Karl Marx (1818-1883) & Friedrich Engels (1820-1895)

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were well known revolutionary socialists. Two of their
key academic works are ‘The Communist Manifesto’ (1848) and ‘Capital’ (1867, 1885,
1894).

Centrality of social class

● Marx and Engels’ viewed social class as essential to socialism.

● Social class is key to three ideas of Marx and Engels’ form of socialism, which is named
Marxism. The ideas are historical materialism, dialectical change and class
consciousness.

Historical materialism

● Historical materialism is the idea that the economic system in a society can have an
influence on all aspects of society.
○ Historical materialism states that the development of a society can be explained
by economic and class factors.

Dialectical change

● Dialectical change is the idea that development results from a conflict between two
forces that oppose one another.
○ Marx and Engels argued that humans pass through a number of stages of
development, with a class structure existing at each stage.
○ Marx and Engels outlined that at each stage there is a class conflict which brings
about historical change and a new stage of development, which will only end
when a communist society is created that will not have classes or class conflict.

Class consciousness

● Revolutionary class consciousness is the self-understanding the oppressed in society

have of their own social class and their class interests.
○ Marx and Engels argued that class consciousness is needed for a socialist
revolution to take place because it means that individuals become aware of the
interests of their social class and determined to pursue them.
○ Marx and Engels argued that a revolution will happen as class conflict intensifies
between the exploited workers and the ruling class.

Humans as social beings

● Marx and Engels believe humans are social beings whose human nature is determined
by social interactions with others.
 ○ Marx and Engels argue that humans are active beings who are able to lead
satisfying lives where the conditions for free creative production exist. The
conditions for this only exist in a communist society.

Free from capitalism

● For Marx and Engels, a communist society that is free from the constraints of capitalism
will allow individuals to develop through taking part in many activities rather than one job,
and people will have more time for leisure because production processes will benefit
everyone rather than be used for profit.
○ Marx and Engels state that each individual society will reach their potential in a
communist society by working in cooperation with one another and creatively.

The Principle of Communism

Communism is the belief that collectively owned wealth should form the basis of society.

Communism

● Communism believes that wealth in society should be commonly owned by all

individuals.
● A communist economic system has a planned economy and public ownership of
industries.
○ In a planned economy, the state owns and controls all means of production such
as land, capital and labour.

Karl Marx and Communism

● Karl Marx's ideas are important within communism.

● Karl Marx believed capitalism would be brought to an end by the exploited working class
revolting and overthrowing the owners of capital in society.
○ For Marx, the revolution by the working class would cause capitalism to end.
● For Karl Marx, communism exists when there are no social classes of people in society,
and all individuals cooperate and live peacefully.

