Moscow State Institute of International Relations MGIMOUniversity School

Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO-University) School of Government and International Affairs & Alexander Shishkin Department of Philosophy The Basics of Philosophy Part VI The Origins of Sociocentric Philosophy Lecture 17 Karl Marx Historical Materialism

Karl Marx (1818 – 1883) • • • Born on May 5, 1818 in Trier Student at the Universities of Bonn and Berlin Died on March 14, 1883 in London Trier Berlin Bonn

Karl Marx (1818 – 1883) Principal Writings • Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (1844) • The Holy Family (1845) • The German Ideology (1845 – 1846) • The Poverty of Philosophy (1847) • The Communist Manifesto (1848) • A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859) • Capital (Vol. 1, 1867)

Karl Marx Historical Materialism q Alienated Labour: the Anthropology of Marx • The Concept of Alienation • Capitalism as a Society of Total Alienation • Social and Existential Consequences of Alienation q The Materialist Conception of History • History as an Objectively Determined Process § The Problem of Social (Historical) Laws § Social Classes as Agents of Socially Determined Activities • The Concept of Material Production • The Structure of Social Reality: The Material Base and the Institutional/Ideological Superstructure • Progress as Transition to New Socioeconomic Formations

The Anthropology of Marx The Concept of Alienation (Ger. Entfremdung) is a philosophical and sociological category used to indicate objective transformation of human activity and its products into an alien, hostile and dominant force that deprives humans of their active role in and turns them into objects of the social historical process.

The Anthropology of Marx Capitalism as a Society of Total Alienation Work to satisfy needs: capital and labour are not yet separated. Five stages of alienation Trade as exchange: work becomes also a source of income. Division of labour and money: work is henceforth work for wages only. Agrarian work and rent: capital and labour still preserve their specific forms. Free capital obliterates all natural and social forms.

The Anthropology of Marx Social and Existential Consequences of Alienation from the product: the product of work does not simply acquire an independent external existence, but is taken away from its producer and turns into an alien and hostile force. Four levels of alienation

The Anthropology of Marx Social and Existential Consequences of Alienation The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and size. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates. The devaluation of the world of men is in direct proportion to the increasing value of the world of things. Labor produces not only commodities; it produces itself and the worker as a commodity – and this at the same rate at which it produces commodities in general. Karl Marx. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.

The Anthropology of Marx Social and Existential Consequences of Alienation This fact expresses merely that the object which labor produces – labor’s product – confronts it as something alien, as a power independent of the producer. The product of labor is labor which has been embodied in an object, which has become material: it is the objectification of labor. Labor’s realization is its objectification. Under these economic conditions this realization of labor appears as loss of realization for the workers; objectification as loss of the object and bondage to it; appropriation as estrangement, as alienation. Karl Marx. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.

The Anthropology of Marx Social and Existential Consequences of Alienation All these consequences are implied in the statement that the worker is related to the product of labor as to an alien object. For on this premise it is clear that the more the worker spends himself, the more powerful becomes the alien world of objects which he creates over and against himself, the poorer he himself – his inner world – becomes, the less belongs to him as his own. It is the same in religion. The more man puts into God, the less he retains in himself. Karl Marx. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.

The Anthropology of Marx Social and Existential Consequences of Alienation from the product: the product of work does not simply acquire an independent external existence, but is taken away from its producer and turns into an alien and hostile force. Alienation in productive activity: work loses its character of the truly human activity and turns into a burden and a means to satisfy the worker’s basic (in fact, animal) needs. Four levels of alienation

The Anthropology of Marx Social and Existential Consequences of Alienation The worker puts his life into the object; but now his life no longer belongs to him but to the object. <…> The alienation of the worker in his product means not only that his labor becomes an object, an external existence, but that it exists outside him, independently, as something alien to him, and that it becomes a power on its own confronting him. It means that the life which he has conferred on the object confronts him as something hostile and alien. Karl Marx. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.

