An Introduction To Marx’s Capital—Part-5

(This is based on and mostly from “Marx’s Capital” written by Ben Fine and Alfredo Saad-Filho)

                            (For Part-4, please see the blog entry dated 14-1-2012)

Summary of Chapter-1, “History and Method”

The first 4 parts uploaded in my blog so far consist of the chapter 1 of the book “Marx’s Capital” written by Ben Fine and Alfredo Saad-Filho. This chapter is titled in the book as “History and Method”.  Before going to read the chapter2, let us summarise this first chapter.

A brief Life History of Karl Marx

Karl Marx was born in the town Trier in Germany (Prussia at that time) on 5-5-1818, in a well to do family and was educated in the best universities at that time-Bonn and Berlin. He studied History and Philosophy and obtained a Doctorate in Philosophy. He turned to radicalism and due to his activities he was banished from Germany, France, Belgium and finally he settled in London in 1849 and lived there till his death on 14-3-1883. He dedicated his life for pursuing the cause of revolutionary transformation of capitalist society through his writings and through the agitation and organisation of the working class. His wife Jenny Von Westphalen belonged to a noble family, but she stood along with him and became a true colleague and comrade in facing all the difficulties along with him. Due to the severe poverty faced by him, he lost 3 of his daughters in their childhood.

Marx’s book ‘Capital” was in 3 volumes. The first volume was published in 1867 when Marx was alive. But the second and third volumes were published in 1885 and in 1894respectively. Both the volume-II and volume-III were prepared by Engels, based on the notes left by Marx. Engels was a colleague, friend and comrade of Marx and together, they have written several books.

The three sources of the thought of Karl Marx

a)      The German Philosophy and the development of Marx’s philosophy on that basis

When he was a student, Marx was a follower of the famous German philosopher at that time, Hegel. Hegel was an objective idealist.   An idealist in philosophy is one who holds the view that it is the idea which is the cause and mover of the world. An objective idealist is the idealist who believes that the idea that causes and moves the world is the idea that exists outside the thinking head of the philosopher. ( A subjective idealist is the one who believes that the world is created and moved by his idea). Hegel believed that the idea is having opposing aspects in it and due to the contradiction and struggle between these opposing aspects, the idea gets itself transformed itself in a revolutionary way to a next higher stage and this process of revolutionary transformation of the idea to higher and higher stages through the struggle of the opposites in it goes on until it reaches the stage of Absolute Idea, after which it will not undergo the change any further. This transformation is not a simple destruction of the old stage, but it is an absorption and transformation of the elements of the old stage.  Hegel called this process in which the new ideas do not defeat the old as resolve conflicts or contradictions with in them, the dialectic.  According to him the phenomena and developments in nature and society are a copy, that too, a poor copy of this ever changing idea.

When Marx was a student, the followers of Hegel were split into two groups. The “Old Hegelian” group held the view that the dialectical development of the Idea reached the final stage in the contemporary Prussian Monarchy. The other group “Young Hegelians” held the view that the dialectical progress of the Idea had far to advance. For a short time, Marx was with the “Young Hegelians.” But soon, he was influenced by thee materialist philosophy of Feurbach. Here materialism means not clinging to material comforts, but holding the view that it is the matter and material conditions that cause and move the  idea. Feurbach held that humans created God to satisfy their emotional need and projected all their best qualities upon the God figure and finally the God thus created by humas assumed an independent existence in human consciousness. He told that to regain their humanity, people need to substitute the love of each other for the love of God. But why at all the emotional need for God arose, and in what conditions that emotional need will end  was not answered by Feurbach.

Marx developed this materialism of Feurbach beyond religion to the understanding of society as a whole, and to the understanding of history. Marx came to the conclusion that human consciousness, ideas and ideology have to be understood in their relation to the prevailing material and social condition. As the material and social conditions change, the ideas and ideologies will change.  The consciousness, ideas and ideologies of human beings in Feudal society are different from the consciousness, ideas and ideologies in the Capitalist society. The consciousness, ideas and ideologies during the struggle for independence in our country is different from the present day ideologies. Consciousness is primarily determined by material conditions. But the material conditions themselves change and develop dialectically through human history, that is through the conflict among different classes in the human society.

Marx held that there are no set of universal rules applicable for understanding human societies. Specific application of the materialist dialectics (materialist dialectics is the method of reasoning required to understand the ever changing material reality through the process of the struggle of the opposites in it and its consequent transformation into a new higher reality) has to be developed in order to address each problem. The best known example of the application of Marx is his critical examination of capitalism in his book Capital. In this work, Marx’s approach has five important broad features. They are:

1.      The method for understanding human societies and changes in the societies is not a fixed set of rules applicable for all societies, but social phenomena have to be understood in their historical context. Generalisations said to be valid every where and for all times are meaningless and invalid.

2.      The concepts useful for understanding one society having a particular mode of production are not useful for understanding another society with a different mode of production.

3.      Reality exists materially and historically, outside the thinking head of the analyst and in a process of change and development. It is shaped by the social structure, tendencies and counter tendencies in it and unpredictable contingencies. Materialist dialectics helps in understanding the past and the present, but it is impossible to foretell the future.