Communism examples

● The communist belief that business owners exploit the working class in society exists in
organisations today.
○ Topshop's employees have protested in the past over their pay which they
complained was less than the 'Living Wage' of £9.40 in London and £8.25 for the
rest of the UK.
○ TNS Knitwear, a clothes supplier to the store Primark, was found by a BBC
investigation in 2009 to pay its workers £3.50 an hour in its factories, and employ
illegal workers in poor conditions in Manchester.
Marxism
Quick revise
“Workers of the world unite you have nothing to lose but your chains”
Most important form of revolutionary socialism to be put forward. As an ideology it calls for
the establishment of a socialist state as a first step towards becoming communist.
It was not the fact that Marx called for revolution through violence which marked him out as
different but the fact that he developed a scientific rationale.
Many different theorists have looked at different things in people’s lives for example
Hobbes looked for security, Bentham looked for happiness and JS Mill looked for
individual fulfilment.
Marx believed in economic well being. He and Engels had seen the appalling conditions
that people lived in and realised that even if these people became educated they were living
in such conditions that their lives were not going to improve.
Your economic position determined your class in society but also your ability to lead a
reasonable life.
The Dialectic – Two ideological opposing ideologies
Socialism needed belief and an empathy with the concepts of social justice, fairness and
equality. The arguments for socialism were moral rather than political until Marx put
together his scientific approach, by proving that socialism was the next inevitable step.
The 6 steps of Marx
1. Primitive communism. in which there were no specialist jobs, everybody
carried out all types of work. Human society was disorganised. Old communal
form of living began to disappear replaced by a society where such
specialisms were taken to extremes.
2. Empire. The second stage saw some people gaining more power than others
due to the acquired wealth they had. At the lower end you had slaves who
worked like animals. However the society of these slaves, Marx argued came
from barbarians and they would overthrow the Imperial system.
3. Feudalism. End of the Imperial system saw the landed nobility looking after
the peasantry in return for military service. Marx claimed this was overturned
by the rise of the commercial class in the cities. This new class or bourgeoisie
was more adaptable than the feudal lords.
4. Capitalism. Marx felt that the bourgeoisie had created a false democracy that
pretended to listen to the people, but really it was the capitalists who made the
decisions because they controlled the economic wealth. However because the
modern industry required a level of education of the workers that they would
understand the system and know how to bring it down. The urban proletariat
would destroy this stage of society.
5. Socialism. This was the final stage before communism and it was needed to
rid society of its bourgeois elements and re-socialise the workers. For a short
period there would be a dictatorship of the proletariat.
 6. Communism. By now each individual would understand his or her equality
with others and there was no bourgeois influence left then there would be no
coercive institutions of the state required. This would have happened across
the world leading to true harmony between nations. This meant that there
would be no need for the state to defend itself. The state would wither away
and laws would be developed by co-operative workers and by communities.
There would be no opposition because everybody would agree that the
communist system was benefiting everyone.
Marx had created a scientific method by which the stages were inevitable and the dialectic
was a law of history. There was no real need for violent revolution but Marx just wanted it to
happen asap and if this meant violence then so be it.
Surplus value
One of Marx’s key terms regarding the evils of capitalism was the concept of surplus value
and that this value belongs to the workers. He argued that although the worker gets paid by
the capitalist the amount is not always right. This is because the difference in cost of the
item and the amount paid by the capitalist goes to the owner. In reality Marx is saying that
this amount should be paid to the worker and actually the capitalist is stealing from the
worker.
Marxism and the state
To Marxists the state is just an instrument by which the ruling classes keep the workers
under control and keeps hold of the political processes.
Marxists also believe that Parliamentary Democracy is also a front by pretending to give
people power through the ballot box.
This means that there would be two stages to true communism. Marxists would have to take
control of the state after the revolution, even though this was something that they despised.
During this time they would attempt to rid the country of the bourgeoisie and the middle
classes, as Marx feared that these people were more than capable of overturning the
revolution. When everybody was eliminated or re-educated would the need for the
mechanisms of the state disappear. Then all the institutions of repression would wither
away and communism could be achieved.
Revolutionary Socialism after Marx
Marx predicted that revolution would occur in Germany or Britain where there already was a
capitalist society. However it was in Russia where it started in 1917, through the actions of
Lenin.
His belief that a revolution could be started even though they had not reached the capitalist
stage was achieved. To achieve this he used a small group of elite professional
revolutionaries who could make this happen. He called these people the vanguard of the
proletariat.
Lenin’s ideas came about from a phase of capitalism that he called imperialism, where the
advanced nations would exploit the economically undeveloped nations. Russia would
therefore have its cheap labour and vast natural resources taken by a colonial power.
He looked for huge industrial growth where the workers would experience socialism through
propaganda and education. The peasantry would also come over to the cause.
He was looking for a speeded up version of Marxism, where socialist consciousness could
be created; this is why he needed a small group of revolutionaries to run the state before a
classless society would finally result in a communist state.
However this created a number of problems the most obvious being that the state had to be
so enormous that it required constant monitoring by the communist party. This system
became known a democratic centralism.
Any notion of democracy was a misnomer as there were no opposition parties and free
elections as there could be no variations to Marxist-Leninist. This take on Marxism had to
be embraced because the workers and peasants were not capable of running their own
country.
What are the problems here?
Stalin
● 1924-29 saw a power struggle amongst some of the most senior Communist Party
members. Resulted in Trotsky being exiled and Stalin taking control.
● Stalin carried on with Marxist-Leninism but there were changes. We will never
know if Lenin saw repression as key to his regime in Russia but Stalin used it, but
he did differ in a number of ways.
● Stalin viewed the peasantry with much distrust and he tried to turn them into
workers by industrialising their farms through collectivisation. This solved the
problem of creating socialism in a country that had not experienced
industrialisation.
● Socialism in one country was an isolationist policy but was also a way of
controlling his people. They were not allowed to trade with any non socialist
country and were not supposed to travel. This made Russia economically reliant
on its domestic market.
● Also he hoped that eventually there would be revolutions abroad because they
saw how well Russia was doing
● Stalin could see the benefits in achievement that capitalism brought but he could
not offer financial incentives for production. Instead he set stiff targets with his 5
year plans for heavy industry. Rewards were career advancements and the
honour of improving the country. This was his way of dealing with the Marxist idea
that the proletariat did not need bourgeois incentives.
Mao Tse Tung
● Claimed to be following Marxist Leninist thought in China but his reliance on Stalin
meant his policies had some Stalinist elements.
● Mao saw the peasantry as the revolutionary group not the workers as they were
the ones being exploited.
● He tried to prove that Marxism could be set up under any economic circumstances
but to do this he had to change Chinese society.
● The Cultural Revolution attempted to destroy the existing order and replace it with
a socialist one set up by the peasantry and industrial proletariat.
 ● Aspects of this revolution involved the swapping over roles with the peasants
coming into the citites to become the teachers and professors and those people
going into the countryside the farm the land.
● This was passed on to the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia in the 1970s
Trotsky
● Clashed with Lenin on some of his interpretations of Marxism. He fully developed
Marxist thought in order to work in a developing country. He saw Lenin’s attempts
to stabilise the country through bureaucracy as development towards a system
that they had just overthrown. Trotsky believed that there should be a permanent
revolution, where leaders and groups in power were changed every few years,
therefore not gaining any significant influence or power. Eventually driven out of
Russia.

