When1: 1843
When2: 1867
Who: Karl Marx [Marx, Karl]
What: philosopher
Where: Germany/Paris, France/London, England
works\ On the Jewish Question [1843]; Toward the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right: Introduction [1843]; Holy Family: Or a Critique of All Critiques [1844]; Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts [1844]; Theses on Feuerbach [1845]; German Ideology [1846: with Friedrich Engels]; Poverty of Philosophy [1847]; Communist Manifesto [1848: with Friedrich Engels]; Class Struggles in France [1850]; Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte [1852]; Outlines of the Critique of Political Economy [1858]; Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy [1859]; Theories of Surplus Value [1863]; Wages, Prices and Profit [1865]; Capital [1867: Engels edited second and third volumes of 1884 and 1893]
Detail: He lived 1818 to 1883, was Feuerbach's and Bauer's student, and was Young Hegelian. He wanted to merge Hegelianism with Enlightenment materialism. He began working with Engels [1844] and helped found Communist League with Engels [1848]. He helped found First International Workingmen's Association [1864].
Economics
One person or group cannot affect market, though people create markets.
Market and capitalists {bourgeoisie} exploit workers {proletariat}. Capitalism and markets always tends to form monopolies and create injustice. They take away freedom, prevent constructive social activity, cause competition, block cooperation, and take labor products away from laborer to anonymous place. Bourgeoisie create new production forces. Those forces control proletariat.
First basic production mode {feudalism, Marx} had landowners in control. Second mode {capitalism, Marx} had industrialists in control. Third and final mode {socialism, Marx} will have wage earners in control.
Capitalism and private property are about profit making, not about people. Employers increase their profits by adding capital, decreasing labor, and merging, to control the market and bankrupt other smaller businesses. More people become unemployed and wages fall, which can lead to revolution.
Production level greater than wage level {surplus value} causes profit.
However, if surplus value theory is true, labor-intensive industries should have higher profits, but they do not. Actually, different industry types have about equal profit.
To maximize profit, businesses try to keep wages low and employ few workers. Profit minimizes employment, and workers are poor.
Economic system must change to allow human meaning and freedom, by removing social classes and allowing people to produce under their will, under rule of proletariat {dictatorship of the proletariat}.
Only labor, not land or capital, has value {labor theory of value}. Capital and resources are indirect labor. Because capitalistic systems discount labor, they make too much capital {overproduction}, have overproduction, and have unsold goods, and economy has business cycles.
Epistemology
Social and economic relations {culture base} {base, culture}, particularly production ability, determine society's beliefs, arts, laws, politics, government, institutions, morals, and religions {superstructure}. The superstructure and social ideas {ideology, society} favor and are for society's ruling class.
Perception is interaction between subject and object, using the dialectic. The process can never be complete. To know sensations and perceptions, you must use or apply them.
Because people and knowledge change over time as situations change, values change.
Ethics
Inhuman social and economic conditions cause alienation. Culture, religiosity, and materialism suppress expression of spirit. Inhuman social and economic conditions also block people from getting basic needs. People cannot be free to exercise their will or realize their essence. Life has no meaning.
Religion is an opiate and an illusion.
History
History is dialectical materialism applied to matter and man's relation to matter, which results in good production-mode changes. Production modes determine philosophy, art, politics, and history.
History is deterministic.
The five history epochs are tribal communism, classical civilization, feudalism, capitalism, and communism. Epochs have spirits, which determine people's actions, ideas, and environment. At historical periods, one class, such as feudalism nobility or capitalism petty-bourgeoisie, dominates, because they optimize production.
Politics
Group creates state to allow one class to exploit another. Government is state's agent in this process. Dominant class achieves and then maintains power.
However, the dialectic always maintains struggle between classes. Capitalism injustices lead to revolt of the masses. Overcoming capitalist power requires revolution. After capitalist-system breakdown, proletariat will collectively establish goals and produce accordingly. Dictatorship of proletariat is transition to state control of land and production {communism, Marx}, which is the only alternative to capitalism.
Social Sciences>Philosophy>History>Ethics
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Date Modified: 2022.0224