Karl Marx

KARL MARX (1818-1883) In the entire history of political thought, both on influence and in criticism, few political thinkers can match Karl Marx. He was truly the last of the great critics in the Western intellectual tradition. His ideas exerted a decisive influence on all aspects of human endeavour, and transformed the study of history and society . He was the first thinker to bring together the various strands of socialist thought into both a coherent world view and an impassioned doctrine of struggle. Along with Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) with whom he shared an unparalleled partnership, Marx dissected 19th century capitalism as scientific socialism or Marxism. Marxism is not only a critical appraisal of capitalism, but also a viable or credible alternative to it. Marx brought about a sea change in the entire methodology of the social sciences. He was “a brilliant agitator and polemicist, a profound economist, a great sociologist, and incomparable historian”.

Karl Marx was born in March 5, 1818 win a predominantly Catholic city of Trier in the Rhineland in a Jewish family. Marx attended the University of Berlin for several years where he studied jurisprudence, philosophy, and history . Young Marx was a brilliant student who read law and eventually took doctorate in philosophy with dissertation on ancient atomism. He quickly became engaged in political activities and in 1842 joined the staff of a democratic news paper in Cologne. In the following year the paper was suppressed by the Prussian Government and Marx went to Paris , then the European headquarters of radical movements. In Paris he met Proudhon, the leading French Socialist thinker, Bakunin, the Russian anarchist , and Friedrich Engels, a Rhinelander like Marx, and soon to become his life long companion and close collaborator. Engels was the son of a German textile manufacture with business interests, in Germany and England, and he was sent by his father to Manchester in 1842. His conditions of the Working Class in English (1844) was a remarkably penetrating study drabness and poverty in the midst of luxurious wealth, and Engels was the first to draw Marx’s attention to England as a laboratory in which industrial capitalism could be most accurately observed. In 1845 Marx was expelled from France through the intervention of the Prussian Government and he went to Brussels, another center of political refugees from all over Europe. There Marx composed with the aid of Engels, the Communist Manifesto (1848), the most influential of all his writings, a pamphlet that has made history, inspired devotion and hatred, and divided mankind more profoundly than any other political document. Marx participated in the revolutions of 1848 in France and Germany, and early in 1849 he was expelled again by the Prussian government, and forbidden to return to his native land.

He went to London in the late summer of 1849, soon followed by Engels, Marx had planned to stay in England for only a few weeks, but he stayed there until his death in 1883. Marx’s writings show little penetration of English political ideas and ways of thought , and his lack of insight into the forces and innovations of English politics would have been little better or worse had he stayed in Germany all his life. By contrast, his writings demonstrate a profound knowledge of the English economic system based on detailed and painstaking research.

Marx’s principal doctrines were not new; but he greatly amplified a systematised older ideas, putting them into new and effective communications. He attempted

to show  that a socialist programme must be based upon a systematic interpretation of social evaluations and a critical analysis of the existing system of production and exchange. His design was to show how a socialist community is to be built upon capitalist foundations. Marx described his socialism as scientific.

Marx inherited and integrated three legacies, German philosophy, French political thought and English economics in his theoretical foundation . From the German intellectual traditions, he borrowed the Hegelian method of dialectics and applied it to the material world. From the French revolutionary tradition he accepted the idea that change motivated by a messianic idea was not only desirable, but also feasible. He applied his method with a view to bringing about large scale change within the industrialised capitalist economy of which England was the classical model in the 19th century. Marx interpreted liberalism and classical economics as articulating and defending the interests of the middle class. He proposed to create a social philosophy that was in tune with the aspirations of the rising proletariat. Like Hegel, he looked upon the French Revolution as an indication of the demise of feudalism, but while Hegel contended that the revolution would culminate in the emergence of nation states, Marx looked upon it as a prelude to a more fundamental and complete revolution beyond the nation state. The French Revolution, which brought the middle class to the forefront with the destruction of the nobility, was essentially a political revolution.

