Karl Marx: Early Life, Influences, and Dialectical Method

Historiography I History as Class Struggle Lecture 4 (2024/25)

1818-35: childhood and early youth in a liberal bourgeois family in Trier. Exposed to Enlightenment, Romantic, liberal and radical world-views through family and acquaintances. 1835-36: University of Bonn. Heavy drinking, gambling, etc. father intervenes to move him to Berlin. 1836-42: University of Berlin. Develops wide range of intellectual interests: jurisprudence, history, and especially philosophy. Involved in Left-Hegelian circles. 1842-49: Cologne, Paris, Brussels, Paris, Cologne, Paris. Years of revolution and counter-revolution: for Marx, constant political exile and flight. Years of intense political agitation, radical political journalism (heavily censored). Marx begins studying political economy. Develops lifelong friendship with Friedrich Engels (son of wealthy manufacturer). 1849-1883: London. Marx s Life

Further Context Romanticism Industrial Revolution Creation of Proletariat Alienated from their work and thus themselves Democratic Revolutions (1789, 1830, 1848)

Influences Significant influence of Enlightenment histories with their stadial view of historical progression (Ferguson etc.) though with a twist English and Scottish political economy Adam Smith (1723-1790) David Ricardo (1772-1823) Utopian Socialism Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825) Charles Fourier (1772-1837) Robert Owen (1771-1858) German idealism: Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1765-1854) Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)

Starting point: Inversion of Hegelian dialectics 1 Among the Left Hegelians in Germany: In early phase, Marx is still philosophical and metaphysical: He assumes man s creative potential and sees history as the the gradual realization of it. Like Hegel: History as dialectic (tension) between real and rational . This friction propels consciousness forward. Hegel s Endpoint full consciousness, at one with Absolute Spirit and the state. Man is reconciled with himself, society and nature. History driven by ideas . 2 3

My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life- process of the human brain, i.e., the process of thinking, which, under the name of 'the Idea,' he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of 'the Idea.' With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought. Karl Marx Dialectics (very simple definition): develop in three steps: Thesis Antithesis Synthesis (new quality)

Dialectical and Historical Materialism Dialectical Materialism Materialist inversion of Hegelian dialectics: standing Hegel the right way up Dialectical Method lasting influence Critic of Capitalism Forces of production/relations of production = modes of production Historical materialism Existence determines Consciousness (Das Sein bestimmt das Bewu tsein) Thought is a product of material reality History driven by material forces and as a series of class struggles History driven by technological innovations, which alter productive forces , creating a struggle to redefine the social relations surrounding them

Friedrich Engels (1820-1895)

Key concepts: Alienation From the product, which as soon as it is created, is taken away from its producer. From his productive activity (work), which is experienced as a torment division of labour reduces him to small cog in production process. From his species-being (Gattungswesen human nature), for humans produce blindly and not in accordance with their truly human powers. From other human beings, as the cash nexus replaces mutual need

Superstructure: Ideas, values, beliefs, laws The state Relations of Production Property relations, relations to objects of work, organisation of production Forces of Production: Material resources, technology

Communism Classless society Socialism Dictatorship of the Proletariat SOCIALIST REVOLUTION Expropriation of Expropriators Capitalism Bourgeoisie against Proletariat Feudalism Feudal lords against Peasants Slaveholder Society Slaveholders against Slaves Primitive Communism Hunter-gatherer societies

Marxism - an activist ideology: The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it. Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden interpretiert, es kommt darauf an, sie zu ver ndern. 11ththesis on Feuerbach All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletariat movement is the self- conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority

Communist Manifesto (Marx/Engels) 1848 Bestselling book by Penguin Books in 2015 Next to Bible, most influential text in history Profit = exploitation Need for working class consciousness Workers of the world, unite! Revolution as key to historical change

The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat. (Communist Manifesto)

Karl Marx (1818-1883) Materialism: material or physical conditions are the basis of human development

The Analysis of Capitalist Society Limitless self-expansion of capital: at the base of capitalism as a social system. Planetary scale of expansion. Sharp tension between socialized forms of labour and private appropriation of wealth by capital inequality in an age of abundance. Distinctive character of capitalism: formal freedom and equality masks profound forms of social power and domination. Growing class consciousness, organization of both bourgeoisie and proletariat would produce what Marx hoped would be a decisive social struggle paving the way for socialism, and overcoming human alienation. Necessity of social and political revolution based on working-class self- organization. Vagueness of proposals for the socialist and communist future (classless, stateless society).

Owners and workers Owners exploit workers Workers are oppressed wage slaves Workers are indoctrinated by capitalist ideology and religion (false consciousness) The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and range. (Marx) Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of modern industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product. (Communist Manifesto)

Alternatives: Ferdinand Lassalle (1825-1864) Advocate of parliamentary democracy road to socialism

Eduard Bernstein (1850-1932) Marx prophesies proved wrong: no pauperisation, no disappearance of middle classes, not fewer, but more capitalists Perspective for social democracy in German Empire: after end of anti- socialist laws, strong representation in parliament, 1912 strongest party, Social-democratic organisations, press, clubs, trade unions Revolution not only way to socialism, parliamentarisation perhaps an evolutionary process

Socialist parties in autocratic Russia illegal and persecuted Reflection of State: autocratic state authoritarian socialist party Split of Russian Social Democratic Party in 1903: organisation minority (Mensheviks) mass party, majority (Bolsheviks) cadre party, members dedicated to revolution Party doctrine: professional revolutionaries, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (Ulyanov) (1870-1924) Fought against revisionism, saw himself as orthodox Marxist But also revisionist: industrialist society not precondition of revolution

Theory of Imperialism (Hobson, Luxemburg, Hilferding and Lenin) and Marxism-Leninism - limits to capital accumulation (the national economy as a constraint) - need for new overseas markets (cheap labour and cheap raw materials) - the corrupted working class aristocracy in the middle complicit revisionist Social democrats - exploited workers and peasant in the colonies

Further Marxist Legacies Stalinist distortions of Marxism Heterodox Marxists who contested notions of economic determinism and historical inevitability: eg. Antonio Gramsci, Walter Benjamin, and many others Hobsbawm Reading history against the grain / history from below . Morton/Hill/Thompson. Raphael Samuel: history as the playground of the Communist unconscious . Tension between mechanical and creative interpretations of Marxism.

Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) Marxist theorist Imprisoned under Mussolini Prison Notebooks (1927-1935) Builds on Marx s superstructure Cultural Hegemony The way the state creates ideological shackles to maintain its power and the dominance of bourgeois-capitalist relations Accepts state/civil society distinction but sees coercion and manipulation in both Bourgeois regimes manufacture consent Marxists taking the cultural-historical turn in 1970s and 1980s will borrow from Gramsci

Highgate Cemetery, London