Karl Marx (1818 – 1883)

Karl Marx's wordy contribution can essentially be divided into two parts; a critique of
capitalism and a prescription for a better society built around common ownership of the
means of production.
In terms of the former, Karl Marx condemned capitalists as parasites upon the toil of
others. Under capitalism, the bourgeoisie have every possible incentive to extract the
maximum level of surplus value from their workers. If they do not, another capitalist rival
surely will. The exploitation of the proletariat is thereby an inevitable consequence of
capitalism. There is no room whatsoever for capitalism to adopt a more humane
system. Social democrats are therefore flawed in their assumption that capitalism can
be tamed by state intervention. Equally, democratic socialists are also wrong to believe
that a parliamentary route is available for the advancement of socialism because the
wealthy will never allow people to vote away their wealth. Marx could hardly be clearer
on this point. Only a revolution will lead to a better economic system and a better world.
Not only was this necessary, it was inevitable!
To prevent exploitation, a radically different economic system was required. Crucially,
the economic base required a complete overhaul. Replacing an economic system
based upon private ownership enables the creation of a fairer system in which our
natural humanity would flourish and find its rightful expression. The fraternity generated
by an equitable distribution of wealth would free us from the environmental
destructiveness and rampant consumerism of the capitalist economic system.
These arguments found expression in ‘The Communist Manifesto’ which he co-wrote
with Friedrich Engels. Written in the space of just two weeks, it is without doubt the most
explosive political document of all time. In the pages of the manifesto, Marx and Engels
proclaim that “the history of all hitherto societies is the history of class conflict.” They
argued that social class can be distinguished via the means of production (which was
both physical and mental). The former is focused upon economic resources whereas
the mental means of production refers to how the media serves the interests of the
ruling elite. Marx also believed that the impact of capitalism was destructive in that it
dissolved those meaningful relationships and sentiments that held society together.
Commodification turns that which is solid into pure air, and all that honours the human
spirit is corroded by the process of commodification.
As well as offering a critique of capitalism, Marx decrees that the most intractable
obstacle towards social progress is that of religion. Spiritual beliefs act as a painkiller for
a deep-seated problem within society. In truth, the source of our malaise is the capitalist
system itself. Capitalism is a monster we do not control, and religion merely offers a
hallucinatory drug for the masses. Religion also serves the interests of the ruling class
by thwarting the revolutionary potential of the oppressed.
For a theorist so preoccupied with contradictions, it is ironic to note that there are
certain contradictions within Marx’s outlook. Firstly, Marx was from a bourgeois family
and there were times when Marx strived to offer the same bourgeois comfort to his own
family that he himself experienced. Secondly, Marx certainly admired the dynamism of
capitalism. However, perhaps the most prescient criticism of Marx concerns the
prediction of a global revolution led by the proletariat. This has patently not occurred
despite capitalism facing repeated crises (ranging from the Great Depression of the
1930s to the 2008 credit crunch). This is arguably one of the main flaws with the whole
theory of Marxism. In its predictive sense, it has thus far failed. Moreover, the Marxist
response that the working-classes are suffering from false consciousness seems a self-
serving one. Indeed, according to Raymond Aron, Marxism itself is the “opium of the
intellectuals.”
As with other theorists, it is important to place his work in its historical context. He was
writing at a time in which workers toiled in the dark satanic mills, child labour was
commonplace and labourers were housed in cramped conditions. He also wrote at a
time of rapid social change driven by unregulated market forces, although workers were
at least becoming better organised. When we consider the historical background, it is
perhaps understandable why Marx offered such a devastating critique of the capitalist
economic system. More importantly, Marx may have had the diagnosis right but the
prescription wrong. His faith in the transformative power of human nature has been
shown as flawed. Communist societies systematically failed to create a new socialist
man, and capitalism has been shown to be more appealing than communism (even
amongst those with relatively few economic resources). He does however remain a
hugely influential theorist and one whose critique of capitalism remains as readable and
relevant as ever.