Marx has written so extremely on various issues of history, economics, philosophy, society and politics. As Prof. William Ebenstein has rightly pointed out, Marx’s analysis of the capitalist system has influenced the making of history even more than the writing of history. During his student days, Marx was attracted to Hegelian Idealism but he soon shifted his interest to humanism and ultimately to scientific socialism. The books, articles, pamphlets of Marx were written during three decades from the early forties to the early seventies. Major works of Marx included Critique of Political Economy, The Communist Manifesto, Das Capital. Although the first volume of his great work Das Capital was published in 1867, the second and third volumes were edited after his death by Engels from the vast amount of manuscript material that he left. Marx’s political philosophy has to be gathered from many incidental remarks and comments in his writing and letters, as he never wrote a systematic statements on the basic assumptions of his thought. In the preface to his Critique of Political Economy(1859) , Marx briefly states his general philosophy of history, based on the thesis that “the anatomy of civil society is to be found in political economy”.

Marx, before the Paris commune, never described himself as a socialist, let alone a scientific socialist. He always identified himself as a communist. There are good reasons for this. Socialism pre-dated Marx; it was already flourishing on French soil when Marx arrived in Paris in 1843, as a movement which advocated economic well being and legislative protection for the workers , universal suffrage, civil rights of association and freedom of opinion and cultural opportunities for the poor. Marx believed that socialism, like Proudhonism, was by definition utopian and doctrinaire, and that it was by the same token a false brother to communism; he thought that for this reason its very name should be avoided. Marxism made its bid after the socialist movement had already become organised, conscious, active, doctrinaire and French, which does much to explain the relative a slowness of the penetration of Marxism into the French radical tradition.

Base – Super Structure Relations

In order to understand the Marxist position on the origin and nature of the state, it is essential to distinguish between the foundation or base of society and the structure above its foundation or the super structure. In this building- like metaphor it is assumed that the character of the superstructure will depend on the character of the base. The forces of production constitute the basis of all social relationship; they belong to the base or sub structure. Legal and political structure, religion, morals and social customs belong to the superstructure of society, rests upon the prevailing economic conditions. In the preface to his Critique of Political Economy, Karl Marx observed that “Legal relations as well as form of state….. are rooted in the material conditions of life”. Elaborating the relation between the real foundation and the super- structure, Marx further observed:” In the social production which men carry on they enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, these relations of production correspond to a definite state of development of their material powers of production. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society - the real foundation, on which rise legal and political superstructures and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production in material life determines the general character of the social, political and spiritual process of life.”

This distinction between the economic structure or substructure of a society and its corresponding superstructure constitutes an important element of Marxian social analysis. The economic structure of society determines the superstructure of consciousness. This is simply another way of saying that life determines consciousness. This superstructure of consciouness corresponds to legal and political institutions that are also super structural, that is , determined by the economic base of society. Thus the economic structure( class) of society determines its political structure and determines as well corresponding social and political beliefs and values.

According to Marx, this superstructure of political consciousness, and indeed the whole cultural apparatus of ideas, beliefs and values, constitutes misperceptions of social reality. Thus, while it is true that life determines consciousness, it does not determine it in ways that necessarily illustrate the true character of social life. Indeed consciousness not only mistakes the nature of social reality but also plays the role of justifying the very reality that gives rise to these misperceptions. Marx calls these forms of social misperception as “ “false consciousness” There are a variety of ways in which consciousness may be characterised as ideological.

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM

The doctrine of dialectical materialism is one of the most important contributions of Karl Marx to the world. Karl Marx is indebted to both Hegel and Hobbes for his theory of dialectical materialism. Dialectical materialism holds that the world is by its very nature material and it develops in accordance with the laws of movement of matter. The evolution of the world is not one of Idea or Universal Spirit as held by Hegelian idealists, but the evolution of matter or material forces. Matter generates sensations, perceptions and consciousness.

Marx borrowed is dialectic method from Hegel but modified it in a fundamental way. While Hegel had applied the dialectics to explain the domain of ideas, Marx applied the dialectics to explain the

material conditions of life. In the process of doing so he denounced the Hegelian philosophy of dialectical idealism, on the one hand and the theory of Hobbesian scientific materialism on the other. ‘My dialectic method, wrote Marx, is not only different from the Hegelian but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life process of human brain, i.e, process of thinking which under the name of the idea even transforms into an independent subject is the demiurgos of the real world and the real world is only the external phenomenal form of the idea. With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind and translated into forms of thought . Thus Marx contrasted his materialistic to Hegel’s idealistic interpretation of history. One of Marx most famous sayings is that men’s “social existence determines their consciousness and not as had been generally accepted before Marx that the consciousness of men determines their existence”.

