Marx: Alienation and Class Struggle

1. Marx: Alienation and Class Struggle Marx (1818-1883). His parents were Jews who converted to Protestantism. He lived during a period of radical unrest, with revolutions (industrial and political) sweeping throughout Europe. Marx was passionate about politics, and was editor of a radical journal at the time of the 1848 revolution in Germany. His main interest became the historical basis of inequality, especially its unique form under capitalism. But his theories of how society is structured and operates are never separate from his theories of how to �change� society. => Key Point on Theory: The way things �are� versus �should be.�

2. Marx: Alienation and Class Struggle The Communist Manifesto �The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.� Embodies three propositions: People of the same class (economic position) tend to act together. Economic classes are the most important groups; class history = the history of human society. Classes are antagonistic; the outcome of conflict defines how society develops (p. 44). => Theory of class = theory of SS and S? How does Marx define class?

3. Marx: Alienation and Class Struggle A class = people alike in terms of their relationship to property. A class either has no property or has the same type. - Owners of their own labor (proletarians). - Owners of �instruments of production� (capitalists and landlords). Do students, manual workers, clerks, technicians, engineers, and professors belong to the same class?

4. Marx: Alienation and Class Struggle In the struggle of classes under capitalism, the bourgeoisie is victorious because it controls the �means of production.� Marx also said that ideas emerge from social reality, and that the ruling ideas of a society are always but the ideas of the ruling class. - - What does this mean? (p. 53 and 67) - What are the ruling ideas of bourgeois society? - How does the �state� fit into this theory? - What does Marx mean when he says that the bourgeoisie �creates a world after its own image�? (p. 46) - What are �cosmopolitanism� and �civilization� for Marx?

5. Marx: Alienation and Class Struggle What is Marx�s view of the nation-state and what is its role in the development of communism? What is Marx�s view of the family? (p. 53, 54) - What is the character of the bourgeois family for Marx? What does Marx say about �eternal truths� (Relgions, Freedom, Justice)? (p. 55)

6. Marx: Alienation and Class Struggle Summary of Marx�s �Estranged Labor� Premise: Ownership Private property - Workers� labor and the resulting products belong to the capitalist. Four types of alienation follow from this: 1. Workers are alienated from the products of their labor. The products don�t belong to the worker. The more the worker produces, the less the worker has. 2. Workers are alienated from the labor process (necessity vs free will). Labor is forced, belongs to another; it is only a means ($) not an end. 3. Workers are alienated from their bodies and human potential (�species being� � our �essence� as born of productive activity). Workers� produce for physical existence, not an end in itself. 4. Workers are alienated from other workers (from social relationships).

7. Marx: Alienation and Class Struggle The German Ideology - Engagement with German philosophy, particularly Hegel. Contradictions are not a mistake; they exist in reality and how contradictions develop is central to understanding social reality. For Hegel, the key contradictions were in our �understanding� of reality (mind, consciousness, or �spirit�) and were schematic/deterministic/teleological (history has stopped in Germany, p. 65). For Marx, the key contradictions were in social relations grounded in material reality�needed to struggle against contradictions to bring about change.

8. Marx: Alienation and Class Struggle Division of Labor � starting point for fundamental contradictions. What does Marx say about hunting, fishing, shepherding, and criticizing? (p. 66) Dialectical sociology versus traditional sociology, which is interested in how things mesh neatly into a cohesive whole.