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Karl Marx

Some Marxist Terms

  • In the next few pages I will discuss the marxist tems human potential, species being and alienation.
  • These are key terms that come up in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.
  • They are central to Marx’s theories on workers and how workers fare under capitalism.
  • In many ways these terms can still be applied today - especially for workers who work in factories or service-jobs.

Human Potential

  • Marx is a macrosociologist – remember this means that he looks at the BIG PICTURE. How society is organized as a whole and how society affects the individual.
  • At the same time - even if he looks at the big picture– he wants to know exactly how societal structures (and in particular capitalism) affects microsociological aspects of social reality
  • Marx becomes concerned with human potential and the way humans must work in capitalist society
  • Human potential or “species being” (Marx) is determined by the historical social structure of that era. So when Marx was writing about life under capitalism he was noting that this thing he called human potential – or species being (what we are as humans in terms of our true nature) was affected by capitalism.
  • Marx believed that humans do have a nature– but that it is influenced by where they are historically –so who we are and what we can be is influenced by the social reality of the time and in particular the economic system (remember historical materialism)

Human Potential cont.

  • Labor
  • Species being and human potential are related to labor.
  • First lets define “species being” – Marx believed that humans have an inherent need to work and be creative – to actually be an active part in the creation of something. This is essentially, he argued, our essential human nature. So when capitalism separates humans from being active in the creative process of something (say they are working in a shoe factory and your job is to punch the holes for the grommets where the laces will go – you are not really being creative and you don’t have a say in how the shoe gets created. If you were an artisan shoemaker however – things would be different – you would create a whole shoe and feel proud- this feeling comes from your species being).
  • Labor is important because it differentiates us from animals in that we CREATE something
  • Our production reflects our purpose. According to Marx, humans WANT to work but to CREATE something- be it farming and seeing the crop from the beginning stages (seeds) to the reaping stages or making a whole shoe (shoemaker) . It is this that separates us from animals. If we did not create then we would just go around hunting for food- - which is what animals do. This is how our species is different from animals.

Human Potential cont.

  • Objectification – where we create external objects of our internal thoughts. Think of the word – objectification. Our brains think of something and then we create it– that is essential to what we are as humans. We need to create. Marx believed that what happened over time is that people were no longer able to carry out this objectification. People were merely working in factories.
  • Today (as well as when Marx was writing) labor becomes material, it is no longer an expression of our desires and creativity. Think again about working in a factory- or better yet how about McDonalds – do you think it is different to make burgers in a small restaurant where you get to choose the meat, the spices, the kind of sauce you want to put on it – and then at McDonalds where you make one part of the burger – perhaps you just operate the grill. Marx would say that this person working at McDonalds is alienated from his species being. This means essentially that she is not able to be creative in her work and create something.
  • This second type of labor (the McDonalds kind) transforms nature but also us
  • Our needs, our consciousness, our human nature
  • (think back to the BBC film)
  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQEBDoi5MyE

Human Potential Cont

  • Labor
  • So labor is not just economic – humans are not essentially laborers only to get paid (according to Marx). In fact we want to create and produce– but be active participants in this process- so what happens under capitalism is that we no longer get to produce whole things. I like to think about knitting for example. Knitting has become very popular in the last five years or so, but knitting is WORK (labor) and often times more expensive than actually going out to buy a sweater. But people still do it– why?
  • According to Marx it is because it is our species being to create something, to think of something in our mind and then objectify it (i.e. make it). So knitting is not about money – or labor is not just economic.

Human Potential cont.

  • Its about all productive action where we transform material nature in accordance with our own purpose. So in the knitting example we transform raw material (wool) for own purposes – we design and make a sweater. How is this different from working in a factory that produces sweaters? Or working at the Gap and selling sweaters you did not make?
  • How is Art a representation of this concept?
  • Dialectical method of art
  • Art is a representation of artists imagination and objectification
  • Yet once produced art also changes the artist
  • Art and artist are interconnected
  • And once completed it may have influence on those who see it as well as again on the artist based on the reaction of public

Human Potential cont.