In the dialectical materialism of Marx evolution is the development of matter from within environment helping or hindering but neither originating the evolutionary process nor capable of preventing it from reaching its inevitable goal. Matter is active and not passive and moves by and inner necessity of nature. In other words, Dialectical materialism of Marx is more interested in motion than matter, in the vital energy within matter inevitably driving it towards, perfect human society. As Engels has rightly pointed out, the dialectical method grasps things and their images, ideas essentially in their sequence, their movement, their

birth and death’. This motion that dialectical materialism entails in possible by the conflict  of the opposites.  According to Marx, every state of history which falls short of perfection carries within itself the seeds of its own destruction. Each stage reached in the march to the classless society, the thesis calls into being its opposite or anti-thesis and from the clash between the two, a new synthesis and from the clash between the two, a new synthesis emerges in which what was true in both thesis and anti- thesis and from the clash between the two. A new synthesis emerges in which what was true in both thesis and anti- thesis is preserved which serves as a starting point for the whole process again until the classless society has been achieved.

Nowhere unfortunately Marx tells us what he means by materialism, But at least he makes it clear that his materialism is dialectical not mechanical. In mechanical materialism evolution is the path taken by material. In mechanical materialism evolution is the path taken by material things under the pressure of their environment. In dialectical materialism evolution is the development of matter within, environment helping or hindering but neither originating the evolutionary process nor capable of preventing it from reaching its inevitable goal. Matter to the dialectical materialist is not passive, and moves by an inner necessity of its nature. Therefore, dialectical materialism is more interested in motion than in matter, in a vital energy within matter inevitably driving it towards perfect human society just as Hegel’s demiurge drove forward to the perfect realization of spirit. As Engels said: ‘ the dialectical method grasps things and their images, ideas, essentially in their sequence, their movement , their birth and death”.

“Contradiction” then, as Hegel says,” is the very moving principle of the world. But for the Marxist as for the Hegelian, it works in a peculiar way. The change it produces takes place gradually until a certain point is reached beyond which it becomes sudden so that each synthesis is brought about very abruptly. As C.L. Wayper in his Political Thought has rightly pointed out, this change as: “Water becomes ice, Feudalism capitalism, capitalism socialism, as a result of a sudden qualitative change’.

How closely Marx follows Hegel here is obvious. For Hegel the universal substance is Spirit; for Marx it is Matter. Both Spirit and Matter used to develop themselves and both do so the idea fully conscious of itself; for Marx the inevitable goal is the classless society , perfectly organized for production, sufficient for itself. Neither Hegel nor Marx proves that the goal which they state to be inevitable is indeed so. Both begin with the assumption that it is and in both historical analysis serves to illustrate but not to prove the initial act of faith. The only important differences between them are that Marx applied the dialectic to the future and indulged in much pseudo- scientific which Hegel would have been the first to condemn, and that of course, he completely rejected Hegel’s philosophic idealism. As Marx wrote in the Preface to the second edition of Das Capital :

In Hegel’s writings, dialectic stands on its head. You must turn it right away up again if you want to discover the rational kernel that is hidden away with in the wrappings of mystification”.

It is beyond dispute that dialectic materialism is the corner- stone of Marxist philosophy. The materialistic interpretation of history and the theory of class struggle based on the theory of surplus value are its applications. Dialectic materialism helps us to distinguish the contradictions of reality, to understand their significance and follow their development.

HISTORICAL MATERIALISM

Historical materialism is the application of the principles of dialectical materialism to the development of society. It is, in fact, an economic interpretation of history, according to which all the mass phenomena of history are determined by economic conditions . The theory begins with the “simple truth” which is the clue to the meaning of history, that man must eat to live’. His very survival depends upon the success with which he can produce what he wants from nature. Production is, therefore, the most important of all human activities.

