Lecture 2

1. Lecture 2 • Karl Marx (1)

2. KARL MARX 1818-1883

3. Marx’s Life • Karl Marx was born on May 5, 1818 , in the city of Trier in Prussia. • His family was Jewish, but converted to Protestantism in 1824. • The family was petty-bourgeois; his father was a lawyer. • He was a law student at the university of Bonn at the age of 17 • In 1841 he received his doctoral degree [age: 23] • After graduating from university, Marx moved to Bonn, hoping to become a professor. • However, the reactionary policy of the government made Marx abandon the idea of an academic career

4. Marx was persecuted by the Prussian state. He moved to Paris first [1843] and then to Brussels [1845] and finally England [1849] where settled until he died at the age of 65 [1883].

5. Marx had an enormous effect on the Recent History • Some important historical events associated with Marx’s ideas: • The Russian Revolution [1917] • The revolution in China, [1949] • Until the 1990s, nearly four out of every ten people in the world lived under governments that at least claimed to follow Marx’s ideas.

6. In this lecture I will be using an essay by Paul Paolucci, a Professor at the University of Kentucky, as an example of a Marxist analysis of society. • Please note that by assigning this article I do not necessarily mean that I and You should agree with his views!

7. Two common errors! • In explanations of human behavior • the reversal of causal mechanisms (the camera obscura effect), and • the fallacy of individualistic reductionism

8. What is the “camera obscura effect”? • An image and explanation of the social world that presents a vision of it that is the inverse of its real historical development. • For example, as we discuss next, that individuals relationships and ties are shaped by their ideas (e.g. social order is based on consensus over values and beliefs)

9. On several occasions Marx himself used the metaphor to illustrate the mistaken views of both social thinkers and ordinary people in explaining social life.

10. Hegel in the camera obscura! • In his essay “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law”, Marx gives us an example of this metaphor in the Hegel’s idealism:

11. Hegel’s Idealism (according to Marx): • Ideas have their own independent existence, • The relationships of human beings are products of their ideas, • Ideas constitute the true bonds of human society.

12. Hegel turned right side up! • For Marx: • “on the contrary the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind…”

13. The fallacy of individualistic reductionism • Means explaining social phenomena (e.g. the market economy) as an outcome of an assumed natural characteristics of individuals (e.g. human beings like to trade, exchange and compete)

14. An Example: • Poverty (as a social phenomenon) analyzed from the Conservative and Liberal points of view.

15. Modern conservatism • Assumption: • people are justly rewarded for both the merit and the functional importance of the work they do. • Poverty: reducible to individual level explanations (e.g. lack of accomplishment, intelligence, effort).

16. Three conservative themes: • 1. society at large reflects the nature of humans • 2. the market is the inevitable result of the naturally determined human propensity to barter and trade.

17. 3. Social inequality is an inevitable outcome of our natural traits. • Therefore there are limits as to what can be done about it. • Governmental intervention can only hurt and unjustly penalize the meritorious.

18. The liberal frame • Holds that individuals tend to be victims of • (economic capital) poverty • (human or social capital ): limited access to hegemonic language, mathematical, and academic skills • (culture of poverty) access to drugs, sex, and other supposedly morally dysfunctional enticements • The result is a general inability to compete

19. Since liberalism often admits that the market cannot rid itself of poverty some sort of activist state intervention is advocated. 

20. Liberalism and Conservatism Compared: • The Shared assumption: • Competition for resources is a normal state of human affairs. • They differ only to the extent that either the market or the state, are entrusted to assure “the highest level of good to the largest number of people.”

21. Marx’s View: • He asked us to suspend the question of the extent to which human imperfection, or otherwise error, produces social malaise, poverty, war. • He encouraged analysts to consider the extent to which social phenomena are structurally and historically produced.

22. Historical Analysis: • Capitalism is a historical Product and not the outcome of humans’ natural propensities to compete and trade • How was capitalism put in place? • Most often by force, i.e. with a great deal of death, violence, and expropriation of feudal peasants, ordinary urban plebs, and modern indigenous peoples from their lands and/or means of production.

23. The present case of East Timor, according to Paolucci, demonstrates the historical use of violence to keep the world-economy expanding in the present.

24. The genocide taking place in East Timor. • Fearing Timorese independence would “destabilize” the region, military leaders of Indonesia, with massive assistance from the United States (as well as Australia, Japan, France, Britain, Canada, and other core societies) invaded this tiny island nation, killing upwards of one third of the population between 1975 and 1998.

25. The historical Background: • The CIA worked to destabilize the Indonesian government, succeeding in a 1965 military coup, replacing Sukarno with Suharto, and resulting in between half to one million deaths, and 750,000 imprisoned within an eight month period.

