The Central Aspect of Marxism

[SEKT]

I have a question for you, since the "young" Marx was more interested in alienation than something we can call the "old" Marx which analysis of material conditions of capitalism was amazing which is in your opinion the central aspect of Marxism (alienation or the material conditions of human being under capitalism)? and Why?

[Holden Caulfield]

material conditions, which are the cause behind almost everything,
and are what we analyse to make our theories

[Dean]

Alienation applies to the root causes behind all the dynamics he describes. Clearly, alienation is a central theme to all serious communists and psychologists, and this is certainly also true for Marx.

[trivas7]

As a theorist Marx was most interested in understanding the capitalist mode of production. It's not exactly accurate to say he was interested in the "material conditions" of capitalism -- a word he rarely uses. He was interested in what he describes as the laws of motion of the captalist mode of production, we would call it a scientific understanding of capitalism.

[Lamanov]

What do you mean by "Marxism"?

[MarxSchmarx]

Central Aspect of Marxism

Alienation
Material Conditions
Other (Specify in your comment)
Doesn't surplus value (THE central aspect of Marxism) entail both material conditions AND alienation:confused:

[Decolonize The Left]

Doesn't surplus value (THE central aspect of Marxism) entail both material conditions AND alienation:confused:

This is all terribly confusing. We will need either more options, or better phrasing for the one's present...

- August

[Holden Caulfield]

surly one causes the other though...

[Winter]

Alienation applies to the root causes behind all the dynamics he describes. Clearly, alienation is a central theme to all serious communists and psychologists, and this is certainly also true for Marx.

Agreed. Class struggle is caused by alienation and lack of solidarity within classes, specifically the working class. If there were no alienation would there be a need for Marxism?

[trivas7]

Agreed. Class struggle is caused by alienation and lack of solidarity within classes, specifically the working class. If there were no alienation would there be a need for Marxism?
Dialectically everything is related to everything else so, yes, I take your point (but "caused" is too mechanical iMO. Human beings aren't billiard balls).

[Malakangga]

i choose material conditions

[gla22]

The are both essential to Marxism. Material conditions, Alienation, and dialectics are all essential parts to Marxism.

[Saorsa]

Definitely the Marxist theory of value, and surplus-value in particular. Everything rests on that.

[CuteCommie]

Dialectically everything is related to everything else so, yes, I take your point (but "caused" is too mechanical iMO. Human beings aren't billiard balls).

:lol:

Okay. Explain to be how a lemon and my car keys are dialectically related.

Explain how the numbers 3 and 777 are dialectically related.

Explain how this smiley :lol: and this smiley :rolleyes: are dialectically related.

[trivas7]

Definitely the Marxist theory of value, and surplus-value in particular. Everything rests on that.
Different labor theories of value prevailed amongst classical economists through to the mid-19th century but they were especially associated with Adam Smith and David Ricardo before Marx.

[Comrade Castro]

i'd say material conditions although aren't those the effect of alienation?

[CuteCommie]

Uhh...historical materialism?

[shorelinetrance]

equally important.

[Niccolò Rossi]

"Material Conditions" is not an "aspect" of Marxism. Alienation on the other hand is a very very important aspect, however not what I would call "the" central aspect either ( this is in part due to the controversy surrounding the matter).

I would say that Class Struggle is the central aspect of Marxism, despite the fact that Alienation precedes it and historical materialism is drawn from.

[trivas7]

i'd say material conditions although aren't those the effect of alienation?

"Material Conditions" is not an "aspect" of Marxism. Alienation on the other hand is a very very important aspect, however not what I would call "the" central aspect either ( this is in part due to the controversy surrounding the matter).

I would say that Class Struggle is the central aspect of Marxism, despite the fact that Alienation precedes it and historical materialism is drawn from.
Just the opposite; alienation as psychology is the effect -- not the cause -- of historically mediated social reality.

But, yes, class struggle -- the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat -- is central to Marxism. I hesitate to say that Marxism endures as either a philosophy or as an economic doctrine.

[Niccolò Rossi]

Just the opposite; alienation as psychology is the effect -- not the cause -- of historically mediated social reality.

This is correct and I am not saying otherwise. What I am saying is that alienation serves as the basis of the class struggle, but not of "historically mediated social reality".

A question to ask is: Why do classes struggle? The answer: their interests are diametrically opposed. But what then constitutes these "interests"?

Marx and Engels had this to say in The Holy Family:


Proletariat and wealth are opposites; as such they form a single whole. They are both creations of the world of private property. The question is exactly what place each occupies in the antithesis. It is not sufficient to declare them two sides of a single whole.