The Anthropology of Marx Social and Existential Consequences of Alienation … in his work, therefore, he [the worker] does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind. <…> His labor is therefore not voluntary, but coerced; it is forced labor. It is therefore not the satisfaction of a need; it is merely a means to satisfy needs external to it. Karl Marx. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.

The Anthropology of Marx Social and Existential Consequences of Alienation As a result, therefore, man (the worker) only feels himself freely active in his animal functions – eating, drinking, procreating, or at most in his dwelling and in dressing-up, etc. ; and in his human functions he no longer feels himself to be anything but an animal. What is animal becomes human and what is human becomes animal. Karl Marx. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.

The Anthropology of Marx Social and Existential Consequences of Alienation This relation is the relation of the worker to his own activity as an alien activity not belonging to him; it is activity as suffering, strength as weakness, begetting as emasculating, the worker’s own physical and mental energy, his personal life – for what is life but activity? – as an activity which is turned against him, independent of him and not belonging to him. Here we have self-estrangement, as previously we had the estrangement of the thing. Karl Marx. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.

The Anthropology of Marx Social and Existential Consequences of Alienation from the product: the product of work does not simply acquire an independent external existence, but is taken away from its producer and turns into an alien and hostile force. Four levels of alienation Alienation in productive activity: work loses its character of the truly human activity and turns into a burden and a means to satisfy the worker’s basic (in fact, animal) needs. Alienation from the species-being: the social, including nature transformed by human productive activity, becomes but a means of individual survival.

The Anthropology of Marx Social and Existential Consequences of Alienation For labor, life activity, productive life itself, appears to man in the first place merely as a means of satisfying a need – the need to maintain physical existence. Yet the productive life is the life of the species. It is life-engendering life. The whole character of a species, its species-character, is contained in the character of its life activity; and free, conscious activity is man’s species-character. Life itself appears only as a means to life. Karl Marx. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.

The Anthropology of Marx Social and Existential Consequences of Alienation In creating a world of objects by his personal activity, in his work upon inorganic nature, man proves himself a conscious species-being… <…> Admittedly animals also produce. <…> But an animal only produces what it immediately needs for itself or its young. <…> An animal forms only in accordance with the standard and the need of the species to which it belongs, whilst man knows how to produce in accordance with the standard of every species, and knows how to apply everywhere the inherent standard to the object. Karl Marx. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.

The Anthropology of Marx Social and Existential Consequences of Alienation It is just in his work upon the objective world, therefore, that man really proves himself to be a species-being. This production is his active species-life. Through this production, nature appears as his work and his reality. <…> … in degrading spontaneous, free activity to a means, estranged labor makes man’s species-life a means to his physical existence. Karl Marx. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.

The Anthropology of Marx Social and Existential Consequences of Alienation from the product: the product of work does not simply acquire an independent external existence, but is taken away from its producer and turns into an alien and hostile force. Four levels of alienation Alienation in productive activity: work loses its character of the truly human activity and turns into a burden and a means to satisfy the worker’s basic (in fact, animal) needs. Alienation from the species-being: the social, including nature transformed by human productive activity, becomes but a means of individual survival. Alienation from other human beings: with the appropriation of the product by other persons (different from the workers) social relations grow antagonistic.

The Anthropology of Marx Social and Existential Consequences of Alienation An immediate consequence of the fact that man is estranged from the product of his labor, from his life activity, from his species-being, is the estrangement of man from man. When man confronts himself, he confronts the other man. What applies to a man’s relation to his work, to the product of his labor and to himself, also holds of a man’s relation to the other man, and to the other man’s labor and object of labor. Karl Marx. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.

Если продукт труда мне чужд, если он противостоит мне в качестве чуждой силы, кому же в таком случае он принадлежит? Если моя собственная деятельность принадлежит не мне, а есть деятельность чуждая, вынужденная, кому же принадлежит она в таком случае? Некоторому иному, чем я, существу. Что же это за существо? The Anthropology of Marx Social and Existential Consequences of Alienation If the product of labor is alien to me, if it confronts me as an alien power, to whom, then, does it belong? To a being other than myself. Who is this being? The gods? The alien being, to whom labor and the product of labor belongs, in whose service labor is done and for whose benefit the product of labor is provided, can only be man himself. If the product of labor does not belong to the worker, if it confronts him as an alien power, then this can only be because it belongs to some other man the worker. Karl Marx. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.

