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MARX AND MARXISM

Karl Marx: born Trier, Rhineland, 1818, died London, 1883

Major works

The Poverty of Philosophy (1847)

Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844)

The German Ideology (1846)

The Communist Manifesto (1848)

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852)

Grundrisse (Outline of a Critique of Political Economy) (1857)

Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859)

Theories of Surplus Value (1862-3)

Capital, Volumes 1-3 (1863-7)

Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875)

Introduction

The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point is to change it.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels (1846),
Theses on Feuerbach, Thesis XI

This quotation from Marx is inscribed on his gravestone in Highgate Cemetery, London. In this context it acknowledges his death but also suggests how we might remember him now - as a figure whose words remain inspirational. However, remembering and recognizing his continuing influence involves interpreting a disparate body of work, including full-length manuscripts, journalism, political speeches, all kept as scribbled notes, often on fragments of paper, some of it literally eaten by mice and often ending in mid-sentence. Only parts of Marx's work were published in his lifetime, and the manuscripts and notes that were most influential in the middle of the twentieth century were not published until after the Russian Revolution, and more than fifty years after his death. He was also only claimed as a sociologist in the latter part of the twentieth century and was not taught as part of the sociology curriculum in the USA until the 1960s (Connell 2007). This is not to say that there are not clear and consistent themes and threads within his work which are of sociological value, but its somewhat chaotic posthumous transmission serves as a reminder that the 'Marx' we are often encouraged to read as one of the classic founders of sociology is one that has been posthumously put together and pulled apart, by each subsequent generation of social theorists, philosophers, political analysts and activists.

Now, some 140 years after Marx's death, the interpretation and application of his ideas by successive generations of social and political thinkers and activists are still very much live issues. We can see this in the work of, for example, David Harvey on the 'new imperialism' of global capitalism, as well as more critical contemporary assessments of Marxist thought. Looking at Marx's work from the perspective of the early twenty-first century, it is easy to dismiss his ideas as quite simply wrong in their analysis of capitalism and disastrous in their predictions about the promise of the communist society that he believed would replace it. However, while it is important to expose the limitations of Marx's vision of the future of capitalism, this does not exhaust his significance as a theorist of capitalist society. It is this latter aspect of his work which we will discuss in more detail in this chapter.

To be able to introduce this rich and complicated legacy this chapter will take up the key points in Marx's opening quote: what is the activity of critical thinking he developed, how did he apply it to 'the world' and how did he envisage the possibilities of using this knowledge to change society?

Philosophical interpretations of social change

Marx's ideas developed initially from his criticisms of German Idealist philosophy, particularly the work of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831) and Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-72). Kant and Hegel were inspired by the revolutionary ideals of democracy, equality and freedom, and yet critical of the practices employed to attain them. Each, in different ways, sought to use philosophy to understand more systematically how peaceful progress towards equality and freedom could be sustained. For this generation of German Idealist philosophers, then, the French Revolution was in important senses unfinished, and Marx, beginning in the early 1840s, took up their project to work out how its promise could be delivered. Hegel, for example, argued that human history could be analysed as the gradual development of human self-reflection, the cumulative significance of which could, if properly recognized and acted upon, help open up a new era of freedom. Marx (1844, 1845, 1848) was one of a series of critics who argued that, despite their best efforts to find a secure rational basis for political progress, the problem with the German Idealists was that their ideas remained just that: ideas which left the real world untouched. Not only this, but such philosophies failed to grasp that the most important and unique human characteristic was collective practical activity. Marx, in contrast, wanted to bring intellectual analysis and practical political action together to change society. He critically used some aspects of German Idealism along with parts of two further bodies of work, that of political economists such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo, and of French socialists, to build his own analysis of the history, politics and economy of modern capitalist societies.

For Marx, then, the 'world' that needed changing was one that shapes and is shaped by human action. One of the ways Marx made use of Hegel's work can be seen in his own approach to historical analysis. He, like Hegel, believed that such an analysis must involve looking at all aspects of a society, its economy, culture, politics and state formation, each of which should be seen as the results of human collective action. We might not recognize this 'world' as of our own making, but to show how it can be made and remade by conscious political action is one of the most important tasks of Marxian theory. Marx's was one of the most significant attempts to develop a multidimensional analysis of capitalist societies; one which would not just describe the ways things appear to be, but would penetrate beneath accepted views and offer a decisive challenge to the most powerful beliefs and values of such societies. This ambition led him to develop an historical analysis of European capitalist societies, which focused on what was often overlooked in other kinds of history. Rather than looking at monarchs and battles, he argued that historians should look at the work of ordinary people, because this is the activity that really makes and changes history. Perhaps more importantly for his significance as a social theorist, however, Marx returns repeatedly to the failure of the leading economists of his time to recognize the social relationships between real people that are necessary to create the commodities on which capitalism relies. As Giddens puts it, for Marx, 'any and every "economic" phenomenon is at the same time always a social phenomenon, and the existence of a particular kind of "economy" presupposes a definite kind of society' (Giddens 1971: 10).

For Marx, 'economic activity' always includes work or labour as a set of social relationships. This is what he is trying to draw attention to with his claim that the crucial feature distinguishing humans from animals is that humans have to transform the natural world in order to survive in it. Whereas animals can survive by consuming what they need, humans have to make everything they need - from clothing to shelter to food - out of materials from their natural environment. Without burrows, and lacking fur or claws, in this vulnerable state humans need to work together to survive, hence they need to develop social relationships: 'By social we understand the co-operation of several individuals, no matter under what conditions, in what manner, and to what end' (Marx and Engels 1969: 291-2).

Here, then, Marx is developing a sociological analysis of economic production. It is not only that, for example, we build homes or sow crops, but that we do so as 'praxis'; by this term, Marx refers to all the practical know-how, theoretical knowledge and other social resources available to any particular historical society or group within it. This is what he means in referring to his method of social, economic and political analysis as 'historical materialism' - nature, both 'out there' and our own biological possibilities, is 'the raw material' which we work on and transform in order to produce what we need to survive. The tools and actions we put in place to fulfil basic needs also change nature, and the resulting new product in turn changes our future needs. For example, a particular society may learn by trial and error that certain crops grow better than others and so focus on these; they then become staples for that society and scarcity will come to mean an absence of these particular crops rather than of any food at all. Such scarcity will prompt experiments with growing other food, as well as the forging of new trading links with other societies. In a very real sense, then, humans are social products too. We create ourselves anew in creating what we need to survive; as 'universal producers' we are also historical products.

Marx's strategy of making explicit the social relationships embedded in all aspects of human society offers a powerful way of making the familiar world...