Post by [CHIMERA]Antioxos III Megas on Feb 7, 2017 18:52:16 GMT
Marxism is a set of theories about philosophy, history, and political economy.
The Philosophical Component:
Marxism uses a type of conception that is employed to understand world processes known as the Hegelian Dialectic. It also employed Materialism, a philosophy which roots worldy understanding by limiting it to what the senses can interact with and experiment; materialism as things grounded in nature, not the divine or to idealism. Marx takes materialism and combines it with the idealistic Hegelian dialectic, forging Dialectical Materialism and, by extension, Historical Materialism.
The Marxist and Hegelian Dialectic work by combining two contradictory elements which, when combined, produce a "synthesis", or the conclusion of the conflict between two opposing forces. When applies in science, it could be the "dialectic" in the sun between the force of energy and the force of gravity...the synthesis would be the existence of the sun itself. Applied to societies, the dialectic is the struggle between different economical interests, mainly workers and large scale property owners; the synthesis of this struggle eventually culminates in a new form of society.
Marxism additionally maintains that workers become alienated from labor. When someone works, they naturally do work for a purpose which immediately satisfies their needs. In our society, workers produce for the sake of other interests and are compensated only partially (this concerns political economy for further clarity). The alienation as a process in capitalist society makes the worker merely an appendage to the machine, as opposed to an individual with self-determination in the labor processes, who produces something that does not belong to him.
Further, there is the base/super structure theory, which is more sociological, but i will explain it here. Essentially, the base of society is the economic form of production: Slave Empire, Aristocratic, Capitalist, Socialist....the base determines what the superstructure shall be. The Superstructure is in effect the culture emanating from society. The culture of a slave society will feature things like a religious, legal, cultural-norm base that serves to promote master-slave relationships in some way, as an example. This base-superstructure theory also maintains that, sometimes, culture will arise that signals a resistance to a certain form of society, which is either reactionary or revolutionary. In a capitalist state, some culture, religious or ideological, may appear that emphasizes going back to feudal or tribal times, while another expression of culture may promote socialism. Still, mainstream culture always confirms the status-quo, and all culture is rooted in the historical economical form of society in which it exists and is more or less limited to being a reaction to the historical context through which it arises.
Political Economy:
There are several aspects of this. Marx's main focus as a writer was here, and is expressed in his magnum opus, Das Kapital. It would be impossible to do it all justice here, so keep in mind this is a very simplified summation.
The first part is understanding the role commodities have in the economic process. A commodity is the "cell" unit of capitalism. All things that have value are commodities, from products, to services, and to labor power. If you cannot buy and sell something, or if it requires no labor to create, it's not really a commodity.
Next, the idea of labor-power and the labor theory of value: The amount of value a commodity has is determined by the amount of labor required to supply its existence. Services or products that require extraordinary skill to produce are generally more expensive on the market than services/products that nearly anyone can produce. Things that are freely available to all people, such as air, require no labor and thus have no economical value, though they still have a high use-value. Things that are difficult to maintain and produce, such as rare metals like gold. or rare materials like diamonds, or highly skilled services such as medical practices, have high value but at times more or less subjective use-values. If something has no use-value, then although a great amount of labor power is required to make it, it doesn't technically have an value. The labor itself has potential value that is expended away on something which human beings do not generally benefit from.
Exploitation and Surplus value in capitalism: Marx argued that when workers in the capitalist system work for an entire day, they are only partially remunerated for their services depending on the bare minimum a capitalist must do so to keep the worker alive, or depending on the minimum wage requirement the state imposes on capitalists. Supply and demand in the labor market, typically in play with higher and more rare forms of labor, also determine how in practice workers are compensated. In general, a worker is not compensated for the full technical value of their labor, but they merely give it away to the capitalist who then sells that labor power, as it has been transmuted into products or services, at a price which is above or around the same as the value of the labor used to create the products. Because a capitalist, therefore, is only paying workers for a fraction of their labor-power, the only thing a worker owns that he can sell and make a living off of in capitalist society, the capitalist derives profits from the other part of the working hours he/she does not pay that worker. Such is the phenomenon known as profit derived from surplus value.
Capitalists control 2 types of assets: Constant Capital, Variable Capital. Constant Capital (C) refers to fixed assets, like money, property, and raw materials. Variable Capital (v) refers to human input which can changed based on the individuality of laborers and their condition. Capitalists make their profits off of the surplus they accrue from exploiting labor-power and reinvesting part of that surplus to expand their business. This requires that their profit is greater than their initial investments.
Historical/Crisis of Capitalism
Now that a general understanding of the philosophical and economical Marxist conception of capitalism has been understood, the theory of history used by Marx can be described, detailing how, ultimately, the dialectic latent in capitalism means that capitalism is the precursor to the socialist mode of production.
1.) Primitive Communal Society:
The history of homo sapiens sapiens begins seeing communities struggling to survive in tribal societies in which there is no "private property" in the grand sociological sense of the term. Assets of the tribe seem to be owned by the community as a whole, and only things constituting personal property exist as a semblance of private property.
2.) Slave society/empires:
Eventually, tribes form alliances and confederations, normally on the basis of common ethnicity, religion, and language in this primitive stage of society, but the underlying causes are increased improvements in technological and agricultural practices, which made the nomad lifestyle obsolete due to the better out-put in use-values such as food provided by, say, farming. Finally, we see things such as warlords, chieftains, oligarchies, Kings, and emperors. The surpluses produced in this phase are such that some privileged individuals do not need to work, but most people still do, often living in near destitute beneath the shadow of their slave-owning emperors and kings. This also is the first phase in history where free time is available, because slaves and poor farm owners produce most of the food for society, doing all the work for providing basic needs to society, allowing other people to spend time on producing advances in other areas, such as art, architecture, science, and philosophy to develop for the first time. The apex of this societal stage in western Europe was exhibited by the Hellenistic and Roman empires.
3.) Feudalism:
As society expanded, in terms of urbanization and population, slavery became less and less stable, and the capacities for running giant empires with the technological limitations of the ancient time period became a pressure that the slave empire of Imperial Rome could only withstand for so long. Eventually, Rome's increasing size and power was too great to sustain, as there were no more conquests capable of continuing the expanding necessity to increase the scale of slaves, money, cities with expensive buildings/defenses, and soldiers. This caused the empire, like a star out of energy to burn, to contract and collapse under the weight of its own immense size and gravity. What followed was a time of decreased art, architecture, scientific pursuit, and literature outside of the ecclesiastical. Feudalism, a partial emancipation for human beings, became the new form of society in Europe, and was also common in Asia. The Germanic warlords and some of the old Roman aristocrats became feudal lords and kings, eventually, but they were still united in a way by the Roman Empire's last remnant, the Catholic Church based in the Vatican. The byzantine empire also continued the lineage of the Romans, but it too eventually developed more feudal aspects as the centuries rolled on, and its urban centers declined since the days of antiquity as more people sought out farm work to gain better sustenance. Feudal lords required that people were tied to the land and worked it tirelessly to produce goods for them. Feudal lords as a whole commonly were lorded over by a King to whom they provided support, such that the King enforced Feudal relations in society at large with Knights and soldiers raised by the feudal Lords.
4.) Capitalism:
With the printing press, the steam engine, a revival in trade, people accumulating vast amounts of private property through commercialism, and a revival in the ancient period's pursuit of science and philosophy, which led to architectural and technological advancements, the necessary foundations upon which the capitalistic merchant class could rise and take power were developed. For although capitalists had gained wealth and thereby power, they still needed the political power that the old aristocrats of the feudal age still endeavored to control; the feudalistic lords fought to keep history tied down so that the relations through which they dominated wouldn't evaporate. This culminated in many wars and revolutions which would reform government and laws in such a way that suited workers being free and emancipated from feudal relations, and freed people to become rich and own as much property as they wanted without being impeded by titles of nobility and royal lineage. Eventually, democratic societies formed as a result of many wars and revolutions because they were convenient ways that the capitalist class could sort out its internal conflicts of interest while maintaining a society which facilitated the stability of private property and capitalist-worker relations therein.
As the last remnants of feudalism were overthrown, capitalist democracies sprang about throughout the entire world, and the most powerful ones broke off from proto-capitalist colonial powers such as the Spanish and British empires. The ruling classes of these colonies merely broke away from empires that were siphoning the wealth of their lands, but these in turn would create their own empires which practiced more subtle economic imperialism on third world nations, a form of empire that persists into the present day.
Industrialization led to the unimaginable expansion of the means of production and the production power thereof. Factories pumped out products like never before, which drove the demand for labor and resources on a scale unheard in the whole history of humanity. The greatest cities, abundances, and technological advances thus far have occurred under the capitalistic framework. The dark side of these achievements, however, is that people working in factories or providing services in store places are necessary to make such production within the framework of capitalist relations possible. The few most wealthy owners of the means of production continue to control more and more property, out-competing others with less technology, money, legal power, ect, and often conquering all assets in society. Eventually, everything becomes manufactured and standardized in more and more familiar ways throughout greater and great parts of the entire globe until, finally, so few people are wealthy and power, and so many people globally are reduced to the same precarious position as a small time laborer making very little money in comparison with the total wealth that capitalism is constantly producing.
