202 Cinco de Mayos ago, one of the world's most prominent and influential thinkers was born. You may know him from his famed Manifesto, or from Assassin's Creed: Syndicate, but did you know that he wrote a very nice letter to Abraham Lincoln? Did you know he has a very mediocre Chinese cartoon done in anime style?
Yes, it's your old bushy bearded friend Karl, a man whose last name has been appended to a billion things to justify or villify anything and everything. A man whose ideas have apparently somehow ruined western civilization through "cultural Marxism", a thing that doesn't exist but totally should. Hoary Karl is considered by many to be the father of modern socialism, though socialism as a concept predates him and there are many strands aside from those in the Marxian maelstrom that have emerged since his time. Marx is not Joseph Stalin, nor is he Bernie Sanders. Who is this intriguing fellow with a massive mane? And why make a thread for his 202nd birthday? (Mostly because people kept asking me to do it)
Young Karl was once a member of the Young Hegelians, a group of big brained radical youths obsessed with Hegel, as all college students are. Though Hegel himself never actually used the famed thesis-antithesis-synthesis model of dialectics that everyone calls "Hegelian dialectics", Marx ended up influenced by Hegelian ideas but in reverse. I'll let Karl explain:
In short, what Marx (and his best bro and financier Engels) came to develop was a system known as dialectical materialism, which is integral to the concept of historical materialism. According to this view, the basis of society is its material conditions - the stuff that makes it up, how its organized, who owns and operates it, and so forth. To put it extremely simply and somewhat inarticulatetly, societal changes occur in the long run due to clashes between opposing forces over material problems. This clash forms a new result. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis.
Marxism, as we call it, is not a political program but an analytical method and body of theory for analyzing how society and economics are intertwined, with a particular focus on capitalism, the present world system. In Marxist thought, capitalism is a system wherein one class (the bourgeoisie) owns the means of production which are worked by another class (the proletariat). The ownership of the material base of society gives the bourgeoisie the upper hand, causing all societies in which they have the top economic power to be in some fashion a "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie". Marx was very impressed by the bourgeoisie and considered them to be a historically progressive force, compared to the likes of aristocrats and feudalism - but, he thought, given enough time, the contradictions within their preferred economic system would be their own ruin. The competition made necessary by markets would drive the bourgeoisie to continual degredation of the conditions of the workers and to the most ravenous business practices; it would create a "metabolic rift" in the ecosystem; it would lead to the ensnaring of the whole world economy in its eternal drive for new markets; the rate of profit would tend to fall over time; and ultimately, the class struggle between worker and owner would become so unsustainable that the whole thing would break down and the workers would revolt. Victory was not guaranteed (he said it was a few times, but that was more to stir up people's spirits), and ruin might be the result, but if the workers succeeded in taking control - then the world would be theirs, and they would be free to build a democratic society where they ruled for themselves and produced for themselves.
So if you have some downtime (and I know you do - we're all quarantined) and you're interested to hear what one of modern history's most important thinkers has to say, why not give him a try? There's the Communist Manifesto, of course - a quick read that hits the basic points. Or his biggest work, Capital, for which you might want to check out a guide like David Harvey's to help get you through it. But please make note - he wasn't a prophet. He got stuff wrong. Marxists don't worship him or treat his writings as scripture. And plenty of Marxists have developed theories that go further beyond his own. He was, like all people, a product of his time and the material conditions that prevailed. But he still remains prescient today, perhaps now more than any time in decades.
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it."
Yes, it's your old bushy bearded friend Karl, a man whose last name has been appended to a billion things to justify or villify anything and everything. A man whose ideas have apparently somehow ruined western civilization through "cultural Marxism", a thing that doesn't exist but totally should. Hoary Karl is considered by many to be the father of modern socialism, though socialism as a concept predates him and there are many strands aside from those in the Marxian maelstrom that have emerged since his time. Marx is not Joseph Stalin, nor is he Bernie Sanders. Who is this intriguing fellow with a massive mane? And why make a thread for his 202nd birthday? (Mostly because people kept asking me to do it)
Young Karl was once a member of the Young Hegelians, a group of big brained radical youths obsessed with Hegel, as all college students are. Though Hegel himself never actually used the famed thesis-antithesis-synthesis model of dialectics that everyone calls "Hegelian dialectics", Marx ended up influenced by Hegelian ideas but in reverse. I'll let Karl explain:
In short, what Marx (and his best bro and financier Engels) came to develop was a system known as dialectical materialism, which is integral to the concept of historical materialism. According to this view, the basis of society is its material conditions - the stuff that makes it up, how its organized, who owns and operates it, and so forth. To put it extremely simply and somewhat inarticulatetly, societal changes occur in the long run due to clashes between opposing forces over material problems. This clash forms a new result. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis.
Marxism, as we call it, is not a political program but an analytical method and body of theory for analyzing how society and economics are intertwined, with a particular focus on capitalism, the present world system. In Marxist thought, capitalism is a system wherein one class (the bourgeoisie) owns the means of production which are worked by another class (the proletariat). The ownership of the material base of society gives the bourgeoisie the upper hand, causing all societies in which they have the top economic power to be in some fashion a "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie". Marx was very impressed by the bourgeoisie and considered them to be a historically progressive force, compared to the likes of aristocrats and feudalism - but, he thought, given enough time, the contradictions within their preferred economic system would be their own ruin. The competition made necessary by markets would drive the bourgeoisie to continual degredation of the conditions of the workers and to the most ravenous business practices; it would create a "metabolic rift" in the ecosystem; it would lead to the ensnaring of the whole world economy in its eternal drive for new markets; the rate of profit would tend to fall over time; and ultimately, the class struggle between worker and owner would become so unsustainable that the whole thing would break down and the workers would revolt. Victory was not guaranteed (he said it was a few times, but that was more to stir up people's spirits), and ruin might be the result, but if the workers succeeded in taking control - then the world would be theirs, and they would be free to build a democratic society where they ruled for themselves and produced for themselves.
So if you have some downtime (and I know you do - we're all quarantined) and you're interested to hear what one of modern history's most important thinkers has to say, why not give him a try? There's the Communist Manifesto, of course - a quick read that hits the basic points. Or his biggest work, Capital, for which you might want to check out a guide like David Harvey's to help get you through it. But please make note - he wasn't a prophet. He got stuff wrong. Marxists don't worship him or treat his writings as scripture. And plenty of Marxists have developed theories that go further beyond his own. He was, like all people, a product of his time and the material conditions that prevailed. But he still remains prescient today, perhaps now more than any time in decades.
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it."
