Editing Karl Marx (section)

=== Philosophy and social thought ===
Marx has been called "the first great user of [[critical method]] in social sciences", a characterisation stemming from his frequent use of [[polemic]]s throughout his work to effect critiques of other thinkers.{{sfn|Calhoun|2002|pp=20–23}}<ref name="Sherman1995"/> He criticised speculative philosophy, equating [[metaphysics]] with ideology.{{sfn|Bannerji|2001|p=27}}<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Paolucci |first1=Paul |title=Marx's scientific and political criticism: The internal relation |journal=Capital & Class |year=2015|volume=39 |pages=65–78 |doi=10.1177/0309816814564657 }}</ref> By adopting this approach, Marx attempted to separate key findings from ideological biases.<ref name="Sherman1995"/> This set him apart from many contemporary philosophers.{{sfn|Calhoun|2002|pp=23–24}}

==== Human nature ====
{{further|Marx's theory of human nature}}
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| image1 = G.W.F. Hegel (by Sichling, after Sebbers).jpg
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| footer = The philosophers [[Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel|G.W.F. Hegel]] (left) and [[Ludwig Feuerbach]], whose ideas on dialectics heavily influenced Marx
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Like Tocqueville, who described a faceless and bureaucratic [[despotism]] with no identifiable despot,<ref>[[Annelien de Dijn]], [https://books.google.com/books?id=a3SFelqBLw8C ''French Political Thought from Montesquieu to Tocqueville''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150915142405/https://books.google.com/books?id=a3SFelqBLw8C&dq= |date=15 September 2015 }}, Cambridge University Press, 2008, p. 152.</ref> Marx also broke with classical thinkers who spoke of a single tyrant and with [[Montesquieu]], who discussed the nature of the single despot. Instead, Marx set out to analyse "the despotism of capital".<ref>Karl Marx. ''Capital: A Critique of Political Economy'', vol. 1, trans. [[Samuel Moore (translator of Das Kapital)|Samuel Moore]] and Edward Aveling (New York: Modem Library, 1906), 440.</ref> Fundamentally, Marx assumed that [[human history]] involves transforming [[human nature]], which encompasses both human beings and material objects.<ref name="Ollman1973"/> Humans recognise that they possess both actual and potential selves.<ref name = "Marx_labour">Marx K (1999). [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htm "The labour-process and the process of producing surplus-value".] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101018135115/http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htm |date=18 October 2010 }} In K Marx, ''Das Kapital'' (Vol. 1, Ch. 7). Marxists.org. Retrieved 20 October 2010. Original work published 1867.</ref><ref name = "Marx_critique">See Marx K (1997). "Critique of Hegel's dialectic and philosophy in general". In K Marx, ''Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society'' (LD Easton & KH Guddat, Trans.), pp. 314–47. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. Original work published 1844.</ref> 

For both Marx and Hegel, self-development begins with an experience of internal [[Marx's theory of alienation|alienation]] stemming from this recognition, followed by a realisation that the actual self, as a [[Subject (philosophy)|subjective]] agent, renders its potential counterpart an [[Object (philosophy)|object]] to be apprehended.<ref name="Marx_critique"/> Marx further argues that by moulding nature<ref name = "Lefever">See also Lefever DM; Lefever JT (1977). "Marxian alienation and economic organisation: An alternate view". ''The American Economist (21)'' 2, pp. 40–48.</ref> in desired ways<ref name = "Holland_desire">See also Holland EW (2005). "Desire". In CJ Stivale (Ed.), ''Gilles Deleuze: Key Concepts'', pp. 53–62. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press.</ref> the subject takes the object as its own and thus permits the individual to be actualised as fully human. For Marx, the [[Marx's theory of human nature|human nature]]&nbsp;– {{lang|de|Gattungswesen}}, or [[species-being]]&nbsp;– exists as a function of human labour.<ref name="Marx_labour"/><ref name="Marx_critique"/><ref name="Holland_desire"/> 

