Marxism

Marxism is a complicated set of ideas. It is both antagonistic to dogma and, in its own way, dogmatic itself. As our classmates Tara and Joe take on the task of summarizing our notes, lectures, and Allan readings for this week (and Amanda and Jessie summarize the essay) I'll offer you these discussion questions. If you'd like to offer a comment please do so and put your name next to your comment so that I can give you the appropriate participation points!

=Discussion Questions:= What do you think the world would look like if it were to satisfy Marx? Would it resemble modern forms of communism? What about other (non-state) examples of communal living?

Some criticize Marx for having a tautological argument. That is, it cannot be disproven because if you disagree with one of his fundamental assumptions then you are simply speaking your false consciousness. What are your thoughts on this issue?

What one thing did you learn from Marx that you had never considered before? Put another way, if you do not agree with Marxism as a whole theory, what one part or aspect or assumption of the theory do you find to be intriguing?

=Joe Briggs Summary of Class Discussion and Allan:=

One of Marx's main points in his theorizing is that he did not think capitalism would work, he in fact thought capitalism would bring about the end of society. Marx saw humans as being unique in that they are able to create their own world compared to other animals who are relient on other aspects of nature to aid them in their survival. Humans must rely on their own ability to destroy and create nature on their own in order to benefit themselves, these products therefore create a relationship between the product and the producer in which both affect each other. This idea is called Species being and it is one of four fundamental assumptions that Marx had involving humanity. The other three assumptions about humanity were its social aspects, its altruistic aspect, and the goods we create.

One of Marx major problems with capitalism was his fear that capitalism would remove human labor from all of our other relationships. Some examples of this owuld be that in a pre-capitalism society there were families that worked together for econimic gain, such as family farms and such. However in a capitalistic society the family will be seperated and the children will feel as though they need to move away from the family at a younger age because there are more opportunities available for them elsewhere consequently hurting and disrupting the family structure. He also felt that if you have a connection with the person you are making a product for you will produce a better product, which in a capitalistic society Marx did not think there would be enough familiarity between the client and the producer and therefore a poor product. Another discrepency Marx had with capitalism is that he felt it would create gender discrepencies in the fact that men would go to work and women would stay home, and that if a man created an amount of wealth he would want to pass it on to his heir, therefore he would need to control the women so he can be sure of who his children are and he can give his inheritance to his proper offspring.

Under Marx's way of thinking capitalism would swallow up all of the classes except for two: the bourgeoisie(the merchant or middle class), and the proliteriat(the lower class) and this seperation between classes will result in class consciousness and eventually an economic revolution. Marx thinks that eventually the Bourgeoisie will begin to disapear and will begin to slip into the lower class, this phenomenom makes the revolution possible because as more middle class slip into the lower class the lower class will grow until it is much larger than the upper class and eventually take revolt againt the upper class; this happening has also been reffered to as the boom and bust.

Marx views commodification as an ever increasing force of capitalism in which more and more aspects of human life are turned into something that can be bought or sold, and that in a capitalistic society we would be dominated by money. Marx thinks that this concept will seperate humans from social networks, and will remove humanities from goods and services. A higher commodification will transform a society from one that bought very few of there neccesities and either bartered and produced everything else, to a society that more fits a modern day American one in which we buy almost everything we want or need. Another one of Marx main points involves the material dialectic, which is the primary mechanism for which history progresses and contains several important elements. The first is the idea that the dialectic contains different elements that are connected together with a certain amount of tension. Next is that a dialectic implies a dynamic process, and lastly the dialectic brings out change and reform that first come from tension between classes. Marx perspective of this idea is that capitalism will cause humanity to not always try to better itself through advances, but is instead will just try to show and use its power in order to reduce and suppress other people in society.

At the end of the day Marx did not support capitalism at all, he saw it as an evil that would eventually destroy society through its greed and dependence on money, capital, and material things and not other things he saw as being more important. He also believed that eventually capitalism would fail and as the middle class disappeared the ever growing lower class would overtake the upper class in a revolution, and this revolution was the only good thing that Marx saw coming out of a capitalistic society.

