8 marx conclusion - personal websites at ub8马克思的结论——在ub的个人网站

,8 Marx on Communism,1,Paradox of alienation,Individuals are essentially free and socially connectedBut existentially (forms of existence of the human essence) they feel/are enslaved and isolatedNevertheless they continue to create the forms of alienation/oppression that enslave them,2,Productive forces and Relations of Production,The productive forces of society are normally in harmony with the social relations of productionProductive forces: physical and spiritual powers of individuals expressed in technologies of consciousness and material transformation of natureRelations of production: social dimension: master-slave, lord-serf, capitalist-workerThe productive forces continue to develop within the social system (relations of production) and can come into contradiction with the relations of production, bringing about a revolutionary period.E.g., capitalist industry and commerce develops within feudalism English revolution=dialectical contradiction leads to new social order, allowing freer development of the productive forces,3,Nature of capitalism,1) Private ownership and control of the means of productionPeasants owned their tools, but not the land in feudalismWorkers do not own their tools (=alienation of means of labor)2) Social nature of production Individual labor of peasant societies and craftsWorkers together in manufactories and eventual factories3) Goods are produced for the market (commodities)The ability to work becomes a commodity: workers must sell their labor power for a wage (alienation of labor power),4,Development of capitalism,1) Mercantilism: the state plays an important role in the development of large capitalist industries (i.e., the East India company which dominated India late 18th century)Other limitations: guild system continues restricting competition2) Laissez-faire capitalismAdam smith argued against Mercantilism in 1776, but for the continuation of the four-day work-weekIn early 1800s men women and children worked in factories for six days a week, up to 16 hours a day,5,First triumph of communism: The Ten Hours Bill,Bill of 1847: part of “Factory Acts”Marx: “it was the first time that in broad daylight the political economy of the middle class succumbed to the political economy of the working class.” = Laws passed to limit the working day for children and women to 10 hours!The state imposes limits on the market for the well-being of society= communism emerging within capitalism,6,Internal critique of capitalism,Laissez-faire (pure) capitalism tends to self-destructIt destroys the basis of its existence: the workerKills the goose that lays the golden eggsHence for capitalism to develop it must be limited, giving rise to its opposite: communism,7,Moral critique of capitalism,Recall Marx on “bourgeois right”: In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labour, and thereby also the antithesis between mental and physical labour, has vanished; after labour has become not only a means of life but lifes prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of common wealth flow more abundantlyonly then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs!”,8,Bourgeois right,Exchange of goods is based on equality: x Oreos = y cereal Why?Hidden source of equality: socially necessary labor, measured by average time, embodied in the goodsThe value of the commodity reflects the labor that produced the materials and machinery, as well as the new labor in the factory or office that finishes the productionTherefore the exchange of labor power for a wage should also be based on equalityMaxim of capitalist justice (=bourgeois right): An honest days work for an honest days pay,9,Value of goods produced/value of labor power,But the worker does not get the value of her workShe gets the value of her “labor power” Labor power = the equivalent in food, shelter, clothing, and reproduction for bringing the worker back to the job, in this and the next generationMeanwhile, she produces goods whose value is greater than the value of labor powerValue of goods per worker per day, measured in average labor time: 8 hoursToday value of labor power per day (wage): 2 hoursSurplus value: 6 hoursRate of exploitation 6/2 = 300%!Is this fair?,10,Realizing bourgeois right,Only in (the first stage of) socialism/communism would workers tend to get the value of their labor Deductions for social needs (education, etc.) as well as for new machinery, science, etc.But not for profitsParadox: Bourgeois right can be realized only in socialism (first stage of communism)But there would still be inequality, because conditions of workers are unequalOne is a bachelor, another has five childrenBut they get paid the same for the same workTo overcome this material inequality is the goal of the higher stage of communism (when work becomes lifes prime want),11,Demands of the Communist Manifesto (1848),CM: “Free education for all children in public schools.”