Marx in 60 Minutes E-Book

Walther Ziegler

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 68

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Never before or since has a single philosopher produced such a tremendous effect as Karl Marx. His great vision of a society without private property was heeded worldwide and had huge historical effects. Allegiance to his ideas was proclaimed by revolutionaries, parties, governments and states. Marxism spread all around the globe. Marxist revolutions occurred in countries as different as Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba, Nicaragua and Mozambique as well as many others, until at one point almost a third of humanity were living under communism. But some hundred years after Marx’s death the communist world that he had inspired fell apart. After the fall of the Iron Curtain many claimed that Marx had been entirely in error and that the sole viable economic system is really capitalism after all. But the global economic and financial crises of recent decades have profoundly shaken belief in the power of the market to regulate itself. It has become ever clearer that capitalism does indeed display the structural flaws that Marx described in his main work, “Capital”. Certain of Marx’s predictions, such as the forming of powerful economic monopolies and the ever-growing gulf between rich and poor, have already come true. His acute critique of capitalism is, then, more relevant today than ever. There is no question but that Marx still has a lot to say to us. The book “Marx in 60 Minutes” explains in clear and perspicuous terms, using some seventy key quotations from Marx’s works, such topics as the materialist philosophy of history, the doctrine of “base and superstructure”, Marx’s critique of religion, and the analyses developed in Capital of “surplus value”, capital accumulation, and the immiseration of the workers. In the second part of the book, entitled “Of what use is Marx’s discovery to us today?”, Marx’s insights are applied to the present situation. The book forms part of the popular series “Great Thinkers in 60 Minutes”.

Leseprobe

My thanks go to Rudolf Aichner for his tireless critical editing; Silke Ruthenberg for the fine graphics; Lydia Pointvogl, Eva Amberger, Christiane Hüttner, and Dr. Martin Engler for their excellent work as manuscript readers and sub-editors; Prof. Guntram Knapp, who first inspired me with enthusiasm for philosophy; and Angela Schumitz, who handled in the most professional manner, as chief editorial reader, the production of both the German and the English editions of this series of books.

My special thanks go to my translator

Dr Alexander Reynolds.

Himself a philosopher, he not only translated the original German text into English with great care and precision but also, in passages where this was required in order to ensure clear understanding, supplemented this text with certain formulations adapted specifically to the needs of English-language readers.

Contents

Marx’s Great Discovery

Marx’s Central Idea

Man’s Basic Material Needs

Work

Base and Superstructure

Religion as ‘the Opium of the People’

History as Class Struggle

The Theory of Surplus Value

Accumulation and Concentration

Immiseration and Revolution

The “Withering Away of the State”

Alienation

Ending Alienation

The Realm of Freedom

Of What Use Is Marx’s Discovery for Us Today?

Beware of the Sorceror – How Can Man Maintain Control?

Every Era Has Its Ideology, Even Our Own – The “Critique of Ideology” Today

Making the „Realm of Freedom“ a Reality – Work is Just a Staging Post

Egoism May Bring Success – But Man Finds Completion Only as a “Species-Being”

Bibliographical References

Marx’s Great Discovery

The philosophical effort undertaken by Marx (1818-1883) was an enormous one. He was the first to attempt to decipher the law of motion of the whole of human history. He wanted to draw from the course of history prior to his own day certain precise insights about future developments, so that this history could be guided in a more rational direction.

Such an enterprise appears at first sight impossible, even megalomaniac. How can a human being – even a philosopher, however wise and far-sighted – predict the future, let alone hope to exert an influence on future historical developments?

But Karl Marx did in fact succeed in drawing philosophical, economic and socio-political conclusions from past and present events which were, in later years, really borne out in many nations. Some hundred years after his death a third of the human race was living in states whose social systems bore Marx’s name. In the course of the last century, “Marxism” spread across the entire world. Never before or since has an individual philosopher had such a huge effect.

