Karl Marx

Dialectics of Historical Change

Dialects is investigation of truths in philosophy. The dialectal method assumes that everything is under
constant change and only thing that is the final truth or universal or permanent is the constant change.
(This sounds paradoxical). And hence, there is nothing that is given. In contrast, there is opposing view in
philosophy that says that there are certain truths that are permanent (constant) and which do not change
and one of that is God. Dialectics of Nature written by Fredrick Engels, talks about this constant process
of change in the daily processes of nature. At the end of a process of change, a thing transforms itself into
its opposite. (Day becomes night, hot becomes cold, and so on)
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Materialism (Historical Materialism)

Materialism as a science argues that there is material basis for everything. That is, the people
make their lives in their routine productive activity. This productive activity is taken to be the central
business of human social life and around it more abstract concerns, such as law, religion, art, etc. cluster.
In the social production of their life, men (and women) enter into definite relations that are
indispensable and independent of their will. relations of production which correspond to a definite state
of the development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production
constitutes the economic structures of society, the real foundation, on which rise a legal and political
superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production
of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life processes in general. It is not the
consciousness of men that determines their being, on the contrary, their social being that determines
their consciousness (In preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy in 1859) by Karl
Marx).
Religion is the superstructure, that he calls is opium of the masses.
Know a person through his/her actions and not words as the true identity is in the material being (material
actions) and not in consciousness.
Marx has a materialist conception of History, where is makes human production to analysis of human life.
The history is interpreted through physical evidences found and not from the epical works written by
saints, etc. He argues that human beings make their own patterns of life. (A book called Mans Worldly
Goods by David Liberhan that is the materialist interpretation of history). This materialist thesis of history
is now widely and routinely accepted as a basis of social science except the religious fundamentalists of
all hue, Hindu, Muslim, Christian, etc.)

-Marx gave a philosophical and economic critique of the capitalist economic system, which was
the economic system of his time. The new industrial economic system was based on capitalism.
He uses his materialist philosophy to argue out that capitalism is not the final economic system
and it was not given. It is bound to change and move towards socialism. (Remember, socialism as
a philosophy had come into being in France with the work of Rousseau and then Saint-Simon
followers).
-Marxs critique of capitalist economic system is that in this system, the labour becomes a routine
factor of production and the workers labour is controlled by the others. Because of the division

of labour, work specialization, routinization of work, and the external control of labour, the
worker gets alienated from the product of his labour (that is alienated from the product he
makes). This leads to destruction of human creativity. And hence, worker becomes an element in
the capitalist production system. And hence, the labour goes to work for wages and not because
he/she identifies with this work. This alienation of worker from the work is the essence of
capitalist system of production. Also human beings are alienated from their species being as
capitalist social relations degrade the collective human creation of self and society. Thus, there is
an overall alienation that takes place in the system.
-But, this alienated labour in the capitalist system is not voluntary, but in a sense is forced.
(This alienation process, in the current world is addressed by law and order machinery. In the earlier forms
of society, it was the identity of individuals with the production system and by that with each other, that
kept society in stability. What we now call social controls.)
But, this alienation also frees the labour from societal controls. The labour becomes a free labour, not tied
to land or any asset. Labour becomes a proletariat (those earning from wages by selling their labour).
Proletariat having no other asset but their own labour power to sell.

-According to Marx, the production system in capitalism is social, that is through social division
of labour, (no one individual produces any single commodity or product), but the value produced
through labour is appropriated (taken by force) by individuals, that is by capitalists, the owners
of capital.

Marxs economic analysis, that is analysis of economic dynamic of capitalism. The main features are:
I.
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IV.
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VII.

VIII.

IX.
X.

Capitalism is historically novel because in it the production is oriented not to the satisfaction of
social or human needs but to the requirements of the market exchange of commodities.
Each commodity has a use value (the function of commodity) and exchange value (the value of
commodity in market).
Value is created by expenditure of labour (like Adam Smith).
In a day, the labourer sells his labour (calls labour power) at the market price produces a surplus
over his replacement needs.
A labour (worker) sells his power to labour and hence it is the labour power that has value and
not the worker who has value.
A labourer (worker) gets the price for his labour power that is just enough to provide the
labourers conditions of existence (food, housing, basic welfare, and so on).
The labourer gets the wages that are much lower than the value created by the labour power of
that labourer. That is, the labourer creates value, over and above value required to subsist that
labour.
The additional value created by the labour in this process is called surplus value of labour and
that is the basis of profit in a market place, which is earned by the capitalist, one who deploys
capital in the production system.
The capitalist system therefore is inherently exploitative. Ratio between labour necessary to
reproduce labour (called necessary labour) and surplus labour, is called the rate of exploitation.
Capitalist system is competitive and thus technically innovative. In the process, the system
reaches a stage where the technical innovations lead to more and more deployment of capital

XI.