However, as the capitalist world grows and becomes more advanced, so too does its need to aggrandize profits. It must not only break even with its investments in variable and constant capital, but it must overcome them (profit) such that it can reinvest and expand. This becomes harder and harder to do as the monster it creates becomes more and more ravenous. Eventually, the world runs out of third world countries it can squeeze cheap labor from, as these too become more advanced and the workers therein fight for better wages and benefits. A tension arises where the capitalist is constantly trying to lower the wages of a worker who cannot afford to have his/her wages lowered any further, and also where the capitalist attempts to increase the prices of his/her products but the workers they pay so little are unable to buy them...the combination of all these things that will eventually happens should lead to cyclical collapses of capitalism, and one day an ultimate collapse that shall obliterate the system entirely.
5.) Socialism:
Socialism has yet to occur, as it is a global phenomenon only made possible with the completed development of advanced capitalism. The preconditions of socialism are democracy and capitalism, as capitalism creates monopolistic empires that wipe out small time contest and turn more and more people into workers who become united in their common despair, and democracy allows the people free representation which can be used against the capitalists who invented it for their own purposes (this turning of democracy against the capitalists leads them sometimes to create totalitarian or at least more authoritarian societies, which in themselves undermine the foundations of a healthy capitalist state and weaken the amicability of the capitalist relations, which veiled their exploitation under the auspices of constitutional freedoms.). Once capitalism develops fully around the world, the workers of all nations will be the most likely to unite and use political and/or militaristic means of executing Revolution. Once, by one way or another, the working class has seized political power, it can get about the business of seizing the means of production and democratically harnessing it for the benefit of itself, the working class which is the immense majority of the people as a whole. By this logic, socialism is the most pure form of democracy and is the riddle of history solved; humans have long tried to figure out how to organize themselves such that scarcity ceases to exist and democratic rights to them are assured. Socialism alone provides both. This is a society in which there are still some class distinctions based on who contributes to society the most, and some form of currency resistant of the capitalist era is still used. As time goes on, classes, currency, and even government should wither away, and people shall work directly to produce that which they need; such an advanced phase of socialism is referred to as Communism.
The Philosophical Component:
Marxism uses a type of conception that is employed to understand world processes known as the Hegelian Dialectic. It also employed Materialism, a philosophy which roots worldy understanding by limiting it to what the senses can interact with and experiment; materialism as things grounded in nature, not the divine or to idealism. Marx takes materialism and combines it with the idealistic Hegelian dialectic, forging Dialectical Materialism and, by extension, Historical Materialism.
The Marxist and Hegelian Dialectic work by combining two contradictory elements which, when combined, produce a "synthesis", or the conclusion of the conflict between two opposing forces. When applies in science, it could be the "dialectic" in the sun between the force of energy and the force of gravity...the synthesis would be the existence of the sun itself. Applied to societies, the dialectic is the struggle between different economical interests, mainly workers and large scale property owners; the synthesis of this struggle eventually culminates in a new form of society.
Marxism additionally maintains that workers become alienated from labor. When someone works, they naturally do work for a purpose which immediately satisfies their needs. In our society, workers produce for the sake of other interests and are compensated only partially (this concerns political economy for further clarity). The alienation as a process in capitalist society makes the worker merely an appendage to the machine, as opposed to an individual with self-determination in the labor processes, who produces something that does not belong to him.
Further, there is the base/super structure theory, which is more sociological, but i will explain it here. Essentially, the base of society is the economic form of production: Slave Empire, Aristocratic, Capitalist, Socialist....the base determines what the superstructure shall be. The Superstructure is in effect the culture emanating from society. The culture of a slave society will feature things like a religious, legal, cultural-norm base that serves to promote master-slave relationships in some way, as an example. This base-superstructure theory also maintains that, sometimes, culture will arise that signals a resistance to a certain form of society, which is either reactionary or revolutionary. In a capitalist state, some culture, religious or ideological, may appear that emphasizes going back to feudal or tribal times, while another expression of culture may promote socialism. Still, mainstream culture always confirms the status-quo, and all culture is rooted in the historical economical form of society in which it exists and is more or less limited to being a reaction to the historical context through which it arises.
Political Economy:
There are several aspects of this. Marx's main focus as a writer was here, and is expressed in his magnum opus, Das Kapital. It would be impossible to do it all justice here, so keep in mind this is a very simplified summation.
The first part is understanding the role commodities have in the economic process. A commodity is the "cell" unit of capitalism. All things that have value are commodities, from products, to services, and to labor power. If you cannot buy and sell something, or if it requires no labor to create, it's not really a commodity.
Next, the idea of labor-power and the labor theory of value: The amount of value a commodity has is determined by the amount of labor required to supply its existence. Services or products that require extraordinary skill to produce are generally more expensive on the market than services/products that nearly anyone can produce. Things that are freely available to all people, such as air, require no labor and thus have no economical value, though they still have a high use-value. Things that are difficult to maintain and produce, such as rare metals like gold. or rare materials like diamonds, or highly skilled services such as medical practices, have high value but at times more or less subjective use-values. If something has no use-value, then although a great amount of labor power is required to make it, it doesn't technically have an value. The labor itself has potential value that is expended away on something which human beings do not generally benefit from.
Exploitation and Surplus value in capitalism: Marx argued that when workers in the capitalist system work for an entire day, they are only partially remunerated for their services depending on the bare minimum a capitalist must do so to keep the worker alive, or depending on the minimum wage requirement the state imposes on capitalists. Supply and demand in the labor market, typically in play with higher and more rare forms of labor, also determine how in practice workers are compensated. In general, a worker is not compensated for the full technical value of their labor, but they merely give it away to the capitalist who then sells that labor power, as it has been transmuted into products or services, at a price which is above or around the same as the value of the labor used to create the products. Because a capitalist, therefore, is only paying workers for a fraction of their labor-power, the only thing a worker owns that he can sell and make a living off of in capitalist society, the capitalist derives profits from the other part of the working hours he/she does not pay that worker. Such is the phenomenon known as profit derived from surplus value.
Capitalists control 2 types of assets: Constant Capital, Variable Capital. Constant Capital (C) refers to fixed assets, like money, property, and raw materials. Variable Capital (v) refers to human input which can changed based on the individuality of laborers and their condition. Capitalists make their profits off of the surplus they accrue from exploiting labor-power and reinvesting part of that surplus to expand their business. This requires that their profit is greater than their initial investments.
Historical/Crisis of Capitalism
Now that a general understanding of the philosophical and economical Marxist conception of capitalism has been understood, the theory of history used by Marx can be described, detailing how, ultimately, the dialectic latent in capitalism means that capitalism is the precursor to the socialist mode of production.
1.) Primitive Communal Society:
The history of homo sapiens sapiens begins seeing communities struggling to survive in tribal societies in which there is no "private property" in the grand sociological sense of the term. Assets of the tribe seem to be owned by the community as a whole, and only things constituting personal property exist as a semblance of private property.
2.) Slave society/empires:
Eventually, tribes form alliances and confederations, normally on the basis of common ethnicity, religion, and language in this primitive stage of society, but the underlying causes are increased improvements in technological and agricultural practices, which made the nomad lifestyle obsolete due to the better out-put in use-values such as food provided by, say, farming. Finally, we see things such as warlords, chieftains, oligarchies, Kings, and emperors. The surpluses produced in this phase are such that some privileged individuals do not need to work, but most people still do, often living in near destitute beneath the shadow of their slave-owning emperors and kings. This also is the first phase in history where free time is available, because slaves and poor farm owners produce most of the food for society, doing all the work for providing basic needs to society, allowing other people to spend time on producing advances in other areas, such as art, architecture, science, and philosophy to develop for the first time. The apex of this societal stage in western Europe was exhibited by the Hellenistic and Roman empires.
3.) Feudalism:
As society expanded, in terms of urbanization and population, slavery became less and less stable, and the capacities for running giant empires with the technological limitations of the ancient time period became a pressure that the slave empire of Imperial Rome could only withstand for so long. Eventually, Rome's increasing size and power was too great to sustain, as there were no more conquests capable of continuing the expanding necessity to increase the scale of slaves, money, cities with expensive buildings/defenses, and soldiers. This caused the empire, like a star out of energy to burn, to contract and collapse under the weight of its own immense size and gravity. What followed was a time of decreased art, architecture, scientific pursuit, and literature outside of the ecclesiastical. Feudalism, a partial emancipation for human beings, became the new form of society in Europe, and was also common in Asia. The Germanic warlords and some of the old Roman aristocrats became feudal lords and kings, eventually, but they were still united in a way by the Roman Empire's last remnant, the Catholic Church based in the Vatican. The byzantine empire also continued the lineage of the Romans, but it too eventually developed more feudal aspects as the centuries rolled on, and its urban centers declined since the days of antiquity as more people sought out farm work to gain better sustenance. Feudal lords required that people were tied to the land and worked it tirelessly to produce goods for them. Feudal lords as a whole commonly were lorded over by a King to whom they provided support, such that the King enforced Feudal relations in society at large with Knights and soldiers raised by the feudal Lords.
