1. Marxism
Dr. Christopher S. Rice

3. The Early Marx

4. Marx Becomes A
Philosopher

5. 2
effects of his career in
Journalism

6. He came to appreciate the central
social and political importance of
economics

7. He ceased to be a liberal
and became a radical

9. The Economic and
Philosophical
Manuscripts of 1844

10. Hegel and his
influence on Marxism

11. Hegel’s Philosophy
of History

12. Geist

13. Alienation
(entfremdung)

14. Dialectic
the process whereby opposite
views or forces come into
conflict, which eventually
leads to the overcoming or
reconciliation of the opposition
in a new and presumably
higher form

15. The Master-Slave Dialectic
• The master becomes master by physically
conquering another, whom he then
enslaves.
• Seeing oneself through the eyes of the
Other.
• The master and slave are engaged in a
symbiotic relationship.
• The master and slave are engaged in a
conflictual relationship.
• The true relationship revealed through
resistance.
• A Happy Conclusion…

16. History as the Story
of Human Labor and
Struggle

17. “The history of all hitherto
existing society is the
history of class
struggles.”

18. Materialist
vs.
Idealist

19. Material Forces of
Production
+
Social Relations of
Production
=
Material Production

20. Material Forces of
Production

21. Social Relations of
Production

22. The Dialectic of Class

23. Class determined by
relation to the forces
of production

24. Dominating Class has 2
important advantages:
•Monopoly on the power,
agents of coercion
•Control of the Mental Means
of Production

25. False Consciousness

26. Base & Superstructure

27. Marx’s Materialist Conception of Society
(Ball and Dagger, “Socialism and Communism: More to Marx”)
IDEOLOGICAL
SUPERSTRUCTURE
IDEAS, IDEALS,
BELIEFS
(Morality, Law,
Religion, Etc.)
SOCIAL RELATIONS OF PRODUCTION
BASE
MATERIAL FORCES OF PRODUCTION
(“Productive Forces”)

28. “Religion is the opiate
of the masses”

29. “Religious distress is at the
same time the expression of
real distress and the protest
against real distress. Religion
is the sigh of the oppressed
creature, the heart of a
heartless world, just as it is the
spirit of a spiritless situation. It
is the opiate of the people…

30. “The abolition of religion as
the illusory happiness of the
people is required for their real
happiness. The demand to
give up the illusions about its
condition is the demand to
give up a condition that needs
illusions…

31. The criticism of religion is
therefore in embryo the
criticism of the vale of woe, the
halo of which is religion.
Criticism has plucked the
imaginary flowers from the
chain, not so that man will wear
the chain without any fantasy
or consolation…

32. …but so that he will shake off
the chain and cull the living
flower.
Karl Marx
Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s
Philosophy of Right.

33. Possessive
Individualism

34. Marx’s Critique of
Capitalism

35. “The bourgeoisie, historically,
has played a most
revolutionary part.”

36. Capitalism’s
3
important progressive
functions

37. 1. Merchant capitalists
hastened the demise of
feudalism
2. Capitalism has made men
masters over nature
3. Capitalism requires
constant innovation and
change

38. So why should Capitalism
be replaced???

39. 3

40. Capitalism is
Outmoded

41. Capitalism creates
Alienation

42. 4 ways in which workers are
alienated under capitalism:
1. They are alienated from the product of their labor
because they are forced to sell their labor and do not
own what they produce.
2. They are alienated from the activity of production
itself because the capitalist system of mass
production kills the creative spirit, leaving workers
unable to find satisfaction in their labor.
3. Workers are alienated from their unique and
distinctively human nature and potential,
particularly the power to create and enjoy beauty, by
the dulling effect of living in a capitalist society.
4. Capitalism alienates workers from each other
because it forces them to compete of jobs and wages.

43. Capitalism is
Self-subverting

44. Why capitalism is
DOOOOOOOMED!

45. Capitalism contains within itself
the seeds of its own destruction

46. Bourgeois-Proletariat
Dialectic
•The Worker is enslaved by the
Capitalist, though at first, he or she
does not know it
•The Worker wakes from a “False
Consciousness”
•The Dialectic turns…
•Establishing the classless society

48. Bourgeois-Proletariat
Dialectic
•The Worker is enslaved by the
Capitalist, though at first, he or she
does not know it
•The Worker wakes from a “False
Consciousness”
•The Dialectic turns…
•Establishing the classless society

49. Bourgeois-Proletariat
Dialectic
•The Worker is enslaved by the
Capitalist, though at first, he or she
does not know it
•The Worker wakes from a “False
Consciousness”
•The Dialectic turns…
•Establishing the classless society

50. Bourgeois-Proletariat
Dialectic
•The Worker is enslaved by the
Capitalist, though at first, he or she
does not know it
•The Worker wakes from a “False
Consciousness”
•The Dialectic turns…
•Establishing the classless society

51. The Revolutionary Sequence
COMMUNISM
WITHERING AWAY OF
THE STATE
DICTATORSHIP OF THE
PROLETARIAT
SEIZURE OF STATE
POWER
REVOLUTIONARY
CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS
IMMISERATION OF
THE PROLETARIAT
ECONOMIC CRISES

52. The Marxist View of Freedom
(Ball and Dagger, “Socialism and Communism: More to Marx”)
OBSTACLE:
Class divisions,
economic
inequalities,
unequal life
chances, “False
Consciousnessquot;
AGENT: GOAL:
Common/ Working Fulfillment of
People; human potential
The proletariat and needs

54. Lenin’s Contributions to
Marxism

55. Vanguard Party

56. Marx vs. Lenin

57. The Party’s chief role is to
agitate, organize, and
educate the workers,
teaching them where their
“true” interests lie.

58. The Intellectuals
MUST Lead!

59. No faith in the
“working-class mentality”

60. Imperialism

61. Four Conclusions:
1. Confirmed his suspicions and hatred of the
“revisionist” Marxists who proposed gradual
change by working through parties within the
current system.
2. Members of the working-class in the West have
been infected with a “trade union mentality,” in
effect becoming “bourgeoisie” themselves, and
unreliable for bringing the Marxian revolution.
3. The (Vanguard) Party plays the indispensable
role of raising the consciousness of the working
class.
4. The revolution will come FIRST to those areas
most immiserated and led by an active
vanguard party.

63. Maoism:
Marxism “through a
glass, darkly”

64. Heavily influenced by
Lenin’s Imperialism

65. Mao proposed to rely on the Chinese
agrarian peasantry for 2 reasons:
1. Poor peasant farmers were an
overwhelming majority of the Chinese
population, and if organized and mobilized,
would provide an almost irresistible force.
2. They were the poorest and most oppressed
segment of the population. They had
nothing to lose but everything to gain from
revolution against their oppressors.

66. Urban Proletariat
Peasantry

67. Mao vs. Marx
•Subjective •Material or
Conditions Objective
•Consciousness Conditions
•Political Will

68. The Class Struggle recast…

69. Importance of the
Vanguard Party