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KARL MARX

KARL MARX. INTRODUCTION. Background: Personal Middle-class Academic career Journalistic career. Background: the times Widespread poverty “Unpriced costs” of industrialization Political unrest: Revolution of 1848

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KARL MARX

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  1. KARL MARX

  2. INTRODUCTION • Background: Personal • Middle-class • Academic career • Journalistic career

  3. Background: the times • Widespread poverty • “Unpriced costs” of industrialization • Political unrest: Revolution of 1848 • Relationship with Engels; other revolutionary thinkers; utopian socialists

  4. THE “COMMUNIST MANIFESTO” • “A spectre is haunting Europe . . .” • An appeal to workers: could free themselves from capitalist oppression only by their own efforts

  5. A political program • Abolition of private property • A progressive income tax • Abolition of right to inheritance • Centralize credit, communications, and transportation in hands of the state • “Workers of the world, unite!”

  6. THE STRUCTURE OF MARXIAN THOUGHT • Introduction • Das Kapital (Capital) • Link to • Classical economics • German philosophy; Enlightenment thought

  7. Contrast with Smith, Ricardo, on economic progress under capitalism • Capitalism as incredibly productive • Capitalism as inherently • Exploitative • Dehumanizing • Destructive of human freedom • Unable to permit humans to realize their full powers • Capitalism as “carrying the seeds of its own destruction”

  8. The materialist concept of history • History as • The record of the class struggle • An evolving process • Obeying discoverable laws

  9. Philosophic grounding in Hegelian thought: the dialectic • Change as the rule of life • Societies carry internal contradictions • A given stage dissolves into the next stage • History as the expression of conflicting and resolving ideas and forces • Thesis; antithesis; synthesis • A teleological view of history

  10. Marx’s interpretation • Dialectical process: a way to talk about society’s “Laws of Motion” • Key idea: the transformation of society • History: • As the struggle of humans to realize their full potential; to master themselves, and their environment • As the process of self-transformation • How accomplished? Human activity/labor/work • An economic (materialistic) theory of history

  11. The process of historical change: • Primitive community • Slave state • Feudalism • Capitalism • Socialism • Communism • Analogies

  12. Key: inconsistency of base and superstructure • Base: technology; production processes; property rights structure • Superstructure: Social, cultural, political framework; ideology; the state; religion; law • Changes in base ultimately generate changes in superstructure • Example: England, and the transformation from a feudal to a market economy

  13. Conclude: • A scientific, not a utopian socialism • History as the history of the class struggle • How to explain how this happens?

  14. Value; and surplus value • Marxian value theory: a way to explain the nature of capitalist society and the process of history • The idea of value as a social relationship; and as a way to explain existence of exploitation • How can exploitation exist in a free, capitalistic society? • Class monopoly of the means of production

  15. The theory of surplus value • Origin in Ricardo’s wage theory • Wages determined by supply and demand for workers • Value of labor: its cost of reproduction (Socially necessary labor time); the wage rate • Time of the work day determined by the capitalist • Surplus value = Worker output minus cost of reproduction

  16. The source of surplus value? • The class structure • The monopoly over the ownership of capital (the means of production) • Workers being forced to sell their labor services in order to live • Thus: Surplus value exists because of the existence of the class structure

  17. Conclude: Labor theory of value used to express ideas about the nature of the capitalist system • The use of capital can produce much wealth for society • But the ownership structure of capitalism inevitably leads to exploitation

  18. The process of economic growth, and the inevitable demise of capitalism • Profits plowed into new technology and capital accumulation • The spur of competition • The desire to save on labor costs

  19. Surplus value falls • Wages are bid up as production grows, thus reducing surplus value • Capitalists can not exploit machines or technology; surplus value falls • Rate of profit falls

  20. Recession • Firms fail • Incomes fall • Unemployment rises: the “reserve army of the unemployed” • Increasing industrial concentration

  21. Events repeated until system breaks apart • Capitalism creates its own destroyers: the rise of the proletariat • “The expropriators are expropriated!” • What follows? Unclear in Marx • Eventual withering away of the state • Property owned in common • “From each according to ability, to each according to need”

  22. CONCLUSION • Was Marx right? About what? • Growth of large firms • Business cycle theory and economic fluctuations: instability • Importance of technology • Fairness issue: income and wealth distribution • Theory of alienation; goal of self-realization

  23. What’s not survived? • Scientific socialism: the laws of history • Labor theory of value • Falling rate of profit

  24. Marx and the 1990s? • Failure of central planning • Eastern Europe, and “Not Socialism” • Capitalism and adaptive survival mechanisms

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