PHIL3395: Marx

Novy SP09

Engels’ Graveside Speech

 

Marx’s greatest achievement according to Engels
  1. Theory of Historical Materialism
    1. “Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic matter, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history”
    1. Production of immediate material means, determines the degree of economic development attained. This in turn determines the state institutions, the legal conceptions, art, and religion, of the society.
    1. All previous attempts reversed this Base/Superstructure relationship
  1. Theory of Surplus Value
    1. “Marx also discovered the special law of motion governing the present-day capitalist mode of production and the bourgeois society that this mode of production has created

                                                               i.      The capitalist mode of production and

                                                             ii.      The bourgeois society that this mode of production has created
  1. Scientist & Revolutionist

 

Marx’s greatest achievement according to Marx

 

"And now as to myself, no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Long before me bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class struggle and bourgeois economists, the economic anatomy of classes. What I did that was new was to prove:

 

(1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with the particular, historical phases in the development of production [Historical Materialism]
(2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat.
(3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.

Karl Marx
Letter to Weydemeyer
March 5, 1852

 

How relevant is Marx’s biography?

 

Some things Novy is angling for in this course:
  1. To read Marx as the most relevant and important critic of capitalism
  1. To examine the life of an engaged intellectual
  1. Darwinian parallels: particularly the historical motion without teleology
  1. Correcting a prevalent misconception: Marxism is fundamentally optimistic
  1. Examine how philosophy has changed and continues to change the world
  1. Can Marxism get us where we’d like to go?