The Anthropology of Marx Social and Existential Consequences of Alienation Through estranged, alienated labor, then, the worker produces the relationship to this labor of a man alien to labor and standing outside it. The relationship of the worker to labor creates the relation to it of the capitalist (or whatever one chooses to call the master of labor). Private property is thus the product, the result, the necessary consequence, of alienated labor, of the external relation of the worker to nature and to himself. Karl Marx. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.

The Materialist Conception of History as an Objectively Determined Process … Marx put an end to the view of society being a mechanical aggregation of individuals which allows of all sorts of modification at the will of the authorities (or, if you like, at the will of society and the government) and which emerges and changes casually, and was the first to put sociology on a scientific basis by establishing the concept of the economic formation of society as the sum-total of given production relations, by establishing the fact that the development of such formations is a natural historical process. Vladimir Lenin. What the “Friends of the People” Are and How They Fight the Social-Democrats.

History as an Objectively Determined Process The Problem of Social (Historical) Laws Law is a philosophical category used to indicate an essential, objective (i. e. independent of the mind), necessary and persistent relationship between phenomena. The term “law” has come out of use in the 20 th century, its application henceforth limited to the scientific statements about the order and/or relations of phenomena formulated in the era of classical science, but it was still widely used in Marx’s time.

History as an Objectively Determined Process The Problem of Social (Historical) Laws The notion of natural law presents no conceptual difficulty when applied to natural objects that are easily thought of as governed by objective laws. However, the notion of a historical law presents a conceptual challenge insofar as history is seen as the study of human activities. Law is a philosophical category used to indicate an essential, objective (i. e. independent of the mind), necessary and persistent relationship between phenomena. For how can activities initiated and controlled by will and conscience be subject to laws independent of will and conscience by definition? But if human activities are not subject to objective laws, knowledge of history cannot have the form of a science and is at best a collection of interesting facts. History’s claim to the status of science is not saved by denial of free will, i. e. fatalism, since that would deprive history of its status as a specific science.

History as an Objectively Determined Process Classes as Agents of Socially Determined Activities Nevertheless, the concept of a historical law does not seem inappropriate inasmuch as the law-governed activities are not those of individuals. Behaviour of collective entities can be thought of as objectively determined without denying freedom of individual wills. Such objectively determined (lawgoverned) behaviour can reflect the identity of essential characteristics of the collective’s individual members. Of special importance among such collective entities are social classes, i. e. large groups of people having the same status in the system of production. The existence and characteristics of social classes do not depend on the wills of their members, but are determined by the structure and character of production.

History as an Objectively Determined Process Classes as Agents of Socially Determined Activities Social classes are large groups of people having the same status in the system of production.

The Materialist Conception of History as an Objectively Determined Process In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. Karl Marx. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.

The Materialist Conception of History as an Objectively Determined Process Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. Karl Marx. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.

The Materialist Conception of History The Concept of Material Production Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical organisation. By producing their means of subsistence men are indirectly producing their actual material life. Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels. The German Ideology.

The Materialist Conception of History The Material Base and the Superstructure In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. Karl Marx. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.

The Materialist Conception of History The Material Base and the Superstructure Socioeconomic formation is a category of historical materialism that designates society at a certain stage of its historical development characterised by a specific mode of production, i. e. specific forces and relations of production, and specific forms of government and social consciousness.

The Materialist Conception of History The Material Base and the Superstructure The Superstructure Political institutions and legal systems Forms of social consciousness The Base Mode of production Forces of production People and their working skills Means of production, including tools and technologies Relations of production Division of labour Property relations

The Materialist Conception of History Transition to New Socioeconomic Formations At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure. Karl Marx. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.

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