by Gill Hands
Teach®
Yourself
Marx – The Key Ideas
Gill Hands
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First published in UK 2007 by Hodder Education, 338 Euston Road, London, NW1 3BH.
First published in US 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
This edition published 2010.
Previously published as Teach Yourself Marx
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Copyright © 2007, 2010 Gill Hands
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Year 2010 2009 2008 2007
Contents
Meet the author
Only got a minute?
Only got five minutes?
Only got ten minutes?
Introduction
1 Marx’s early life
Europe at the time of Marx
The early life of Marx
University life
Life as a journalist
The Communist Manifesto
Exile
2 Marx’s later life
The move to London
Family life in London
Marx and Engels
Work in London
Das Kapital
The International
The later years
3 Marx and philosophy
A brief history of philosophy
Which philosophers influenced Marx?
Ancient Greek philosophers
European philosophy
Utopian Socialists
Revolutionaries and anarchists
The importance of Hegel and Feuerbach
How did Marx differ from those who went before?
Political economy
What part did Engels play?
4 Economic theory
Dialectical materialism, historical materialism and economy
The capitalist economy
Commodities
Theory of surplus value
Profit and the division of labour
Capitalism in crisis
Falling wages and profits
Social labour
Accumulation and crisis
Centralization of the economy
Was Marx right about the economy?
5 Economy and society
Imperialism and colonialism
Fetishism
Exploitation
6 Class, class struggle and revolution
Introduction
The development of capitalist society
Dialectical materialism and class structure
Class in the capitalist society
Ideology
Class struggle
Workers’ power and education
The Communist League and class struggle
The International Working Men’s Association
Is revolution inevitable?
7 Further Marxist thought
After the revolution
Communist society
Religion
Women’s rights and the family
Art and culture
Freedom and the individual
8 Marxism after Marx – ideas that changed the world
The spread of Marxist thought
The development of socialism
Russian communism
Chinese communism
The Cold War
The decline of communism
Has Marxism failed?
9 Marxism after Marx – the development of Marxist thought
Types of Marxism
Where does Marx fit in?
Is Marxism relevant in the twenty-first century?
The future
Glossary
Taking it further
Index
To my family and friends.
Also, many thanks to the illustrator for his brilliant cartoons.
Meet the author
Welcome to Marx – The Key Ideas!
I was born in Wales but have lived most of my life in Northern England. I have always been interested in all aspects of social history, including legend and folklore. After training as a teacher of English and History, specialising in the Victorian Era, I worked in Adult Training where I began teaching adults with disabilities and many adults who had missed out on formal education for various reasons. I was also instrumental in setting up three women’s groups and a small press to give women in rural areas a voice. It was from working with these varied people that I acquired the skill of breaking complex subjects down into easier steps and clarifying difficult concepts. I have worked as a freelance writer for many years, writing Beginner’s Guides to Marx and Darwin, as well as numerous newspaper and magazine articles, poetry and fiction. Like Marx, I believe that education is one of the first steps in the liberation of the individual.
Gill Hands, 2010
1: Only got a minute?
Karl Marx was born in Germany in 1818 at a time when Europe was going through great social changes as a result of industrialization and revolution. After studying philosophy he moved to Paris where he met Friedrich Engels and together they wrote The Communist Manifesto on behalf of the Communist League. Marx was then exiled from Paris and moved to London where he spent many years writing his masterwork Das Kapital.
Marx saw that the society around him was an unjust one where the workers, (proletariat) were exploited by the capitalist classes, (bourgeoisie). Marx believed that these two opposing groups made society unstable and this would inevitably lead to revolution. He proposed that after the revolution a fairer communist society would be set up, industry and money would be centralized and class distinctions wou
ld be abolished.
Marx died in 1883 but his ideas lived on and led to world changes. In 1917, after a revolution, Russia became the first communist state in the world and during the twentieth century many other countries followed. The communist societies that resulted were often a long way from Marx’s ideal and eventually communism failed in many countries.
Although Marx’s ideas have gone in and out of fashion they are still important today, for he was one of the first people to look at the exploitation and alienation caused by capitalist, consumer-led society. There has been a resurgence of interest in his predictions for the economy due to the global recession that began in 2007.
5: Only got five minutes?
Karl Marx was born in Germany in 1818 during a time at a time when Europe was going through great social changes as a result of industrialization and revolution. He was brought up in a conventional middle class family, and it was assumed that he would follow his father’s profession, that of a small town lawyer. Marx initially studied law at university but contact with radicals led him to study philosophy instead. After university he concentrated on journalism and his articles on the plight of peasants soon put him in disfavour with the authorities. A short spell in Paris meant that he mixed with radicals and revolutionaries; it was here that he joined the Communist League and met with Friedrich Engels, his lifelong friend and co-writer. They wrote The Communist Manifesto in 1847.
Marx married his childhood sweetheart and had a large family. He was exiled from Paris and the family ended up living in London, where Marx was involved with International Workingman’s Association. He wrote Das Kapital, an attempt to make a scientific study of politics, economics and capitalism. He lived in poverty for a great deal of his time in London and was financially supported by Engels. Das Kapital was not received well in Marx’s lifetime and he died in some obscurity in 1883, but after his death the chain of ideas he had begun was to cause revolution and change society.
Philosophy
Marx was both a philosopher and an economist but he believed philosophy was not enough to change the world. His main contribution to the development of philosophy was historical materialism, a way of studying the relationship between the world of ideas and the material world. His study of philosophy and history led him to believe that society developed through a series of contradictions or dialects.