Communism (Socialism)
Communism is an economic system based upon public ownership and a planned
economy.
The term communism originates from the French word ‘commune’ and predates the
prescription offered by Marx and Engels during the time of the Industrial Revolution.
The most obvious contrast to be made is with capitalism, an economic system based
upon private ownership and the market forces of supply and demand. Famously, Karl
Marx predicted the collapse of the capitalist system due to internal contradictions
between the interests of the bourgeoisie (the social class that owns capital) and the
proletariat (the working class or the wage-earners). This would result in a revolution led
by the oppressed followed by the dictatorship of the proletariat. Eventually, class conflict
would come to an end and the result would be the inevitable victory of socialism.
Common ownership would replace private property, and the state would distribute
resources in an equitable manner.
The German theorist Karl Marx remains by far the most influential figure within the
ideology of socialism. Writing during the time of the Industrial Revolution (1848), Marx
offered a devastating critique of the capitalist economic system in which he claimed that
the owners of capital exploited the working-class. The Marxist argument has been
subject to modification since his work was first published, but the core argument
remains both relevant and insightful. One would only have to consider how multi-
national companies such as Apple use third world sweatshops (Klein, 2000) or the
treatment of illegal immigrants in the shadow economy by unscrupulous employers.
Marxist analysis is heavily influenced by a Hegelian understanding of historical
progress. The German philosopher Friedrich Hegel claimed that history progressed
upon a series of logical events based upon the dialectic. Hegel believed that every idea
or state of affairs contains within it an internal conflict. In other words, a thesis contained
an antithesis that drives forward social change. The result is a new state of affairs or set
of ideas he called a synthesis. For example, tyranny (thesis) generates the need for
freedom (antithesis). Once freedom has been achieved there will be a state of anarchy
until an element of tyranny is combined with freedom; thereby creating a system of laws
(synthesis). In other words, when a proposition is confronted by an opposite a new
stage of history will emerge. Grounded on this philosophical structure, Marx claimed
that socialism would confront capitalism and lead to a new historical epoch.
Furthermore, Hegel argued that alienation was the result of our perception of the world
being different to the reality of that world. Progress would therefore occur only when a
collective consciousness emerges, thereby generating a new consciousness. Marx
adopted this view towards the notion of class consciousness, which he believed would
occur amongst the exploited proletariat. Finally, Hegel argued that society was destined
to reach the end of the dialectic in which our consciousness would be the same as the
collective consciousness. We would therefore reach the end of history. For Marx, this
would be a communist society.

Social Class (Socialism)