Fundamental to Marx's idea of meaningful labour is the proposition that for a subject to come to terms with its alienated object it must first exert influence upon literal, [[materialism|material objects]] in the subject's world.<ref name = "Marx_objects"/> Marx acknowledges that Hegel "grasps the nature of work and comprehends objective man, authentic because actual, as the result of his {{em|own work}}",<ref name = "Marx_work">Marx (1997), p. 321, emphasis in original.</ref> but characterises Hegelian self-development as unduly "spiritual" and abstract.<ref name = "Marx_spiritual">Marx (1997), p. 324.</ref> 

Marx thus departs from Hegel by insisting that "the fact that man is a corporeal, actual, sentient, objective being with natural capacities means that he has actual, sensuous objects for his nature as objects of his life-expression, or that he can only express his life in actual sensuous objects".<ref name = "Marx_objects">Marx (1997), p. 325, emphasis in original.</ref> Consequently, Marx revises Hegelian "work" into material "[[labour (economics)|labour]]" and in the context of human capacity to transform nature the term "[[labour power]]".<ref name=sep/>

==== Labour, class struggle and false consciousness ====
{{further|Alienation (Marxism)|Class struggle|Capitalist mode of production (Marxist theory)}}
{{blockquote|The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.|Karl Marx, ''[[The Communist Manifesto]]''<ref name="MarxEngels2009pp5">{{cite book|first1=Karl |last1=Marx |first2=Friedrich |last2=Engels |author-link2=Friedrich Engels |title=The Communist Manifesto |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pC1RMZh4iC0C&pg=PA5 |year=2009 |publisher=Echo Library |isbn=978-1-4068-5174-8 |page=5 |access-date=27 June 2015 |archive-date=12 September 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150912161744/https://books.google.com/books?id=pC1RMZh4iC0C&pg=PA5 |url-status=live |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref>}}
[[File:Marx et Engels à Shanghai.jpg|upright|thumb|A monument dedicated to Marx and Engels in [[Shanghai]], China]]

Marx had a special concern with how people relate to their own labour power.{{sfn|Calhoun|2002|p=22}} He wrote extensively about this in terms of the problem of [[Marx's theory of alienation|alienation]].{{sfn|Mészáros|2006|p=96}} As with the dialectic, Marx began with a Hegelian notion of alienation but developed a more materialist conception.{{sfn|Calhoun|2002|p=22}} [[Capitalism]] mediates social relationships of production (such as among workers or between workers and capitalists) through commodities, including labour, that are bought and sold on the market.{{sfn|Calhoun|2002|p=22}} For Marx, the possibility that one may give up ownership of one's own labour&nbsp;– one's capacity to transform the world&nbsp;– is tantamount to being alienated from one's own nature and it is a spiritual loss.{{sfn|Calhoun|2002|p=22}} Marx described this loss as [[commodity fetishism]], in which the things that people produce, commodities, appear to have a life and movement of their own to which humans and their behaviour merely adapt.<ref name="Balibar1995"/>

[[Commodity fetishism]] provides an example of what Engels called "[[false consciousness]]",<ref name="KołakowskiFalla2005">{{cite book|first1=Leszek |last1=Kołakowski |author-link1=Leszek Kołakowski |first2=Paul Stephen |last2=Falla |title=Main currents of Marxism: the founders, the golden age, the breakdown|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qUCxpznbkaoC&pg=PA226 |access-date=8 March 2011 |year=2005 |publisher=[[W.W. Norton & Company]] |isbn=978-0-393-06054-6 |page=226 |archive-date=16 June 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130616233048/http://books.google.com/books?id=qUCxpznbkaoC&pg=PA226 |url-status=live |via=[[Google Books]]}}</ref> which relates closely to the understanding of ideology. By "ideology", Marx and Engels meant ideas that reflect the interests of a particular class at a particular time in history, but which contemporaries see as universal and eternal.<ref name="Hernadi1989"/> Marx and Engels's point was not only that such beliefs are at best half-truths, as they serve an important political function. Put another way, the control that one class exercises over the means of production include not only the production of food or manufactured goods but also the production of ideas (this provides one possible explanation for why members of a subordinate class may hold ideas contrary to their own interests).<ref name=sep/><ref name="Thompson1990"/>