  • Labor
  • Labor is in response to needs

Satisfaction of these needs can lead to new needs

Ex- cars—satisfied our need for cars – yet created new needs for roads

Roads created an even more need for cars. So in this system in particular (capitalism) the fulfillment of needs just brings on new ones.

Labor is a social activity

according to Marx, humans labor collectively- or rather it is in their spirit to work together and collectively. But that disappears with the capitalist system. Now people compete against each other instead of working together. Marx compares how people work under capitalism to how people worked in agricultural societies. In agricultural societies people worked side by side on the land and often needed each other to produce crops. Labor was SOCIAL.

Moving on to Alienation

  • Central concept in Marx’s early work – and everything we just covered until now is directly related to alienation
  • Inherent relation between capital and human labor BUT this relation gets distorted under capitalism
  • HOW? – essentially this means that that before capitalism there was human labor was used to make things with capital – with raw materials. Think back to the farmer or the shoemaker, who took the raw material and machines (capital) and used human labor to produce something. Under capitalism this is no longer true– capitalists own the raw material and the machines and proletariats (workers) only own their human labor. They no longer control how this capital gets used. The relationship is now distorted – it has been broken.

Labor is no longer objectivation of human desire, it is controlled by capitalists. Remember again in the previous slides about objectification – creating something that we think of or dream up or invent or need – (i.e. a shoe) under capitalism our labor goes to work for someone else– not to make something that we have control of.

We work because we are being paid not because we want to produce something

This results in a feeling of alienation

Introduction to Economic and
Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844

Alienation is a central concept in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.

Alienation - the process of production and the results of our labor confront us as a dominating power. We became alienated from our human potential and our species being because we no longer produce out of our own desires. Think about alienation as a feeling of not connecting, not being true to yourself and your nature.

For Marx, just working for money—and not for the creativity of labor—is akin to selling your soul.

The production process thus controls the worker; it confronts her as an alienating power.

Alienated Labour / “Alienation”

Because the worker is alienated in her role as producer, she is alienated from the product that is produced. Now the product opposes the worker as an object over which she has no control—where and how it is sold and its price.

Moreover, because the worker is alienated from the process of production as well as the product of his labors, he becomes alienated from himself.

Alienated Labour / “Alienation” continued

The wage earner spends two-thirds of his wakeful hours engaged in a meaningless activity, save its providing him with the means of subsistence.

Torn away from the object of his labor, unable to realize the essence of his creative nature or “species being,” the worker becomes alienated from the rest of humanity.

Four Components of Alienation- Production Process

  • One of the ways workers become alienated is by not being connected to the production process
  • This happens in two ways – one is that they are merely just doing one repetitive action over and over – so they are alienated from what they are doing, it is not creative and it is mechanized and BORING
  • Another is that they do not have a say in the process, they are merely part of the equation – the labor part. Imagine that to make a shoe you need capital– machines, buildings, raw material, money to buy these things and labor- the laborers are just that- part of the equation.

Four Components of Alienation- Product

  • We can think about alienation as occurring in four ways. One of which is alienated from the product.
  • Workers are alienated both from the production process but also the product. Imagine pre-capitalist systems where workers made what they consumed or at least had control over the whole product. They owned what they made until they either consumed it or sold it or traded it. Under capitalism this is no longer true.
  • Product belongs to the capitalists – it is private property
  • In order to own the product of their labor they must buy it
  • In this way what we BUY is more of an expression of ourselves than what we MAKE at our jobs
  • Think about how in the modern (today) world we use what we buy as a way to express our identity – our clothes, our car, etc. This is how we show the world who we are – but Marx would argue that this is distorted– what we make and produce should express who we are

Four Components of Alienation- Fellow Workers

  • Workers are alienated from their fellow workers – they no longer work cooperatively as is true human nature
  • “You can work next to a guy for months without even knowing his name. One thing you are too busy to talk . Can’t talk… you have to holler in his ear. They got these little guys coming around in white shirts and if they see you runnin’ your mouth they say ‘This guys needs more work.’ Man he’s got no time to talk” (Terkel 1974: 165)
  • There is also competition, so workers are pitted against each other and their hostilities come out there instead of at the capitalist
  • I like to use the idea of “worker of the month”. In order to be worker of the month at a IKEA for example, you probably need to sell a lot more than your fellow co-workers. In order to do this you are in competition with them – and you do not cooperate with them (because an extra sale for your fellow worker is one less for you). In this way you are making more money for IKEA and feel that your competition is the other workers. All you get for being worker of the month is a reserved parking space (A worker of the month space). But IKEA benefits because you compete with your fellow workers, make more money for the company and work harder all around.

