“Workers of the world, unite



Karl Marx and the Problems of Capitalism

“The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working men of all countries, unite!” Most of us are aware that Karl Marx penned these words in the Communist Manifesto. His ideas live on long after his death, and people are rarely ambivalent about him, whether or not they are actually familiar with his work. Some view him as a prophet whose ideas have inspired nations to revolutionary social change, while others argue that he has directly caused some of the greatest suffering in the twentieth century.

Considering Marx’s reputation as a political agitator, why is he so important to the field of sociology? Although Marx was a journalist and philosopher, much of his work is considered sociology. In a sense, he supplied the foundation for the study of society because his primary concern was with how people are impacted by large-scale social forces (Smith, 1997: 440).

In this chapter we will focus on Marx’s ideas that have had the most influence on the field of sociology. In addition, we will situate his ideas historically because it gives us a better understanding of why he focused on specific social issues; issues that might seem unimportant today. Social theorists rarely write divorced from the society and historical context with which they live. It is our contention that if you understand what was happening in the world around him, his ideas will make more sense. To that end, we will illustrate the social conditions that he was reacting to. In addition, we will also try to make Marx more human. We feel that this is important because, at least in America, he has become a negative stereotype rather than a human being with a series of ideas that have profoundly affected the world.

The Beginning: Trier Germany

Karl Marx was born on May 5, 1818, in Trier, Germany to a Jewish middle-class home, the second of eight children to Heinrich and Henrietta Marx. He was one of the few revolutionaries who did not grow up in an environment where he was victimized and maltreated by those around him, and as a result, he was personally positive and self-confident, despite the poverty and illness that was to become his life during his later years (Berlin, 1995: 23-24). Growing up in Trier may have also impacted Marx’s later political ideas. He was born during the reign of King Frederick William III of Prussia, who tried to re-establish the status quo after the defeat of Napoleon. The King divided Germany into the semi-feudally organized kingdoms of the past, and privileges were restored to their leaders through economic, social and political legislation that required tariffs to survive. These taxes discouraged much industry and trade (Berlin, 1995:17-18).

Thanks to William III’s rule, Trier was a town in decline, with high unemployment, high prices, and twenty-five percent of the population was on some form of welfare. It was not uncommon for citizens to beg on the street or engage in prostitution to survive (McLellan, 2006: 2). In addition, the police were very powerful during that time and both the public and private lives of citizens were managed by the state. Not surprisingly, many citizens felt oppressed and protested. The government reacted by censoring all dissent, and many citizens went into voluntary exile in either Paris or Switzerland where they continued to critique William’s policies (Berlin, 1995: 18). In response to these oppressive conditions, Trier was also one of the first cities in Germany receptive to French utopian socialism, or the idea that society should be egalitarian which would make it a better place for everyone regardless of social class (McLellan, 2006: 2).

This conservative and stifling political climate directly impacted the Marx family. Because Marx’s father Heinrich wanted to continue to work as a lawyer, and Jews could not participate in the professions, his father converted to Protestantism (Marx’s family name was Mordechai, which was later changed to Marx) (McLennan, 2006: 2). During William III’s reign, the few liberties that Jews had managed to acquire under Napoleon were taken away, and Jews could either return to the ghetto, or alter their name and religion and begin new lives as Christian Germans (Berlin, 1995: 19).

So, even though both of Marx’s parents were steeped in rabbinical tradition, and most of the rabbis in Trier were related to Marx, he was raised a Protestant (McLellan, 2006: 2-4). After Heinrich Marx’s Protestant conversion, he encouraged his family to support the status quo, and to show loyalty to William III. It is likely that his son found this submissive attitude humiliating (Berlin, 1995: 20-21) and this, coupled with the discrimination against the Jews, probably made Marx more inclined to be critical of both society and religion (McLennan, 2006: 2).

It is also very likely that Marx’s eventual concern for the poor may have originated with his father. Despite his nationalism, his father espoused liberal views and was very sympathetic toward those who were less fortunate. Heinrich Marx believed that people were both good and rational, and that external obstacles needed to be removed for them to exhibit these qualities. He felt that political, economic, social and racial barriers were disappearing in his own day, and that eventually they would vanish. In the end, all men would be equal, not just in the political arena, but in their day-to-day existence, as well (McLellan, 2006: 6-7).

He believed that his own life was clearly an example of this world-view (Berlin, 1995: 21). Heinrich Marx had come from a poor Jewish background, and was considered inferior by his neighbors. But, through his hard work, his family had a comfortable existence, with two maids and a vineyard near the city (McLellan, 2006: 7). He had earned both equality and the respect of others, and he believed that through time everyone would be free in a just and liberal state. Although there are many differences between Karl Marx’s general approach to the world and his fathers, it is clear that the elder Marx had an impact on his sons overall concerns with justice and equality (Berlin, 1995: 22).

Philosophical Influences

Karl Marx went to the University of Bonn to study law in 1835, and transferred to the University of Berlin in 1836. It was also during this time (1836) that Marx became engaged to Jenny von Westphalen. She was four years older than Marx and was the daughter of Baron Ludwig von Westphalen, a member of the Prussian ruling class. While Marx was overjoyed at their engagement, they kept it a secret from her family for a year, probably because of her aristocratic lineage coupled with their age difference. Although Jenny was only four years older than Marx, it was very unusual for a younger man to marry an older woman, and society viewed it as strange and unnatural (Wheen, 2001: 17-21). They were finally married on June 19, 1843, and had six children together. By all accounts, it was a happy union that lasted a lifetime.

While Marx was attending the university, Germany was even more oppressive than it had been during his childhood, and the new King, Frederick William IV, was considerably more efficient at subjugating its citizens, than his father Frederick William III had been. Because of strict censorship laws, openly expressing dissenting ideas and opinions was taboo. It was during this repressive period that the conservative philosopher G. W. F. Hegel was popular amongst the intellectual elite in all German Universities (Berlin, 1995: 43). Hegel held the chair of philosophy at the University of Berlin from 1818 until his death in1831, and it became the headquarters of the Hegelian movement after his death (McLellan, 2006: 23). His ideas lead to a reactionary patriotism that focused on the past, which meshed well with the political climate of the day (Berlin, 1995: 43).