Social class refers to a group of people in society who have the same socioeconomic
status.
In the Communist Manifesto (1848), Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels boldly proclaim that
“the history of all hitherto societies is the history of class conflict.” They believe that the
social classes can be distinguished between those who own the means of production
(the bourgeoisie) and those who work the means of production (the proletariat). The
means of production is a Marxist term which refers to those elements of the production
process that can be legally owned such as land and machinery. Moreover, the means of
production is both physical and mental. The former is focused upon economic resources
whereas the mental means of production refers to how the media serves the interests of
the capitalist elite (Miliband, 1973 & 1982). With regards to the latter, Marx perceived
that “the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas.”
According to the socialist analysis of the economic system, the bourgeoisie have every
incentive to pay workers the lowest wage possible (and offer the poorest working
conditions) in order to maximise profit. If an employee refuses to accept this
arrangement, they can be threatened with the sack and be replaced by members of the
reserve army of labour. Work undertaken by the reserve army of labour is characterised
by low-wages, low-status, little or no job security, zero-hours contracts and poor working
conditions.
Under the exploitative conditions of the capitalist economic system, the surplus value of
the proletariat is appropriated by the bourgeoisie. Marxists claim that this leads to an
acute sense of alienation because workers do not benefit from the products being
made. They become de-personalised from their own work and the fruits of their labour
are stolen by the bourgeoisie. The interests of these two social classes are therefore in
conflict. This represents a key area of disagreement between socialists and
conservatives. Whereas Marx compares capitalists to “vampires” and “werewolves,”
conservatives emphasise the goal of social harmony based upon shared values.
Socialism also entails a rejection of the liberal assumption that the individual is
somehow free to exchange their labour. In reality, the worker is little more than a cog in
a heartless and brutal capitalist machine. He/she is reduced to the status of a wage
slave in which their labour is exploited by the owners of capital driven solely by the profit
motive. Under the capitalist system labour is bought and sold in a manner little different
to how slaves were treated in feudal times. As such, the only solution to this wretched
economic mess is radical change – a view best summarised in the provocative final
words of the Communist Manifesto (“The proletarians have nothing to lose but their
chains. They have a world to win. Working men of all countries, unite”).
The co-author of the Communist Manifesto, Friedrich Engels, argued that as capitalism
operates via fluctuations in the economic cycle, it must have a permanent reserve army
of labour. In the modern era, the reserve army of labour originates not just from the
younger generation but those who toil away in third world countries. In an era of
globalisation, multinational companies can very easily outsource to those corners of the
world where labour is cheap, working conditions are harsh and union membership is
brutally suppressed by the police. Furthermore, the ‘rules’ of the global economy are
fixed in favour of the owners of capital at the expense of the disadvantaged. In the
contemporary era, the Washington consensus is a manipulative system designed to
enable those with existing wealth to extract the most they possibly can from the
oppressed and downtrodden.

Key Ideas of Karl Marx

1. CAPITALIST SOCIETY IS DIVIDED INTO TWO CLASSES:

The Bourgeoisie or the Capitalist class are the ones who own and control the
wealth of a country. These control the productive forces in society (what Marx
called the economic base), which basically consisted of land, factories and
machines that could be used to produce goods that could then be sold for a
profit.

The majority, or the masses, or what Marx called The Proletariat can only gain
a living by selling their labour power to the bourgeoisie for a price.

2. THE BOURGEOISIE INCREASE THEIR WEALTH BY EXPLOITING THE

PROLETARIAT

Marx argued that the bourgeoisie maintain and increase their wealth through
exploiting the working class.

The relationship between these two classes is exploitative because the amount
of money the Capitalist pays his workers (their wages) is always below the
current selling, or market price of whatever they have produced. The difference
between the two is called surplus value. Marx thus says that the capitalist
extracts surplus value from the worker. Because of this extraction of surplus
value, the capitalist class is only able to maintain and increase their wealth at
the expense of the proletariat. To Marx, Profit is basically the accumulated
exploitation of workers in capitalist society.

Marx thus argues that at root, capitalism is an unjust system because those
that actually do the work are not fairly rewarded for the work that they do and
the interests of the Capitalist class are in conflict with the interests of the
working class.
3. THOSE WHO HAVE ECONOMIC POWER CONTROL ALL OTHER INSTITUTIONS IN
SOCIETY

Marx argued that those who control the Economic Base also control the
Superstructure – that is, those who have wealth or economic power also have
political power and control over the rest of society.

Economic Base(The Consists of the forces of production (tools, machinery,

Mode of raw materials which people use to produce goods and
Production) services)and the relations of production (social
relations between people involved in the production of
goods and services). Together these make up the mode
of production

Superstructure All other institutions: The legal system, the mass

media, family, education etc.

4. IDEOLOGICAL CONTROL

Marx argued that the ruling classes used their control of social institutions to
gain ideological dominance, or control over the way people think in society.
Marx argued that the ideas of the ruling classes were presented as common
sense and natural and thus unequal, exploitative relationships were accepted
by the proletariat as the norm.

5. THE RESULT OF THE ABOVE IS FALSE CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS

The end result of ideological control is false consciousness – where the

masses, or proletariat are deluded into thinking that everything is fine and that
the appalling in which they live and work are inevitable. This delusion is
known as False Consciousness. In Marxist terms, the masses suffer from false
class consciousness and fail to realize their common interest against their
exploiters.