4.      Marx employs materialist dialectics to pinpoint the essential features of the capitalism and their contradictions (mutually opposing tendencies), to explain the dynamics (the causes for the movement and development) of the capitalist mode of production and to identify the sources in the capitalist society which are potentially capable of or will lead to the revolutionary transformation of capitalist society to a higher stage of production, to a higher stage of society. Marx evolved concepts for helping us to reconstruct the realities of capitalist system in our thought. These concepts help us to understand what are the strengths and the critical vulnerabilities (weaknesses that will lead to its end) of the capitalist system.

5.      Marx’s method focuses on historical change. Social change is determined  by the relation of mutual determination between technology, the social relations between various classes in the society and the struggle between these classes (example-the capitalist class, working class, peasants, landlords, agricultural labourers etc)  in the  society.

b)      The influence of French Socialism on Marx

 In the French revolution took place during  1789, the emerging bourgeoisie class (comprising of  capitalists, traders and professionals, and intellectuals) came to political power by overthrowing the King and feudal nobles. This they were able to do by mobilising the urban workers and rural peasants, by the slogan liberty, equality and fraternity. The king was executed; lands of the nobles and the church were confiscated and distributed to small peasants. The state was separated from the Church and the state was declared as secular, without any link to religion. But after the revolution and seizure of political power, the bourgeoisie did not go further to bring economic equality. The oppression of the worker and peasant continued. The French socialists were inspired by the radicalism of the French revolution and further compelled to think about the future since the bourgeoise failed to  implement the demand of liberty, equality and fraternity. Many of them believed in the necessity and possibility of revolutionary seizure of political power by the workers in order to establish a just and equal society. The influence of the French Socialists helped Marx to understand the struggle taking place between the various classes in the society and the revolutionary potential of the working class.

c)      The influence of the British Political Economy on Marx and the development of his economic theory on that basis

 Political economy is the study of the production, buying, selling,and their relations with the law, custom, government and distribution of national wealth including the budget. After his settlement in London in 1849, Marx turned his study to economics in order to understand contemporary capitalist society, and identify its strengths and limitations and its potential for transformation into a socialist society. He particularly developed the labour theory of value from the writings of the classical British political economists Adam Smith (1723-1790) and, especially David Ricardo (1772-1823).

 These classical political economists held that the value of a commodity depends upon the quantity labour required to produce it. At the same time these classical political economists held that the human beings are having certain timeless characters like greed and they further held that the categories commodities, wages, prices, profits etc  are having timeless existence since the beginning of human societies and they will be there like that in future also. Karl Marx questioned these assumptions and tried to understand these categories of commodities, wages, prices, profits etc in their historical context, that is, in their origin, development and demise. He decided further to develop the labour theory of value since he found it insufficient.

Marx argued that society always has the need to work in order to produce and consume. While thus producing the material requirements, people enter into definite relations with each other, as slave or master, lord or peasant, capitalist or wage worker etc. These are the places to be filled up by the individuals in the process of production, independently of their individual choice. These relations are established in the course of historical development of production. These relations of production which people undergo are best studied as class relations, except in the primitive tribal societies where there are no division of labour and classes. A particular set of class relations is the foundation of a particular mode of production—capitalism has the class relations of production—capitalist and wage worker. Feudalism has the class relation of production—the feudal lord and the peasant who has no independence. The slave societies have the class relations of production—slave owner and slave. These relations were established in the course of historical development of production.

These class relations are the basis on which the concerned society constructs its state, its legal system, its morals, its religion and its education system etc. Freedom to buy and sell is a fundamental legal characteristic of capitalistic society. In feudal society, divine rights of the kings and lords were the legal foundation. Self justified political, legal, intellectual forms are established to justify the existing society. These blinker and discourage all other views except the most conventional view of society, whether by force or by habit or otherwise. The peasant in feudal society was bound by loyalty to the lord or king and any vacillation could be punished severely. The wage earner has the freedom and compulsion to sell his labour power. He is free to sell his labour power to any capitalist by bargaining. But inorder to survive, he has the compulsion to sell his labour power. There can be struggle for higher wages, but this does not question the wage system itself. The mindset will be nurtured and prepared in the capitalist society in such a way that the wage system is assumed as natural and eternal. The probing into the nature of the capitalist system is frowned upon by the authorities. Whereas individual dissent is often tolerated, the anti capitalist mass movements are invariably repressed.

Marx’s value theory of labour is a penetrating contribution to social science in that it concerns itself with the relations that people set between themselves, rather than the technical relationship between things or the art of economising. Marx is not interested primarily in constructing a price theory, a set of efficiency criteria or a series of welfare propositions; he never intended to be a narrow ‘economist’ or even a political economist. Marx was a critical social scientist, and his works reject the barriers separating academic disciplines.

Marx was concerned with the critical questions concerning  the sources of stability and crises in capitalism, and how the will to change it can develop into a successful transformative (revolutionary) activity. These questions remain valid into the twenty first century, and now, the present recession and crises faced by all the advanced capitalist countries forcefully bring these questions into focus—whether the capitalism has the crisis in built or as accidental and what are the possibilities for transforming capitalism by a revolution into a higher stage, socialism.