PHIL3395: Marx

Novy SP09

Communist Manifesto Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels

"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles"

The Materialist Conception of History

1. Economic power is political power

Mode of production is the substructure which determines the social superstructure

2. Dialectical engine of history

3. Process :

…→ Economic crisis → immiseration of the lower class → development of class consciousness → seizure of state power → new order established → …

4. Stages:

Primitive Communism → Slavery → Feudalism → Capitalism → Communism

Three positive aspects of Capitalism

1. end of feudal exploitation; increase in human freedom (at least formally)

2. human subjugation of nature

3. premium put on technological innovation

"Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation …”

Three negative aspects of Capitalism

1. estrangement of the workers

2. Self-subverting logic: The bourgeoisie “produces, above all, is its own grave-diggers."

3. Capitalism is immoral; it no longer useful as a force for human freedom

"Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that is does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labor of others by means of such appropriation"

Modern Society

1. Wage labor

2. False consciousness

3. What is the communist future?

The Proletarian Revolution

1. Proletariat as the final revolutionary class

2. Abolition of private property

3. Process:

…→ Economic crisis → immiseration of the prol. → dev. of class consciousness → seizure of state power → dictatorship of the prol. → withering away of the state → communism

Criticism of the communist’s efforts

1. Promotes laziness

2. Destroys families

3. Abolishes countries

Ten Programs of the Communists