Four components of Alienation – human potential

  • Workers are alienated from their human potential because work makes them feel less than human instead of human
  • Humans work on machines/like machines. One of Marx’s believes that under capitalism workers become nearly cogs on a machine– they do the same repetitive action over and over and the work become alien to them. Think about the mechanization of an assembly line– workers just keep doing the same thing over and over.
  • We see this today in the service industry also. For example there are certain expected rules of behavior – greetings and smiles. When you go to a chain restaurant – you will notice that the server has the same script and asks the same questions. Servers cannot do not have a choice in how they interact- it is decided for them. (Think– “would you like fries with that?” or when you order something and the server says “and let me tell you about the specials “ even if you already know what you want.) This results in a feeling of alienation.
  • Consciousness and humaness are vanquished.

Alienation from Species Being

Resolution of alienation

  • Marx argued that thought alone would not resolve the problem of alienation
  • We need action
  • Also feeling identified to your employer
  • Or consuming things makes the problem worse – because it feeds the system

The Power of Money in Bourgeois Society

Marx describes how the possessor of money is transformed into anything money can buy.

One’s individuality is determined not by his or her own characteristics or capacities, but by the power afforded by money to transform what one wants into what one is.

Let’s think about our consumer culture today- in many ways Marx’s theory is truer today than it was back then

What we buy defines who we ARE and we are so susceptible to advertising that we buy what we are told to buy.

Money is thus a universal medium capable of being exchanged not only for a specific good or object, but also for human qualities such as beauty, talent, or honesty.

It bonds us to life itself and to our relationship with others, not through what we are, but through what we have the power to buy.

The Power of Money in Bourgeois Society

Key Quotations from the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844: Alienated Labour

“The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates.” (43)

“Labour produces not only commodities; it produces itself and the worker as a commodity—and does so in the proportion in which it produces commodities generally.” (43)

“the object which labour produces—labour’s product—confronts it as something alien, as a power independent of the producer.” (43)

Introduction to The Communist Manifesto

In 1847, the Communist League, an association formed by radical workers in 1836, commissioned Marx and Engels to write a political tract outlining the organization’s program.

the Manifesto is a deliberately adversarial work intended to inspire allegiance to the movement’s cause.

It was written as a political guide– not as an intellectual exercise.

Marx’s commitment to the Enlightenment belief in the perfectibility of humanity, which, according to Marx, would be realized through an inevitable communist revolution.

He describes the economic processes that made for the dominance of the capitalist class and that eventually will produce its own “grave-diggers”—a class-conscious proletariat. This is an important Marxist term. Marx believed that the capitalist system depends on creating a class of workers- who don’t have what Marx called “class consciousness” What he means by this is that they are in competition with one another – over wages, jobs, etc. They don’t understand that they are actually in the same boat – or the same economic class. But over time they will gain “class –consciousness” which means they will understand that their real enemy is the capitalist. And the workers will rise up again the capitalists and overthrow the capitalist system.

Introduction to The Communist Manifesto

Much of the Manifesto is a “scientific prophecy” detailing the downfall of the capitalist class and the rise of the proletariat.

In the Manifesto– Marx is calling to action all of the proletariats (workers) – and says it is inevitable that capitalism as a system will fail. The capitalist system is set up to fail because it depends on the exploitation of workers. The less you pay workers the more money you earn (the capitalists earn) but what happens when you pay laborers less- over time people cannot buy your product.

Introduction to The Communist Manifesto

Please watch the link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KUl4yfABE4

Introduction to The Communist Manifesto

Key Quotations from The Communist Manifesto

“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” (54)

“Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms: Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: bourgeoisie and proletariat.” (55)