An Introduction To Marx’s Capital—Part-2 (This is based on “Marx’s Capital” written by Ben Fine and Alfredo Saad-Filho)

(For Part-1, please see the blog entry dated 11-1-2012)

The Intellectual Development of Marx and His Philosophy

Throughout his life Marx pursued the revolutionary transformation of capitalist society, through his writings and through agitation and organisation of working class. He attempted to understand the process of historical change, that is, how the society changes from one stage to another stage, and to apply this understanding to particular types of societies and to make concrete study of specific historical situations.

Let us now briefly know about the intellectual development and the philosophy of Marx and the main features of his method.

Marx’s Philosophy

When Marx was a student, the philosophy in Germany was dominated by Hegel and his followers. Hegel was an idealist, that is, he believed that it is the idea that causes and moves the nature and society. But this is not the idea of human beings, but an idea existing independent of the consciousness and thinking of the human beings. Hence he is an “objective idealist”.  The world, the nature, the society and the thinking of human beings is the outcome of this idea which is ever changing from one stage to another stage. This change and movement of this idea is to finally reach the stage of Absolute Idea. At every stage the idea has conflicting aspects in it and the conflict among these aspects can be resolved only by transforming into a new stage. The new stage also will contain new aspects of conflicting elements, the seeds of its own transformation into a higher stage, and the conflict will be resolved by the transformation into a higher stage. Thus the idea, always having conflicting elements in it, gets it self transformed to a higher stage due to the resolution of those conflicts by such transformation. The 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.

When Marx was still a young man at University, two opposing groups of Hegelians, Young (radical) and Old (reactionary), both claimed to be Hegel’s successors. Old Hegelians believed that the Prussian Absolute Monarchy, religion and society represented the triumphant achievement of the Idea in its dialectical progress ( Some years ago, it was campaigned that the society reached its final stage in capitalism and society will not change further and it is the end of history, but now, due to the recession and crisis in the advanced capitalist countries, there is a realisation that it is not the end of history and it is necessary to change the capitalist system for the better). In contrast, the Young Hegelians, dangerously anti-religious, held that intellectual development had far to advance.Marx identified himself initially with the Young Hegelians.

But this was for a short period only. Thereafter he came under the influence of Feurbach, who was a materialist. Here materialist does not mean rhat he is interested in enjoying all the material comforts. In fact, Feurbach last his academic career because of his materialist views. Here, materialism means the view holding that it is the matter  and material conditions that cause and move the  idea. In the simple but brilliant polemic against religion, The Essence Of Christianity, he told that humans needed God because religion satisfied an emotional need. To satisfy this need, humans had projected their best qualities on to a God figure and worshipping that had been made to the extent that God had assumed an independent existence in human consciousness. To regain their humanity, people need to substitute the love of each other for the love of God.

Marx was immediately struck by this insight of Feurbach. Subsequently, he soon moved beyond Feurbach’s materialism. He did this in two ways. First, he extended Feurbach’s materialist philosophy to all dominant ideas prevailing in the societybeyond religion to ideology and people’s conception of society as a whole. Second, he extended Feurbach’s ideas to history. Feurbach’s analysis was ahistorical and non-dialectical, that is, it is not analysing the changes in the material conditions of the society and consequent changes in the idealogy. If humans satisfy their need by creation of religion, then what is the origin of that need and whether that need remains the same always or changes? This remains unexplained by Feurbach. Marx sees the solution of this problem in the material conditions.

Marx came to the conclusion that human consciousness, ideas and ideology can only be understood in its relation to historical, material and social circumstances. 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.

One thing common between Hegel, Feurbach and Marx is that things do not appear immediately as they actually are. For Feurbach, God does not exist other than in the mind, but appears to do so to satisfy a human need. Under Capitalism, the free labour market, i.e the freedom to the worker to sell his labour power, conceals the exploitation. The political democracy, that is, every man having one vote and that one vote having one value, suggests equality concealing the privilege and the power of the rich.This divorce between the reality ( content or essence) and its appearance (form) is a central aspect of Marx’s dialectical thought. It forges the link between abstract concepts  such as class (working class, capitalist class, landlord class, agricultural worker class etc) , value (labour time socially necessary for producing a commodity) etc and  their concrete and practical  appearance and presence in every day life through wages, prices and profits.

The task that Marx sets himself, primarily for capitalism, and which he recognises as extremely demanding with, is to trace the connection and contradiction between the abstract and the concrete. This means how the profits, wages, prices, capital etc which are concrete manifestations and appearances of the absolute, the essence, of the relations between people as capitalist and worker while producing the material necessities. But  these appearances like wages, prices and profits are not illusory, but they are part of the reality itself, both representing and concealing more fundamental aspects of capitalism that appropriate dialectics is designed to reveal.

This complexity has to be revealed and understood by an appropriate method. Tomorrow let us discuss about this method of Marx.