Reading Response for Marx and Engels, 5/26

Reading response to The German Ideology (Karl Marx) and The Manifesto of the Communist Party (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels).

Marx's approach to history is a materialist one. He asserts that in analysing our society, we need to start with examining the material conditions of life - how man works to feed, clothe and house themselves and their families. These material conditions are made possible by man's nature, which is to labour and work, and in so doing he enters into relationships (namely, wage relations) with other people.

In The German Ideology, Marx explains his theory of historical materialism as a series of successive modes of production which resolve into one another through dialectical forces. This means that historical development isn't linear; it proceeds through moments of agreement and moments of contradiction (namely, class conflicts). Thus, it is the conflict between the owners of the factors of production (the ruling class or bourgeoisie) and those who do not own the factors of production (the working class or the proletariat) that creates a revolution and drives the progress of history.

Marx defines the abovementioned "factors of production" as the "material, instrument and product of labour" [151]. This includes raw minerals like wood, coal and water (the materials), technology and machines (the instruments), and the skills and knowledge of the workers, which determines their use of the materials and instruments. All these together result in the production of material goods. He also talks about the "relations of production" or the "definite social and political relations" that an individual must enter into once they are productively active [154]. He uses the feudal system as an example - the lords and serfs engage in an interdependent relationship with each other; in order to stay on the land, the serfs must grow, harvest and present the crops to the lord. The lords get the harvest; the serfs get a place to stay. In this same example, the factors of production are chiefly the land (private property ownership) and the labour of the serfs. These relations and factors of production together comprise the feudal mode of production. The modes of production will change as the relations and factors of production change and as time progresses (from tribal to feudal, from feudal to capitalist, from capitalist to communist and then socialist, as Marx suggests later).

He also stresses that this system acts upon the individual coercively and is "independent of their will". The behaviour of the people is influenced by their material aims because, once again, the nature of man is to labour and work, and this labour is a factor that produces and realises these material aims.

In The Manifesto of the Community Party, Marx and Engels elaborate on the relationship between the "two great hostile camps" of the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat [474]. The emergence of this system of organising society has negated the previously described reciprocal relationship in the feudal era between lords and serfs - instead, this relationship is an exploitative one in the self-interests of the bourgeoisie. What differentiates the two groups of people is the ownership of factors of production; the bourgeoisie own them while the proletariat do not. All the proletariat own are their own labour power, and they sell this based on their "exchange value" in return for a wage provided by the bourgeoisie, which is their means of subsistence [475].

The capitalist era of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is defined by the constant change initiated by the bourgeoisie, unlike previous more "static" eras. The authors then talk about the crisis of overproduction, where the "need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe", colonising new areas and expanding its scope of exploitation [476]. This means that it forces more people to adopt the bourgeois mode of production, "creating a world after its own image". The consequences of this are the agglomeration of populations and thus the creation of a class consciousness.

This means that instead of the workers being a class in itself (defined by their relationship to the factors of production), they become a "class for itself", aware of their social position and how they are being exploited. They are enlightened and conscious of their common fate and become tied together by a common purpose and sentiment, purely because they are being brought together by the bourgeois through their conquests. As this class consciousness develops, it becomes a tool through which the proletariat can stage a revolution, uniting all people of their class to overthrow the bourgeoisie. This movement is "self-conscious" and "independent" in the own interests of the working-class majority, and it is this that creates new modes of production and through this that social structure can be changed. For Marx and Engels, capitalism is doomed socially and economically; the revolution will change the relations of production, and a falling rate of profit will make capitalism economically infeasible.