19th Century Philosophers: Marx

e. Classless Society: The result of the revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat will be the establishment of a classless society in which class distinctions and antagonisms no longer exist. In such a society, there also will no longer exist the political power represented by the State, in which one class rules and exploits other classes. Marx offers few details regarding the precise nature of this future society. IN a classless society, the governance of people which characterizes a State, is supplanted by the administration of things, whereby there is a co-operative management of non-human objects and processes for the benefit of all Without providing details he also mentions the need for a state in which there exists a “revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat” during the stage of transition from capitalist to communist society. And ultimately is a communist society, it will be possible to declare, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!” From Marx’ standpoint through speculation concerning the precise nature of future society is far les important than the description of the present historical conditions which establish the inevitable overthrow of capitalism.

19th Century Philosophers: Marx

d. These measures are designed to end the alienation and exploitation of workers most especially through the abolition of bourgeois private property, that is, the “kind of property which exploits wage-labor, and which cannot increase.” (CM) Marx wants to insure that private property does not remain the instrument of oppression of the capitalistic class. He does not, however opposes the possession of all personal property. He writes,

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

19th Century Philosophers: Marx

c. Warning that allowances must be made for different conditions in different countries, Marx lays out the following general objectives for the communist movement:

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the Sate, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusively monopoly.
6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State, the bringing into cultivation of wastelands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
7. Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
8. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.
9. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc. (CM)

19th Century Philosophers: Marx

2. Individual and Society: Given this description of the historical situation, what ought to be the relation of the individual to the society?

a. Obviously, the future resides with the proletarian class; and individuals who face reality will act accordingly. More important from Marx’ standpoint, however, is his claim that the communists stand in the forefront of the proletariat. “They are the ones clearly aware of the current class struggle and resolute enough to constantly push forward the working-class movement. Consequently, for Marx, becoming a communist is the best action an individual can take.

b. In passing, however, we should note that Marx does not regard his work as the construction of an ideology that will triumph through the effort of will of communists and the proletariat. Rather, he views his work as a scientific description of an historical process, which necessitates the overthrow of capitalism. For example, he writes,

The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented or discovered by this or that would-be universal reformer. They merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on under our very eyes. (CM)

19th Century Philosophers: Marx

e. Therefore, for Marx, every more frequent commercial crises of ever-increasing intensity, due to excesses generated by the continual revolution in the modes of production, lead inevitably to the downfall of capitalism. The eventual, violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie is accomplished by the proletarian class, whose power grows with the development of capitalism itself. As bourgeois modes of production necessitate the raising of huge industrial armies, as property comes into fewer and fewer hands, as some members o the ruling class and of the lower middle class join the proletariat as workers eke out a meager existence while constantly competing among themselves in the midst of scarcity—the proletariat as a class swells in numbers and becomes ever more aware of both its oppression and its oppressors, the capitalists. It is only a matter of time until the proletariat gains the power and awareness sufficient to bring about the revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeoisie.

19th Century Philosophers: Marx

d. The rule of the bourgeoisie will not continue indefinitely, however, for the process of its own development carries with it the seeds of its own destruction. Marx says,

Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production of ex change and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world which he has called up by his spells. The history of industry and commerce for many a decade past is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeoisie and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by heir periodical return put on trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of the entire bourgeois society. In these crises a great part not only of the existing products but also of the previously created productive forces are periodically destroyed. In these crises there breaks out an epidemic that in all earlier epochs would have seemed an absurdity, the epidemic of over production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as it a famine, a universal war of devastation had cut off the supply of every mans of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilization, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand, by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That s to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby the crises are prevented. (CM)

19th Century Philosophers: Marx

c. The Ruling Process: In the process of ruling, there occurs a continual consolidation of power within industrialized nations and over non-industrialized ones. Within industrialized nations, “the bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralized means of production and has a concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralization. Independent or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments, and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation with one government, one code of laws, one national class interest, one frontier and one customs tariff. (CM) Within non-industrialized nations, the bourgeoisie subjugates people and forces them to adopt capitalistic modes of production as a way of guaranteeing sources of raw materials and a market for cheap goods. The social consequences of the rule of the bourgeoisie, according to Marx, are devastating. Everywhere, social relationships revolve around money and self-interest. Personal worth becomes “exchange value,” and freedom becomes “free trade”, while physicians, lawyers, priests, poets, and scientists become merely “paid wage-laborers” and the family relation becomes merely a “money relation.” Meanwhile, commercial crises and competition among the bourgeoisie causes ever-greater insecurity for the workers and their wages always tend toward the minimum necessary for their bare survival.

