Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels Sociology 100

Karl Marx & Friedrich EngelsSociology 100 All that is solid melts into air

1848 • Communist Manifesto published • Revolution • France: Second Republic • German states • Hapsburg Empire (Austria) • Hungary • Poland • Belgium • Switzerland • Ireland • Britain: Child labor • Under 9: may not work • 9-13: limit of eight hours days, 7 days a week • 13-16: 10 hours day, 7 days a week

Ideology • “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas: i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships...” (GI, 172) • “Base” and “superstructure” • Philosophy, religion, politics, economic studies

Ideology • “For each new class which puts itself in the place of the one ruling before it, is compelled, merely in order to carry through its aim, to represent its interest as the common interest of all the members of society, that is, expressed in an ideal form: it has to give its ideas the form of universality, and represent them as the only rational, universally valid ones.” (GI, 174)

Ideology • “Through the emancipation of private property from the community, the State has become a separate entity, beside and outside civil society; but it is nothing more than the form of organisation which the bourgeois necessarily adopt both for internal and external purposes, for the mutual guarantee of their property and interests.” • “The modern French, English and American writers all express the opinion that the State exists only for the sake of private property, so that this fact has penetrated into the consciousness of the common man.” (GI, 187)

Ideology • “Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as just your jurisprudence is but the will of your class made into a law for all.” (CM, 487)

The Dialectic of History • “The history of all existing society is the history of class struggles.” (CM, 473) • Each stage of history, with its dominant means of production, carries within it the seeds of its own destruction and the birth of the next ruling class • Example: Kings, lords, towns, merchants, banks (GI, 180-184) • England first to industrialize, embrace free trade (GI, 184)

The Dialectic of History • Competition means other nations must also industrialize & embrace free trade to compete: • The bourgeoisie “compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e. to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.” (CM, 477)

The Dialectic of History • Universal competition “forced all individuals to strain their energy to the utmost. It destroyed as far as possible ideology, religion, morality, etc. and where it could not do this, made them into a palpable lie. It produced world history for the first time, insofar as it made all civilised nations and every individual member of them dependent for their wants on the whole world, thus destroying the former natural exclusiveness of separate nations.” (GI, 185) • “The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie all over the whole surface of the globe,” giving “a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country.” (CM, 476)

The Dialectic of History • “Since [political and cultural] conditions correspond at every stage to the simultaneous development of the productive forces, their history is at the same time the history of the evolving productive forces taken over by each new generation, and is, therefore, the history of the development of the forces of the individuals themselves.” (GI, 195)

The Dialectic of History • The bourgeoisie “has been the first to show what man’s activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyption pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals...” • “The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and with them the whole relations of society.” (CM, 476)

The Dialectic of History • “The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part. [It] has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his ‘natural superiors,’ and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous ‘cash payment.’ It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation.” (CM, 475)

The Dialectic of History • “It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numbered indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom—Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.” (CM, 475)

The Dialectic of History • “The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage-labourers.” (CM, 476) • “It has simplified the class antagonisms: Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.” (CM, 474) • The lower strata of the bourgeoisie (craftsmen, shopkeepers, etc.) can’t compete with the bourgeoisie, sink into the proletariat. Thus, they become reactionary, trying to turn back history to preserve their status. (CM, 480, 482)

The Dialectic of History • “All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to faced with sober senses, his real condition of life, and his relations with his kind.” (CM, 476)

Friday • Proletarians, communists, and revolution

Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels Sociology 100