The Politics Book

by DK Publishing

  Workers disconnected

  Marx said that workers also suffer from alienation through the very act of working. Under capitalism, workers’ activity does not arise out of their inherent creativity, but from the practical necessity of working for someone else. The worker does not like work, since it crushes his body and mind and makes him unhappy – it becomes a kind of forced activity that, given the choice, he would not do. Like the goods that he eventually produces, the activity of work becomes something that is external to the worker and with which he has little real connection: “The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work he feels outside himself.” The worker becomes someone else’s subject. His labour is no longer his own and his activity is no longer spontaneous and creative, but directed by another who treats him as a mere tool of production. The worker’s alienation from the fruits of his labour and from the activity of working estranges him from his human identity – what Marx calls his “species-being”. This is because human identity is rooted in people’s ability to transform the raw material of nature into objects. Workers in capitalist systems lose the connection with this basic identity – economic necessity makes productive activity a means to an end, rather than the way in which an individual’s fundamental identity is embodied and played out. Activity is what makes up life, and once this becomes alien to the worker, the worker loses the sense of his human self.

  "Communism is the positive transcendence of private property as human self-estrangement."

  Karl Marx

  Marx predicted a global revolution as workers took control of the means of production. Revolution in Russia was followed by China, where propaganda stressed the values of communism.

  Private property to blame

  These forms of alienation – from the goods produced, from the activity of work, and from human identity – cause people to become increasingly alienated from each other. Since the labour market estranges people from their own essential identity, they become estranged from each other’s identity too. The worker is placed into a relationship of confrontation with the capitalist, who owns the fruits of the work and who controls the worker’s labour activity for his own enrichment.

  "There is no other definition of communism valid for us than that of the abolition of the exploitation of man by man."

  Che Guevara

  Marx believed that private property lay at the root of the alienation of the worker. The division of society into property-owning capitalists and property-less workers is what leads to the alienation of workers. In turn, alienation itself reinforces this division and perpetuates private property. An aspect of the system of private property is exchange and the “division of labour”. Labour becomes specialized: one worker makes the head of the pin, one worker the point, and another assembles the pin. Capitalists specialize in different kinds of goods and trade them with each other. In all of this, the worker becomes a mere cog, a small part of the larger economic machine.

  Marx saw the process of the alienation of the worker and the strengthening of private property as a basic law of capitalism, which sets up a tension in human society as people become estranged from their essential nature. A solution is not to be found in higher wages, because workers would remain enslaved even if they were paid more. Alienated labour goes with private property, so “the downfall of one must therefore involve the downfall of the other”.

  Communism the solution

  For Marx, communism resolves the tension caused by the alienation of the worker by abolishing private property, and finally solves the riddle thrown up by capitalism. It resolves the conflict between man and nature, and between human beings, and in so doing reconnects man to his fundamental humanity. Alienation made work and interactions between people into means of economic gain rather than ends in themselves. Under communism, these activities are restored to their rightful place as ends, the manifestation of true human values. For example, association between workers now arises out of a feeling of brotherhood rather than as something that has to be done. Communism brings the return of “man to himself as a social being”.

  Underlying the statement that communism solves history’s riddle is a view of history that Marx went on to develop more fully in his later work. He believed that historical developments are determined by “material” – or economic – factors. Human beings have material needs and possess the ability to produce goods to satisfy them. Production of these goods can be organized in different ways, each of which gives rise to different kinds of social and political arrangements, which in turn lead to particular beliefs and ideologies. Marx believed that material economic factors were the fundamental determinant, and therefore the motor, of history.

  Overturning capitalism

  Capitalism – a particular way of organizing production – is a response to the material needs of human beings. Capitalism arose as older feudal forms of production died out. As the forces of production develop under capitalism, the suffering of workers becomes obvious, and history moves inevitably towards revolution and the ushering in of communism to replace it.

  Friedrich Engels was the son of a German industrialist. He met Marx in 1842 and initially disliked him, but the pair went on to formulate one of the most far-reaching manifestos ever seen.

  The legacy of Marx

  It is hard to overstate Marx’s influence. His work led to new schools of thought in the fields of economics, political theory, history, cultural studies, anthropology, and philosophy, to name just a few. The appeal of Marx’s ideas comes from their broad interpretation of the world and their message of transformation and liberation. The prediction that he and Friedrich Engels made in their Communist Manifesto of 1848 – that the end of capitalism would be brought about through communist revolution – profoundly influenced 20th-century politics. Communist systems emerged in Europe and in Asia, and communist ideas influenced many governments and revolutionary movements throughout the century.

