Karl
Marx (1818-83)
Ish Mishra
Ish Mishra
19th Century witnessed many
revolutions in the realm social movements and theories. The ordinary people,
the working population, the wretched of
the earth [Fanon] who entered in the arena of political theory through
Rousseau in the 18th century found a profound spokesperson in the
genius of Karl Marx in the 19th century. Marx, as a student of
jurisprudence, history and philosophy, at a time when Hegelianism was the
dominant paradigm and trend in the academia, turned Hegel’s philosophy of
inverted reality upside down and declared, “In practice man must prove the
truth”. Thus rejecting the easy way of discovering the truth through myth,
revelation and authority based on some obscure God or prophet or Hegel or Marx
had made his intentions very clear by charging that “the philosophers have only
interpreted the world; the point
however is to change it.” The journey
of Marx’s this clearly un-Hegelian, activist view of philosophy began with his
critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Rights. Unable to find a job in academics, in
1842 he began to prove the truth in practice through his writings,
as a journalist of a democratic
newspaper in Cologne, Rheinische Zeitung and the paper was suppressed by
the Prussian government. Marx moved to Paris Paris , Marx moved to Brussels London
Marx was a materialist and an atheist before he
systematically began to criticize Hegel’s Philosophy
of Rights. He made two opposing liberal streams of liberal philosophy – Feuerbach’s
metaphysical materialism and Hegel’s Dialectical idealism -- as his reference
point, challenged and transformed them. He challenged and reversed the
prevailing notion that men’s consciousness determines material conditions and stated
and reversed it. “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their
existence, but their social existence that determines their existence.” [Preface] He began his analysis of
Capitalism based on his thesis, “the anatomy of civil society has to be found in political economy.” Pre-Marxian social analysis emphasized the
law and the politics. Marx shifted the emphasis to economics and seeks the
explanation of historical changes in the economic structure of the society, the
basis on which rise political and legal superstructure.
The mode of production of material means of existence
conditions the whole process of social, political and intellectual life.
Marx rejects the history of social changes in
terms of monarchs, their court ladies and fellow dynasts or in terms of wars
and battles. Marx attempts to locate the deeper causes of historical changes
beyond the wars and triumphs. Men began to distinguish them self from other
animals by producing their own means of subsistence and hence the major cause
of historical changes lie in the mode of production.
At a certain stage of their development the material
productive forces of society come into with the existing production
relationship. Or, what is but a legal expression for these with property
relationship in which they have moved before. From forms of development of
productive forces, these relationships are transformed into their fetters. Then
an epoch of social revolution opens. With the change in the economic
foundations, the superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed.
The Communist
Manifesto begins by proclaiming, “the history of hitherto societies has
been the history of class struggles between the haves and have-nots with
irreconcilable antagonistic class interests, as individual does not exist in
isolation but as an integral part of a large social aggregate. The epoch of bourgeoisie has simplified the
antagonism by “splitting the society into two great hostile camps: bourgeoisie
and proletariat”. The law of the social changes from primitive communism to
slave system to feudalism and to capitalism led Marx and Engels in the
Manifesto to conclude the end of capitalism by more advanced Forces of
Production – the Working Class -- for the same historical reasons and its
replacement by socialism that will lead to a classless society and the state
shall weather away.
Marx’s writings are difficult to be placed in
any of the existing disciplines as Marx himself was opposed to
compartmentalization of the study of laws of social dynamics as the society is
one organic whole. In fact they cover almost all the existing disciplines. Marx
is the first social thinker to use the neglected government reports and
statistical material I the study of social and economic problems. Marx’s
analysis of capitalist system influenced the course of history in such a way
that the entire intellectual and political spectrum of the world got split into
two broad camps in to Marxist and anti-Marxist camps in the same way as
capitalism has split the world into two broad classes with contradictory class
interests.
