(This
is based on and mostly from “Marx’s Capital” written by Ben Fine and Alfredo
Saad-Filho)
(For
Part-3, please see the blog entry dated 13-1-2012)
Besides
the German philosophy, another influence on Marx was the French Socialism. In the
French revolution took place during 1789,
the emerging bourgeoisie class (comprising of capitalists,
traders and professionals, and intellectuals)which did not have political
power, mobilised the urban workers and rural peasants and revolted against the king, nobles, and the church. In this revolution the
political power was seized by the bourgeoisie and the monarchy (rule of the
king), the domination of the nobles and the church was abolished. 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. The bourgeoisie mobilised the workers
and peasants under the slogan liberty, equality and frarnity. 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.
But they noted the failure of the bourgeoise 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
third source for the development of the ideology of Marx was the British
political economy. 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 and, especially David Ricardo. The labour theory of value
was stated by David Ricardo as, “ The value of a commodity, or the quantity of
any other commodity for which it will exchange, depends on the relative
quantity of labour which is necessary for its production, and not as the
greater or less compensation which is paid for the labour” (Ricardo, 1817).
Marx
found that these classical economists were wrong in content (for example, the
commodities do not often exchange at the value of their labour time of
production) and inadequate in their intent( they have not asked and answered
the question why the commodities are there at all. They assumed certain
timeless features for humans and societies. Therefore he was determined to
understand the historical context of commodities, wages, and prices, profits in
their origin, development and demise. He
also was determined to develop the labour theory of value further.
Society
always has the need to work in order to produce and consume. But how this production
is organised has to be revealed both structurally and historically ( Means how
the society was organised in different forms in the history for organising the
production). Marx argues that when working—producing the material conditions
for their individual and social reproduction (production of the materials and
services required for individual and social sustenance and continuous
reproduction of human beings and society)---people enter into definite relations
with each other, as slave or master, lord or serf (peasant without independence
and tied to a lord) capitalist or wage earner, and so on. Patterns of life are
determined by existing social conditions, in particular the places to be filled
by the individuals in the process of production. These relations –capitalist or
wage worker, etc-are existing independently of individual choices. But they are
established in the course of the historical development of production.
The
social relations of production specific to a particular mode of production (feudalism,
capitalism and so on) are best studied as class relations (capitalist or
worker, landlord or peasant, slave or slave owner) except in primitive society
where there are no classes. These class relations are the basis on which the
society is constructed. 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.
In
this context, Marx castigates the classical political economists for assuming
that certain characteristics of human behaviour, like greed, are permanent
features of ‘human nature’ when, in reality, they are characters generated in
individuals by particular societies. They also took it for granted the features
of the capitalist society for granted, ever existing—like monopoly of the means
of production by a few, wage employment for the majority, the distribution of
products by the means of exchange, and the remuneration involving the economic
categories of prices, profits and wages. Marx felt that it is necessary to see
these features in their origin and development and demise.
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.
The
crucial questions for Marx concern 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.
(These
4 parts I uploaded in the blog so far comprise the first chapter “ History and
Method” in the book “Marx’s Capital”by
Ben Fine and Alfredo Saad-Filho. Tomorrow, we will summarise this first
chapter.)
కామెంట్లు లేవు:
కామెంట్ను పోస్ట్ చేయండి