=Tara McClanahan Summary of Class Discussion and Allan:= Marx’s fundamental assumptions for humanity. One is the species being. This is the concept where man is the creative producer. It reflects our humanity and says “you are what you create”. Human consciousness is demonstrated as nature which is made real by work. Objects become the fruits of our work, and proof of our true reality, and anything which separates us from this takes away our humanity. (pg 12) Two is social. Through collective activities which we use to build up the world. Together as a society we create what is needed to survive, without this social nature the human animal would be extinct. (13) Three is altruistic. We put others before ourselves because we know that if others fail, we will fail, and all society will collapse. By nature we have an uncalculated commitment to each others’ interests. (13) Society over self interest this is the root which began anti-capitalism. For Marx we cannot be fully realized as human beings until we have created something.

Material Production is the conduit through which human nature is expressed, and the product ought to act as a mirror that reflects back to our own nature (13). For Marx everything that happened in history was because of the material dialectic. It refers to the philosophy of Hegel, and his thesis/ antithesis ideas (14). A dialectic is something with inherent antagonisms which cause change. Allan lays out Marx’s historical dialectic for us on page 15. 1) Preclass societies 2) Asiatic societies 3) ancient societies 4) feudal societies 5) capitalist societies As each group changed there became an increase in division of labor. Group 1) Preclass societies is also called primitive communism because of the amount of communal property. Each Group was replaced by the next because of its holes, or rather its inherent antagonisms which caused the collapse of each. Finally, however, ending with Socialism. It is the ideal form of society according to Marx. Capitalism separates work from the person and collective group. The more connections you have with other people the more likely you are to realize the importance of the social, altruistic atmosphere. So, this means that an economic theory is going to shape Marx’s outlook of the world; since all thing human are measured by production.

Mean of production (16) refers to the methods and materials we need to survive.

Relations of production are the people with which whom work together to make a product. (think of all the things that go into making a house. Within the group Capitalism there are classes. These classes within the group are parts of the dialectic. The classes are the bourgeoisie (owners) and the proletariat (workers). (18) Men wanted to control the power of woman and childbirth because economic wealth created status, and allowed for an elite class to be born. The middle paragraph on page 18 along with the graph on page 19 do a very good job of summarizing Marx’s dialectic. The working class under capitalism will always keep growing because all of the wealth is being collected into a smaller and smaller group of people, the owners, the bourgeoisie. Capitalism works because of the constant redistrubution of wealth which allows for growth. When this wealth or profit is reinvested into another venture the demand for labor increases. This causes the amount of unemployed to shrink, or those in the labor pool to decrease. This causes wages to increase for laborers. This causes profit to decrease. The owners cut back production which causes waves to go through the economy. Eventually with enough cutbacks in production the economy will go into recession, or crisis. A recession does not just affect the worker, but also the rich who may want to buy from the owner. Everyone cuts back spending, and so the business must begin to fire people in order to stay afloat. When people quit spending, and workers are fired this leads to inventories (excess product), or overproduction. However, many recessions cause economies to lose businesses. Marx believed that this would happen again. Owners who had enough resources at the time of economic collaspe can purchase the captial of a business, and begin to build themselves of. This is why in times of economic crisis, the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer (the gap Allan refers to at the bottom of page 18). The top groups grows smaller and smaller, but also richer and richer, because they have the resources to do so. But now too the labor pool will get larger, because now the whole company has collapsed and its top manager is as unemployed as the assemblyman. Marx believed that the bourgeoisie would bring about their own demise because of the ever growing group, the proletariat who would one day demand change. This change would be the revolution - the antithesis. This gap mentioned above is very important because it causes the classes to grow in population. This is called class bipolarization, and without this antaganism the revoltion would never take place. Marx is not a fan of money, or a generalized medium exchange of money. In fact he thinks that it a component to our false consicouness. Money only has a value of exchange, not a value of use (23).

“Industrialization is the process through which work moves from being performed directly by human hands to having the intermediate for of a machine” do the work itself. (Allan, 20). The labor saving machine, or technology takes us away from the species being. So, industrailization leads to alienation.