= Free development of each as the basis of the free development of allVs. children working 16 hours a day10 hours bill: children should work no more that 10 hours a day = the first victory of communism (Marx)Is SUNY Buffalo a communist institution?,12,Nihilistic Communism,Plato re the Guardians of the Republic: “Gold and silver, we will tell them, they have of the divine quality from the gods always in their souls, and they have no need of the metal of men nor does holiness suffer them to mingle and contaminate that heavenly possession with the acquisition of mortal gold, since many impious deeds have been done about the coin of the multitude, while that which dwells within them is unsullied. . . .”,13,Community of women/families,Socrates: “Both the community of property and the community of families, as I am saying, tend to make them more truly guardians; they will not tear the city in pieces by differing about mine and not mine; each man dragging any acquisition which he has made into a separate house of his own, where he has a separate wife and children and private pleasures and pains; but all will be affected as far as may be by the same pleasures and pains because they are all of one opinion about what is near and dear to them, and therefore they all tend toward a common end.” (Republic: 464-465d),14,First destroy, then build,15,Mikhail Bakunin: “Let my friends build,” wrote Bakunin to Countess Evgenia Salias, “I want only to destroy, for I am convinced that using rotting material to build on carrion is wasted labour, and that new living materials, together with new organisms, can appear only out of grand destruction.” (around 1848, time of the CM),Dialectical Communism,Marx: the working people “have no ideals to realize, but to set free elements of the new society with which old collapsing bourgeois society itself is pregnant.”The development of private enterprise, capitalism, is an historically necessary/positive phase of human history. It creates the basis of the new society developing within the oldRecall 3 stages of history: Rousseau, Kant, Hegel: all require the development of “egotism” as a necessary historical stage,16,Co-ops,Marx (1864): “The co-operative factories of the labourers themselves represent within the old form the first sprouts of the new . . .”Workers buy their factories, with loans from banks, hire managersMondragon in SpainESOPs (employee stock-ownership plan) in US,17,The Employee Ownership Act of 1999 (H.R. 1462),introduced in the United States House of Representatives drafted by Coronado, California Republican Dana Rohrabacher. The bills stated purpose was to influence businesses (through tax incentives) to offer their employees ownership and control of the companies they work for. The bill states, It is the policy of the United States, that by the year 2010, 30 percent of all United States corporations are owned and controlled by employees of the corporations. 1 The U.S. Senate was considering a similar bill at the time. 2 The bill was introduced on Apr 15, 1999, but the 106th congress did not debate nor vote on this bill. Thus, it did not become law.Congressman Rohrabacher has been a long time supporter of Employee-owned corporation (ESOPs). This bill would have created a new kind of corporation under the law, the Employee Owned and Controlled Corporation (EOCC). -Wikipedia,18,EOCC,The three primary characteristics of these EOCCs would have been:Employees would own at least 50% of all voting stock in the form of an employee trust. At least 90% percent of employees who worked more than 1000 hours a year would have to be allowed to participate in this trust. Employees would be allowed to vote on all corporate issues, including board elections. Distribution and valuation rules correspond to existing ESOP rules. The bill had 36 co-sponsors in the House,19,Other signs of communism?,20,Stockholder rebellionsWho really owns todays corporations? Potential power of workers pension funds Ethical investmentsFair tradeEcological movements protecting whales, imposing limits on pollution,Current news,From deregulation back to re-regulation of banks=defeat of free market approachDebate over whether to nationalize the biggest banks or to create private-public partnershipsDebate over limits to CEO payGovernment provides new directions to economy inEnergyHealthEducationLabor and environmental standards of trade dealsComing world meeting on to set goals for preventing global warming,21,Birth of a new order,Marx: the working people “have no ideals to realize, but to set free elements of the new society with which old collapsing bourgeois society itself is pregnant.”I.e., the Marxist “dialectical” communism, is about a new society emerging within the framework of the oldnot about forcibly destroying one society to create a better, “ideal,” one.= Hegels theory of dialectical development through internal contradiction due to the limitations of one form of life.,22,Religion: Opium of the people?,Also: “the heart of a heartless world the spirit of spiritless conditions.”Opium: a pain-killer, and hallucinogenicAllows people to dream beautiful dreamsThe spirit of a spiritless society: Spirit separated from material conditionsRecall Hegel on Unhappy Consciousness,23,The religion of capitalism,In the value form of the commodity, spirit and matter confront one another as irreducible opposites: for the “value-relation between the products of labour has absolutely no connection with their physical properties and with the material relations arising therefrom.” Consequently, “There it is a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things.” Ibid., 83.=“fetishism” of commodities,24,Positive abolition of religion,Versus negative abolition (nihilistic communism): i.e., atheism as the way to a better societyMarx: 1) criticizes otherworldly religion. 2) He calls for the realization of the promises and ideals of religion in this world.As a necessity for the further development of a society based on the advanced development of the “productive forces”The old society (including its external religions) was necessary, but becomes more and more an impediment.