Notes on Karl Marx

Notes on Karl Marx

Christian Perring, PhD

Marx wrote his Manifesto of the Communist Party with Friedrich Engels in 1848. So he was writing before John Stuart Mill wrote his major works of moral and political theory, and long before Sigmund Freud. Although many of the ideas in the Manifesto have been shown to be wrong, there are other ideas which are still worthy of serious consideration.

Marx suggests that one of the most insightful ways to understand history is to see it as a struggle between different classes of people. Earlier in history the struggles were between freeman and slaves, or lords and serfs. But he notes that as time has progressed, the most powerful class of people to emerge has been the bourgeoisie, which is made of businessmen and merchants. It is free trade and capitalism that have turned out to be the most powerful organizing forces of society. This was especially influenced by the Industrial Revolution.

Marx says that capitalism depends for its existence on constant improvements in technology which means that the whole of society is constantly changing under capitalism.

Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. (SPT, p. 169).

The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.

It is the bourgeoisie who created the large cities, thus transforming traditional rural life into modern urban life. Marx gives many examples of the technological changes that occurred within the hundred years before he wrote: Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground – what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour? (SPT, pp. 169-170.) This has all led to the creation of a working class, the proletariat. Marx thinks that it is inevitable in capitalism that the bosses exploit the workers. Children are put to work in factories, and workers are not paid a fair wage. Furthermore, as the work becomes increasingly mechanized, the role of humans becomes increasingly inhuman. [The proletarian] becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous , and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. (SPT, pp. 170-1) The workers start to become unhappy with their conditions and gradually they start to protest. First this is on an individual basis, and they resent the machines that they have to work on. Society becomes dominated by larger and larger businesses, and small businesses get swallowed by larger ones. Workers start to form unions and other similar groups.

Marx comes to the end of his piece with 10 main proposals.

Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.

6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in he hands of the state.

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.

10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc. (SPT, p. 178)

He believes that these will bring about an end to exploitation, and will make the workers free.