19th Century Philosophers: Marx

VI. History and Social Revolution

1. Class Struggle

a. Social Relationships: Regarding social relationships, Marx asserts in the Communist Manifesto,

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, guild master and journeyman – in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden now open fight, a fight that time ended either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

b. Bourgeoisie and Proletariat: The present time, “the epoch of the bourgeoisie,” has simplified the class struggle as society splits more and more into two hostile, contending classes, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Writing in the nineteenth century, Marx asserts that the bourgeoisie, or capitalists, have gained such power over the proletariat or workers that “the executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” (CM) This triumph of the bourgeoisie occurred over a long period of time due to a series “series of revolutions in the modes of production and exchange” - - the introduction of steam and machinery revolutionizing industrial production at the same time that technological advances in navigation and transportation led to ever-expanding markets for goods. As a results, according to Mars,

The bourgeoisie, during is rule of scarcely one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground - - what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labor? (CM)

19th Century Philosophers: Marx

5. Freedom: In asserting the social nature of human beings, Marx does not want to do away with human freedom. True human freedom however cannot be associated with egoistic individuals because, in practice, such egoistic freedom only exists for the few, not the man. The freedom to acquire, enjoy, and disposes of private property means nothing to the worker who is struggling barely to survive. The freedom to get an education or to travel means nothing to persons with little or no money. Egoistic freedom is based on “separation of man from man” rather than on “the union of man with man.” Consequently, human begins see others as a limitation on, not a realization of, their own freedom; (See “On the Jewish Question”) and they struggle with one another.

For Marx, true human freedom must be based on the social cooperation that the social nature of human beings makes possible. For example, the freedom to work in a society must be a cooperative enterprise where everyone can work, and not just as freedom to compete with other workers for scarce jobs. The rallying cry, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!” (Critique of Gotha Programme) becomes an instrument of human freedom, not a denial of it.

Marx says very little about freedom of thought and conscience – partly no doubt because they tend to be associated with egoistic freedom. More importantly however, he does not regard thought and conscience to function independently. Remember that social being (existence), determined ultimately by the modes of production determines consciousness. Thus, if true human freedom is established with respect to the modes of production and social organization, no special attention to freedom of thought and conscience is necessary.

6. Ethics: In a similar way, for Marx, no special attention to ethics is necessary. Ethic is just the ideological form in which persons become conscious of the conflict between the modes of production and a particular set of social relationships. The modes of production, not morality, constitute the fundamental instrument of social change. Accordingly, Marx regards a scientific description of transformations in the material modes of production as a much more valuable guide to the directing of human life than any set of moral exhortations.

19th Century Philosophers: Marx

4. Material Modes of Production and Alienation: Ultimately the social relationships are determined by the material modes of production, that is, the relations of labor, capital industry, technology, means of subsistence, reproduction and distribution of material goods. Consequently, any institutions or thought within a society derive their particular form and content from the underlying economic processes present. So human beings can best understand how to act through a historical understanding of changes in the modes of production, with their associated effects.

Now how does this social interpretation of human nature solve the problem of alienation? It does so by doing away with the individualistic interpretation that makes possible the claim that the freedom to acquire, hold, and dispose of private property is a fundamental right. Denial of the claim’s legitimacy then paves the way for abolition of private property and hence an end to alienation. According to Marx however we cannot conclude that an intellectual argument will change human consciousness so that people will then decide to eliminate private property. “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.” (Pref, Critique of Political Economy) change in the productive forces, the material modes of production, within a society is the actual instrument that ends the alienation. Marx describes such a process this way:

At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with existing relations of production, or what is but a legal expression for the same thing, with the property relations within which they have at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations a distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic, in short ideological forms in which men become consciousness of this conflict and fight it out. Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he thinks of himself, so can we not judge of such a period of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained rather than from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between the socially productive forces and the relations of production. No social order ever perishes before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have developed; and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself (Pref, Critique of Political Economy)

Instead of alienating system of private property whereby human beings enjoy or dispose of possessions arbitrarily without regard for other persons and view others as instruments or competitors in the process of production, there will develop a human system of production whereby human beings function as species-beings and develop the full range of their potentialities. Of this human system of production, Marx says,

Let us suppose that we had produced as human beings. In that event each of us would have doubly affirmed himself and his neighbor in his production. (1) In my production I would have objectified the specific character of my individuality and for that reason I would both have enjoyed the expression of my own individual life during my activity and also in contemplating the object, I would experience my personality as an objective sensuously perceptible power beyond all shadow of doubt. (2) In your use or enjoyment of my product I would have the immediate satisfaction and knowledge that in my labor I had gratified a human need, i.e. that I had objectified human nature and hence had procured an object corresponding to the needs of another human being. (3) I would have acted for you as the mediator between you and the species, thus I would be acknowledged by you as the complement of your own being, as an essential part of yourself. I would thus know myself to be confirmed both in your thoughts and your love (4) In the individual expression of my own life I would have brought about the immediate expression of your life and so in my individual activity I would have directly confirmed and realized my authentic nature, my human, communal nature. (On James Mill)