HCJ – Karl Marx and the Communist Manifesto

“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.”

– Karl Marx

Born in 1818 in Germany to Jewish parents, Karl Marx studied law but went on to study philosophy then revolution instead. In 1844 he met Fredrich Engles in Paris and together they wrote the communist manifesto in 1848. Marx was also a journalist and editor of a radical newspaper in Europe. He later fled to London until his death in 1883.

Marx believed that you could learn anything about a society by analysing the way its economic forces shaped social, religious, legal and political processes. He was a technological determinist and took a teleological approach to history (i.e. that everything is moving towards and end point).

Marxism fuses Hegelian philosophy, British empiricism and French revolutionary politics and tried to use scientific method to prove points, showing Darwin’s influence at the time. It centers on the idea of dialectic materialism – where two opposing ideas or things clash:

Thesis + Antithesis => Synthesis

In the case of the lead up to communism, the thesis would be the Bourgeoisie, the antithesis – the proletariats and the synthesis (or resolution) would be socialism.

Karl Marx thought that capitalism was not sustainable (as commodities cost more than wages due to profit margins) and that society was moving towards communism. In his eyes, social and political history was structured as such:

1.       Communal living (such as prehistory when everyone worked together)

2.       Slave society (where one group or individual took over)

3.       Monarchy (where one person was in charge and this power was hereditary)

4.       Capitalism (where everything is driven by profit; where we are today)

5.       Socialism (where everyone works for equal wage and all wealth is divided equally)

6.       Communism (where everything is shared equally via the state – “to each according to his need, from each according to his ability”)

 (I.e. social conflict drives history)

To ‘achieve’ communism though, proletariats would have to ‘over through’ capitalism. However, proletariats do not do this due to alienation, meaning that people are seen as commodities. Whilst those lower in the social/economic order have less to lose by rising up against capitalism, they do not. Many will argue that this is because they aspire to be like or become one of the bourgeoisie. Marxism argues that this is not possible as, although the media depicts some proletariats ‘swapping class’ this is not the case; the media provides part of the ‘infrastructure’ capitalism is built upon and can portray people in ways which support this. For example, whilst Alan Sugar can be seen as part of the bourgeoisie, he is still a proletariat as his wealth and power can be taken from him and he will, therefore, lose this status whereas this is not possible for the bourgeoisie.

Of course, if society developed into socialism, there would not be these divides. However, socialism or communism does not look like concepts that can be achieved (take Russia or China as examples). Perhaps this because we are too used to capitalist concepts or maybe we are all in essence lazy, but the idea that a heart surgeon would be paid or given equal amounts of things as a cleaner becomes just an incentive not to try and achieve highly as there is no reward and therefore, we would all just become cleaners.