To the great disappointment of his father, Marx abandoned the study of law, and chose to study philosophy instead. His father wrote him a series of letters begging him to re-consider his future, which he thought would be brighter if he became a lawyer. Marx attempted to ease his fathers’ fears, all the while ignoring his concerns and continuing to study philosophy anyway (Berlin, 52).

Initially, Marx detested what little he knew of Hegel’s philosophy; Marx was very empirical while Hegel was conceptual and abstract. But, after a thorough reading of Hegel and most of his disciples, Marx claimed himself a convert. He then joined the “Doktorklub” (“Doctor’s Club), which was a Hegelian discussion group, comprised of intellectuals from the university who met to discuss philosophy in beer halls and cafes, and its’ members were crucial in forming what would become the Young Hegelians (Berlin, 1995: 51-52; McLellan, 206: 25)

The Young Hegalians

The followers of Hegelian philosophy split off into two camps: The Right Hegelians and the Young (or Left) Hegelians. The Right Hegelians were conservative and espoused Hegel’s positive views on the Prussian state and religion. In contrast, the Young Hegelians thought that they were living in disastrous, crisis-laden times. They asserted that Hegel’s general acceptance of the Prussian state and Christianity was a failure on his part to demand a better, more rational, world, where the separation between the individual and society should be bridged and synthesized. They believed that a philosopher should promote non-violent intellectual warfare, where revolutionary ideas should have an enormous impact on practice. Their goal was to infiltrate academic institutions so they could institutionalize their own theories of the world (cite).

Before we can discuss one of the most important Young Hegelians for Marx’s development, Ludwig Feuerbach, we must first address Hegel himself.

Hegel’s Influence: Idealism, Alienation, and Labor

Hegel’s philosophy is dense and abstract and most of it is not important for understanding Marx’s development. Therefore, we will briefly discuss the more generally important ideas with a focus on the concepts that directly impacted Marx’s work (Berlin, 1995: 40). Hegel is considered an idealist or a theorist that believed that thought ruled the world (Callinicos, 1999: 48). Hegel used a dialectical approach to philosophy, meaning that he thought that conflicts, contradictions and tensions were necessary to move history along through time, and the dialectic explains why one historical period differs from another (Berlin, 1995: 41). So, the dialectic is the engine that drives historical change.

Hegel argued that when we look out into the world, we see a world that is external to us and this “otherness” makes us feel uncomfortable. Because of our discomfort the world seems hostile and strange to us. This perception of strangeness and otherness is called alienation. Throughout history, man attempts to overcome his own alienation through reasoning, in an attempt to better understand the external world. When we understand that the world isn’t a hostile external place, both our knowledge and our perceptions of the world are altered. This mutual progression through time of knowledge and perception is called the dialectic (Walker, 1989: 59).

In Hegel’s theory, our consciousness is a part of God’s consciousness or what he calls Spirit (or the “mind” that all people of the same culture share (Soloman, 1987: 3)) Spirit manifests itself in the mind of man, and it overcomes alienation through uninterrupted stages of history (Walker, 1989: 61). According to Hegel, reality is nothing more than Spirit slowly realizing itself through time, or understanding, through reason, that it has created it’s own world. Alienation stops and freedom begins when man becomes fully self-conscious of this process (McLellan, 2006: 111).

Therefore, the ultimate goal of man is to rationally understand the world that he has created which leads to absolute knowledge and an affinity with God. So we understand that we both create the world, and are a part of God. For Hegel, labor is this cognitive process, where we transform the world and ourselves through reason. Through labor we make the world but the world also makes us (Walker, 1989: 61-62).

Although Marx acknowledged his indebtedness to Hegel for the idea of alienation in the Paris Manuscripts (Easton, 1961: 193), he rejected Hegel’s idealism because for Hegel, freedom is self-mastery (Berlin, 1995: 39), and alienation and labor are abstractions, where alienation refers to a lack of self-consciousness and labor involves spiritual and mental activity (Kolakowski, 2005: 110). By only considering man’s ideas, Hegel was unable to explain large-scale social change. In addition, in Hegel’s theory alienation is an inherent part of society and can’t be abolished (Avineri, 1971: 101), which makes Hegel’s theory inherently conservative. Idealism is then removed from any type of social critique, especially since all conflict that occurs is merely an aspect of God, since we are all parts of God. Therefore, everything that occurs is a part of the Divine and is as it should be, as we move through progressive, higher stages of civilization (Walker, 198962).

But Marx did argue that Hegel had made a breakthrough by reconciling idealism with history. Hegel understood that human nature evolves historically through praxis, or practical activity. But the problem with Hegel’s approach is that this practical activity is merely mental labor, or thinking. What was needed, Marx argued, was a materialistic approach that was situated within the context of the real social world, while still including the dynamics of history (Seidman, 1983: 88).

Feuerbach’s Influence: Materialism

Marx addressed the issue of the real material world by focusing on the work of the Young Hegelian, Ludwig Feuerbach, who argued that man doesn’t have his basis in thought, but rather thought has its basis in man. He argued that the real, material world determines how men think and behave (Berlin, 1995: 58).

Feuerbach theorized that people experience hardship in a world that is overwhelming to them, and in an effort to cope with this anxiety, they create the concept of God to help them get through their difficult lives. In a sense, they ultimately get rewarded for suffering through the day, because there is a heaven at the end of the road. People project all the positives that are lacking in the world (such as peace, kindness, justice, happiness, etc.) on to another world and being to help them cope with their reality (Berlin, 1995: 58). Feurerbach views us as unhappy and because of this unhappiness we creates a delusional fantasy, in the form of heaven and God, to make ourselves feel better.

Marx praised Feuerbach for understanding the importance of the real material world to human development, rather than merely focusing on ideas. But he was critical of him because he ignored how best to change this situation. Marx felt it was imperative to uncover and remove these contradictions (which is the dialectic) or otherwise these delusions would continue. So, Marx is really critiquing Feuerbach for having no dialectic in his work (Berlin, 1995: 106-107), and he rectifies this problem through his own philosophical analysis.