Commodity FetishismA fetish is an object of desire, worship or obsessive

concern. Capitalism is very good at producing ‘things’. In capitalist society
people start to obsess about material objects and money, which is necessary
to purchase these objects. Material objects and money are worshipped in
capitalist societies. Some people even need material objects to construct
identities – this is partly responsible for keeping most of us in ‘false
consciousness’

6. REVOLUTION AND COMMUNISM

As far as Marx was concerned, he had realised the truth – Capitalism was
unjust but people just hadn’t realised it! He believed that political action was
necessary to ‘wake up’ the proletariat and bring them to revolutionary class
consciousness. Eventually, following a revolution, private property would be
abolished and with it the profit motive and the desire to exploit. In the
communist society, people would be more equal, have greater freedom and be
happier.

Criticisms of Traditional Marxism

● Marx’s concept of social class has been criticised as being too simplistic
– today, there are clearly not just two social classes, but several;
moreover, most people don’t identify with other members of their social
class, so it is questionable how relevant the concept of social class is
today.
● Clearly Marx’s predictions about capitalism ending and the ‘inevitable
success of communism’ have been proved wrong with the collapse of
communism.
● Capitalism has changed a lot since Marx’s day, and it appears to work for
more people – it is less exploitative, so maybe this explains why it still
continues to this day?

Evidence that Marxism is still Relevant Today

Contemporary Marxist sociologists argue that Marxism is still relevant in

many ways. For example:
1) Family = Parents want the perfect family and they compete with one another
for the best house, car, holiday and the best dressed/most successful children
etc. This is encouraged through advertising and TV programmes. Significant
sums of money are spent in pursuit of the “perfect” family. This benefits the
bourgeoisie in two ways 1) Parents work harder at work improving profits for
their companies owners – the bourgeoisie 2) Parents spend more of their
salary on providing this lifestyle – this benefits the bourgeoisie as they can
make more profits by selling goods and services to the parents. Furthermore,
it makes parents feel “happy” about family life and society generally, even
though they might work 13hr days for an average salary, rarely seeing their
family. Lastly, children grow up watching their parents behave in this manner
and then replicate it as adults with their own families.

2) Media = the mainstream media is controlled by few wealthy individuals who

promote the ideas and beliefs that maintain the bourgeoisie’s wealthy position
in society. This encourages people to accept beliefs which benefit capitalism
and legitimise (justify) the exploitation of the proletariat (workers) as normal.
The media justify exploitation and even make it into games shows.

3) Education = encourages people to accept hierarchy and to be obedient. This

is good for capitalism as it creates students who will later become good
workers. Also, schools emphasise high achievement and high flying jobs –
implicitly this means highly paid jobs, better profits for company owners and
more exploitation for the workers. Schools also encourage the idea people get
what they deserve in education, when in reality educational achievement is
primarily a result of the chance circumstances of your birth i.e. who your
parents are.

Karl Marx: Becoming a Socialist

In our previous lecture, we learned how Karl Marx's ideas are studied and used by philosophers,
historians, economists, sociologists and political scientists. Marx's ideas were seen as so radical that
he was perceived as an inspiration to revolutionists and a threat by leaders of state governments.

Karl Marx's work has had an everlasting impact on the arena of sociology in that his views opened
the door to the study of how one's social class has a direct influence on one's life experiences and
life chances. His work also opened the door for many differing perspectives on the issue of the
wealthy and the poor in society.
While in Paris from 1843 to 1845, Marx was able to meet with other radical thinkers and
revolutionists, for Paris had become a center for all things social, political and artistic. Here, Marx
was able to study socialist theories that were not available to him in Germany.

It was during this time that Marx met and became lifelong friends with Friedrich Engels and was
immersed into the socialist world, focusing on the conditions of the working class. For the first time,
Marx was beginning to understand the conditions and misery of the working-class people.

He wrote many editorials regarding such and, once again, was expelled from his country - but this
time by the French government. Marx would spend much of his life expelled from Germany and
other countries as a result of his radical (for the times) thinking.

Theories of Social Class

Karl Marx was one of the first social scientists to focus mainly on social class. His main focus on
social class was that one's social class dictated one's social life.

Basically, Marx meant that if one is in the upper class, life was one of leisure and abundance, while
those in the lower class lived lives of hardship and poverty.