In his ‘Socialism: Utopian and Scientific’ Engels defined historical materialism as a theory which holds that the ultimate cause which determines the whole course of human history is the economic development of society. The whole course of human history is explained in terms of changes occurring in the modes of production and exchange. Starting with primitive communism, the mode of production has passed through three stages: slavery, feudalism and capitalism and the consequent division of society into three distinct classes( Slave- master, serf - baron and proletariat- capitalist) and the struggle of these classes against one another. The most profound statement of Marx which explains his theory of historical materialism is contained in his ‘ Preface to a contribution to the Critique of Political Economy”. In this work Marx wrote thus.:

“The economic structure of society, constituted by its relations of production is the real foundations of society. It is the basis on which rises a legal and political super- structure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. Along with it the society’s relations of production themselves correspond to a definite stage of development of its material productive forces. Thus the mode of production of material life determines the social, political and intellectual life process in general. ‘

The forms of production which under the society change according to necessities inherent in them so as to produce their successors merely by their own working, The system, for instance, characterized by the “hand mill” crates an economic and social situation in which the adoption of the mechanical method of milling becomes a practical necessity. The “steam mill” in turn creates new social functions, new groups, new out looks, which in turn outgrow their own frame. The factories which are necessary to solve the economic problems of the 18th century create the conditions of 19th century problems. These self- developing forms of production are the propeller which accounts first for economic and then for social change, a propeller which requires no external impetus.

Every society, Marx says, is confronted with problems which it must face and solve- or collapse. But the possibility of collapse is never considered, though no great knowledge of history is needed to convince one that civilizations can and do collapse. Indeed in his Critique of Political Economy Marx even says: ‘Mankind always takes up only such problems as it can solve”. Finally, the productive forces inherent in any society develop completely before a change takes place, and the change itself will be sudden as when 0water turns into steam. In such sudden revolutionary change, the entire structure of society will be evolutionally transformed, until the new society in its turn is overthrown and remoulded.

Marx developed his own materialist theory of history by way of a critique of idealism and the idealist interpretation of history. This critique and the basic outline of his own materialist conception were published in 1846 as the German Ideology, with Engels as co-author. The basic materialist proposition of this work is that “the first premise of all human existence, and therefore all of history…is that men must be in a option to live in order to be able to make history”.? Before people can make history they must first exist, not abstractly as philosophical categories, but concretely as actual existing material entities. It thus follows for Marx that any valid historical analysis must begin with the ways in which human beings materially produce themselves, both as individuals and as species. This involves they study of those productive or “ historical acts” as Marx calls them, by which people provide for the necessities of survival: and the social forms of reproduction by which the species as a whole is perpetuated; it is an obvious and undisputable fact that these historical acts of production have “ existed simultaneously since the dawn of history and the first men, and still assert themselves in history today.”

The Marxian philosophy of historical materialism is different not only from Hegelian philosophy; it is also different from that of Feuerbach. While Feuerbach saw the unity of man and nature expressed by man’s being a part of nature, Marx sees man as shaping nature and his being, in turn, shaped by it. In other words, whereas Feuerbach materializes man, Marx humanizes nature. Marx argued that man not only satisfies his needs through his contact with nature but also creates new needs as well as possibilities of their satisfaction. Thus, according to Marx, man’s needs are historical, not naturalistic.

Historical materialism is a variety of determinism which as understood by Marx implies that social or political change is not really brought about by “ideas”, that is by various schemes for social or political reform. It is the modes of production and distribution that determine social and political forms of organization, not vice versa. Marx maintains that the prevailing ideology of a society reflects the class interest of those who control the means of production and distribution within the society, As Marx has rightly pointed out, “ The mode of production of the material means of existence conditions the whole process of social, political and intellectual life.”

THEORY OF CLASSES : CLASS STRUGGLE

The understanding of the concept of “class” is central to the understanding of Marxian philosophy. The sole criterion on the basis of which the class of a person is determined is his ownership (or control) of means of production(land, capital, technology etc,.) those who own or control the means of production constitute the bourgeoisie (exploiters), and those who own only lookout power constitute the proletariat (exploited.) Thus classes are defined by Marx on the basis of twin criteria of a person’s place in the mode of production and his consequent position in terms of relations of production. Since class is based on ownership of means of production and ownership of property, the disappearance of property as the determining factor of station. During different historical phases, these two classes were known by different names and enjoyed different legal status and privileges; but one thing was common that one of exploitation and domination. Class is determined by the extent to which people own most, same or little of the means of production or by their relationship to the means of production. Marx wrote thus: “ Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, guild-master and Rneyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another.”

In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels said, “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle”. They argue that class conflict is the real driving force of human history. In the capitalist societies call differentiation is most clear, class consciousness in more developed and class conflict is most acute. Thus capitalism is the culminating point in the historical evolution of classes and class conflict. The distinctive feature of bourgeois epoch is that 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.