Social conditions in Marx’s own lifetime – particularly the working conditions in the newly-emerged factories – were catastrophic. Not just men, but women and children too, had to work twelve to fourteen hours a day and the living conditions and hygiene levels in the slums these workers lived in were an offence to human dignity. Marx considered it his duty to take the part of those who were suffering in this way and to bring about revolutionary change.

But Marx was of the view that it was not just his task but that of all philosophers to work toward the improvement of society. Philosophers, he argued, should no longer, as they had for two thousand years, be content with understanding and interpreting the world. Writing on the near-contemporary philosopher Feuerbach, Marx declared:

Thus, the young Marx observed, for several years, as a journalist and philosopher, the day-to-day politics, history, and economic development of Europe until he believed he had gained an understanding of the causes of all these processes. Humanity’s whole development, he concluded, from antiquity right up to the present day, consisted in a necessary sequence of great conflicts between different social groupings:

There occur, Marx argued, at regular intervals great revolutions which radically alter the way in which society is ruled and, with this, its economic foundations. Marx himself, along with his family, lived through just such a time of revolutions. He supported, in his newspaper articles, Germany’s revolution of 1848, composing in this year, together with his friend Engels, the famous Communist Manifesto.

This call to revolution earned him the bitter enmity of the Prussian king, then ruler of Marx’s native Rhineland. Deprived of his nationality and in danger of arrest, he was forced to flee across the border to France. But the Prussian king pursued him even there, demanding his extradition, so that he finally had no choice but to take his family into permanent exile in England. There too, however, he continued to work on his revolutionary writings.

However, the money that he earned from his newspaper articles and his books was not enough to feed his family of six. In a letter to his friend Engels (who helped him with sums of money sent from Germany) dated 8th of September 1852 he wrote:

Marx, then, had bitter personal experience of the poverty he denounced. He lived through the process of Europe’s industrialization and saw how, all around him, cities grew at an astonishing rate and how more and more people flooded from the country into the great metropolises to work day and night in the factories. He saw how children were made to produce, for starvation wages, huge masses of fabric at the machines of the textile factories. And he saw how railways rapidly joined up all the cities of Europe, how mines were dug in their thousands, and how steamships full of a million wares began to ply the ocean between Europe and America.

Marx analysed, with fascination, this rapidly progressing industrialization and came to the conclusion that the modern capitalist mode of production meant that incomparably more goods could now be produced than ever before in history – but also that the great majority of the human race remained excluded from the wealth and prosperity so created. He was also firmly convinced that the free play of supply and demand would, in the long term, collapse and lead to global crises. This was why he criticized the capitalist system and recommended the abolition of private property. In its place he proposed putting a new kind of collective mode of production: so-called “communism”.

The effects of these ideas were enormous. Communist revolutions occurred in countries as diverse as Russia, China, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Mozambique, as well as many others. For almost a whole century, communist and socialist regimes declared themselves adherents to the historical and social philosophy of Marx.

But the planned economies favoured by these states proved to be clumsy and, in many areas, inefficient. Around a hundred years after Marx’s death the communist world that he had called into existence had largely vanished again. Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, communism is considered by most to be a failed project. After the fall of the Iron Curtain many were of the view that Marx had simply been wrong and that capitalism is in fact the only economic system apt to bring prosperity. It was hoped that a market economy could exist in harmony with democracy and a fair distribution of wealth. But this optimism did not last long.

The global economic and financial crises of the last few decades have deeply shaken this faith in capitalism’s ability to regulate itself. It is becoming ever clearer that capitalism too has its structural weaknesses. Some of Marx’s predictions – such as increasing monopolization and an ever greater global gap between rich and poor – have already come true, while others are taking form on the historical horizon. His insightful critique of capitalism, then, is more relevant than ever. Marx surely still has a lot to say to us.

Marx’s Central Idea

Man’s Basic Material Needs

Marx’s philosophical starting point is of appealing simplicity, and basically uncontestable. Every human being needs food and drink. To be without these for a long time is to die. Marx writes: