How does Marxism work?

[commie 13]

Im not very bright on the subject, so can someone please explain how Marxism works?

[Muzk]

Before reading: yes I was bored and I didn't clearly understand the question

Marxism is a political, economical and philosophical "school" "founded" by Marx & Engels. (In case you didn't know, and that's also why marxists are sometimes refered to as "students of Marx").

As for the political part, or to be more accurate, "socialist" political part, Marx and Engels laid the foundations of a theory of how a future socialist and later communist society has to be run. On top of that this also involves their theories on how to overthrow the current system, capitalism.

One part of it is the observation of the class struggle. Since capitalism is divided into 2 classes, workers and capitalists, with different interests, there will always be an inherent struggle.


The economical side of Marxism involves the criticism of the current capitalist system of economics. There are three points that distinguish capitalism from past and future societies (feudalism and socialism), which are:

1. Goods are mainly produced for the market, for profit. This causes the "anarchy of production", you can't always entirely know if you'll always sell 100% of the products you have produced - which is one of the factors of a crisis, since capitalists tend to always overproduce (as seen by the tonnes of grain that are thrown into the ocean each year)

2. Capital tends to monopolize into the hands of a few(through competition)

3. Men can now be bought too. Modern slavery, although it's hidden behind this awesome word "labour power"


The philosophical part is "historical materialism".

This can be summed up by the first line of the communist manifesto:

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Which means that class struggle, which is inherent to all societies with some sort of classes, is the driving force of human development. (In terms of political, economical systems, but it also plays a factor in technology etc.)

Moar here: http://marxists.org/subject/students/index.htm

[Zanthorus]

Marxism is more a method, a way of looking at and understanding the world, than a social system.

Are you asking how a communist society would work, or do you want to know about the Marxist understanding of how capitalism works?

[Muzk]

Or did you mean how does communism work? You must always distinguish between marxism, communism, socialism, leninism etc. XD

The encyclopedia of Marxism can be a good help here (http://marxists.org/glossary/index.htm)

[A.R.Amistad]

the understanding of historical materialism is the key to Marxist understanding.

[Nikolay]

the understanding of historical materialism is the key to Marxist understanding.

Sorry for high jacking this thread, but where can I find a good read on Historial Materialism?

[Broletariat]

Sorry for high hacking this thread, but where can I find a good read on Historial Materialism?


This is the selection I see typically recommended

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-cyril/works/articles/cyril_01.htm

http://marxmyths.org/peter-stillman/article.htm

They were both good reads metinks

[Zanthorus]

As for the political part, or to be more accurate, "socialist" political part, Marx and Engels laid the foundations of a theory of how a future socialist and later communist society has to be run.

This is not quite true. Most of the ideas put forward by Marx and Engels for how the future society would run - the abolition of wage-labour, abolition of individual enterprises, withering away of the state - were originally proclaimed by the utopian socialists. What distuinguishes Marx is that instead of dividing society into two parts, one of which is superior to the other, he grasps these demands as immanent within capitalism and the struggle of the working class against capital. Instead of being the work of this or that would-be world reformer communism is a product of the conditions brought about by capitalism, which simultaneously cuts it's own foundations out from under it's own feet and creates it's own grave-diggers.


This is the selection I see typically recommended

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-cyril/works/articles/cyril_01.htm

http://marxmyths.org/peter-stillman/article.htm

They were both good reads metinks

I second this post :)

[commie 13]

Marxism is more a method, a way of looking at and understanding the world, than a social system.

Are you asking how a communist society would work, or do you want to know about the Marxist understanding of how capitalism works?

I want to know Marxist's understanding of how capitalism works And i believe i should have been more specific on the subject, I want to know how the political side worked.

[automattick]

Same as any other scientific methodology in that one must apply it.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I want to know Marxist's understanding of how capitalism works.

These are big questions and it would be best to read some Marx and then ask questions from there like "why does Marx mean about X" and so on.

But I will take a stab at a "big picture" explanation:

Capitalism: the important thing to know is that labor creates wealth in the marxist view (and in the original capitalist economists view as well). This is called the "labor theory of value" and it basically means that in order for raw materials be worth more than just the sum of their parts, labor must be applied. A piece of land is worth X, but if you apply labor to it and build a house, it is now worth significantly more than it was worth before. In capitalism, workers are paid a wage that is less than the value of the "worth" they are creating... the difference is where "profit" comes from.

While capitalism has created an incredible ability to produce things for people, the nature of capitalism means that production is not driven by what people want or need, but what can make a profit. That creates many problems such as "crisis of over-production" which caused, for example, construction of new homes to collapse. The problem with new homes was not that people stopped needing houses, the problem was that too many homes were being built at inflated prices and when they could no longer sell these, the prices fell and profits were lost. That caused banks to stop funding new housing developments and new homes to stop being built, construction firms fired people, the companies that rented trucks or sold wood to the housing contractors lost profits and so on... eventually resulting in a big crash.

Marxism argues that while it is great that humans have increased their ability to produce to a point where we can easily feed everyone in the world/build homes for them/manufacture ipods and computers for everyone, the way society is organized in the service of profits rather than human needs and wants is fundamentally wrong and produces problems of war, poverty, crime and so on. The system is also based on an opressive class system - in order to make profits for a small group of people who own "the means of production" (the fields, factories, and control the flow of money) most of us are paid a fraction of the value that we actually help produce.

What Marxism argues as an alternative is socialism: that people who do the labor (rather than getting a wage and having no say in what and how they are producing things) should be the ones who control that labor. Since labor is collective (people rarely sit down at their job and produce a car or ipod individually) Marxism says that decisions about labor and production should also be collective.

I hope that helped a little - maybe other people can go into more detail on specific aspects of a Marxist view of capitalism.

[Broletariat]

I think this topic will help you

http://www.revleft.com/vb/need-some-help-t137684/index.html

[commie 13]

These are big questions and it would be best to read some Marx and then ask questions from there like "why does Marx mean about X" and so on.

But I will take a stab at a "big picture" explanation:

Capitalism: the important thing to know is that labor creates wealth in the marxist view (and in the original capitalist economists view as well). This is called the "labor theory of value" and it basically means that in order for raw materials be worth more than just the sum of their parts, labor must be applied. A piece of land is worth X, but if you apply labor to it and build a house, it is now worth significantly more than it was worth before. In capitalism, workers are paid a wage that is less than the value of the "worth" they are creating... the difference is where "profit" comes from.

While capitalism has created an incredible ability to produce things for people, the nature of capitalism means that production is not driven by what people want or need, but what can make a profit. That creates many problems such as "crisis of over-production" which caused, for example, construction of new homes to collapse. The problem with new homes was not that people stopped needing houses, the problem was that too many homes were being built at inflated prices and when they could no longer sell these, the prices fell and profits were lost. That caused banks to stop funding new housing developments and new homes to stop being built, construction firms fired people, the companies that rented trucks or sold wood to the housing contractors lost profits and so on... eventually resulting in a big crash.

Marxism argues that while it is great that humans have increased their ability to produce to a point where we can easily feed everyone in the world/build homes for them/manufacture ipods and computers for everyone, the way society is organized in the service of profits rather than human needs and wants is fundamentally wrong and produces problems of war, poverty, crime and so on. The system is also based on an opressive class system - in order to make profits for a small group of people who own "the means of production" (the fields, factories, and control the flow of money) most of us are paid a fraction of the value that we actually help produce.

What Marxism argues as an alternative is socialism: that people who do the labor (rather than getting a wage and having no say in what and how they are producing things) should be the ones who control that labor. Since labor is collective (people rarely sit down at their job and produce a car or ipod individually) Marxism says that decisions about labor and production should also be collective.

I hope that helped a little - maybe other people can go into more detail on specific aspects of a Marxist view of capitalism.

well one thing i think i understand is if a person puts in labor to a product then however much he paid for that is how much he has earned. right?

[BAM]

This is the selection I see typically recommended

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-cyril/works/articles/cyril_01.htm

http://marxmyths.org/peter-stillman/article.htm

They were both good reads metinks

I third this post :)

[The Vegan Marxist]

well one thing i think i understand is if a person puts in labor to a product then however much he paid for that is how much he has earned. right?

Under Capitalism, as a worker, you are selling your labor practically in order for the Capitalist to gain surplus value (profit). Say you make a chair. You get paid $10 to make that chair - each chair. The Capitalist then sells that chair, which cost $10 to make, for $30, which three times more than the wage you were given to make it. Now, out of that $30, you get $10 again in order for you to remain making chairs, in which the Capitalist gains the rest that's left - $20 (double the wage the worker gets), which is surplus value. Human labor is used under the exploitation by the Capitalist against the worker, for the worker does not own the means of production (tools provided to work).

[commie 13]

I understand that. But is that all to Marxism?

[The Vegan Marxist]

I understand that. But is that all to Marxism?

Of course not. We're just giving you a simplistic overview on what Marxism pertains to. Go to the link that I provided for you on your public message board & start reading from there.

[A.R.Amistad]

This is the selection I see typically recommended

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-cyril/works/articles/cyril_01.htm

http://marxmyths.org/peter-stillman/article.htm

They were both good reads metinks

I didn't have time to read all of this, but are you suggesting that historical materialism is economic determinism? I don't think any serious historical materialist anymore is a "economic determinist."

The first article talks a bit about the "base/superstructure" thing, which is Althusser's creation not Marx's, Engels, Lenin's or anyone else's really.

[A.R.Amistad]

Sorry for high hacking this thread, but where can I find a good read on Historial Materialism?
http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01b.htm

[Broletariat]

I didn't have time to read all of this, but are you suggesting that historical materialism is economic determinism? I don't think any serious historical materialist anymore is a "economic determinist."

The first article talks a bit about the "base/superstructure" thing, which is Althusser's creation not Marx's, Engels, Lenin's or anyone else's really.


Oh no on the contrary, the article talks against economic determinism as far as I recall.

[A.R.Amistad]

Oh no on the contrary, the article talks against economic determinism as far as I recall.

thats good. I liked the second article OK (I certainly oppose "economic determinism" 100%, that was Kautsky's thing, and later Stalin's when he reverted the Comintern back to Kautskyan determinism.) But the first article seems as if Smith never read the German Ideology, particularly this chapter:

http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01b.htm

[A.R.Amistad]

Engels against economic determinism:
http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/letters/94_01_25.htm

[Zanthorus]

I didn't have time to read all of this, but are you suggesting that historical materialism is economic determinism? I don't think any serious historical materialist anymore is a "economic determinist."

The first article talks a bit about the "base/superstructure" thing, which is Althusser's creation not Marx's, Engels, Lenin's or anyone else's really.


thats good. I liked the second article OK (I certainly oppose "economic determinism" 100%, that was Kautsky's thing, and later Stalin's when he reverted the Comintern back to Kautskyan determinism.) But the first article seems as if Smith never read the German Ideology, particularly this chapter:

http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01b.htm

I think you missed the point of Smith's article which was that there is a long tradition of "Historical Materialists" who took it to mean that, to quote Robert Service, "any analysis of a country's politics [needs to be grounded] in it's economic conditions." Which to begin with is a poor interpretation of what Marx meant anyway and secondly it reduces the materialist conception of history to a purely sociological analysis. The point of the article is to stress the gulf between "historical materialism" and Marx's materialist conception of history. He does in fact quote from the German Ideology four times in the piece.

[BAM]

IThe first article talks a bit about the "base/superstructure" thing, which is Althusser's creation not Marx's, Engels, Lenin's or anyone else's really.

Base-superstructure is from Marx's Preface to the 1859 Critique of Political Economy. It was a metaphor used I think (though someone correct me if i am wrong) only once by Marx, but which was turned into a meta-theory of histroy, a kind of catch-all method of explaining away all of history. In fact, Marx just refers to those few paragraphs as a guiding thread of his studies. In his actual historical works, a much more nuanced and complex interaction of social forces is portrayed.

[Hit The North]

I don't know where the base-superstructure model has been elevated to a meta theory, but the Italian Marxist, Labriola gave it prominence in his excellent essays on Historical Materialism: http://www.marxists.org/archive/labriola/index.htm

I think the secret of the popularity of this metaphor is that it does in fact capture the truth of the relation between these spheres of social life, particularly in the capitalist mode of production where the need for accumulation does drive fundamental changes in the patterns of life and thought, and where all intellectual and cultural manifestations are transformed into commodities.

The reason Labriola's essays are worth reading is because of the way he articulates the complexity of the interaction (or dialectic) between base and superstucture. This is what Trotsky has say on his work:


“It was in my cell [in 1898] that I read with delight two well-known essays by an old Italian Hegelian-Marxist, Antonio Labriola, which reached the prison in a French translation. Unlike most Latin writers, Labriola had mastered the materialist dialectics, if not in politics – in which he was helpless – at least in the philosophy of history. The brilliant dilettantism of his exposition actually concealed a very profound insight. He made short work, and in marvellous style, of the theory of multiple factors which were supposed to dwell on the Olympus of history and rule our fates from there. http://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/l/a.htm#labriola-antonio

[BAM]

I don't know where the base-superstructure model has been elevated to a meta theory

yeah, maybe not the best choice of words, but it indeed did frame much of the debate particularly within academic Marxism and beyond over "relative autonomy" of the state, ideological state apparatuses, cultural hegemony, the media, and so on. Not so much now, I don't think. (Or maybe it still does. I'm not an academic so I don't know if it still applies there).


I think the secret of the popularity of this metaphor is that it does in fact capture the truth of the relation between these spheres of social life, particularly in the capitalist mode of production where the need for accumulation does drive fundamental changes in the patterns of life and thought, and where all intellectual and cultural manifestations are transformed into commodities.

I think in a very general sense it's true. Capitalist societies will evolve similar legal structures, certainly. I think that that's the spirit to take it, not building a huge theoretical edifice out of it like some have done.