Private property as private property, as wealth, is compelled to maintain itself, and thereby its opposite, the proletariat, in existence. That is the positive side of the antithesis, self-satisfied private property.

The proletariat, on the contrary, is compelled as proletariat to abolish itself and thereby its opposite, private property, which determines its existence, and which makes it proletariat. It is the negative side of the antithesis, its restlessness within its very self, dissolved and self-dissolving private property.

The propertied class and the class of the proletariat present the same human self-estrangement [The term used here is Selbstentfremdung]. But the former class feels at ease and strengthened in this self-estrangement, it recognizes estrangement as its own power and has in it the semblance of a human existence. The class of the proletariat feels annihilated in estrangement; it sees in it its own powerlessness and the reality of an inhuman existence. It is, to use an expression of Hegel, in its abasement the indignation at that abasement, an indignation to which it is necessarily driven by the contradiction between its human nature and its condition of life, which is the outright, resolute and comprehensive negation of that nature.

Within this antithesis the private property-owner is therefore the conservative side, the proletarian the destructive side. From the former arises the action of preserving the antithesis, from the latter the action of annihilating it.

[Tower of Bebel]

According to Lenin (State and Revolution (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch02.htm#s3)) the dictatorship of the proletariat is the central aspect of marxism:



"And now as to myself, no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Long before me bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class struggle and bourgeois economists, the economic anatomy of classes. What I did that was new was to prove: (1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with the particular, historical phases in the development of production (historische Entwicklungsphasen der Produktion), (2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat, (3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society."[5] (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch02.htm#fw05)
In these words, Marx succeeded in expressing with striking clarity, first, the chief and radical difference between his theory and that of the foremost and most profound thinkers of the bourgeoisie; and, secondly, the essence of his theory of the state.
It is often said and written that the main point in Marx's theory is the class struggle. But this is wrong. And this wrong notion very often results in an opportunist distortion of Marxism and its falsification in a spirit acceptable to the bourgeoisie. For the theory of the class struggle was created not by Marx, but by the bourgeoisie before Marx, and, generally speaking, it is acceptable to the bourgeoisie. Those who recognize only the class struggle are not yet Marxists; they may be found to be still within the bounds of bourgeois thinking and bourgeois politics. To confine Marxism to the theory of the class struggle means curtailing Marxism, distorting it, reducing it to something acceptable to the bourgeoisie. Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. That is what constitutes the most profound distinction between the Marxist and the ordinary petty (as well as big) bourgeois. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism should be tested. And it is not surprising that when the history of Europe brought the working class face to face with this question as a practical issue, not only all the opportunists and reformists, but all the Kautskyites (people who vacillate between reformism and Marxism) proved to be miserable philistines and petty-bourgeois democrats repudiating the dictatorship of the proletariat. Kautsky's pamphlet, The Dictatorship of the Proletariat, published in August 1918, i.e., long after the first edition of the present book, is a perfect example of petty-bourgeois distortion of Marxism and base renunciation of it in deeds, while hypocritically recognizing it in words (see my pamphlet, The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky, Petrograd and Moscow, 1918).

[Die Neue Zeit]

Perhaps you're correct. After all, I keep hearing Lou Dobbs' "war on the middle class" mantra.

[Dystisis]

Lol, I am laughing at the poll options. Hmmm, I would say Material Conditions is the "central aspect" of Marxism. Adding that I do find Material Conditions to be the "central aspect" of the universe as well.

[redwinter]

"Marxism consists of thousands of truths, but they all boil down to one phrase: 'It's right to rebel.'" - Mao Tsetung, "Speech at a Meeting of All Circle in Yenan in Celebration of Stalin's Sixtieth Birthday" (December 21, 1939).

[Die Neue Zeit]

Comrades Rakunin and Zeitgeist, I retract my statement above and must disagree with Lenin. The "dictatorship of the proletariat" is alas, merely the culmination of dem Klassenkampf, and may be independent of "socialist ideology" (particularly social-abolitionism).

The central aspect of "Marxism" is, in its true founder's own words, "the merger of socialism and the worker movement."



EDIT: Furthermore, with all the bourgeois clap-trap about "no class conflict," "lib'ral class warfare" (as if they're trying to portray class struggle as a myth), etc., I think it is time that "pro-merger" revolutionary leftists (as opposed to the "propagandists of the deed" and similar hooligans) appropriate the concept known as Der Klassenkampf.