German Idealism British Political Economy French Revolution

Proceeds from the principle that the spiritual and non-material, is primary and material is secondary.

It regards consciousness in isolation from nature, as result of which it inevitably mystifies human consciousness and the process of cognition.

Constructs the world on the basis of individual consciousness.

It denies the existence of the objective reality independent of the will and consciousness of the subject.

It regards as the prime source of being not the personal, human mind, but some objective otherworld consciousness, the “absolute Spirit”, “Universal reason”.

Plato considered general concepts as existing eternally in the “world ideas”, while material objects were shadows of these ideas.

As the point of departure for his philosophy, Hegel chose the identity of being and thinking, i.e. the conception of the real world as a manifestation of an idea, a concept, or spirit.

This identity he regarded as the historically developing process of the absolute idea’s or spirit’s cognizing itself. e.g. the State as a realization of reason.

The dialectic is essentially a method of expounding our fundamental categories.

It is a method of exposition in which each category in turn is shown to be implicitly self-contradictory and to develop necessarily into the next.

Category A contains in itself its contrary category B.

Conversely that category B contains category A, thus showing both categories to be self-contradictory.

This negative process has a positive outcome, a category C. This new category unites the preceding categories of A and B

The new category C contains both A & B It unites them in such a way that they are

not only preserved but also abolished. In the new category C, the original senses

of A and B are modified. This modification of their senses renders

them no longer self-contradictory.

The attainment of the new category C denotes the completion of one level of the dialectic.

We pass to a new level where category C plays the role that was formerly played by category A.

The cyclical process culminates in all-embracing category called the ‘Absolute Idea’

For Hegel, the historical process was a movement and conflict of abstract categories of which real individuals are simply the playthings.

For Marx, the history of human society is fundamentally the history of the conflict of classes.

Primitive Communistic society Feudal Society Capitalist Society Socialist society Communist Society

Mode of Production of a particular society consists of Two of socio-economic elements: Means of Production and the Relations of Production

Labor Object of Labor Instrument of Labor

The social relations that are formed between the people in the process of production, exchange and distribution of material wealth.

The production and appropriation of surplus value express the basic relations of production under the capitalist mode of production.

Surplus value is a value created by the wage worker’s labor over and above the value of his labor power and appropriated by capitalist without remuneration.

The commodity “labor power” is able, in the process of labor, to create new value, which is greater than its own cost.

The capitalist achieves this by making the worker work more than the time necessary to reproduce the value of his labor power.

Under Capitalism, part of the working day during which a worker creates surplus value appropriated by the capitalist.

The labor expended during that time is called surplus labor.

In the quest for surplus value, the capitalists try to increase surplus working time.

1. By an absolute increase in the working hours over and above the necessary working time.

2. By reducing the necessary working time, and correspondingly increasing the surplus working time.

1. The worker is alienated from the product of his labor. The product in which he expresses and realizes himself does not belong to him. It is appropriated by the capitalists and sold on the market.

2. The worker is alienated from the act of producing itself. The realization that his labor has become already become a commodity on which he has no control.

3. The worker is alienated from his being a member of the human species and from his humanity as being a fellow being with other human beings. His involvement in the production activities as social activity, turns into a means for his individual existence. This implies his alienation from other human beings with whom he competes for scarce jobs.

Classes refer to the objective position of a group in a specific social formation and are thus rooted in economic reality. This position is chiefly determined not by income and occupation, but by the group’s relation to means of production.

The conception of two basic or fundamental (antagonistic) classes: owners and non-owners of means of production.

There are also non-basic classes. e.g. Middle class

A class, according to Marx, becomes a class only when it gets united and organized in defense of its classes interests.

Class consciousness comes into existence only when divisions between classes are perceived to be antagonistic and become a basis for organized political action.

is the struggle between two fundamental classes whose interests are incompatible or are in contradiction with each other.

In pre-capitalistic societies, contradictions are distinguishing features rather than essential conflicts. Feudal society is characterized by hierarchy, not by a polarization of opposing groups.

In pre-capitalistic societies, the struggles were predominantly spontaneous.

Under capitalism, the struggles are organized.

Class struggle against capitalism assume three main forms: economic, political and ideological.

Economic: against all sorts of economic exploitation.

Political: establishing the rule of working class.

Ideological: liberating working class from the influence of bourgeois ideology.

The concept of ‘ideology’ did not originate in Marxism.

The term ideology was first used by Destutt de Tracy at the end of the 18th century and was fully developed as a concept during 19th century.

Ideology was constructed based on the abstraction of human sensations.

Ideology was limited to accounting for individual representations by a causal psychology.

The notion ‘ideology’ was used by Marx to understand the collections of representations characteristic of a given epoch and society.

1. Ideology as False Consciousness: ideology is inverted and distorted reflection of reality. In ideologies men and their conditions appear upside down like images on the lens of a camera.

2. Ideology as a site of Political Consciousness: Once ideology is related to the real conditions that gave rise to it, it ceases to be completely illusory, entirely false.

Class ideologies create three images of the class that is struggling for dominance: 1. an image for itself, 2. images of the other classes and 3. images for the other classes.

Ideology is based on political faiths. Ideological is the political move against any

form of ideological dominance of the dominant class and the State that represent the interests of the dominant class.

Marx used the analogy to make sure that nobody would separate politics or ideology and the rest from economics.

According to Marx the relations of production form the base or economic structure of society.

Superstructure comprises a broad spectrum of political, religious and cultural practices as ideological forms in which people become conscious of the basic economic conflict.

Causal relationship is a misunderstanding of Marx meant.

The misunderstanding is the result of the pre-suppositions of a mechanical materialism which looks at matter as the cause of everything else.

Marx does not intend to reduce everything else to economic causes. He aimed at relating everything to the whole society by exploring its connection with the economic relations of a particular society.