Marx’s Historical Materialism

Marx wanted to study society objectively and historically (Smith, 1997: 433) and he felt that this could be accomplished through historical materialism (Engels created this phrase and Marx never directly used this term.). This method entails fusing the dialectic with materialism. Therefore, Marx was able to focus on contradictions, conflicts and tensions that manifest themselves in the real, material world. This meant that Marx’s primary concern was with a theory that demystified the development of social institutions (Seidman, 1998: 36-37).

In addition, Marx argued that people are anchored in their bodies and their natural environment. But nature does not directly provide us with what we need to survive; instead, we have to work on and with nature to produce what we need to live. Marx called this activity labor. The highest activity that people can engage in is labor, and it is what separates us from the lower animals (Berki, 1979: 36). He also stressed the importance of history because an historical focus allows us to uncover how, through time, people have created forces that come to control and dominate them. In turn, working on the environment changes human nature. Therefore, human beings become alienated because of how they have chosen to fulfill their needs through time (Seidman, 1998: 38). For Marx, it is important that we understand these processes so that we can change them.

The Industrial Revolution

Marx lived and wrote during a time of enormous social change. The industrial revolution had begun in the early 1800’s in England. Automated factories were growing in the North of England, and factory owners needed cheap labor to work in them. Initially, adults were not interested in doing these kinds of jobs because traditionally they had worked long hours based upon the seasons. During this time, workers were used to working incredibly long hours for a relatively short period of time until their work was completed. When the season was over, they would take long breaks off until it was time to work again. So, the idea of working consistently throughout the year was not appealing to most adults.

In an effort to cut labor costs, factory owners hired orphans. These children were shipped to the factory and were provided barracks-style housing and food (Stearns, 2007: 34), primarily in the textile industry (Nardinelli, 1980: 753). Prior to the Factory Act of 1833, it was legal to hire children who were less than nine years old, and they could be worked in excess of forty eight hours a week. In addition, these children had no time to attend school because of their long work day (Nardinelli, 1980: 741).

Life was not much better for the adult workers. In another effort to reduce labor costs, factory owners expected their workers to work long, consistent hours throughout all the seasons. In addition, the machinery was very expensive so it had to be kept running continuously so it could pay for itself. Supervisors not only rewarded employees for their productivity, but they also rewarded or punished their overall behavior in the workplace. Workers were often fired, assessed heavy financial penalties, and locked out of the workplace for a variety of infractions. Penalties could be steep for “arriving a few minutes late in the morning, being absent from their machine, talking or eating at work, drinking beer, and whistling, singing, and engaging in other forms of horseplay” (Clark, 1994: 132).

Despite these working conditions, more adults eventually came into the city to work these jobs because it was becoming more difficult to make a living in the countryside. It was not unusual for them to work sixteen-hour days for weeks at a time, where they were paid a substandard wage, and literally had no legal protections. But this situation was not just restricted to England. The United States also implemented the same factory discipline.

For example, in New England, female workers were required to attend church, and supervisors would turn back the clock to extract more output from workers. Prior to 1835, factory workers typically worked thirteen hours a day and were paid, not in cash, but in company receipts that could only be spent in the company store (Zinn, 1999: 228-230). Even when it came to where they spent their wages, the workers were controlled and exploited by the capitalist.

Marx was preoccupied with this social trend and the resulting alienation of the workers. He became very involved in radical communist groups in an effort to spark revolutionary fervor because he believed that the capitalist system was coming apart. But, he attacked the system and called for its destruction when it appeared to be at its most successful. In fact, most citizens felt very optimistic about industrialization and capitalism (Berlin: 15-16), and were not particularly concerned with any possible negative repercussions.

Strangely, Marx had very little contact with the workers themselves. Most of the information that he garnered about them came from newspapers and official government documents. It was his life long friend and writing partner Frederich Engels, who most directly experienced the plight of the worker (Wheen, 2001: 75; 83). Engels’ family owned a cotton factory in Manchester, England, which was where the industrial revolution began in England. Although he didn’t want to work for his family, he finally capitulated and spent most of his adulthood in the factory. He wrote The Condition of the Working Class In England, which documented the plight of the working class in the 1840’s. This was Engels most well known book and he clearly was the voice of concrete working experience for Marx.

Marx’s Life within the Capitalist System

Throughout his life, Marx consistently lived in poverty. Although he had intended to enter the German university system as a professor, his involvement with the Young Hegelians made him too politically dangerous to hire. The Ministry of Education in Berlin blacklisted him because, like all Young Hegelians, he was critical of the Prussian state, which made it virtually impossible for him to secure an academic position. As an alternative form of employment, he spent most of his life writing for various radical communist papers that were typically funded by him. He would write articles that were critical of the government during a time of extreme conservativism, and the government that he targeted would typically claim that he was a dangerous subversive. Initially, he felt that he couldn’t write in Germany and relocated to Paris where he met Engels. He was expelled from Paris and he and Engels moved to Brussels. He moved back to Paris where his ideas were suppressed again, and then finally immigrated to England where he would spend the rest of his life, writing for newspapers and developing his theories.

Not making money was only part of Marx’s problem. He would make a little money from his journalistic writings and this income was continuously supplemented by money from Engels. When Marx had money he grossly overspent it. Rather than attempting to make the money last, he would move his family to a nice house that he couldn’t afford, only to be broke again the following month. As a result, this meant that he spent a lot of time hiding from creditors.

Despite his critique of the bourgeoisie (or the capitalists), ironically, Marx shared many of their attitudes’. He was desperate to keep up appearances, and he felt that a man of his standing should have a secretary, so he hired one at time when he could barely feed his family. His family would take vacations to the beach, and his children took piano lessons, which was an expensive luxury of the middle-classes (Wheen, 2001: 181, 183). He detested his own poverty, and the deaths of this two sons and daughter can be directly attributed to it (Berlin, 1978: 144). In fact, his mother made the comment that she wished her son had spent more time making capital that writing about it (McLellan: 327). Marx was quoted as joking, “I don’t suppose anyone has ever written about “money” when so short of the stuff” (Wheen: 2001: 234). It seems reasonable to assume that Marx’s own poverty fueled his ideas on capitalism.