  One challenge in assessing Marx’s legacy is separating what he really meant from what was done in his name, particularly since communist ideology was used to justify totalitarianism and oppression in many places and at different times. By the end of the 20th century, communism in Eastern Europe had all but collapsed, and the wealthiest nations were firmly capitalist. So, even if aspects of Marx’s analysis of capitalist society still had a ring of truth, many critics see history as having refuted him, particularly in his prediction of the collapse of capitalism. More recently, Marx’s ideas echo once more in claims that the global economic crisis of the early 21st century is a sign of deep contradictions that are inherent in the capitalist system.

  KARL MARX

  Marx was born in Prussia to liberal Jewish parents who converted to Protestantism in response to anti-Jewish laws. As a journalist he increasingly turned to radical politics and economics. In 1843 he moved to Paris, where he met Friedrich Engels, with whom he co-wrote the Communist Manifesto in 1848.

  After the revolutions of that year, Marx was expelled from Prussia, Belgium, and Paris before ending up in London, where he studied economics and history intensively. This eventually led to his major work, Capital. Marx found it hard to support himself and lived in poverty in the slum district of Soho, sustained by the financial support of Engels. He and his wife suffered from poor health, and several of their children died. Marx himself died before the final two volumes of Capital could be published.

  Key works

  1844 Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts

  1848 Communist Manifesto

  1867 Capital Volume I (Volumes II and III published 1885 and 1894, posthumously)

  See also: Francisco de Vitoria • Georg Hegel • Pierre-Joseph Proudhon • Vladimir Lenin • Rosa Luxemburg • Joseph Stalin • Jomo Kenyatta

  IN CONTEXT

  IDEOLOGY

  Socialism

  FOCUS

  Revolutionary criticism

  BEFORE

  1748 Montesquieu analyses different forms of gove
rnment, distinguishing republics from monarchies and despotisms.

  1789 The French Revolution begins, stimulating a period of revolutionary activity in France and beyond.

  AFTER

  1861 Serfdom is abolished in Russia by Tsar Alexander II, after growing pressure from liberals and radicals.

  1890 The German Social Democratic Party is legalized, and starts on the road towards a reformist socialist party.

  1917 The Russian Revolution sweeps away the tsarist regime, bringing the Bolsheviks to power.

  The Russian revolutionary Alexander Herzen began his collection of essays From the Other Shore in 1848, the year of the failed revolutions in Europe. In it he conjured the image of a ship sailing for new lands that runs into gales and storms, representing the hopes and uncertainties of the time. But by 1850, in the collection’s later essays, Herzen believed that real revolutionary fervour had been dampened, and betrayed by a more conservative vision of reform.

  In one essay, Herzen lampooned the republican celebrations held in France in September 1848. He argued that beneath the pomp and slogans, the “old Catholic-feudal order” remained intact. He claimed that this had prevented realization of the authentic ideal of revolution – true liberty for all. Many of the liberals who professed to support revolution were in fact scared of its logical conclusion – the sweeping away of the old order entirely. Instead, Herzen claimed, they sought to secure freedom for their own circle, not for the worker with his “axe and blackened hands”. The architects of the republic had, in a sense, broken the chains but left the prison walls standing, making them “assassins of freedom”. Herzen believed that society was suffering contradictions that were dulling its vitality and creativity. Many shared his disappointment with the 1848 revolutions, and his writings influenced the populist movements that followed.

  The penal colonies of French Guiana were extended in the 19th century. Despite the French Revolution of 1789, feudal-era punishments continued.

  See also: Jean-Jacques Rousseau • Georg Hegel • Vladimir Lenin • Mao Zedong • Che Guevara

  IN CONTEXT

  IDEOLOGY

  Consititutional monarchy

  FOCUS

  Modernization

  BEFORE

  1600 Establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate by Ieyasu brings to an end two centuries of internal conflict.

  1688 The Glorious Revolution brings about a constitutional monarchy in Britain.

  1791 The French constitutional monarchy, in which King Louis XVI shares power with the Legislative Assembly, fails.

  1871–1919 Germany becomes a federation of states, each with its own monarch.

  AFTER

  1901 The new Commonwealth of Australia adopts a federal constitutional monarchy.

  2008 Bhutan becomes a constitutional monarchy.

  From the 17th to the 19th centuries, strict isolation and rigorously controlled trade kept Japan closed to the outside world. That changed when Commodore Matthew Perry forced the Japanese to sign a trade deal with the US in 1853. A national crisis ensued, and a section of Japan’s feudal rulers – the shoguns – including Prince Ito Hirobumi, began to argue for radical reforms to preserve Japan’s independence, using Western models of society. But a society as distinctive as Japan’s could not easily switch to Western modes of rule. Instead, under the guise of returning the emperor to power, an alliance of powerful reformers, including Hirobumi, overthrew the shogunate in 1867, proclaiming a new imperial rule. Samurai were disarmed, feudal lands turned over to the state, and caste divisions abolished.