= Kants “religion within the limits of reason alone”Hegel: spirit realized in the world,25,Alienation of spirituality,1) Hunter-gatherer “natural religion”Animistic belief in divine in plants, animals, environmentReligious ceremonies, shamans, channel that divinity for human purposes2) With rise of class-divided societies, the gods become powers over people, while religious institutions become allies of political powersGods are separate from peopleruling over them,26,Overcoming the alienation,3) Religious/spiritual revolutionaries attack this alienation of the spirit: Buddha, Jesus, MuhammadBuddhism: If you see the Buddha, kill the Buddha! Jesus: the Kingdom of God is within you4) New religions restore the alienation, but contain contradictory teachings of the foundersCouncil of Nicea (325) establishes Christian orthodoxy was called by the Roman emperior ConstantineSt. Francis of Assisi as revolutionary (See The Name of the Rose, Eco),27,Liberation Theology,“Among the several essays published on liberation theology in the 1970s, one of the most famous is by the Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutirrez. In his 1972 essay A Theology of Liberation: Perspectives, he theorized a combination of Marxism and the social-Catholic teachings contributing to a socialist current in the Church that was influenced by the Catholic Worker Movement and the French Christian youth worker organization, Jeunesse Ouvrire Chrtienne. It was also influenced by Paul Gauthiers The Poor, Jesus and the Church (1965).”/wiki/Liberation_theology,28,Was Marx a Materialist?,1) Scientific materialismImplies determinismBut Marx argues that people make their own history, at first unconsciously, but eventually consciously: free development of each Hence “dialectical materialism”,29,2) Historical materialism,1) Dialectic of forces and relations of production2) Political and ideological superstructure on this “economic base”=ideology, belief system, is secondaryBut the “forces of production” include ideas = 2 levels of ideas: theoretical (3rd person) and practical (1st person)Marx is criticizing the primacy of 3rd person ideology,30,Marxs criticism of Hegel,Marx criticizes Hegels idea that history is the unfolding of the idea implicit in each historical periodBut Hegel is a critic of Stoicism as the ideological expression of the master-slave relationAt a deeper level, the reality is the transformation of nature through laborwhich reality is alienated (expressed in an external way) in the Stoic consciousness,31,Social being and consciousness,3) “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.”But this “social being” is Hegels “species consciousness”Recall Marxs earlier position: “Conscious life activity directly distinguishes man from animal life activity. Only because of that is he a species-being. Or, rather, he is a conscious being i.e., his own life is an object for him, only because he is a species-being. Only because of that is his activity free activity.”I.e., “social being” is the basis of human consciousnessNot: some non-thinking “matter” (brain) is at the basis of consciousness,32,Nature of labor,4) In his chapter on labor in Capital, Marx argues that “A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will. And this subordination is no mere momentary act.”,33,Basis of Marxs theory of labor,He footnotes this passage with a quote from Hegels Logic: “Reason is as cunning as she is powerful. Her cunning consists principally in her mediating activity, which, by causing objects to act and re-act on each other in accordance with their own natures, in this way, without any direct interference in the process, carries out reasons intentions.”= The material world accomplishes conscious human purposes: the practical idea is primary, not as a separate power over nature, but when it unleashes the potential within nature (= dialectic of matter and spirit),34,Achievement of Hegel,Marx: “The outstanding achievement of Hegels Phenomenology and of its final outcome, the dialectic of negativity as the moving and generating principle, is thus first that Hegel conceives the self-creation of man as a process, conceives objectification as loss of the object, as alienation and as transcendence of this alienation; that he thus grasps the essence of labour and comprehends objective mantrue because real manas the outcome of mans own labour.,35,“The real, active orientation of man to himself as a species-being, or his manifestation as a real species-being (i.e., as a human being), is only possible if he really brings out all his species-powerssomething which in turn is only possible through the co-operative action of all of mankind, only as the result of historyand treats these powers as objects: and this, to being with, is again only possible in the form of estrangement.,36,Critique of Hegel?,“The only labour which Hegel knows and recognises is abstractly mental labour. Therefore, that which constitutes the essence of philosophythe alienation of man who knows himself, or alienated science thinking itselfHegel grasps as its labors essence”But the Stoic consciousness is the expression of “the alienation of labor” of the slaveUnhappy Consciousness before the “incomprehensible Beyond” is an intensified alienation,37,Alienation and overcoming alienation,38,Hegel: “Not until consciousness has given up hope of overcoming that alienation in an external, i.e., alien, manner does it turn to itself, because the overcoming of that alienation is the return into self-consciousness; not until then does it turn to its own present world and discover it as its property, thus taking the first step toward coming down out of the intellectual world, or rather towards quickening the abstract element of that world with the actual Self.”,Analysis,This is an abstract definition: it could apply to Marxs theory as wellQ: What does Hegel mean concretely?A: the overcoming of alienation is happening in his own society in his own time in the Rational State of