Ryder Holmes Wilson HUM 144 / Harjes Oct 23, 2012 The Morality of Materialism Karl Marx would

have fit right in with the identity theorists of the 20th century, who believed all experience could be distilled to physical activity in the body. Marx's economic theory and central philosophy mirrors this conception of the world. He summarizes his materialist ideology in his selfreflection on his opinions, The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political, and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness."1 These two sentences unambiguously assert Marx's view that our minds and experiences are just a product of the material behavior of the world, which determines his description of history, economy, and justice. A significant portion of Marx's writing is an attempt to describe the history of economy and the development of capitalism. As he states in the first sentence of his Communist Manifesto, "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles."2 The nature of the classes has differed, but the struggle has not changed significantly. Since the beginning of written history, Marx supposed the chief struggle to have been between a ruling class, be that patriarchy, feudal reign, or the capitalist bourgeoisie, and a subordinate, laboring class of serfs, slaves, or the proletarians. These were not the only classes, but these particular conflicts have dominated most of history -- except perhaps the revolution of the bourgeoisie over the aristocracy which birthed capitalism. He celebrates its victory while at once critiquing and marching towards the newest class revolution of the proletarians to end all classes. All these struggles, however, are material struggles: the poverty of the working class against the gluttony of the ruling class. Everywhere in Marx's time were putrid factories with starvation and disease in the shadow of the enormous prosperity of the capitalists the misery was so clearly the result of material inequality that he could not ponder any other cause.

Marx's description of capitalism further elucidates his materialist conception of the world. He turns everything into a commodity, a useful object to be traded, including labor time. In the beginning of his critique of capitalism: "Labor power is, therefore, a commodity which its possessor, the wageworker, sells to capital."3 The skill and efficiency of a worker can merely be explained in terms of the amount of hours he or she has trained that craft with and their relative productiveness compared to the average labor power. The nature of capitalism is the trade of capital, which he defines as consisting of "...raw materials, instruments of labour and means of subsistence of all kinds, which are utilised in order to produce new raw materials, new instruments of labour and new means of subsistence."4 Capitalism is therefore a circular, self-propagating system of commodities. He elaborates again: Products are therefore not only results, but also essential conditions of labor.5 Labor is transformed into capital and then capital transforms into a new kind of labor. Human productivity is a closed loop of these material processes of this economic and political system. Capitalism, moreover, is a means of exploitation of one class over another: It is only domination of accumulated, past, materialised labour over direct, living labour that turns accumulated labour into capital6 The capitalist dominates the proletarian with his wealth; he suggests the farm owner paying a worker five silver groschen for an hour's labor that produces ten silver groschen worth of value in crops7. The farmer capitalizes on the worker's labor with his accrued wealth (his farm) and gains twice the benefit out of the transaction than the worker. This concept of domination inspires concerns of morality, which permeate Marx's entire philosophy. His deep-rooted materialism is not an abandonment of morality or spirituality, but merely a definition of them. His critique of capitalism is the critique of the uneven distribution of wealth it produces, contrasting with the moral supremacy of his communism with the fairness of its distribution. Marx endorsed a kind of material utilitarianism: the most moral system is one that contents the greatest number of people with the available material conditions. And since labor power is a commodity, depriving a person of her time is a deprivation of their possessions. Hence, Marx's most moral system of communism does not advocate a certain mental

disposition such as loyalty, lawfulness, or generosity, but rather merely the abolition of private property, so one person does not own another to any degree and the material conditions of life (including free time) may be more evenly distributed across humanity. Justice is thus whatever instantiates this emancipation from material inequality. He espouses this viewpoint with his inaugural address to the Working Men's Assocation, describing misery with statistics and the number of grains of carbon and nitrogen "sufficient to avert starvation diseases"8. He scornfully highlights England as a center of industrial exploitation with the logic of class struggle and concrete numbers, and celebrates the humanist Ten Hours' Bill as an economic victory over the middle class. His rhetoric is relatively devoid of abstract inspiration and communistic language, rather it is focused on the material world which is so thoroughly unfair and in need of revolution. It is likely the idealistic tinge of the Manifesto which preceded this address had been significantly affected by Engel, who perhaps did not share such an extreme materialism. The whole of Marx's work is saturated with a material focus, and though the morality that underscores this philosophy should not be neglected, his central thesis of experience as quoted in the introduction does seem somewhat contemptible and superficial. Is man not more than his material life? What would Marx say to the placebo, clear proof that human will can affect one's body? Though Marx claims to elate the artistic expression of a creative worker and the individuality of each person, much preferred to the automation and conformity of modern industry, what material condition is the subject of this elation? Perhaps it is the revolution of the human spirit over the material, what would be the falsification of Marx's central thesis of man, that which transforms worker to artist that Marx so apotheosizes. Despite concerns of these inconsistencies, Marx's philosophy has great pertinence to today, where in the grand global scheme, very little has changed since the 19th century. The middle class (or the petty bourgeoisie as Marx would call it) has expanded greatly, the greatest population of many industrialized countries. Their misery surely has decreased since olden days, with the inventions of

science and new, fairer labor laws. But it is merely the case that others have been burdened by labor; many countries of Latin America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East are burgeoning with the toil of sweat shops, dangerous factories, and sprawling plantations to produce the clothes we wear, the toys we play with, and the fruit we enjoy. To read Marx without cognizing this fact would be to miss one of his greatest points: humanity has always had its struggles, and with every revolution comes both relief from these struggles and brand new difficulties for the world. It is easy for Americans to believe the world has progressed significantly thanks to capitalism, but this is because the American proletariat has wrested so much from the bourgeoisie that they have become bourgeoisie themselves to a degree, and have only transferred our struggle to different peoples. There are likely more miserable souls in the world than there have ever been, merely due to the unfathomable scope of our copious reproduction, and so Marx's moral philosophy has more necessity than ever in bettering the world.

Citations Marx, K., Engels, F., & Tucker, R. C. (1978). The Marx-Engels Reader 2nd Edition. New York: Norton. 1: Marx On the History of His Opinions, pg 4 2: The Communist Manifesto, pg 473 3: The Critique of Capitalism, pg 204 4: The Critique of Capitalism, pg 207 5: The Critique of Capitalism, pg 347 6 & 7: The Critique of Capitalism, pg 209 8: Inaugural Address of the Working Men's International Association, pg 513