Marx made a distinction between the objective facts of existence of a class and its subjective awareness about its being a class- consciousness. Division of labor is the main source of historical emergence of classes and class antagonisms. Through a detailed historical analysis Marx showed that no major antagonism disappears unless there emerges a new antagonism.

According to Marx , there has been class struggle since the breakup of the tribal community organization. In fact,humanity has evolved to higher stages of development through class conflicts. Marx believes that class – struggle in the modern period is simpler than earlier class struggle. This is because of greater polarization today compared with earlier times. Inspired by Hegel’s distinctive theory of history and idealist philosophy, Marx postulated that human social and political development are advanced through conflict between antithetical class forces. Marx made a major departure from Hegel, on the nature of this conflict. Marx is said to have “stood Hegel on his head” by claiming that it was conflict rooted in the material conditions of existence that drove history and not conflict over antithetical ideas, which Hegel asserted was the principal mover of human history.

Marx examined the dominant material conditions at various moments of human history and stated that each set of dominant conditions breed a conflictive conditions. In the hands of human

beings, these   contradictory

conditions contributed to conflict; at times, this conflict became so deep and irresolvable that it transformed human development in profound ways. Marx asserted that human beings drove this process by acting collectively and particularly as members of an economic class.

As a result for Marx and Engels, history moved in distinct stages or epochs, and within each epoch, one could find the contradictions ( or class conflicts) that would pave the way to the next stage. Marx identified the following stage:

1. Primitive communism

2. Slave society

3. Feudalism

4. Capitalism

5. Socialism and communism

Unlike earlier liberal democratic theory, which held that there had been a time in human history when humans did not live in a society, Marx argued that humans had always lived in some kind of society. The first of these societies he called primitive communism. This stage was characterized by a society much like the tribal communities of the North American plains. Since this was a class less society, it was communist. What made it primitive was the very low standard of living and the great dangers facing tribal members.

Eventually, primitive communism gave way to the next stage of history, slave society. Although Marx and Engels are not clear as to how primitive communism collapsed, there is a suggestion by Engles that it was a “ natural” development, slave society was in many ways the first epoch with class contradictions. In slave societies was defined in terms of land ownership and slave ownership. In such societies, there were classes: those who owned some of the means of production; and those who owned nothing, not even themselves (slaves). Societies such as Rome were rocked by internal conflicts among these conflicts for control over the means of production . Eventually these conflicts led to the demies of slave society and the emergence of feudalism.

Feudalism, like slave society ,is characterized primarily by agricultural production controlled by large estates of land holding nobles. In feudalism. There were also other classes, particularly the merchants, or the early bourgeoisie. The early bourgeoisie, unlike the land holding nobility, directed their livelihood form the control of trade and finance. With the expansion of trade routes east and west the European bourgeois i.e. grew in economic status and emended political power as a results’.

Theory of Surplus Value

The doctrine of surplus value is one of the important theoretical contributions of Karl Marx. Marx’s theory of surplus value is an extension of Ricardo’s theory according to which the value of every commodity is proportional to the quantity of labor contained in it, provided this labor is in accordance with the existing standard of efficiency of production. Labor power equals the brain, muscle and nerve of the laborer. Being itself a commodity, it must command a price proportional to the member of labor hours that entered into its production. This will be the number of labour hours required to house and feed the laborer and to bring up his family.

This is the value of his services, for which he receives corresponding wages. But labor is unique among commodities because in being used up to create more value. The employer, therefore, can make his work more hours than would be required to produce that stock. The value thus created over and above what the labouner is paid for, Marx calls surplus value, and he regards it as the source of all profit.

Marx explains the whole process of exploitation with the help of his theory of surplus value. It is a distinctive feature of capitalist means of production. Surplus value accrues because the commodity produced by the worker is sold by the capitalist for more than what the worker receives as wages. In his Das capital, Marx elaborated in it in a simple technical manner. He argued that the worker produces a commodity which belongs to the capitalist and whose value is realized by the capitalist in the form of price. This capital has two parts- constant capital and variable capital. Constant capital relates to means of production like raw material, machinery tools set used for commodity production.