Before we address Marx’s theoretical ideas, keep in mind that there were two major points of view concerning capitalism during this time period. There were those who celebrated industrialization as a positive form of progress, and those, like Marx, who found it a necessary evil. It seemed unlikely to those critical of industrialization that the government would intervene and pass laws protecting workers. It also seemed doubtful that it would be illegal to employ children. In fact, they were certain that these working conditions could only get worse through time.

The Theory

Although Marx claimed that he was not writing an overarching theory, one can certainly be found in his work (Berlin, 1978: v). In essence, he created a stage theory, whereby a society must transverse successive stages through time before communism can be reached. As a result of this approach, even though he detested what capitalism did to workers, he felt that it was necessary because a communist society relied upon the technological advances of capitalism.

Alienation

We have seen how Marx was influenced by Hegel’s ideas on alienation. Hegel theorized that when a person creates something, that thing becomes externalized and alien to him, and it was an inescapable part of life. This is where he and Hegel differed because Marx felt that alienation was not inevitable and in fact could be eradicated (Berlin: 90). Marx implemented Hegel’s idea of alienation to illustrate how man could be both free and constrained simultaneously. Through the idea of alienation Marx shows that people have the propensity to be free through creativity, but are thwarted by the large-scale structures of capitalism. Of course, he felt passionately that communism was the only society that would use technology to support human freedom (Smith: 436), and we will turn to this issue in a later section.

For Marx, one of the pivotal questions driving his work was why people don’t see the alienating circumstances of their lives (Smith: 439), created by the material conditions of capitalism. He argued that man has a natural propensity to create things for his own use, and through creating things man is truly human. When man makes objects for himself or another person, this is called use value, because the object is useful to some one. In addition, “use values are only realized in use or in consumption” (Marx, 1977a: 127), meaning that their value comes from their use, not from the market. (Marx, 1977a: 129). Marx called this creative tendency to make objects species-being or human potential.

People also need to appropriate, which is merely being creative through nature. In other words, we go out into the world and use things found in nature (e.g. wood, clay, rocks, etc.) to make things that have use-value. Marx writes, “The worker can create nothing without nature, without the sensuous external world. It is the material on which his labor is realized” (Marx: 1982: 109). He also writes that people are inherently social, so they must be creative in conjunction with other people (Knapp, 1986: 590). So, people need to work with one another, bond with one another, cooperate together and converse with one another while they work. But in capitalism we are alienated from other people because we only relate to them as workers who are a part of the capitalist system and we are in direct competition with them (Marx, 1982: 115).

In capitalism, man has never reached his species-being or potential because he is making commodities, or goods that are sold and exchanged on the market, such as automobiles, clothes, computers, etc. A commodity has both use-value and exchange value, or what it costs on the market (Marx, 1973: xx). The worker is paid a wage for his labor-power, and this wage is typically the bare minimum to survive. The capitalist is solely interested in profit, or surplus value. Surplus value is what remains after the costs of making the product and the value of the product are calculated. The goal of the capitalist is to make as much surplus value as possible, while paying the worker less than he is worth.

Marx argues that the capitalist can accomplish this by forcing workers to work longer hours, which results in absolute surplus-value. The problem with absolute surplus-value is that the capitalist is restricted in how long he can lengthen the work day before he ends up killing the worker from over-work. For example, a factory owner can make more profit if his or her workers work twenty hours a day. But the owner can’t depend on this level of productivity over time because it is physically impossible for people to work at this level with out eventually getting sick or dying. Therefore, there are physical limits placed on people that the capitalist must acknowledge.

A second and more effective approach to increase surplus value requires that “the mode of production must be revolutionized” where it takes a shorter amount of time to make an object through the use of technology and machines. The result of this revolution is called relative surplus-value (Marx, 1977a: 432). Through the use of machinery, it takes less time for the worker to actually work for his wage (or himself) and he spends more time on “the other part of the day, in which he is free to work for nothing for the capitalist” (Marx, 1977a: 438). This results in a “mentally and physically dehumanized being" (Marx, 1982: 121)

Therefore, through surplus value the worker is exploited because the commodity (or the object that the worker is making) belongs to the capitalist not the person who actually made it, and it is sold on the market for more than the wages paid to the worker. Marx called this drive for surplus value a “werewolf-like hunger” (Marx, 1977a: 353), and this hunger has a devastating impact on the worker because he

“becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and size. The worker becomes an even cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates. With the increasing value of the world of things proceeds in direct proportion the devaluation of the world of men. Labor produces not only commodities: it produces itself and the worker as a commodity…” (Marx, 1982: 107).

Because he is not making something for himself and he does not own the commodity, these products seem foreign to the worker, and they take on a life of their own, and control him. In The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (also known as the Paris Manuscripts) Marx makes this point when he writes, “…the object which labor produces—labor’s product—confronts us as something alien, as a power independent of the producer” (Marx: 1982: 108).

Within capitalism, man forgets that his labor-power gives these objects value and anything he creates he ultimately controls. Through this process, the worker also loses sight of himself and his creativity, which results in man behaving like an automaton (Smith, 1997: 438). This is demoralizing for workers because it effects who he is as a person whereby “the poorer he himself—his inner world—becomes, the less it belongs to him as his own" (Marx, 1982: 108), so he loses sight of himself and his humanity.

Through this process of alienation, man in not able to be human, and instead, resembles the lower animals. Marx makes this assertion by writing, “man (the worker) only feels himself freely active in his animal functions—eating, drinking, procreating, or at most in his dwelling and in dressing-up, etc; and in his human functions he no longer feels himself to be anything but an animal. What is animal becomes human and what is human becomes animal” (Marx, 1982: 111).