According to Marx, there was one social element that would determine where one fit in the social
class hierarchy: that of who controls the means of production, meaning who owned the resources
necessary to produce what people needed to survive.

The wealthy would be the individuals who owned the land and factories. The wealthy would then
control all elements of society - including the livelihoods of the lower, working class. The lower,
working class would work for hourly wages on the land or in the factories.

Marx wanted to better understand how so many people could be in poverty in a world where there
was an abundance of wealth. His answer was simple: capitalism.
According to sociologist John Macionis, the wealthy and the working poor ''have opposing interests
and are separated by a vast gulf of wealth and power, making class conflict inevitable.''

Alienation and Revolution

In history, those members of the aristocracy and the church owned the means of production, and the
peasants worked for the aristocracy. With the onset of the Industrial Revolution, Marx thought that
he would see more of the working poor rise financially and socially. However, this did not
materialize.

In the industrial society, the aristocracy was replaced by the capitalists (also known as the
bourgeoisie). These were the people who owned businesses with the goal of earning a profit, and
the working class was replaced by the proletariat, the people who labored for wages.

Marx believed that this system was inherently unfair. Under capitalism, Marx believed that the
workers would become poorer and poorer and experience alienation. Alienation is seen as the
workers becoming more distanced from, or isolated from, their work, resulting in a feeling of
powerlessness.

To replace this alienation and extreme social class structure, Marx believed that capitalism had to
end and be replaced by a socialist system that would make all equal and have all people's needs
met.

In his work with Fredrick Engels, The Communist Manifesto, Marx stated, ''The proletarians have
nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.'' Thus, Marx had called for a workers'
revolution where the proletarians would rise up against the bourgeoisie, overthrowing capitalism. To
Marx's despair, though, such revolutions occurred in various countries such as Russia and China,
but did not occur in the more industrialized nations of the time, like Britain and Germany.

Mode, Means, and Relations of Production

Marx used the term mode of production to refer to the specific organization of economic

production in a given society. A mode of production includes the means of production

used by a given society, such as factories and other facilities, machines, and raw

materials. It also includes labor and the organization of the labor force. The term

relations of production refers to the relationship between those who own the means of

production (the capitalists or bourgeoisie) and those who do not (the workers or the
proletariat). According to Marx, history evolves through the interaction between the

mode of production and the relations of production. The mode of production constantly

evolves toward a realization of its fullest productive capacity, but this evolution creates

antagonisms between the classes of people defined by the relations of production—

owners and workers.

Capitalism is a mode of production based on private ownership of the means of

production. Capitalists produce commodities for the exchange market and to stay

competitive must extract as much labor from the workers as possible at the lowest

possible cost. The economic interest of the capitalist is to pay the worker as little as

possible, in fact just enough to keep him alive and productive. The workers, in turn,

come to understand that their economic interest lies in preventing the capitalist from

exploiting them in this way. As this example shows, the social relations of production

are inherently antagonistic, giving rise to a class struggle that Marx believes will lead to

the overthrow of capitalism by the proletariat. The proletariat will replace the capitalist

mode of production with a mode of production based on the collective ownership of the

means of production, which is called Communism.

Alienation
In his early writings, which are more philosophical than economic, Marx describes how

the worker under a capitalist mode of production becomes estranged from himself, from

his work, and from other workers. Drawing on Hegel, Marx argues that labor is central to

a human being’s self-conception and sense of well-being. By working on and

transforming objective matter into sustenance and objects of use-value, human beings

meet the needs of existence and come to see themselves externalized in the world.

Labor is as much an act of personal creation and a projection of one’s identity as it is a

means of survival. However, capitalism, the system of private ownership of the means

of production, deprives human beings of this essential source of self-worth and identity.

The worker approaches work only as a means of survival and derives none of the other

personal satisfactions of work because the products of his labor do not belong to him.

These products are instead expropriated by capitalists and sold for profit.

In capitalism, the worker, who is alienated or estranged from the products he creates, is

also estranged from the process of production, which he regards only as a means of

survival. Estranged from the production process, the worker is therefore also estranged

from his or her own humanity, since the transformation of nature into useful objects is

one of the fundamental facets of the human condition. The worker is thus alienated from

his or her “species being”—from what it is to be human. Finally, the capitalist mode of

production alienates human beings from other human beings. Deprived of the

satisfaction that comes with owning the product of one’s labor, the worker regards the

capitalist as external and hostile. The alienation of the worker from his work and of the

worker from capitalists forms the basis of the antagonistic social relationship that will

eventually lead to the overthrow of capitalism.