Commodification is the process by which products are bought and sold, usually with a generalized medium of exchange. When money is used, or many products are made for the purpose of being bought and sold man is losing his humanity. When the product is no longer intended to be used by ourselves we become distant and unhappy with our lives. We are forced to make ourselves commodities (our labor for a wage) in order to make a product we will never use (unhappiness, another component which could lead to the revolution). Marx finds profit: where consumers over-pays for a product with value of use. Smith says that profit is determined by the owner/capitalist, but is ultimately decided by the //invisible hand of the market.// This is where exploitation enters the scene. Marx sees profit really as exploitation. All products are measured by the capitalist in terms of time in takes to produce or replace any product. Human labor as a product is measured by the things that provide life to the product, the cost of living: food, shelter, clothing (24). Therefore, because capitalist seek a profit, they in turn do not pay workers justly for their labor which also defines the amount of exploitation depending on the margin of profit and wages earned.

Alienation is the “separation from one’s own awareness of being human. (26). The difference is pride in one’s own work by being a craftsman to sitting at the assembly line doing work that is “repetitive and noncreative”(26). The paragraph on the bottom of page 26 does a great job relating false consciousness and the commodity fetish. The commodity fetish is when workers work day in and day out on something that does not belong to them. They have to separate themselves from the products because they do not belong to them. Furthermore, they must work quite laboriously to purchase the product. The products are the property of the company, and the worker is getting paid a wage to live, but this action causes the separation which leads to our false consciousness. For example private property is a great thing to capitalist and horrible to Marx, because it encourages people to separate themselves from their true humanity, and reality, the species being (28). We are not defined by our thought, but by the materials we produce. When thoughts have their own independent entities which transcends historical and economic relations we would call these ideologies. Religion is an ideology, and it is no good/ dangerous/wasteful.

False Consciousness is anything that is outside the realm of resting on a foundation of free and creative production. (29). The tension between the classes builds as the labor pool grows and as laborers become increasingly unhappy with their repetitive dead end lives (speaking in terms of people back in Marx’ day). From the articles discussion: Everything is creating our false consciousness by spreading ideology and increasing alienation.

=Jessie Schiffer's summary of the Essay:=

__Wage-Labour and Capital__-Jessie Schiffer 1/29/10 In this writing, Marx discusses capitalism and the labor process. He asks five main questions that form the basis of his essay which he follows with a summary. They are:

1. What are wages? 2. How is the price of a commodity determined? 3. What is the cost of labor? 4. What takes place in the exchange between capitalist and wage-worker?

1. What are wages? Marx begins his discussion talking about wages and how they are determined. He tells of how any worker would define wages as the money they gain from the capitalist for a specific amount of labor completed over a specific time period (an hourly rate, as is the norm for most businesses today). The concept is not a new one. The capitalist, as Marx says, buys the labor (with money) from the workers (who are selling it). The important fact to keep in mind, however, is that labor in this scenario is now a commodity. Not only is it a commodity, it has a “definite ratio (Marx, 122)” at which it is exchanged with the money, i.e. the price. Marx illustrates all of this with the weaver example. The weaver is given the tools he needs to make linen (loom and yarn). When the weaver is done, he receives payment for his labor. The linen may not even be on the market yet and it might not sell for that matter, but the weaver is still compensated. So the weaver works hard and makes a product, but the money he is paid has nothing to do with what he just created. Marx uses this example to back up his point about the “going rate” of the weaver’s labor (recall - commodity). As a result, “our good weaver has little share in the product or the price of the product” (Marx, 123). The weaver has been separated from the labor process. He has effectively been, “alienated.” The weaver is unaware of the gravity of the situation and thinks he is working hard to earn a living. Now the weaver falls into the trap of the bourgeoisie and falls under the false consciousness. Marx concludes that wages do not come from the profit earned through the worker’s product, but rather, are the price of the commodified labor. The capitalist already has the money stored somewhere else. This is crucial because it means that the money, the living wage, that worker gets, is external to his labor (leads to alienation, false consciousness, etc.)