26. Why the need for a military coup in 1965? • After WWII, under Sukarno, Indonesia was reluctant to handover its resources to multinational corporate interests.

27. Why the invasion of Timor? • The Timor Gap Treaty, signed by Indonesia and Australia, consigns East Timor’s oil to western multinational interests.

28. “The Primitive Accumulation” The violent origin of Capitalism, is studied in Marx’s work “Capital” under the concept of “the primitive accumulation”

29. The legend of the first capitalist! Marx, sarcastically, mocks the idea put forth by people that once upon a time “in times long gone-by there were two sorts of people; one, the diligent, intelligent, and, above all, frugal elite; the other, lazy rascals, spending their substance.” Thus it came to pass that the former sort accumulated wealth, and the latter sort had at last nothing to sell except their own skins.

30. Who was the first capitalist? To generate and accumulate capital one needs to make profit, and to make profit one needs to have capital to invest. Vicious Circle 

31. How to get of the vicious circle? only by supposing a primitive accumulation preceding capitalistic accumulation (not the result of the capitalistic mode of production, but its starting point. Primitive Accumulation  profit -capital profit  ….

32. How the “primitive accumulation” was gained? By the expropriation of the great mass of the people from the soil, from the means of subsistence, and from the means of labor, this fearful and painful expropriation of the mass of the people forms the prelude to the history of capital. It comprises a series of forcible methods

33. Structural Analysis of poverty • Paoluuci: • “Poverty is a historically constant and structurally general feature of capitalism.” • Thus we need to analyze the structure of Capitalism. • Creation of surplus-value (profit) • Created by the working class • Appropriated by the capitalist class

34. Creation of Surplus-Value The idea that in the capitalist mode of production, the socio-structural constant is creation of value, and thus wealth, by the many and its appropriation to the few, was developed by Marx in his work “Capital”

35. Buying in order to sell M-C-M When money is invested as capital the goal is to increase the money (profit): When we buy in order to sell, Marx writes: “the movement becomes interminable,” $100  $110  $120 .....

36. money ends the movement only to begin it again the circulation of capital therefore has no limits. M-C-M' ...this increment or excess over the original value I call "surplus-value."

37. Marx argues that surplus-value (profit) is created by what he calls surplus labor: Assuming one hour work is paid $30 The number The number of of hours worked of hours needed to work - = 3 hours (surplus labour) - = 90 $ (profit) 8 hours 5 hours 240$ 150$

38. The number of hours needed to work what a worker needs in average for living, i.e., food, house, etc.. In terms of salary it means what in average a worker is paid.

39. Criminalization of the Population • Paolucci argues: • 1) Criminality (who commits crime) • 2) Crime (what behavior is criminal) • are the outcomes of social conditions rather than “individual responsibility.”

40. Who commits crime: Crime in the USA • Population in jail, on probation, or on parole (from 1980 to the mid-1990’s) • one-third of black men, • one-eighth of Latino, and • one-fifth of white men in their 20’s,

41. The racial factor • Drug users: • Whites 75% • Blacks 13%. • Percent of arrests for drug possession, • blacks 35% • Percent of all convictions, • Blacks: 55%

42. Crime and Criminalization • The origin of Crime is the Criminalization of some groups by the dominant groups in society. • Crime’s function: • to bring more and more of the population under some sort of bureaucratic control, surveillance, and discipline

43. The rich gets richer and the poor gets more prison! • The state has used police as a method for sending the poor to prison (street “criminals”) while ignoring the more socially harmful behavior of the capitalist class (white collar and corporate crime).

44. Drugs and Crime In the nineteenth century, drugs such as opium and morphine were commonly used throughout society, and addiction was viewed as a personal problem. Until certain users were seen as problems

45. In the United States around 1900, the drug addicts were middle-class women and returning northern soldiers addicted to morphine about 2% of the population, a higher rate than today.

46. Late in the 1800’s opium smoking was associated with the Chinese, and attempts to control this group as well as their behavior were to provide the justification for their legislative controls

47. The late 1960’s • Hispanics, blacks, and young people started to demand the US stop imperialist warfare and extend democratic participation, • Each group was then associated with a particular drug and its presumed/claimed evils.

48. “war on drugs” • Broadened the state’s exercise of techniques of maintaining class domination by increasing repression of these groups

49. Policing and prisons are there to make sure that the working class does not threaten property or, more importantly, capitalist property relations.

50. Marxists have generally agreed that the state is created with the primary function of securing the conditions of constant accumulation of capital.