Lectures on Marxism, PS 240 Intro to Political Theory, University of Kentucky, Spring 2015

1. Marxism
Dr. Christopher S. Rice

3. The Early
Marx

4. effects of his career in
Journalism

5. e came to appreciate the central socia
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
3important 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. 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 for jobs & 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. COMMUNISM
WITHERING AWAY OF THE
STATE
DICTATORSHIP OF THE
PROLETARIAT
SEIZURE OF STATE
POWER
REVOLUTIONARY CLASS
CONSCIOUSNESS
IMMISERATION OF THE
PROLETARIAT
ECONOMIC CRISES
The Revolutionary Sequence

52. Engels &
Feminism

53. Women’s oppression
historical, not natural

54. Modes of Production &
Matrilineal societies

55. Marriage is a Bad Deal

56. Vladimir
Illyich
Lenin

57. Lenin’s Contributions to Marxism

58. Vanguard Party

59. Marx vs. Lenin

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

61. The Intellectuals MUST
Lead!

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

63. • 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.

64. Imperialism

65. 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.

66. Mao
Zedong

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

68. Heavily influenced by
Lenin’s Imperialism

69. 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.

70. Urban Proletariat
Peasantry

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

72. The Class Struggle recast…

73. Importance of the
Vanguard Party