, meeting rumors,

exorcizing specters


exorcizing specters- Grand history culminating in the present


exorcizing specters- Grand history culminating in the present- Dramatic structure, including crises and turning

point, rather than dialogue or credo



point, rather than dialogue or credo- Dramatic story telling, including the use of the

sublime and a sudden reversal



point, rather than dialogue or credo- Dramatic story telling, including the use of the

sublime and a sudden reversal- Intervention, not just description: manifesto

contributes to the reversal it describes

2nd assignmentEither critical paper or creative assignment: write a Manifesto of Capitalism.Think about the form: would it be adequate to copy

formal features from the Communist Manifesto, or should you change the form as well as the content?

Would you emphasize history or ideas?What role would the crises of capitalism play in your

account?Whom would the manifesto be against? Marx?What would it be making manifest?

Historical materialism

Materialism as inversion of idealism: Marx turns Hegel upside down: economic conditions determine ideas, not the other way around.

Historical materialism

Materialism as inversion of idealism: Marx turns Hegel upside down: economic conditions determine ideas, not the other way around.

Marx turns Hegel back on his feet.

The materialist conception of history starts from the principle that production, and with production the exchange of its products, is the basis of every social order; that in every society that has appeared in history the distribution of the products, and with it the division of society into classes or estates, is determined by what is produced and how it is produced, and how the product is exchanged. According to this conception, the ultimate causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in the minds of men, in their increasing insight into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the mode of production and exchange; they are to be sought not in the philosophy but in the economics of the epoch concerned. (Engels)

Material explanation: late 18th and early nineteenth century America

slave states free states

economic commodity agriculture

social

political

ideological




social planter and dependents (vertical)

political

ideological





political quasi-aristocratic, quasi-feudal

ideological






ideological paternalism, chivalry



economic commodity agriculture subsistence farming, artisanal labor







social planter and dependents (vertical) yeoman farmers, artisans (horizontal)







political quasi-aristocratic, quasi-feudal democratic






political quasi-aristocratic, quasi-feudal democratic

ideological paternalism, chivalry independence, American (Franklin)

In order that a manner of life so well adapted to the peculiarities of capitalism could be selected at all, i.e. should come to dominate others, it had to originate somewhere, and not in isolated individuals alone, but as a way of life common to whole groups of men. This origin is what really needs explanation. Concerning the doctrine of the more naive historical materialism, that such ideas originate as a reflection or superstructure of economic situations, we shall speak more in detail below. At this point it will suffice for our purpose to call attention to the fact that without doubt, in the country of Benjamin Franklin's birth (Massachusetts), the spirit of capitalism (in the sense we have attached to it) was present before the capitalistic order. (Max Weber)

Question of origin

Question of originQuestion of determination

Marx (visionary) – Lenin (formulate doctrine;

founder of party)


founder of party)Socrates -


founder of party)Socrates - Plato (formulates doctrine; founder of

party)



party)

Jesus –



party)

Jesus – St. Paul (formulates doctrine; founder of party/church)

Karl Marx (1818 – 1883)

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Transcript of Karl Marx (1818 – 1883)