Marx was an outspoken opponent of [[child labour]],<ref>In ''[[The Communist Manifesto]]'', Part II:Proletariats and Communist and ''[[Capital, Volume I]]'', Part III</ref> saying that British industries "could but live by sucking blood, and children's blood too", and that U.S. capital was financed by the "capitalized blood of children".<ref name="autogenerated2" /><ref>{{cite speech |author=Karl Marx |title=Inaugural Address of the International Working Men's Association |year=1864}}</ref>

==== Religion ====

Marx agreed with [[Ludwig Feuerbach|Feuerbach]] that religion is a human construct reflecting human conditions ("man creates religion, religion does not create man"), but analysed this in historical, not abstract terms. He saw religion as both an expression of suffering and a protest against it. In his 1843 essay ''[[Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right]],'' Marx sought to distance himself from [[Young Hegelians]] like [[Bruno Bauer]], whose religion-focused critique, in his view, could not be a solution to human suffering without a transformative critique of society. [[Criticism of religion|Critique of religion]] would be ineffective without changing the real social conditions of which religion is only an expression.<ref name=":2" />
According to [[Shlomo Avineri]], the famous passage from the introduction to this essay is, though often only partially quoted, "both more complex and more profound" than would seem, and Marx here expressed "empathy, not scorn" for religious feelings:<ref name=":2">{{Cite book |last=Avineri |first=Shlomo |url=https://www.worldcat.org/title/on1089573903 |title=Karl Marx: Philosophy and Revolution |date=2019 |publisher=Yale University Press |isbn=978-0-300-21170-2 |series=Jewish lives |location=New Haven, Connecticut |chapter=2. Transcending Hegel - Religion and Opium |oclc=on1089573903}}</ref><blockquote>Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the [[opium of the people]].

<p>The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions.<ref name="MarxO'Malley1977" /></p></blockquote>Similar to the later views of [[Max Weber]], Marx believed that religion plays a [[Legitimation|legitimating function]] for the dominant classes by providing a divine sanction for [[Economic inequality|inequality]] and existing social conditions, and that for subordinate classes religion offers an escape:<ref name="SwatosKivisto1998" /> like an [[opiate]], alleviating pain but not offering a cure.<ref name=":2" /> Marx's [[Gymnasium (school)|gymnasium]] senior thesis at the {{Interlanguage link|Friedrich-Wilhelm-Gymnasium (Trier)|de|3=Friedrich-Wilhelm-Gymnasium (Trier)|lt=Gymnasium zu Trier}} argued that religion had as its primary social aim the promotion of [[solidarity (sociology)|solidarity]].{{Citation needed|date=March 2025}}

==== Critique of political economy, history and society ====
{{further|Critique of political economy|Marxian economics}}
{{Quote box
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|quote=But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the whole bourgeoisie in chorus. The bourgeois sees in his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the means of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion than that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women. He has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed at is to do away with the status of women as mere mean of production.
|source=—Karl Marx, ''The Communist Manifesto''<ref>Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, "The Communist Manifesto", page 55, translation made by Samuel Moore in 1888</ref>
}}
Marx's thoughts on labour and its function in reproducing capital were related to the primacy he gave to social relations in determining the society's past, present and future.{{sfn|Calhoun|2002|pp=20–23}}<ref name="Turner2005"/><ref name=":1">{{cite web |last=Marx |first=Karl |title=Grundrisse 06 |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch06.htm |access-date=21 November 2021 |website=[[Marxists Internet Archive]] |quote=the demand that wage labour be continued but capital suspended is self-contradictory, self-dissolving. |archive-date=21 November 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211121201428/https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch06.htm |url-status=live }}</ref> Critics have called this [[economic determinism]]. Labour is the precondition for the existence of, and [[accumulation of capital]], which both shape the [[social system]].<ref name=":1" /> For Marx, [[social change]] was driven by conflict between opposing interests, by parties situated in the historical situation of their [[mode of production]].{{sfn|Calhoun|2012}} This became the inspiration for the body of works known as the [[conflict theory]].<ref name="Turner2005"/> 

