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PHIL3395: Marx
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Novy SP09
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Notes
for Wolff: Chapter 2 “Class, History, and Capital” (pg. 48-66)
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Class
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- “The history of
all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle”
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Excludes the most primitive and the most advanced
societies
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- Who are the
bourgeoisie?
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- Who are the
proletariat?
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- Myth of the lazy
and of the industrious
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“From this original sin dates the poverty of the
great majority … and the wealth of the few that increases constantly although
they have ceased to work”
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- Class has an
“explanatory and predictive function”
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- Class struggle
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“Between equal rights
force decides”
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- Each class
recognizes common interest in measures to advance position
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- Class
consciousness
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Classes are real
agents for Marx
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- Class
antagonism provides the mechanism for replacing capitalism with
communism
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Theory
of history
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- “A society
marches on its stomach, and its stomach greatly influences its brains”
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- Historical
materialism
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- “Seeks the
ultimate cause and the great moving power of all historical events
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- In the economic
development of society
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- In the changes
in the modes of production and exchange
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- In the
consequent division of society into distinct classes, &
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- In the
struggles of these classes against one another”
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- To accept the
basic story is to accept Historical Materialism (& hence, a Marxist)
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- Human history
is the story of the development of human productive power
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- Forms of
society rise and fall as they further or impede that growth
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- Architectural
image
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- Foundation:
Human productive power
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- Base: Economic
structure
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- Superstructure:
Political and legal form
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- Development
Thesis: forces of production tend to develop over time (i.e., human
productive power tends to grow)
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- Primacy Thesis
#1: level of development of the productive forces within a society – its
available technology – will determine the nature of its economic
structure
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- Primacy Thesis
#2: nature of the economic structure of a society determines the nature
of its political and legal superstructure
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- Theory of
Ideology
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Dominate ideas of a society are determined by the
needs of the economic structure
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- Distinction
between the “social revolution” and the “ideological forms in which men
become aware of this struggle and fight it out”
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