4.) Capitalism:
With the printing press, the steam engine, a revival in trade, people accumulating vast amounts of private property through commercialism, and a revival in the ancient period's pursuit of science and philosophy, which led to architectural and technological advancements, the necessary foundations upon which the capitalistic merchant class could rise and take power were developed. For although capitalists had gained wealth and thereby power, they still needed the political power that the old aristocrats of the feudal age still endeavored to control; the feudalistic lords fought to keep history tied down so that the relations through which they dominated wouldn't evaporate. This culminated in many wars and revolutions which would reform government and laws in such a way that suited workers being free and emancipated from feudal relations, and freed people to become rich and own as much property as they wanted without being impeded by titles of nobility and royal lineage. Eventually, democratic societies formed as a result of many wars and revolutions because they were convenient ways that the capitalist class could sort out its internal conflicts of interest while maintaining a society which facilitated the stability of private property and capitalist-worker relations therein.
As the last remnants of feudalism were overthrown, capitalist democracies sprang about throughout the entire world, and the most powerful ones broke off from proto-capitalist colonial powers such as the Spanish and British empires. The ruling classes of these colonies merely broke away from empires that were siphoning the wealth of their lands, but these in turn would create their own empires which practiced more subtle economic imperialism on third world nations, a form of empire that persists into the present day.
Industrialization led to the unimaginable expansion of the means of production and the production power thereof. Factories pumped out products like never before, which drove the demand for labor and resources on a scale unheard in the whole history of humanity. The greatest cities, abundances, and technological advances thus far have occurred under the capitalistic framework. The dark side of these achievements, however, is that people working in factories or providing services in store places are necessary to make such production within the framework of capitalist relations possible. The few most wealthy owners of the means of production continue to control more and more property, out-competing others with less technology, money, legal power, ect, and often conquering all assets in society. Eventually, everything becomes manufactured and standardized in more and more familiar ways throughout greater and great parts of the entire globe until, finally, so few people are wealthy and power, and so many people globally are reduced to the same precarious position as a small time laborer making very little money in comparison with the total wealth that capitalism is constantly producing.
However, as the capitalist world grows and becomes more advanced, so too does its need to aggrandize profits. It must not only break even with its investments in variable and constant capital, but it must overcome them (profit) such that it can reinvest and expand. This becomes harder and harder to do as the monster it creates becomes more and more ravenous. Eventually, the world runs out of third world countries it can squeeze cheap labor from, as these too become more advanced and the workers therein fight for better wages and benefits. A tension arises where the capitalist is constantly trying to lower the wages of a worker who cannot afford to have his/her wages lowered any further, and also where the capitalist attempts to increase the prices of his/her products but the workers they pay so little are unable to buy them...the combination of all these things that will eventually happens should lead to cyclical collapses of capitalism, and one day an ultimate collapse that shall obliterate the system entirely.
5.) Socialism:
Socialism has yet to occur, as it is a global phenomenon only made possible with the completed development of advanced capitalism. The preconditions of socialism are democracy and capitalism, as capitalism creates monopolistic empires that wipe out small time contest and turn more and more people into workers who become united in their common despair, and democracy allows the people free representation which can be used against the capitalists who invented it for their own purposes (this turning of democracy against the capitalists leads them sometimes to create totalitarian or at least more authoritarian societies, which in themselves undermine the foundations of a healthy capitalist state and weaken the amicability of the capitalist relations, which veiled their exploitation under the auspices of constitutional freedoms.). Once capitalism develops fully around the world, the workers of all nations will be the most likely to unite and use political and/or militaristic means of executing Revolution. Once, by one way or another, the working class has seized political power, it can get about the business of seizing the means of production and democratically harnessing it for the benefit of itself, the working class which is the immense majority of the people as a whole. By this logic, socialism is the most pure form of democracy and is the riddle of history solved; humans have long tried to figure out how to organize themselves such that scarcity ceases to exist and democratic rights to them are assured. Socialism alone provides both. This is a society in which there are still some class distinctions based on who contributes to society the most, and some form of currency resistant of the capitalist era is still used. As time goes on, classes, currency, and even government should wither away, and people shall work directly to produce that which they need; such an advanced phase of socialism is referred to as Communism.