In his [[sociocultural evolution|evolutionary]] model of history, he argued that [[human history]] began with free, productive and creative activities that was over time coerced and dehumanised, a trend most apparent under capitalism.{{sfn|Calhoun|2002|pp=20–23}} Marx noted that this was not an intentional process, but rather due to the immanent logic of the current [[mode of production]] which demands more human labour ([[Abstract labour and concrete labour|abstract labour]]) to reproduce the social relationships of capital.{{sfn|Postone|2006|pp=190, 26–27. 135, 374–75}}{{sfn|Pepperell|2010|pp=104–105}}

The organisation of society depends on [[means of production]]. The means of production are all things required to produce material goods, such as land, natural resources, and technology but not human labour. The [[relations of production]] are the social relationships people enter into as they acquire and use the means of production.<ref name="Turner2005"/> Together, these compose the [[mode of production]] and Marx distinguished historical eras in terms of modes of production. Marx differentiated between [[base and superstructure]], where the base (or substructure) is the [[economic system]] and superstructure is the cultural and political system.<ref name="Turner2005"/> Marx regarded this mismatch between economic base and social [[base and superstructure|superstructure]] as a major source of social conflict.<ref name="Turner2005"/>

Despite Marx's stress on the critique of capitalism and discussion of the new [[communist society]] that should replace it, his explicit critique is guarded, as he saw it as an improved society compared to the past ones ([[slavery]] and [[feudalism]]).<ref name=sep/> Marx never clearly discusses issues of [[morality]] and [[justice]], but scholars agree that his work contained [[Logical implication|implicit]] discussion of those concepts.<ref name=sep/>

{{multiple image
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 | caption1 = Memorial to Karl Marx in Moscow, whose inscription reads: "[[Workers of the world, unite!|Proletarians of all countries, unite!]]"
 | image2 = Murales Rivera - Treppenhaus 7 Marx.jpg
 | caption2 = A mural by [[Diego Rivera]] showing Karl Marx, in the [[National Palace (Mexico)|National Palace]] in Mexico City
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Marx's view of capitalism was two-sided.<ref name=sep/><ref name="Wood1993"/> On one hand, in the 19th century's deepest critique of the dehumanising aspects of this system he noted that defining features of capitalism include alienation, exploitation and recurring, cyclical [[economic depression|depressions]] leading to mass unemployment. On the other hand, he characterised capitalism as "revolutionising, industrialising and universalising qualities of development, growth and progressivity" (by which Marx meant industrialisation, urbanisation, technological progress, increased [[productivity]] and growth, [[rationality]], and [[scientific revolution]]) that are responsible for progress, at in contrast to earlier forms of societies.<ref name=sep/><ref name="Wood1993"/>{{sfn|Calhoun|2002|pp=20–23}} 

Marx considered the capitalist class to be one of the most revolutionary in history because it constantly improved the means of production, more so than any other class in history and was responsible for the overthrow of [[feudalism]].{{sfn|Clark|1998|pp=57–59}}<ref name="Gilbert2010" /> Capitalism can stimulate considerable growth because the capitalist has an incentive to reinvest profits in new technologies and [[capital equipment]].{{sfn|Calhoun|2002|p=22}}

According to Marx, capitalists take advantage of the difference between the labour market and the market for whatever commodity the capitalist can produce. Marx observed that in practically every successful industry, input unit-costs are lower than output unit-prices. Marx called the difference "[[surplus value]]" and argued that it was based on [[surplus labour]], the difference between what it costs to keep workers alive, and what they can produce.<ref name=sep/> Although Marx describes capitalists as [[vampire]]s sucking worker's blood,{{sfn|Calhoun|2002|pp=20–23}} he notes that drawing profit is "by no means an injustice" since Marx, according to [[Allen W. Wood]] "excludes any trans-epochal standpoint from which one can comment" on the morals of such particular arrangements.<ref name=sep/> Marx also noted that even the capitalists themselves cannot go against the system.{{sfn|Clark|1998|pp=57–59}} The problem is the "cancerous cell" of [[Capital (economics)|capital]], understood not as property or equipment, but the social relations between workers and owners, (the selling and purchasing of labour power)&nbsp;– the societal system, or rather [[mode of production]], in general.{{sfn|Clark|1998|pp=57–59}}