Historical Materialism
As noted previously, the writings of the German idealist philosopher Hegel had a

profound impact on Marx and other philosophers of his generation. Hegel elaborated a

dialectical view of human consciousness as a process of evolution from simple to more

complex categories of thought. According to Hegel, human thought has evolved from

very basic attempts to grasp the nature of objects to higher forms of abstract thought

and self-awareness. History evolves through a similar dialectical process, whereby the

contradictions of a given age give rise to a new age based on a smoothing over of these
contradictions. Marx developed a view of history similar to Hegel’s, but the main

difference between Marx and Hegel is that Hegel is an idealist and Marx is a materialist.

In other words, Hegel believed that ideas are the primary mode in which human beings

relate to the world and that history can be understood in terms of the ideas that define

each successive historical age. Marx, on the other hand, believed that the fundamental

truth about a particular society or period in history is how that society is organized to

satisfy material needs. Whereas Hegel saw history as a succession of ideas and a

working out of contradictions on a conceptual level, Marx saw history as a succession of

economic systems or modes of production, each one organized to satisfy human

material needs but giving rise to antagonisms between different classes of people,

leading to the creation of new societies in an evolving pattern.

The Labor Theory of Value

The labor theory of value states that the value of a commodity is determined by the

amount of labor that went into producing it (and not, for instance, by the fluctuating

relationship of supply and demand). Marx defines a commodity as an external object

that satisfies wants or needs and distinguishes between two different kinds of value that

can be attributed to it. Commodities have a use-value that consists of their capacity to

satisfy such wants and needs. For the purposes of economic exchange, they have an

exchange-value, their value in relation to other commodities on the market, which is

measured in terms of money. Marx asserts that in order to determine the relative worth

of extremely different commodities with different use-values, exchange-value, or

monetary value, must be measurable in terms of a property common to all such

commodities. The only thing that all commodities have in common is that they are a

product of labor. Therefore, the value of a commodity in a market represents the

amount of labor that went into its production.

The labor theory is important in Marx’s work not because it gives special insight into the

nature of prices (economists today do not use this theory to explain why commodities

are priced as they are) but because it forms the foundation of Marx’s notion of

exploitation. In the simplest form of exchange, people produce commodities and sell

them so that they can buy other commodities to satisfy their own needs and wants. In

such exchanges, money is only the common medium that allows transactions to take

place. Capitalists, in contrast, are motivated not by a need for commodities but by a

desire to accumulate money. Capitalists take advantage of their power to set wages and

working hours to extract the greatest amount of labor from workers at the lowest

possible cost, selling the products of the workers at a higher price than the capitalists

paid for them. Rather than buy or sell products at their true exchange-value, as

determined by the labor that went into making them, capitalists enrich themselves by

extracting a “surplus-value” from their laborers—in other words, exploiting them. Marx

pointed to the abject poverty of industrial workers in places like Manchester for proof of

the destructive effects of this exploitative relationship.

Commodity Fetishism
The word fetish refers to any object that people fixate on or are fascinated by and that

keeps them from seeing the truth. According to Marx, when people try to understand the

world in which they live, they fixate on money—who has it, how is it acquired, how is it

spent—or they fixate on commodities, trying to understand economics as a matter of

what it costs to make or to buy a product, what the demand for a product is, and so on.

Marx believed that commodities and money are fetishes that prevent people from

seeing the truth about economics and society: that one class of people is exploiting

another. In capitalism, the production of commodities is based on an exploitative

economic relationship between owners of factories and the workers who produce the
commodities. In everyday life, we think only of the market value of a commodity—in

other words, its price. But this monetary value simultaneously depends on and masks

the fact that someone was exploited to make that commodity.

The concept of commodity fetishism applies both to the perceptions of normal people in

everyday life and to the formal study of economics. Economists, both then and now,

study the economy in terms of the movements of money, goods, and prices, which is

essentially the point of view of the corporation. From this point of view, the social

dimension of economic life is considered unscientific and unworthy of discussion. Marx

argues that this commodity fetishism allows capitalists to carry on with day-to-day affairs

of a capitalist mode of production without having to confront the real implications of the

system of exploitation on which they depend.