XII.

and becomes capital-intensive. The labour is replaced by capital. On one hand, the addition of
surplus value of labour decreases by this and hence the profits fall. On the other hand, the
labour are squeezed and their wages (value given to the labour) fall due to surplus labour in the
market. It leads to reduction in purchasing power of commodities by the labour. This leads to a
situation of overproduction in the capitalist system.
This leads to fall in wages, closure of factories, production decline and thus depression. The
great depression of the thirties is the result of the over production in the capitalist system. This
overproduction leads to capitalist seeking newer and newer market (which the colonialists did
through capture of the third world). By the First World War, the globe was divided by the
colonialists in their colonies. Germany was the new entrant in the capitalist system by early 20th
century. And so was Japan. To be able to have a share of the global cake of colonial countries,
Germany wages the Second World War, under the leadership of Hitler.Todays system is also a
crises of global capitalism.
There is overproduction of various goods and services, including food, but, there are no buyers.
People do not have adequate wages to buy even food, which leads to hunger deaths in many
parts of the world. Todays technology has reached a stage that it can produce everything in
abundance, but, the economic system is such that there are no adequate buyers of these goods.
(Hence, the system of privatisation in services, e.g. of water supply, sanitation, etc. in cities,
would lead to situation where there would be no buyers of these goods)
The crises in capitalism on the other hand causes misery for the proletariat, which fosters class
consciousness in them and which would ultimately lead them to organising to over throw
capitalism.
The basic contradiction in the capitalist system is, as mentioned, the production is social but, the
profits and property ownership is private. Through organisation, the labour would overthrow
such a system and remove this contradiction, and create a system where there is no private
ownership of property.

Marxian view of state, party and revolution

Each dominant economic class of any system, has the state through its law and machinery,
working in the benefit of the dominant economic class. And the ideology or the theory of that dominant
economic class becomes the ideology or the theory of the state. This is why, in the pre-industrial periods,
the feudal classes and then the mercantile classes had theories to support their dominance. Which, Adam
Smith overturned and whose theory the rising industrial class made their own.
Thus, executive of the modern state is a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole
bourgeoisie. State is a machine in the hands of the few wealthy to oppress the majority in the process of
appropriation (taking by force) the benefits produced by the majority. Lenin, the father Russian Bolshevik
Revolution gave this theory of state and used the same in establishing proletarian state in Russia. It is
argued that the overthrowing of the bourgeois state is the only way to establish a state of the proletariat.
And this overthrowing of bourgeois state would be necessarily violent. (Overthrowing of feudal state in
France was through French Revolution, that established the power of industrial capital over the feudal
lords). The theory of state gets the name Marxism-Leninism, implemented in a new way in China by Maotse-tung.
Impact of Marxism

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ii.
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vii.

viii.

This Marxist approach to analyse a societal system is something that is new and has captured
the social scientists. That is, looking at the system as a whole and analysing the society from the
perspective of class analysis. The system of exploitation as inherent in the capitalist system is
the beginning of the economic analysis of a society.
Role of state was what has gripped the planners. Only in socialist countries, the cities are
planned as the way planners have planned.
The middle path between socialist state and capitalist state is the welfare state where the state
acts as a welfare distributing mechanism, thereby capitalist keeping the control of state and
thereby over the private property whereas ensuring that the labour are not pushed to such a
stage of penury that they organise on class lines to over throw the state.
Marxs work encompasses a body of social scientific ideas and related subsequent social
movements. Social movements often do not take place spontaneously. Leaders, that is,
subjective forces are required for any social movement to take place. An organisation is required
to carry out social movement. The leaders and cadres in such organisation come with this new
understanding of the social reality, the reality of exploitation, that leads to a social movement.
Marxism has been a very powerful ideology that has attracted the oppressed, the Third World
Countries (all national liberation struggles in the third world were led by leaders influenced by
Marxist ideology of socialism and communism), the labour movements, and even womens
movement. Within each movement, womens movement, environmental movement, which has
led to changes in development paradigm globally, there is a very strong presence of Marxists.
Academics, throughout the world, especially in Europe and the Third World, have been
influenced by these ideas. A stream of social scientists, called the structuralists emerge from the
Marxist school of thought.
Theories of imperialism as highest stage of capitalism were mounted by the Marxists. It is from
this understanding, theories of finance capital and current global economic system comes.
From here emerges the core-periphery theories in global development.
Theories for analysing cities, the primate cities, the global cities, settlement hierarchy, and city
planning efforts, are all Marxist legacy (much as we may not like to acknowledge it).