THEORY OF ALIENATION

Marx employed the term alienation to describe dehumanization and he devoted much theoretical effort in these younger years to analyze the nature of alienation in a capitalist system. His chief work on this subject is found in Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (also known as the Paris Manuscripts) which were written in 1844 but only posthumously published much later, in 1932. In the Manuscripts Marx discusses a cluster of forms of alienation that centre on a central sense of ‘alienation’ which is virtually definitely of the capitalist economy. By alienation Marx means the separation of our specific human qualities, our “ species being”, as he termed it, into structures of domination. In a capitalist society or economy, work or labor itself becomes a commodity, something that is bought and sold on the open market. One result is the creation of the two principal classes of bourgeoisie- liberal, capitalist society: there is the bourgeoisie, which control the means of production and distribution in the society and in particular, have the power to buy labour. And there is the proletariat, composed of persons who have no share in the control of the means of production and distribution in the society and who are forced to sell their labour on the open market in order to sustain themselves and their families.

The class divisions generated by the existence of capitalist private property constitute the chief example and indeed the basic source of alienation. Given these class division, workers are separated from the capitalists and once separated, dominated. Indeed, it is precisely in their separation, that is in the alienation of their innate human capacity for community with their fellow creatures, that the domination of the worker becomes possible. Given this basic form of separation – domination, the entire world of workers becomes and alienated reality, Marx argues. They are alienated form the fruit of their labour, which is expropriated by the capitalist as profit. What rightfully belongs to workers as a direct human expression of their productive life is separated form them and then, in the form of surplus value or capital, becomes the source of their domination and exploitation. More than this, the whole technological infrastructure of industry takes on an alienated character.

All of these various forms of alienation achieve their highest and most tragic character itself- alienation, according to Marx. Having alienated the power to act upon the world in a directly human way, the workers finally alienated the power even to comprehend that world. Given Marx’s proposition that life determines consciousness, it must follow that where life has become alienated, so must consciousness. It is clear from this analysis that alienated consciousness is nothing other than false consciousness, or ideology. The natural human ability to comprehend reality is quite literally separated from the workers by the conditions of their lives and replaced by false perception of reality. These perception, by blinding the workers to their real conditions and therefore preventing them from changing those conditioned, constitute structures of mental domination.

Given such extreme misery and alienation, particularly the alienation of consciousness itself, one may well wonder how Marx could assert the inevitable demise of capitalism. Marx proceeds to claim that a consequence of the alienation of the activity of the labour is that the worker looks elsewhere to find a true expression of himself or herself: “ man (the worker) only feels himself freely active in his animal functions of eating, drinking, and procreating at most also in his dwelling and dress”. This displacement of one’s true human self into one’s “animal “ (biological) functions and into artificial and fairly trivial concerns interlocks with the sort of consumerism characteristic of capitalist economies.

Finally, there results from the objectification of laobur the alienation of man from man: each man measures his relationship to other men by the relationship in which he finds himself placed as a worker. The main feature of this relationship is competition. Worker must compete with one another in the sale of their labour. One might conclude that the forms of alienation described by Marx only effect members of proletariat in a situation of unregulated competition . ‘

Critique of Capitalism

In the Das Capital, Marx pointed out that “ capitalism arises only when the owners of the means of production and subsistence meet in the market with the free labourer selling his labour power”. The basis of capitalism was wage labour. In the Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx implied that even if the state owned the means of production, wage labour still continue. This was not real socialism, but a new variation of capitalism, namely state capitalism.

In the Communist Manifesto, Marx paid handsome tributes to the bourgeoisie, while highlighting its negative side. There were three reasons that make capitalism attractive. First, it brought remarkable economic progress by revolutionizing the means of production and developing technology as never before. It built and econuraged the growth of commerce and factories on a scale unknown before. Secondly, capitalism undermined the national barriers, In its search for market and raw materials, capitalism and the bourgeoisie crossed national boundaries and pentetrated every corner of the world drawing the most backward nations into their fold. Thirdly, capitalism eliminated the distinctions between town and the country and enabled the peasants to come out of what Marx called, “ the idiocy of rural life. “ In spite of the achievements, Marx believed that capitalism had out lived its use because of the sufferings and hardships it caused.