The idea that the value of an object depends on how much time a worker spent making it is called the labor theory of value (Mandel, 1971: 38). The importance of labor-time is mystified in a capitalist system. Because workers are unaware of their own importance to control commodities, those commodities become fetishized. This fetishism of commodities occurs when a worker believes that these objects have an inherent or natural value, when in reality the workers labor-power gives these objects value. In a sense, objects are “endowed with a will and a soul of their own” (Marx, 1977a: 1003).

All commodities have an exchange value or their cost on the market. For example, if a Porche is priced at $100,000 we assume that there is something intrinsically valuable about that car and that is why it is so expensive. What the worker doesn’t realize is that his labor-time gives the product value, and nothing else.

Ideology

For a capitalist society to work, the life circumstances of the capitalist must be justified, and all citizens must see capitalism as natural and necessary. It is important that everyone defend capitalism, and they must view any alternatives to the system as impossible. This is accomplished through the use of ideologies, which are simply idea systems that validate the position of those in power (Berlin: 90). To make this point, Marx writes in The Communist Manifest that “the ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class” (Marx and Engels, 1948: 29).

There are always tensions and contradictions in a society and ideologies are implemented to obscure them. An example of an American ideology would be that people are successful because they work hard. This implies that if some citizens are not successful they are lazy. This idea is important to capitalism because it allows the larger society to blame people that are unsuccessful for their own plight. The reality is that most poor people in American are working poor, and they work very hard. But as long as this ideology is in place, we don’t have to do anything to make the system more just. Instead, we feel that if only these people would play by the rules of the game like we do, then their life chances would improve. We can sit back and live our middle-class lives in comfort with little or no concern for the less fortunate. It also allows people like Donald Trump to flaunt their wealth and brag about their success, no matter how crass, because they clearly deserve it. In a sense, if they didn’t deserve it they wouldn’t possess it. The irony here is that most Americans, even poor ones, will defend the rights of the rich to their wealth, even though the chances for most of them to possess such wealth are slim, at best.

So ideologies are norms, values, and laws that justify the position of the wealthy and defend those having political power (Smith: 440) Marx argued that since most people in society blindly accept ideologies, we all experience a form of collective self-deception (Berlin: 90). Marx was particularly interested in why we don’t typically question the status quo. Because these idea schemas are often so obviously oppressive it seems reasonable to assume that people would easily understand this reality and try to find better ways to live (Smith: 439).

But the reality is that these ideas are taught to us as children, and are reinforced by a variety of social institutions (e.g. family, school, politics), which makes them seem obvious and natural. For most of us, it rarely occurs to us to question the norms and values of America, and we often find it threatening, and even “un-American” when others do.

Because it seems unlikely that citizens will notice these ideologies, the goal of the philosopher is to expose these falsehoods to the masses, because the only way that the proletariat will change their situation is by learning the truth (Berlin: 90). Marx’s focus on ideology is important because he was the driving force behind the philosophical debates of his time on how non-communist societies create and perpetuate these social myths. But for him, it was more than a philosophical exercise; it was pragmatic from a political point of view. He felt that exposing ideologies would increase the likelihood of bringing about a new and better society (Smith: 440), and he sacrificed much in his life to do just that. Like the Young Hegelians, he understood that merely critiquing capitalism would not destroy it (Berlin: 105).

The Importance of Religion in Capitalism: Religion as Ideology

Marx theorized that most people live a life of hopelessness. In an effort to cope with this bleak situation, people look inward to morals and religion to justify their life experiences. While this may give most of us some temporary relief, it also causes more social problems, because morality and religion merely perpetuate more social deception and lies. Through time, these falsehoods appear to be self-evident, objective truths that most of us defend. What people surrender by believing and defending these ideas is an accurate understanding of the world. Through these perceptual inaccuracies, individuals inadvertently miscalculate their own power and the power of others. So in the capitalist system workers feel powerless to change their circumstances because they view the capitalists as more powerful than they are (Berlin: 4). Both of these perceptions are incorrect, according to Marx.

One of the primary tools of social justification that Marx specifically targeted was religion. In a well-known passage Marx writes, “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people” (Marx, 1977b:??). What he means is that people move toward religion because they live in a world where they feel powerless and oppressed, and they have no hope of expressing themselves as creative human beings. Because this situation is so depressing, the only way people can emotionally survive is by looking to God and the promised afterlife. By believing in heaven we make our current situation more palatable. So if one’s life is miserable and there is no hope for any positive change, it becomes immediately less troublesome when they know that they will be rewarded for their suffering when they die.

The problem with this logic, according to Marx, is that although it may give us immediate comfort, it probably also leads us to be less motivated to make any major changes in the world. The world and its problems become less important to us because we are only alive for a short period of time. Because most of our existence will be spent in heaven, that is where we focus our attention. In addition, man gives up a sense of self when he focuses on religion. Marx is very clear about this when he writes, “the more man puts into God, the less he retains in himself” (Marx, 1982: 108). Not surprisingly, Marx viewed any society that held a strong religious ethic with great suspicion and assumed that it possessed a host of major social problems.

As a caveat, it is important to recognize that Marx was specifically critiquing the Prussian state and more particularly Germany. Because religion was so important in Prussia, Marx believed that it had to be removed before any type of social change could occur. In addition, he was primarily critiquing the Lutheranism found in Germany, which tended to be very dogmatic. But none the less, he was still highly critical of all religions and believed that it was an indicator that man was alienated because he chose to live in a fantasy rather than in the real, material world (McLellan: 80-81).

False Consciousness and Class Consciousness

Marx insisted that the development of capitalism was historically necessary before communism could be realized, which made him somewhat ambivalent about it. In a sense, it was a necessary evil because it had opened the door for unlimited wealth, in contrast to past societies where the norm was limited markets and vast poverty. It had taken very little time for capitalism to take root and grow and it had expanded the local market place to a world wide, global market (McLellan: 177). These developments resulted in a better life-style for many people, who were no longer living in abject poverty and starving to death.

