Karl Marx Lecture 2

August 21, 2007 Marx -2

We are going to exam the following key concepts of Marx:
o Philosophy of history
o Consciousness
o False consciousness
o Ideology

Hegel’s view on history Review
o History as development and conflict of abstract principles
o Dialectical movement- every state of affair contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction and transformation to a higher stage
o Thesis ---Antithesis

Marx’s view on dialectic, appropriation but not whole accepted
Marx’s view on
o History: contains creation, satisfaction and recreation of human needs
o In these process, human beings develop different types of society

Thought Marx was regarded as Historical Materialism, but that only used to explain his socio-historical changes.

Marx thinks:

History is a social change by human agency in response to production relationship, which contains structures changes and human subjectivity (consciousness)

Marx’s criticism to Feuerbach

o Feuerbach ignored the creative subject of human beings that actively modified the world through production
o Feuerbach doesn’t grasp the significant of revolutionary of “practical-critical” activity
o “Contemplative materialism” doesn’t comprehend sensuousness
Mark thinks to “change” the world, is more important than just to “interpret” world.

German Ideology (1884)

Summary: Marx’s criticism to German philosophy system as well as their understanding of human social development process and progress, instead of accepting “idea” to “objectification”, he suggested……

Stage of societal development
Engine of historical changes: due to class struggles

(Question: is that class struggles is because division of labour? If so, the class struggles is no way to avoid, as long as the division of labour exists and counties to develop)

There are four stages of social history development according to Marx:

The Stage of Social Development

Type of Society	Ownership	Degree of Division of Labour	Class struggles	Private Property
Primitive	tribal	Low, elementary	Low, or none	none
Ancient communal	State	Start to develop	Low	less
Feudal	Estate to Lords and kings	middle	Landlords vs peasant	belong to landlord
Capital	Capitalists	Highly developed	Bourgeoisie vs Proletariat	captialists

Conception of history (p172)

Depends on our ability to expound the real process of production, starting out form the material production of life itself and to comprehend the form of intercourse connected with this and created by this mode of production at the basis of all history.

Social and historical changes are tension between agency and structure. Agency here refers to human beings are constrained in social structure. Ritzer (1998) pointed out that dialectical relationship between agency and structure in larger scales is the historical and social changes.

Consciousness is a social product; Marx thinks consciousness only exists when needs rise.

Consciousness of nature
o Rooted in human productive activity, is a social product
o Only exist when needs are required, their consciousness and activities are not isolated from one another.

Human consciousness, dialectical interplay between a creative subject and the objective material environment

Mode of production in capitalism society:
o Ownership of force of production
o Relationship of production

Social being -- class consciousness -- social class-- class struggles

Class consciousness is an essential condition that can help bring about the change from capital to communist.

Class position, shape our ideas about the world and social relationship and in all class society: dominant ideas about who we are and what we ought to be are ideas of ruling class.

False consciousness: refers to social classes do not possess correct assessments of how the system works and their roles and interests in it.

Eg. Proletariat class:
1. they are unaware of they are the oppressed
2. see the idea system of bourgeoisie as natural as their own
3. unaware of their historical revolutionary potential

Difficulty in overcoming false consciousness

Ideology: one impediment to gain true class consciousness (more of the ruling class’s ideas)

o Formulated ideas
o Refers to human affairs
o Public
o Subject to state control

End of ideology when class domination in general ceases to be the form in which the social order is organized “general interest” as ruling interest.

Ruling class ideas--- political, economic dominance
What are the effects of ruling ideas/ ideology?
What are the resistances to the dominant ideology?
What form does resistance take? What are the alternative media to address general interest?