As Marx declared in the Theses on Feuerbach,
“Philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to
change it.” And hence he sought to interpret the world with the aim of changing
it. In his interpretation of history, Marx emphasized on the economy -- the mode of production of material means of
existence, and sought the
explanation of all the major historical events and changes in the economic
structure of the society, the basis on which rise political and legal
superstructure and conditions the whole
process of social, political and intellectual life. Strictly speaking,
historical materialism is the application of the method of dialectical
materialism to history or the Materialist concept of history and constitutes
social-scientific core of Marxist theory of the course of history that seeks
ultimate Cause and great moving power of all important historic events in the
economic development of the society, in the changes in the mode of production
and exchange, in the consequent division of society into distinct classes, and
in the struggle of these classes against one another”. [Engels, Socialism: Scientific and Utopian, SW:
394-411]
Historical Materialism, as Marx and Engel’s
claim in the German Ideology
(1845-46), is the “guiding thread” of all their subsequent studies. It rests
not on philosophically derived abstractions or dogmas but on observation and
accurate depiction of real conditions that can be verified in purely empirical
ways. Economic structure of the society,
constituted by its relations and the forces of production, is the real foundation of the society ‘on the basis of which rise a
legal and political super structure and
to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness’.[Preface]
The concept of Class and Class struggle is
the key to Marxist concept of social change. Marx’s ‘discovery of proletariat’
as ‘the idea in the real itself’, a new political force engaged in a struggle
for emancipation, formed the basis for Marxist theory of history and politics.
Liberals before him do talk about this conflict but for them it is a ‘problem’
to be solved by good will, reason and reconciliation. For Marx, the conflict is
irreconcilable as it is not a ‘problem’ to be solved but a relationship of
domination and subjugation to be lessened and ended eventually by the total
transformation of the society by ending the conditions, which give rise to it.
The antagonists are not the individuals, but the individuals in and through a
society, members of a social aggregate, the Class. “Society does not consist of
individuals, but expresses the sum of inter-relations, the relations within
which these individuals stand.” [Grundrisse] Basis of domination and the
struggle to end it is the determination of the dominant classes to extract
maximum products of labor of the subject classes.
The latest antagonists are the common people
and the global capitalism. The working class that is the common people are the
revolutionary forces today. What does
working class or proletariat mean? Marx writes in the Poverty of Philosophy, “Economic conditions had first transformed
the people of the country into workers. The domination of the capital has
created for this mass a common situation, a common interest. This mass is thus
already a class as against capital, but not yet for itself. In the struggle
this mass gets united, and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The
interest it defends becomes class interest. Comprehension of the collective
interest of the class as a whole to which one belongs is the consciousness of
the class interest that makes the working class from a class in itself into the
class for itself.
The
above Marxist analysis of class and class conflict is predominantly based on
the development of capitalism in the developed capitalist countries. But the
colonial intervention and dominance of foreign capital exceedingly distorted,
qualitatively and quantitatively, the development of capitalism in Third
World/developing countries.
Marx and Engels termed the bourgeois
consciousness as ideology in the sense of false consciousness, through its
ideologues as it presents the sectoral, class interest and class ideas as
universal. These spokespersons of the dominant classes try to persuade the
subordinate classes about the universal validity of these class-bound ideas and
ideals, generally under TINA syndrome, as universally true and essential for
the maintenance of the social order. They themselves and those whom they speak
to, deeply believe in this universal and
final truth and hence will vigorously fight for them.
Working Class is a universal class, as the
“previous historical movements have been movements of minorities, or in the
interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious,
independent movement of immense majority, in the interest of the immense
majority”. “The communist revolution is the most radical rupture with the
traditional property relations” and “with traditional ideas”[CM]
What this class consciousness is in reference
to the working class? In Marxist parlance it means an understanding that the
emancipation of proletariat and hence liberation of the whole society, the
human emancipation, require the overthrow of capitalism along with its ideas
and ideals. The will and preparedness to overthrow is its logical corollary. It
is revolutionary in the sense of its radical rupture.
No set ideas or ideals, ‘communists do not
set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mold the
proletarian movement.’ The workers ‘have
no ready made utopia to introduce’ and ‘have no ideals to realize but to set
free the elements of new society with which the old collapsing bourgeois society’
[GI] Those who treat Marxism is as a cult robs the concept its dynamic nature of its
character as constantly changing process that is not unilinear. It is
susceptible to not only progress but also to regress. There are no irreversible
formulas. It is an objective understanding of the social order and what to do
about it. Historically it has been full of tensions, contradictions, open
questions, possibilities of errors and regression.
It means a commitment to the revolutionary
transformation of the society, internalization of the need to achieve that
‘most radical rupture’. It is not a
definite set of ideas but a perspective, a world view. In times when the class struggle nears
a decisive hour a section of ruling class and particularly a section of its
ideologues who have raised themselves to the level of theoretically
comprehending the historical movement as a whole’, and change the side to join the proletarian struggle for emancipation. The middle class, petty
bourgeoisie and peasant are against capitalism to save their existence from
extinction, try to roll back the wheel of the history so they are unwilling
allies, allies, nevertheless.
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