But despite these positive outcomes, he felt that capitalism was an unnatural situation for humanity because it requires constant conflict between the capitalists and the proletariat (Marx, 1982: 106). The only way one class could be successful was to try to devastate the other through an unremitting, permanent class war, whose result directly determines how the world operates. For instance, if the proletariat were in a position of power society would be a very different place, and it would impact everything from what we believe to be true as a society to the importance placed on various social institutions. What makes class conflict particularly abnormal is that both the proletariat and the capitalist become alienated, and the relationship between both classes becomes distorted and inaccurate. As a result, society as a whole becomes one of tension and discord (Berlin: 100).

It is here that both classes experience false consciousness. Both the capitalists and the proletariat misread their place in history because of these dominant ideologies. The capitalists believe that they are successful because they are smart and talented business people. They don’t understand that they hold this structural position because it has been justified by the larger society through ideology. On the other hand, the proletariat also believe that the system inherently makes sense and that if they work harder they can also become successful like the business owners. What the proletariat don’t understand is that they have a revolutionary potential to change the system.

Through time, as capitalism becomes more oppressive it was Marx’s hope that the proletariat would possess class consciousness. This means that the proletariat would finally understand that the system was exploitative and oppressive and that it was designed to keep them at the bottom, no matter how hard they worked. It is a final awareness that no matter what they do, they will probably not own the means of production (or the factories and technology necessary to make commodities), and that they are destined to be poor, engaging in monotonous, repetitive, unfulfilling tasks for the rest of their lives. Once the proletariat experiences class consciousness, revolution becomes possible.

Marx explains the coming revolution through the General Law of Capitalist Accumulation. In this scenario, the capitalist needs to make as much surplus value as he can. He does this by the specialization of work, the mechanization of work, and globalization (or expanding markets). Unfortunately, at least initially, this increased productivity pushes many working proletariat into the industrial reserve army, or the unemployed, because fewer workers are needed to make a profit (Marx, 1977a: 798).

In addition, because of the increased competition between the capitalists, many of the capitalists go out of business and end up falling into the proletariat. Eventually, this results in few capitalists, many proletariat, and even more unemployed. (Marx, 1977a: 799). During this period, the proletariat are further exploited by the few capitalists. Marx argues that the capitalists

“distort the worker into a fragment of a man, they degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine, they destroy the actual content of his labor by turning it into a torment; they alienate from him the intellectual potentialities of the labor process in the same proportion as science is incorporated in it as an independent power; they deform the conditions under which he works, subject him during the labor process to a despotism the more hateful for its meanness; they transform his life-time into working-time, and drag his wife and child beneath the wheels of the juggernaut of capital (Marx, 1977a: 799).

So the proletariat is now even more exploited than they have been in the past. This is what makes the situation so ironic. While the capitalists are initially winning the war over the proletariat because they are making more money, they are setting the stage for their own demise, which is the unanticipated consequence of capitalism. Because the workers are so exploited they are more inclined to see the reality of the situation and get class consciousness. So in Marx’s words, the capitalists are creating their own “grave-diggers” (Marx, 1948: 21). Without this level of exploitation, workers would probably continue to accept the dominant ideologies about work and success. But through the General Law of Capitalist Accumulation revolution could become a reality and Marx warns, “let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win” (Marx, 1948: 44).

Marx predicted that the bourgeoisie class would disappear altogether, but he believed that it would be possible for some individual bourgeoisie to save themselves and leave this class before it fell into historical oblivion (Berlin: 115). So a select few would “have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole” and band with the proletariat to bring about a new society where people could reach their species-being (Marx and Engels, 1948: 19).

Commitment to Revolution

As we enter the twenty-first century, it is easy to dismiss the idea that communism might lead to a better world as misdirected and naïve. Most Americans view communism as the ultimate political failure, especially with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the former Soviet Union. But it is easy to look back on history and make these value judgments. Communists and socialists were common during Marx’s lifetime and many were afraid of what the future of capitalism might hold. Communist and socialist intellectuals were committed to these ideas because they wanted to wrest society from the clutches of a capitalist system that only seemed to bring misery and heartbreak to the masses (McLellan: 45).

Marx certainly staked everything he had on the possibility of this idea. He was chased from country to country before he settled in England, an academic career was closed to him, he was poor and he lived in squalor for much of his life, and three of his children died as the result of this poverty. He even suffered through several nasty bouts of carbuncles for his cause, where he continued to work but he had to write standing up because the boils were too painful if he sat at his desk (Wheen, 2001: 294).

He spent countless hours in the British Museum pouring through government documents that chronicled the lives of factory workers to write his masterpiece, Capital (Das Kapital), which he began in August, 1861 (Felix, 1983: 28). He meticulously poured over data that the English government had collected documenting the horrible conditions of factories. Surprisingly, although they had considerable evidence about the horrors of industrialization, the English government did little to improve the situation for workers (Wheen, 2001: 82). Once Capital was published it was all but ignored, and his wife Jenny is quoted as having written, “If the workers had an inkling of the sacrifice that was necessary to complete this work, written only for them and in their interest, they would perhaps show a bit more interest” (McLellan: 325). So whether you agree with his ideas or not, whether you believe he was naïve about the future, you can certainly appreciate his determination and commitment to an idea.

The French Revolution of 1789

During this period, many thinkers, including Marx, were greatly impacted by the French Revolution of 1789. The American Revolution had a great impact on Europeans who thought that if the Americans could defeat the British and sever ties with the English crown, then maybe something similar could occur in Europe. Many of the French soldiers who had fought alongside the Americans against the British, were excited about the prospect of a revolution in France. King Lois XVI had run up an enormous debt, leaving the commoners highly taxed, with the financial burden coming down the hardest on the poorest. There was also a shortage of food, prices were very high, and many people were unemployed. Not surprisingly, the poor blamed the king for their predicament.

The revolution began in Paris in mid-July of 1789 when the poor stormed the Bastille looking for weapons to defend themselves against the Kings troops. When the governor of the prison refused them entry, they killed him and put his head on a pike. This chaotic scene was replicated all throughout France, and poor hungry women captured the royal family at Versailles and brought them back to Paris where they were imprisoned. This time period was later called the Great Fear. The nobles were so afraid of the peasants that they abolished serfdom and many of the financial costs that went with it. In August 1789, Enlightenment ideals like equality, freedom, and liberty were embraced in The Declaration of the Rights of Man (of course, these freedoms did not apply to women).