Marx examined the sufferings within capitalism, which were rooted in its origin: the eviction of peasants from their land, the loss of their sources of income and most significantly, the creation of the proletariat. According to Marx, capitalism facilitates an explitative relationship between the two major social classes, the owners of capital (the bourgeoisie) and the working class ( the proletariat). Marx claimed that the profit derived from the capitalist production process was merely the difference between the value generated by the proletariat and the wage that they earned from the bourgeoisie. Therefore, according to Marxian ceception, the proletariat generated all value as a result of its labour but had only a portion of that value returned it by the bourgeousing in the form of wages. Since the proletariat created surplus value, but the bourgeoisie enjoyed the fruits of the value, the bourgeoisie was effectively exploiting the proletariat on a consistent and on going basis.

Marx asserted that this exploitative relationship was an essential part of the capitalist production process. Among other things, surplus value was used by the bourgeoisie to reinvest, modernize, and expand its productive capacity. Therefore, for Marx, capitalism could not continue as a mode of production without the unceasing exploitation of the proletariat, which comprises the majority of human beings in advanced industrial societies.

Not only Marx claimed that the capital wage labour relationship was exploitative, but he also claimed that this economic relationship left the majority of human beings feeling estranged from their own humanity. Because Marx believed productivity was a naturally human act, he concluded that the capital wage labour relationship degraded something that was a fulfilling, meaningful , and free act into drudgery that was performed soley for the purpose of basic survival.

Marx predicted that capitalism, like every dominant economic mode of production before it, possessed internal contradictions that would eventually destroy the system. These contradictions or recessions were moments of crisis, Marx thought, and not necessarily temporary in nature.

Furthermore Marx predicted that, over

time crisis periods would get progressively

longer, recessions would get deeper, recoveries would be shallower, and times in between moments of

crisis would get shorter.

In the meantime, Marx paints a picture of capitalism driven to ever more desperate, and ultimately irrational and futile attempts the stave off the inevitable. The intensity of capitalist competition increases in precise proportion to the decline of the system as a whole. Technologies are introduced at a ferish pace with resulting over production on commodities on the one hand and increasing unemployment on the other. The consequences of this” anarching of production” as Marx terms it, are periodic depressions in which all of the productive forces that had evolved up to that point are destroyed.

According to Marx, capitalism contains its own seeds of destruction. He rallied the working class under the call “workers of all countries unite”. Within the capitalism, increase in monopolies led to growing exploitation, misery and pauperization of the working class. Simultaneously, as the working class increased in number, it became better organized and acquired greater bargaining skills’. This initiated a revolutionary process, leading to a new socialist arrangement in which common possession replaced private ownership in the means of production. The calrion call given to the workers was to unite, shed their chains and conquer the world. Ultimately, like all modes of production before it, Marx claimed, capitalism would come to an end and be replaced by an economic system that had fewer internal contradictions.

Following the collapse of capitalism and the seizure of power by the proletariat, a transitional period would follow, Socialism.

Marx spent very little space discussing his vision for  socialism and communism, but he and Engels discussed it briefly in the Communist Manifesto. During the transitional period, the proletariat uses the coercive power of the state to defend the revolution from the remnants of the bourgeoisie. In the Critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx states that in a socialist society, the labourer will receive, in return for a given quantity of work, the equivalent in means of consumption, from each according to his ability, to each according to his labour. Full communism would have some key characteristics. It would be a classless society, because class differences would disappear. Again communism would ultimately be a stateless society as well, “ because the state would ultimately “ wither away” Further more, communism would be a nation less society because, Marx and Engels believed, national identities were a product of capitalism, and such identities would disappear, to be replaced by a universal proletarian identity.

CRITICAL APPRISAL OF MARXISM

Marxism is undoubtedly one of the most influential philosophies of modern times. Marx’s ideas not only inspired a variety of schools of thought, but his ideas have inspired a vigorous debate over a whole range of issues- such as the balance of the state and the market in production and the proper role of government in society. His ideas of Base- super structure relations alienation, Dialectical Materialism, Class struggle, surplus value, Proletarian Revolution, vision of communism etc have been extensively discussed, debated, modified and sometimes even rejected by his followers and adversaries. His writings are so voluminous and his theories are so wide –ranging that Marx has come to mean different things to different people.

