Marxism Lecture for PS 240, Fall 2014, University of Kentucky.

1. Marxism
Dr. Christopher S. Rice

3. The Early
Marx

4. effects of his career in
Journalism

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

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

8. The Economic and
Philosophical
Manuscripts of 1844

9. Hegel and his
influence on Marxism

10. Hegel’s Philosophy of
History

11. Geist

12. Alienation
(entfremdung)

13. 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

14. THESIS
+
ANTITHESIS
=
SYNTHESIS

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
BASE
IDEAS, IDEALS, BELIEFS
(Morality, Law, Religion, Etc.)
SOCIAL RELATIONS OF PRODUCTION
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???

40. Capitalism is
Outmoded

41. According to Marx in “Estranged Labor,” how does
political economy conceal the estrangement
inherent in the nature of labor?
1. By not considering the direct
relationship between the
worker and production.
2. By not considering the direct
relationship between the
worker and government.
3. By not considering the rich and
complex relationship between
the worker and the capitalist.
4. By not considering the
importance of unions and the
workers’ relationship to each
other.

42. Capitalism creates
Alienation

43. 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 for jobs & wages.

44. Capitalism is
Self-subverting

45. Why capitalism is
DOOOOOOOMED!

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

47. 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. 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

52. 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

53. Engels &
Feminism

54. Women’s oppression
historical, not natural

55. Modes of Production &
Matrilineal societies

56. Marriage is a Bad Deal

58. Architecture
vs.
Capitalism

59. “Capitalism, he discovered,
produced only ugly,
pretentious luxury goods for
slave owners and ugly,
shoddy goods for slaves.”
- A.L. Morton

60. The Arts & Crafts
Movement

61. “I have tried to produce goods
which should be genuine as far
as their mere substances are
concerned, and should have on
that account the primary beauty
in them which belongs to
naturally treated substances.”
William Morris

62. Artistic Criticism
Social Criticism

63. Morris Transforms

64. Morris’ Marxism

65. The problem of political action:
“Making Marxists”

66. Morris’ Principles
• It is right and necessary that all men
should have work to do which shall be
worth doing, and be of itself pleasant to do;
and which should be done under such
conditions as would make it neither over-wearisome
nor over-anxious.
• Nothing should be made by men’s labour
which is not worth making; or which must
be made by labour degrading to the
makers.

67. Morris’ Principles
• It is right and necessary that all men
should have work to do which shall be
worth doing, and be of itself pleasant to do;
and which should be done under such
conditions as would make it neither over-wearisome
nor over-anxious.
• Nothing should be made by men’s labour
which is not worth making; or which must
be made by labour degrading to the
makers.

68. Morris’ Principles
• No one who is willing to work should ever fear want
of such employment as would earn for him all due
necessities of mind and body.
– Honourable and fitting work
– Decency of Surroundings
– Leisure
• It is NECESSARY to human well-being that “In a well
ordered state of Society every man willing to work
should be ensured honourable and fitting work, a
healthy and beautiful house, and full leisure for mind
and body.”

69. Morris’ Principles
• No one who is willing to work should ever fear want
of such employment as would earn for him all due
necessities of mind and body.
– Honourable and fitting work
– Decency of Surroundings
– Leisure
• It is NECESSARY to human well-being that “In a well
ordered state of Society every man willing to work
should be ensured honourable and fitting work, a
healthy and beautiful house, and full leisure for mind
and body.”

71. Lenin’s Contributions to Marxism

72. Vanguard Party

73. Marx vs. Lenin

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

75. The Intellectuals MUST
Lead!

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

77. • Monopoly arose out of the concentration of
production at a very advanced stage of
development.
• Monopolies have accellerated the capture
of the most important sources of raw
materials.
• Monopoly has sprung from the banks
(creation of a financial oligarchy).
• Monopoly has grown out of colonial policy.

78. Imperialism

79. 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.

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

82. Heavily influenced by
Lenin’s Imperialism

83. 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.

84. Urban Proletariat
Peasantry