  "Since government is concerned with the administration of the country, it does not follow that its acts are always favourable to all individuals."

  Ito Hirobumi

  Meiji Constitution

  The leaders of this revolt wanted to unite Western advances with traditional Japanese virtues. Hirobumi drafted the 1890 Meiji Constitution, in which the emperor remained as head of state and focal point for the nation, but government was exercised by a cabinet of ministers. As with constitutional monarchies elsewhere, it was hoped this would provide a “central axis” for Japanese society on which it could advance as a whole. In fact, the constitution provided the framework for Japan’s economic and military development over the next 60 years.

  See also: Barons of King John • John Locke • Tokugawa Ieyasu

  IN CONTEXT

  IDEOLOGY

  Nihilism

  FOCUS

  Morality

  BEFORE

  1781 Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason describes the gap between our thought and the world it attempts to apprehend.

  1818 Schopenhauer publishes The World as Will and Representation, taking Kant’s insight and suggesting that the gap can never be closed.

  AFTER

  1937 Bataille dismisses any political interpretation of Nietzsche as inadequate.

  1990 The End of History and the Last Man by Francis Fukuyama adopts Nietzsche’s metaphor of the Last Man to describe the apparent triumph of free-market capitalism.

  The name of Friedrich Nietzsche still invites hostility. His elusive, wide-ranging writings and visceral critique of morality would spark controversy even without his largely unwarranted tainting with fascism. Like Marx and Freud, he was – in French philosopher Paul Ricoeur’s words – a leading light in the “school of suspicion”, intent on stripping away the veil from received notions and comforting beliefs. His philosophy was nihilist, which means that he thought it impossible to find meaning in existence.

  Opposed to the systematic thought of traditional philosophy, he nonetheless left numerous hints towards a political philosophy. This has little to do with the popular perception of him as a prototypical Nazi. Nietzsche was not an anti-Semite, considering it – and its accompanying nationalism – a means by which failed individuals blamed others for their own failings. He broke with his friend Richard Wagner partly due to the latter’s increasingly strident racism and nationalism. This did not prevent Nietzsche’s works being mauled by his sister, who assumed editing duties as illness incapacitated him towards the end of his life. She attempted to present his many writings in a more favourable light to the German nationalist and anti-Semitic circles in which she moved.

  Will to power

  Nietzsche’s famous phrase “will to power” first appears in a short book that he considered to be his masterpiece, Thus Spake Zarathustra. In this dense, literary text, the protagonist, Zarathustra – a Germanized name for Zoroaster, founder of the ancient Persian religion – surveys a fallen world, and seeks to teach a new way of thinking and living to the people. It is not a standard work of philosophy, or of politics; stylistically, it is something closer to an epic poem, and its central arguments are rarely presented directly, favouring instead a figurative address. But the main themes are clear.

  For Nietzsche, will to power is not merely a demand to dominate and control. He did not necessarily intend to describe a will to power over others. Rather, he intended it to denote the endless striving after goals and the highest achievements in life that he thought motivated human behaviour – whatever these goals may be in practice. In developing the concept, he was heavily influenced by his reading of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. The latter’s bleak depiction of a reality in which no values could become meaningful was brightened, if at all, only by the “will to live” – a desperate striving of all life in the universe to avoid the finality of death. Nietzsche’s development of the same concept is, by contrast, positive: not a struggle against, but a struggle for.

  Nietzsche suggests that the will to power is stronger than the will to life itself. Even the most privileged humans strive after goals that mean risking their lives. There are higher values than crude survival, and what should mark out a good life is the willingness to reach after them.

  Criticizing contentment

  The will to power was a response to the utilitarian thinking that was coming to dominate social philosophy, in which people simply stri
ve after their own happiness and the greatest goal in life is to be content. Nietzsche thought that utilitarianism, and the social philosophy it engendered, was the debased expression of the thinking of the English bourgeoisie – happy, and entirely philistine.

  "The priests are the most evil enemies… in them hatred grows to monstrous and uncanny proportions, to the most spiritual and poisonous kind of hatred."

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Thus Spake Zarathustra contains an argument against this style of social thought. It describes the Last Man, a pitiable creature who is content, looks passively out on the world, “and blinks”. The Last Man is a harbinger of the end of history itself, when all meaningful struggles have ceased. But if we are not meant simply to be content with the world, and instead must strive after higher goals, the question remains as to what those goals should be. Nietzsche was clear on what they should not be. Zarathustra, the first to found a system of morality, must now be the man to destroy it. The morality we have is debased and the god we worship little more than the expression of our own inadequacies. “God is dead”, wrote Nietzsche. Likewise we, as people who remain trapped by this morality, must overcome it. “Man is something to be surpassed. How have you overcome him?” demands Zarathustra of the crowd.