2. How is the price of a commodity determined? Price is determined by competition, specifically, among the buyers and sellers influenced by supply and demand. Each seller is going to sell as cheaply as possible. This drives the price of the commodity down. Consequently, each buyer is going to want a “piece of the pie”, which in turn drives the price of the commodity up. The buyers and sellers are competing with one another and do not even realize that they are playing right into the hand of the false consciousness. 3. What is the cost of the production of labor? Plainly, the cost of the production of labor is that of maintaining the worker that already exists and training those who are not workers to become workers. The capitalist is in luck when the tasks of the workers are so menial that they do not take any special training. This way, it is cheaper and all he (capitalist) has to do is pay the worker enough to live on (i.e. “living wage”). Another factor to consider is the cost of reproduction. Like machines, humans will wear out and will need to be replaced. Marx concludes that all of this can only be bad for the individual, even though it might benefit the economy as a whole. 4. What takes place in the exchange between capitalist and wage-worker? The worker is paid for his labor. In return, the capitalist gains the “productive activity of the worker.” He gets whatever output the worker can produce. The worker uses his gain to keep on living and surviving, but the capitalist uses his gain to reinvest and gain more. So the worker loses his gain as soon as he gets it, but the capitalist gets to keep his “creative power” and then some. This is the idea of capital and exploitation. The only real value that the worker has exists to the extent that the capitalist can extract more value. The bourgeoisie wants capital, they want to employ in order to exploit. It is a catch-22 for the worker, because either he survives by being employed to the bourgeoisie or he perishes because he is exploited by the bourgeoisie. It is a vicious cycle that masquerades as the common good for both parties: (capital/labor exchanged)=>industry prospers=>⇧productive capital=>⇧wealth of Bourg.=>⇧worker sells self (thereby increasing wages, in theory)

In reality:

(capital/labor exchanged)=>industry prospers=>⇧productive capital reinvested=> ⇧wealth of Bourg ( ⇧worker’s wages, but inversely proportional)=>greater disparity between wages and classes As the profit increases, relative wages (those of the worker) drop as the real wages (the difference between the wage of the worker and the capitalist) grow rapidly. So even though the worker is getting more money, proportionally, it does not measure up to that of the capitalist. In the end, “the social gulf is widened” (Marx, p127). As the reinvestment of capital takes place, division of labor greatly increases and the cost of production continues to decrease. Hostility among capitalists grows, and the competition to exploit the labor rolls right along. Capitalists beware, however, because as Marx explains, you could be put out of business at any time. The workers are not devoid of competition either. They seek to do as much work as is humanly possible, sometimes going beyond that. The increase in division of labor feeds this competition and makes it feasible. Forever gone are the specialized skills of the worker. Summary “If capital grows rapidly, competition among the workers grows incomparably more rapidly, that is the means of employment, the means of subsistence, of the working class decrease proportionately so much the more, and, nevertheless, the rapid growth of capital is the most favorable condition for wage labour” (Marx, p 129).

=Amanda Amthor's Summary of the Essay:= A capitalist buys labor with money. Labor is a commodity, like sugar. A laborer exchanges commodity, and wage is a special name for labour. The loom and yarn is not the product of the weaver, it is the exchange for his commodity. How is the price of commodity determined? The commodity has the same quality but different prices because of competition, the cheaper one “wins” you could say. If you are familiar with simple economics and the rules of supply and demand then this concept is familiar to you. The price of commodities is measured the same as how we regulate wages or price of labor. Now moving to the worker, we know that with most work comes training. With the higher levels of training the more the price of labor will be, and vice versa. Marx mentions that humans are like machinery, and are treated with depreciation and work reproduction cycle. In a business with machinery the depreciation of a thing is how much “life” or cost it used each year. Like humans, those machines get older and less capable of doing things, in time a manufacturer will have to replace it. The machine is equal to the humans work. But there is something that machine cannot duplicate, that is that humans add a special quality or a value to a part, and then the capitalist gives subsistence. You only have capitol when you have wages. As long as the worker is working for wages he relies on capitol, which is the relation between capitalist and worker. In the cost or production, when you get new machinery your supply goes up while still having the same labor and capitol. This is excluding the value of exchange. The greater the capitol, the more production, which then leads to a division of labor. Little to no skills is needed for humans to work on the new machines, and the knowledge workers have becomes worthless. 1. If there was some kind of crisis and some recent technology was lost, would our society be patient and appreciative enough to make or do things by hand? Examples: flour for cooking, letters instead of e-mail? 2. Is it ethical to cycle people through work like a piece of machinery that has depreciation? When they reach a certain age you are not good enough?
 * Wage-Labour and Capital **