6. marx, part 1
- 1. Karl Marx, Part 1 HTH 1002 History of Thought II Kara Heitz
- 2. • Karl Marx (1818 -1883) • Friedrich Engels (1820-1895)
- 3. Industrial Revolution • Shift from agrarian & handicraft economy to industrial & machine manufacturing economy • Fundamental transformation of the production process
- 5. Industrial Revolution • Urbanization • Middle class (Bourgeoisie) • Industrial Working Class (Proletariat)
- 7. What is Capitalism? • Capital accumulation • What is capital? • Private ownership of means of production • Wage labor • Free markets?
- 8. Alienation • Creative labor innate to humans – Making things gives our lives meaning – “Species-being” • Estranged labor under capitalism – Monotonous, unsatisfying work – Our labor and its products are owned by others – Work becomes only a means to existence – We are alienated from ourselves, from others, and from our species-being
- 9. “First, the fact that labor is external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his intrinsic nature; that in his work, therefore, he 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. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself. He feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home. 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. Its alien character emerges clearly in the fact that as soon as no physical or other compulsion exists, labor is shunned like the plague. External labor, labor in which man alienates himself, is a labor of self- sacrifice, of mortification. Lastly, the external character of labor for the worker appears in the fact that it is not his own, but someone else’s, that it does not belong to him, that in it he belongs, not to himself, but to another. Just as in religion the spontaneous activity of the human imagination, of the human brain and the human heart, operates on the individual independently of him – that is, operates as an alien, divine or diabolical activity – so is the worker’s activity not his spontaneous activity. It belongs to another; it is the loss of his self.” - Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844
- 11. Commodities • Commodity: something that can be bought and sold • Commodity fetishism – False view: commodities have nature/innate value – Exchange v. use value • Obscures actual labor that produced commodity • Pleasures from commodity consumption help mask alienation
- 12. “A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily understood. Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties. So far as it is a value in use, there is nothing mysterious about it, whether we consider it from the point of view that by its properties it is capable of satisfying human wants, or from the point that those properties are the product of human labour. It is as clear as noon-day, that man, by his industry, changes the forms of the materials furnished by Nature, in such a way as to make them useful to him. The form of wood, for instance, is altered, by making a table out of it. Yet, for all that, the table continues to be that common, every-day thing, wood. But, so soon as it steps forth as a commodity, it is changed into something transcendent. It not only stands with its feet on the ground, but, in relation to all other commodities, it stands on its head, and evolves out of its wooden brain grotesque ideas, far more wonderful than “table-turning” ever was.” - Marx, The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof” from Capital Vol. 1 (1867)