Austria and Prussia were afraid that revolution would spread throughout Europe, so they threatened to intervene. This so outraged the poor that they stormed the royal gardens in Paris where the King was being held. They also attacked prisons and murdered nobles who they believed were consorting with the European enemy. King Louis XVI was guillotined in 1793, and the queen, Marie Antoinette was beheaded nine months later.

A large percentage of intellectuals embraced the French Revolution as the beginning of a new and better era, while still deploring its violence. Hegel felt that it had replaced outdated social and political institutions with sophisticated moral and political ideas (Mah, 1990: 3-4). Marx used the French Revolution as the positive standard when assessing Germany’s entrée into to the modern world. He thought that Germany, while still modern, was backward in comparison to France (Mah, 1990: 16).

The European Revolts of 1848

The European Revolts of 1848,which occurred right after Marx and Engels had published the Communist Manifesto, also had a direct impact on Karl Marx and his ideas about social change. (Wheen, 2001: 105). During this time, the government of France was corrupt, there were no welfare protections for citizens and the economy was performing poorly. In an act of desperation, the working classes and the middle classes came together and barricaded the streets in revolt. Because of the perceived failures of the monarchy, these revolutionaries established the Second Republic (the First Republic followed the Revolution of 1789). This was clearly a time of great social upheaval and Marx thoroughly believed that a major revolution was just around the corner.

While many French citizens initially moved toward socialism, they grew more conservative when some revolutionaries attempted to form a new state. There was such violent warfare between the social classes that the National Guard was finally brought in to stop the social chaos. Other countries followed France’s lead, and revolution also erupted in Italy, Prussia, Poland, Austria, and Hungary.

Despite the eventual failure of this revolution, Marx believed that these events in Europe signaled something new on the horizon. He interpreted these events in terms of social class and felt that the workers were forced by the bourgeoisie to revolt because they were starving and without rights (Calhoun, 1989: 210-211). These events impacted his ideas on the future where he understood revolution as the clash of classes based on material interests, and he believed that these revolts were a progression to the final socialist revolution (Calhoun, 1989: 214). Unfortunately for Marx, this upheaval was not the beginning of anything new, but was actually the end of a revolutionary era (Calhoun, 1989: 211).

Marx didn’t call for revolution and a new society because it was the right and just thing to do. He was not an emotional romantic, so he didn’t discuss morality, humanitarianism, or goodwill. Instead, he appealed to reason and facts. His life work involved uncovering how the capitalist system worked, and how the system was going to deteriorate (Berlin: 7). He believed that class conflict dominated all social relations throughout history, which resulted in economic instability. He felt that these social problems would be corrected through a revolution and the result would be communism (Smith: 444). He was clear that he did not view his ideas as merely a theory, but involved “actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on under our very eyes” (Marx and Engels, 1948: 23). His stance certainly makes sense when placed within the context of the French Revolution and the Revolutions of 1848.

Marx, the Communists and the Socialists

Marx enjoyed attacking and denouncing popular leaders of the various communist and socialist groups, and exposing their intellectual weaknesses (Wheen, 2001: 105). He was highly critical of those intellectuals (e.g. St. Simon, Fourier, Owen) who spent their time writing and discussing the new utopian socialist society, and in an effort to “realize all these castles in the air, they are compelled to appeal to the feelings and purses of the bourgeois” (Marx and Engels, 1948: 41). He believed that they were attempting to avoid a revolution because of their “blind unbelief in the new gospel” (Marx and Engels, 1948: 42). He was also highly critical of Conservative Socialism, and especially its most well-known proponent, the philosopher Proudhon. In his book, Philosophy of Poverty, Proudhon argued for a society where only the proletariat lived. He believed that competition was evil and that we didn’t need a revolution to change the system, we only needed to outwit the bourgeoisie (Marx and Engels, 1948: 38; Berlin: 83). Marx responded harshly to Proudhon by writing his own book, Poverty of Philosophy, which underscored and attacked the flaws in Proudhon’s argument. As an aside, Marx also felt that Proudhon was essentially a stupid man and he didn't like him (Berlin, 86-87).

Marx is known for claiming that “I, at least, am not a Marxist!” to distance himself from some of his French followers, (McLellan: 414). Because he was more interested in critiquing capitalism and looking for signs of revolution, he was often irritated when others wanted to better understand how the new society would work. He had one conversation where a man asked him who would clean the shoes under this new communist system, and Marx angrily snapped, “You should!” (Wheen, 2001: 296).

The International

During his later years when he was writing Capital, Marx was very involved with The International, a group of like-minded people who were committed to social revolution. In the 1860’s, it seemed likely that there would be a resurgence of working class rebellion in England (McLellan: 339). Many believed that the situation in England would spread throughout Europe and those countries would become more like England (McLellan: 343). They argued that England would be the most promising place to organize because it was where capitalism had begun (Wheen, 2001: 195). Membership in the International grew very quickly as unions in Europe joined to achieve shorter work days, higher wages, and political representation (Berlin: 166).

The International was its most powerful from 1867-1869, but was almost non-existent in England in 1867 (Mclellan: 354-355). This was primarily because The International was based in London and most heavy industry was located in the North of England. Not only was The International headquartered on the other side of England, but most workers were craft workers (and not the theorized proletariat) who were not particularly threatened by industrialization (McLellan: 361).

Through his involvement with The International, Marx was notorious all throughout Europe, but he was unknown in England, where he was living (McLellan: 374). In fact, he was in such demand that he would tell other members that he was out of town just so he could spend some time alone to work on Capital (McLellan: 345).

With time, Marx gave up the idea that a revolution was impending and was less inclined to believe that short outbursts of working class political activity would lead to a revolution (McLellan: 376). But, there was a glimmer of hope in Russia. Despite its history of strict censorship, the Russian government allowed the printing of Capital because they didn’t think that anyone would read it. Ironically, it was more popular there than anywhere else in the world (Berlin: 198).