Economy and Society
Marx saw that society had developed into a capitalist one, focused on the production of commodities and that human labour power had itself become a commodity. This was exploited by the capitalists to gain profit. The capitalists (Bourgeoisie) were those who were rich enough to own factories and machinery and the workers (Proletariat) had to sell their labour power in order to live.
Marx believed capitalism led to fetishism (a kind of worship) of money, capital and commodities and this alienated people. This is because consumers do not see the relationship between a product that they buy and the work that has gone into making it.
Class struggle and revolution
Marx believed that capitalism had divided society into two opposing camps, the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat. He thought people were influenced by ideology, i.e. the prevailing perceptions of a society, to believe that the society they lived in was a fair one that could not be changed; everyone had their place and things had always been that way. He believed that once the Proletariat became educated and realised they were being exploited then they would begin a revolution.
Further Marxist thought
Marx believed that all the injustices in society could only be remedied by the communist society that would be set up as the result of the inevitable revolution. The means of production would be centralised, private property would be abolished and money would cease to exist. Religion would also be abolished as Marx saw it as the opium of the people, something that gave an illusory support to those suffering from alienation and poverty.
How Marxism changed the world
After Marx’s death Engels continued with his work and Marx’s ideas began to spread around the world. Russia became the first communist state in the world after a revolution in 1917 and remained in isolation until Mao Zedong declared the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Other countries followed suit, mainly in the developing world. The communist societies that resulted from these revolutions were often a long way from the ideals of Marx, and communism failed in many countries largely because of economic problems.
Marxism after Marx
Numerous schools of Marxism flourished in the twentieth century and academics hotly debated the ‘true’ meaning of Marx’s legacy. There has been a great deal of debate about the relevance of Marx in the 21st century and Marx has gone in and out of fashion in academic circles. Post-modern theorists such as Jean Baudrillard have argued that Marx’s economic theories do not take the world of the mass media and modern consumerism into account and those who follow the philosophy of Jean-Francois Lyotard think that huge theories of everything and grand narratives, like those Marx described in Das Kapital, are flawed. There was a resurgence of interest in Marx’s predictions for the economy after the start of the world economic crisis that began in 2007. There is also interest in his ideas on consumerism by those in the green movement who see capitalism as the main enemy of the environment.
10: Only got ten minutes?
Life of Marx
Karl Marx was born in Germany in 1818 when the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution were changing the face of Europe. It was while he was at university that Marx developed an interest in the philosophy of Georg Hegel and the theory of the dialectic, the idea that change comes about as a result of conflict between two opposing movements. After university Marx moved to Paris and began collaborating with Friedrich Engels, who was to become his lifelong friend and co-writer. They wrote The Communist Manifesto together in 1847.
Marx and his family lived in London, and Marx became involved with the International Workingmen’s Association. This was founded in 1864, when trade unionists from many countries decided it would be in their interests to band together. Marx lived in poverty for a great deal of his time in London and was financially supported by Engels. Marx wrote Das Kapital, an attempt to make a scientific study of politics, economics and capitalism. It was not received well in Marx’s lifetime, however after his death 1883 the chain of ideas he had begun was to eventually cause revolution and change society.
Philosophy
Marx was both a philosopher and an economist and his main contribution to the development of philosophy was historical materialism, a way of studying the relationship between the world of ideas and the material world.
Marx studied philosophy at Berlin University and became interested in the works of the ancient Greek philosophers Democritus and Epicurus. Marx also studied the philosophers Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach. Both Hegel and Feuerbach believed that people became alienated because they were separate from God but Marx realized that it was money that alienated people in society.
Economy
Marx explained his economic theory in his works Das Kapital, Wage-labour and Capital, and Value, Price and Profit. He saw that since the Industrial Revolution society had focused on the production of commodities and that human labour power had itself become a commodity.
Marx saw that workers are exploited in an industrialized society but the exploitation is hidden. It is only in an industrialized capitalist economy that costly machinery and factories, the means of production, are needed before products can be made. In this way the capitalists or bourgeoisie, i.e. those who were rich enough to own the means of production, came to be the new ruling class. As more and more people left the land to work in factories their labour power became a commodity that could be bought and sold. Marx believed workers were exploited because factory owners could make a profit from their workers and then invest it to make more profit. This is what Marx called the theory of surplus value.
Marx believed tha
t this drive to make profits would push wages lower and lower and this was one of the factors that would eventually lead to global economic crisis; high wages reduce the profit of the capitalist, but low wages mean that workers are unable to buy enough goods and services to keep the economy viable. Because capitalists are in competition with each other and there is no system of regulation of who produces what, there is a danger of over-production; prices fall and the economy becomes stagnant or depressed. Factory owners are also interdependent because no producer can meet all of his own needs from the products of his own factory so he has to sell them as commodities in order to buy other commodities. Marx saw these factors as inherent instabilities in the capitalist system and predicted a series of booms and periodic depressions. His solution, under a communist government, was the centralization of production and of the economy.
Society
Marx saw how the rapid spread of capitalism around the world had led to colonialism, where one country exploited another for profit. Marx saw the globalization of world markets as inevitable, because as profits fell in home markets factory owners would try and exploit new markets overseas. It was this exploitation that is believed to be a contribution to the formation of the developing world.
Marx thought that work was necessary to the human condition, but he believed the factory system had distorted natural relations between people, placing them in competition with each other. He also thought that they were not in ‘right relation’ to the goods that they produced and this led to alienation of people in society. Marx believed capitalism led to fetishism (a kind of worship) of money, capital and commodities and this was part of the process of alienation. This is because consumers do not see the relationship between a product that they buy and the work that has gone into making it. This is linked to exploitation which is not apparent to those in the society