At the same time, Marx stressed that capitalism was unstable and prone to [[crisis theory|periodic crises]].<ref name=wk/> He suggested that over time capitalists would invest more and more in new technologies and less and less in labour.<ref name=sep/> Since Marx believed that profit derived from surplus value appropriated from labour, he concluded that the rate of profit would fall as the economy grows.{{sfn|Calhoun|2002|p=23}} Marx believed that increasingly severe crises would punctuate this [[business cycles|cycle]] of growth and collapse.{{sfn|Calhoun|2002|p=23}} Moreover, he believed that in the long-term, this process would enrich and [[empowerment|empower]] the capitalist class and impoverish the proletariat.{{sfn|Calhoun|2002|p=23}}{{sfn|Clark|1998|pp=57–59}} In section one of ''The Communist Manifesto'', Marx describes [[feudalism]], capitalism, and the role internal social contradictions play in the historical process:

{{blockquote|We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged&nbsp;... the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder. Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution adapted in it, and the economic and political sway of the bourgeois class. A similar movement is going on before our own eyes&nbsp;... The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring order into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property.<ref name=manifesto/>}}

[[File:MandK Industrial Revolution 1900.jpg|thumb|Outside a factory in [[Oldham]], 1900. Marx believed that industrial workers, the [[proletariat]], would rise up around the world.]]

Marx believed that those structural contradictions within capitalism necessitate its end, giving way to socialism, or a [[post-capitalism|post-capitalistic]], communist society:

{{blockquote|The development of modern industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.<ref name="manifesto"/>}}

Thanks to various processes overseen by capitalism, such as urbanisation, the working class, the proletariat, should grow in numbers and develop [[class consciousness]], in time realising that they can and must change the system.{{sfn|Calhoun|2002|pp=20–23}} Marx believed that if the proletariat were to seize the means of production, they would encourage social relations that would benefit everyone equally, abolishing the exploiting class and introducing a system of production less vulnerable to cyclical crises.{{sfn|Calhoun|2002|pp=20–23}} Marx argued in ''[[The German Ideology]]'' that capitalism will end through the organised actions of an international working class: {{blockquote|Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality will have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.<ref name="Elster1985"/>|sign=|source=}}

In this new society, the alienation would end and humans would be free to act without being bound by selling their labour.{{sfn|Calhoun|2002|p=23}} It would be a democratic society, enfranchising the entire population.{{sfn|Clark|1998|pp=57–59}} In such a [[utopia]]n world, there would also be little need for a state, whose goal was previously to enforce the alienation.{{sfn|Calhoun|2002|p=23}} Marx theorised that between capitalism and the establishment of a socialist/communist system, would exist a period of [[dictatorship of the proletariat]]&nbsp;– where the working class holds political power and forcibly socialises the means of production.{{sfn|Clark|1998|pp=57–59}} As he wrote in his ''[[Critique of the Gotha Program]]'', "between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the [[communist revolution|revolutionary transformation]] of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat".<ref name="Karl Marx:Critique of the Gotha Programme"/> While he allowed for the possibility of peaceful transition in some countries with strong [[democracy|democratic]] institutional structures (such as [[United Kingdom|Britain]], the [[United States]], and the [[Netherlands]]), he suggested that in other countries in which workers cannot "attain their goal by peaceful means" the "lever of our revolution must be force".<ref>[http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/09/08.htm La Liberté Speech] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180716015355/https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/09/08.htm |date=16 July 2018 }} delivered by Karl Marx on 8 September 1872, in [[Amsterdam]]. "You know that the institutions, mores, and traditions of various countries must be taken into consideration, and we do not deny that there are countries – such as America, England, and if I were more familiar with your institutions, I would perhaps also add Holland – where the workers can attain their goal by peaceful means. This being the case, we must also recognise the fact that in most countries on the Continent the lever of our revolution must be force; it is force to which we must some day appeal to erect the rule of labour."</ref>