Until 1875, Marx doubted that revolution would occur in Russia (McLellan: 410). Most Russian Marxists were middle-class intellectuals who advocated understanding the proletariat in an effort to elevate them intellectually and socially (Berlin: 199). With time Marx began to take the Russians more seriously. The countries policies were more liberal and there was a mounting resistance movement that came to him for advice (McLellan: 410). Although it may have been out of desperation, he thought that even though Russia was an agricultural, pre-industrial society, it might be able to by-pass capitalism altogether (McLellan: 411-423) considering the commitment to communism of these Russian revolutionaries (Berlin: 201).

A Glimpse into the Future

The question then becomes, after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, when Lenin and his socialist party assumed power, did Russia resemble Marx’s vague ideas on communism? Although he wrote much more about the problems of capitalism, Marx did intend to eventually write a description of the “ultimate communist society” in the fourth and final volume of Capital. Unfortunately, he didn’t live to complete the volume (Hammen, 1972: 82). But, he did have a few things to say about the future in his other writings.

Despite his concessions to Russia, he was very clear that a society must be capitalist before communism could be an option (McLellan: 406). He argued that the technology that makes industrialization possible is important for communism because machinery allows people to have free time. In communism, technology works to the advantage of people giving them time to finally experience their human potential, in contrast to capitalism, where technology was antagonistic and alienating to workers (Kain, 1980: 298). But even though machinery gives us free time, Marx acknowledged that we will still have a bit of work to do in the new society, and it would be utopian to think otherwise (Berlin: 95).

What makes communism so different from other historical periods is that it requires the abolition of private property. When Marx referred to private property he didn’t mean that people couldn’t have personal possessions. Rather, he was referring to the means of production, or all the technologies needed to make commodities, and he sums up communism as the “Abolition of private property” (Marx, 1948: 23). He argues that there would be no need to destroy personal property, because most people really don’t have much anyway (Marx, 1948: 25).

It is in communism that man returns to himself; where he is no longer alienated and there is no conflict between people or between people and nature. Man also returns to himself as a social being as he moves away from religion, the family, the state, and all alienating social institutions typical of capitalistic society. Man is reunited with nature and nature exists for him and he exists for it (Marx, 1982: 135-137). He writes that in communism, “my work would be a free expression of my life, and therefore a free enjoyment of my life. In work the peculiarity of my individuality would have been affirmed since it is my individual life. Work would thus be genuine, active property” (McLellan: 102). It is by working in concert with nature that we can finally reach our human potential or species-being. So in a sense, communism and species-being are one in the same.

In communism, there would be no division of labor that is so necessary in capitalist societies. People would no longer engage in specialized, repetitive tasks and would instead, create things from beginning to end (Marx, 1970: 53). Strangely, he used a rural example of paradise to illustrate this point in the well-known passage that follows:

“while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, 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, shepherd or critic (Marx and Engels, 1970: 53).

What makes this passage particularly odd is that Marx knew that we could never return to a simpler time because all historical periods were unique (Nicolaaus, 1973: 111). But more to the point, Marx loathed the countryside, and he is said to have described it as a “rural idiocy” (Wheen, 2001: 96), so it makes little sense for him to express a better life through landscapes that he detested.

Although he spent very little time writing about it, Marx felt that communism was the “solution to the riddle of history and knows itself to be this solution” (McLellan: 104). As a result, history would no longer be one of class struggle.

Why is Marx still important today?

Because communism has been such a dismal failure in the 20th century, a reasonable question to ask would be why Marx is still pertinent today. Most Americans dismiss his ideas as an antiquated failure, whether they are familiar with them or not. Nations that are in the late stages of capitalism are still not on the brink of revolution, and there has been a renewed commitment to the superiority of the free-market. Marx didn’t predict the importance of welfare capitalism; children no longer work and attend school instead, and workers routinely get over time, have clean and safe working conditions, and have a safety net in the form of Social Security and Medicaid. Most of us do not or will not experience anything like the factory system that Marx described over one hundred years ago.

But Marx is important, especially to the field of sociology, for several reasons. He highlighted the problem of social class and social stratification that continues to permeate much of the work of sociology today. We still view inequality as an important factor in the world, especially today as the middle-class continues to shrink, and the lower-classes continue to expand.

His ideas on ideology still resonate today, and our sensitivity to that concept has allowed Americans to become more savvy and sophisticated when assessing people in power. If we didn’t understand that those in power have their own agenda to further their own ends, we would be less inclined to think critically when politicians make promises to us (although Curtis White argues that Americans don’t think for themselves in his book The Middle Mind).

Marx couldn’t have been more correct when assessing globalization. Jobs have been exported to peripheral countries, and corporations move quickly all over the globe. There have been a host of social problems that have come with this development. Workers in poor countries often experience the same working conditions that Marx described in the mid-1800’s. Corporations continue to make profits for their shareholder’s while hiring children and barely paying a living wage to their workers. Exploitation continues to be a pertinent issue for most of us today. Americans are working longer hours, are paying more for health care and day care, and with the advance of new technologies (e.g. cell phones, computers) many have experienced a blur between work and their personal life. We can be so tethered to our jobs that we don’t feel that we have a right to take vacations or personal time without “checking-in”.

Marx was also correct when he stated that we are so alienated that we only feel human when we act like animals. Americans are more obese than they have ever been. Many of us achieve meaning in our lives by eating and drinking to excess, and alcoholism and drug addiction are major social problems today. Evidently, many people feel the need to escape their lives, despite their educational level or social class. This becomes all the clearer as many college campuses are attempting to arrest the episodes of “binge-drinking” that undergraduates have become known for.

So although Marx may have not correctly predicted the coming revolution and he was incorrect when describing communism, his ideas on alienation, exploitation, globalization and ideology are chillingly accurate. His modern day importance will become even clearer when we address the Neo-Marxian theories and theorists that have updated his work to better explain the current world, later in this book. So although many communist countries have not faired very well, many of Marx’s ideas certainly have.

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