Marxism has been subjected to severe criticisms from different corners. Marx’s vision of a new social order in which there will be neither alienation nor exploitation, no classes, no class antagonism, no authority, no sate is highly imaginative and fascinating and because of this attraction, Prof. Sabine called “ Marxism a utopia but a generous and humane one” Marx did not forsee the rise of fascism, totalitartianism and the welfare state. His analysis of capitalism was at best, applicable to early 19th century capitalism, though his criticisms of capitalism as being wasteful, unequal and exploitative was true. However, his alternative of genuine democracy and full communism seemed more difficult to realize in practice, for they did not accommodate a world which was becoming increasingly differentiated, stratified and functionally specialized.

Karl Popper in his “ Open Society and its Enemies has criticized Marxism along with Plato and Hegel. Popper was suspicious of Marx’s scientific predictions, for scientific theory was one that would not try to explain everything. Along with Plato and Hegel, Marx was seen as an enemy of the open society , Marx was seen as an enemy of the open society. Marxism claimed to have studied the laws of history, on the basis of which it advocated total, sweeping and radical changes. Not only was it impossible to have first- hand knowledge based on some set of laws that governed society and human individuals but Popper also rejected Marx’s social engineering as dangerous , for it treated individuals as subservient to the interests of the whole. Popper rejected the historicism, holism and utopian social engineering of Marxism. In contrast, he advocated piecemeal social engineering, where change would be gradual and modest, allowing rectification of lapses and errors, for it was not possible to conceive of every thing. Popper claimed that Marx’s scientific socialism was wrong not only about society, but also about science. Popper wrote thus: “ Marx misled crores of intelligent people by saying that historic method is the scientific way of

approaching social problems. “ Further, Marx made the economy or economic factors all important, ignoring factors like nationality, religion, friendship etc.” As Karl Popper has rightly mentioned, Marx brought into the social science and historical science the very important idea that economic conditions are of great importance in the life of society…… There was nothing like serious economic history before Marx”. Like Popper, Berlin attacked the historicism of Marx which he developed in his essay” Historical Inevitability”.

Marx is wrong in his static conception of the classes. As Prof. C.L. Wayper has observed, classes are not fixed and rigidly maintained blocks. There is constant movement from class to class, so much so that perhaps the most salient fetures of social classes is the incessant rise and fall of individual families from one to another. Marx believed that he had “ scientifically proved” that the development of capitalism would leave facing each other in irreconcilable opposition two and only two classes. He did not allow for the emergence of a new class of managers and skilled technical advisers. The forecast based on his economic analysis of surplus value have similarly proved wide of the mark. He declared that working men must become ever poorer until the day of final reckoning. But real wages today are higher than they were a century ago, not lower as they should now be according to Marx. Further , Marx did not foresee the possibilities of the Trade union movement and of the social service state.

Marx was wrong in ignoring the psychological aspects of politics. Though his is an explanation of the state in terms of force, nowhere he gives us any adequate treatment of the problem of power. Nowhere in his work is there the realisation of that men desire power for the satisfaction of their pride and self respect and that for some men power must be regarded as an end in itself. One must go further and say that nowhere he shows any real appreciation of the defects in human nature.

The collapse of communism proved the serious shortcomings of Marxism, both in theory and practice. It at best remained a critique rather than providing a serious alternative to liberal democracy. However its critique of exploitation and alienation, and the hope of creating a truly emancipated society that would allow the full flowering fo human creativity, would be a starting point of any utopian project. In spite of Marx’s utopia being truly generous, it displayed a potential for being tyrannical, despotic and arbitrary. Concentration of political and economic power and absence of checks on absolute power were themselves inimical to true human liberation and freedom.. As Prof. Sabine has observed, Marx “ offered no good reason to believe that the power politics of radicalism would prove to be less authoritarian in practice than the power politics of conservative nationalism”.

Whatever may be the limitations and shortcomings of Marxian principles, it is beyond dispute that Marx would be remembered as a critic of early 19th century capitalism and politics. The “true and false together in him constitue one of the most tremendously compelling forces that modern history has seen”. Although the study of Marxism after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 has gone out of vogue in many intellectual circles, its relevance now has become increasingly apparent. The concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands via corporate mergers and hostile take overs, the disappearance of petite bourgeorisie, and the apparent collusion between big capital and the state - all were suggested by Marx. Perhaps a rediscovery of Marxism among students of social science would help them better understand the direction of the world in the 21st century.