PHIL3395:Marx

Novy SP09

Notes on The German Ideology (184-201)

 

Division of Labor and Private Property are expressions of the same situation

 

  1. Voluntary vs. Natural Division of Labor (184ii)
    1. “As long as activity is not voluntarily, but naturally, divided, man’s own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him”
    2. “For as soon as the distribution of labor comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape.
    3. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood;
    4. while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes,
    5. society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.
    6. This fixation of social activity, this consolidation of what we ourselves produce into an objective power above us, growing out of our control, thwarting our expectations, bringing to naught our calculations, is one of the chief factors in historical development up till now.”

The State & Power

  1. Illusory “general interest” is necessary as it must counter the individual and communal interests
    1. State is divorced from interest of community & individuals
    2. A class must conquer for itself political power in order to represent its interest as the general interest

 

Abolition of Private Property

  1. Requirement #1: Becomes an intolerable power
  2. Requirement #2: Development of productive forces
  3.  “Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.”

 

Materialist Conception of History

6.       Summary in text (188ii-189i)

  1. When History is written according to an extraneous standard
    1. “the relation of man to nature [is] excluded … and hence the antithesis of nature and history is created”
    2. “For the practical materialist, i.e., the communist, it is a question of revolutionizing the existing world, of practically attacking and changing existing things”
  2. When we conceive of things  properly, every profound philosophical problem is resolved

 

Ruling Class and Ruling Ideas

  1. “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.
  2. In Big industry, contradiction between the instrument of production and private property appears for the first time
    1. With money every form of intercourse itself is considered fortuitous
    2. Labor: losses all semblance of self-activity and only sustains their life by stunting it

Egoism & Communism

  1. Not a contrast of egoism against self-sacrifice or vice versa
  2. Communists do not preach morality at all