Marx- A very short Introduction

PRESENTED BYANTON BOBAN THENGUMMOOTTIL

DEEPAK VENUGOPALPRAJNA SRUTHISMARA

Author: Peter Singer

Peter Albert David Singer is an Australian moral philosopher. He is currently the Ira W. Decamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University.

Peter Singer identifies central vision that unifies Marx’s thought, enabling us to grasp Marx’s view as a whole.

He sees him as a philosopher primarily concerned with human freedom, rather than as a economist or a social scientist.

Introduction

Marx’s impact can only be compared with that of religious figures like Jesus or Muhammad. For second half of century, nearly 4/10 people lived under governments that considered themselves as Marxists and use Marx principles to decide on how the nation should be run.

His writings were the ultimate source of truth and authority; his image was everywhere reverently displayed.

The lives of hundreds of millions of people have been deeply affected by Marx’s legacy.

Marx’s ideas profoundly affected sociology, philosophy, literature and arts.

Life and its Impact

Karl Marx was born in Trier, in the German Rhineland, in 1818. His parents, Heinrich and Henrietta, were of Jewish origin but became nominally Protestant in order to make life easier for Heinrich to practise law.

Career began badly at age of 17, he went to study law at the University of Bonn. Later he went to University of Berlin, his interests turned from law to philosophy.

Marx began work on a doctoral thesis with a view of getting a university lectureship. Thesis was accepted in 1841 but no lectureship was offered.

He became interested in journalism. He founded liberal newspaper, the ‘Rhenish Gazette’.

He began his work on study of Hegel’s political philosophy. He was invited to become co-editor of a new publication, the ‘German

French Annals’. Through the friendship with Friedrich Engels, the outcome was the

‘German Ideology’. Marx published the ‘Communist Manifesto’ in February1848 which was the classic outline of Marx’s theory.

In spite of all criticisms, Marx returned to Germany raised money to start a newspaper called ‘New Rhenish Gazette’.

After having expelled for 2 times, Marx spent the rest of his life in London.

After that Marx was invited to become the editor of ‘New York Tribune’ in 1852.

In 1859, Marx published a small portion of his work on economics under the title of Critique of Political economy. In 6 months duration, Marx wrote more than 800 pages of draft of ‘Das Capital’ which covers much more ground than Capital as it finally arrived.

In 1867, Marx finally completed the first volume of Capital. The initial reaction was disappointing. By the time Marx became popular not because of Capital but of publishing ‘Civil war’ in France.

At the age of 54, Marx was in poor health. Marx’s ideas were spreading at last. By 1871, a second edition of Capital was needed.

In 1872, Russian translation of Capital came and Marx was very popular among Russian revolutionaries. Soon French translation came.

Marx worked desultorily on the second and third volumes of Capital but never got them published. This task was left to Engels after Marx’s death.

The last important work Marx wrote arose from a congress held in Gotha, in Germany, in 1875.

After Marx’s death this Critique of the Gotha Program was published and recognized as one of the Marx’s rare statements.

In 1881, Marx’s beloved wife Jenny died after a long illness. Then in 1882, his daughter died because of illness.

Marx never got over this loss. He developed bronchitis and died on 1883.

Phenomenology of Mind

This theory by G.W.F Hegel influenced the mind of Marx to develop communist theory of equality for all. The theory traces the development of mind from its appearance as individual minds, conscious but neither self conscious nor free , to mind as a free and fully self- conscious unity.

Master and Slave relationship: Here master and slaves are independent beings. Master exist because of slaves does the work for him and changes the natural world. Liberation of slave is a must.

From God to Money

The transformation of Hegel’s method into weapon against religion was carried through another radical Hegelian called Ludwig Feuerbach.

Feuerbach in his ‘Essence of Christianity’ in 1841 characterized religion as a form of alienation.

Feuerbach's later works went beyond the criticism of religion to the criticism of Hegelian philosophy itself.

Up to this point, Marx has followed Feuerbach in reinterpreting Hegel as a philosopher of man rather than mind. His view of human beings, however, focussed on their mental aspect, their thoughts and their consciousness.

Marx’s Views

In his view, money is the main obstacle to human freedom. He believed that if capitalism is removed a perfect communist government would form its own accord. E.g.: A dam having been removed a river will eventually reach a perfect state of freedom.

Communist society is very difficult to implement in principle. Marx believed there is no such thing as human nature.

Marx doesn’t challenge classical economist within their areas but takes viewpoints from outside and argued private property, competition, greed are only found in particular condition of human existence.

Marx believes that there is no such thing like people want more than their share of things and are more contingent upon material relations, modes of production, most notably capitalism.

Drawbacks

Marx doesn’t sufficiently drew the attention of political economists.

Even though Marx gave theoretic explanation, according to him, capital is good but in a sense it is only crystallized labour. E.g. The fact that a capitalist owns a factory only means that at some other point of time, he got labourers to build a factory for him. So labourers does everything, but gets only a tiny share of gains produced because capitalists oppress labourers. Once labourers realize this, they can choose to do labour in such a way that to give themselves full gains of their own labour.

Marx thinks coordination as something that happens in absence of obstacles. Obstacles being capitalism is a false consciousness, removing such result is an invisible notion.

Conclusion

Even removing capitalism, there are problems of competition and tragedies of communities.

So author tries to say that a system is needed to solve all issues better than capitalism does. It is a real challenge that Marxist intellectuals set themselves.