Painting The Town red

Get out the red flags and throw away all your stuff! Because it’s time to talk about Karl Marx, and communism.

He's got something you don't. A great big bushy beard!

Marx started his academic life brilliantly, initially studying law, he was held up as a model pupil. Until, to the shock of his tutors, he changed to philosophy. And from that, no doubt to the utter horror of his parents, he took up journalism. He’d have caused quite a stir in any press conference no doubt, what with the crazy-rabbi look going on. Indeed, his radical thinking got him kicked out of pretty much any country he tried to live in, until he came to London, the home of free thought.

Marx’s basic principle was that man was a productive animal. He is master of the world because of his use of tools (In a sense, you could say that man has out-evolved evolution).

Marx took a Darwin-like approach to his research, studying every aspect of society in order to try and understand it. He believed that other philosophers made no attempt at real change, they just spent their time sitting in darkened rooms, pontificating all the worthy questions of life.




Indeed his tombstone is inscribed with the words:

“Workers of the world unite”

“Philosophers have only interpreted the world - the point however is to change it.”

Very eloquently written, and ever the pragmatist.

Engles, an associate of Marx who also had a fantastic beard, and helped publish the Communist Manifesto. Said that Marx achieved in his philosophy, a fusion of Hegelian philosophy (dialectics), British empiricism (As of Adam Smith), and French revolutionary politics, especially the socialist side (remember from our romanticism discussion, “Man is born free but everywhere he is in chains”).

Though he was a self-proclaimed disciple of Hegel, he attacked the mysticism and idealism which clouded much of the man's work. He did not approve of wishy-washy ideas like the Geist, or the spirit of the world. But he did approve of the Dialectic, that opposing points of view could come together and form new (supposedly better) points of view. The dialectic that Marx favoured was based on materialism. No he didn’t spend his time angsting over the latest PlayStation console, or a particular polo shirt that is exactly the same as the one from Peacock’s only this one has a special label which makes it fly or something. No, his materialism was that which is based in the real world. Not the ethereal haze of other philosophers.

In this respect, the main focus of the dialectic was the conflict between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The proletariat are the plebeians, the workers, they were the people who had no means of production save for themselves. They are the lowest rung on the ladder, and as such, they have nothing to lose. As Marx said: “they have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.”

On the other side of the scale, the Bourgeoisie are the people who have property, whether they’re rich aristocrats, or the meanest landlord, they own some form of subsistence.  Marx predicted that at some point in the future. There would be a clash between the two parties, resulting in the victory of the proletariat, and the introduction of a socialist system in which production is used for the benefit of society as opposed to the benefit of the market (for an outline of the market system referred to, look at my earlier post on Adam Smith’s Opulence of Nations). This would show all the people that this is to the common good (hello hello, traces of Rousseau’s General Will idea) and the state would be able to disappear. Leaving a society not alienated by the division of labour (another Smith idea) as all activities are considered equal. The rocket scientist is not above the farmer, they are both as important as each other.

“From each according to their ability, to each according to his need”

Of course all of this is brilliant in theory, the USSR took up their own version of it, as did several other countries (everyone knows about the Berlin Wall for example, not to mention Cuba) though none of them got it quite right. It’s probably worth remembering that whilst Marx was dying, he said to his best pupil something along the lines of:

 “You were my best pupil, and not even you got what I’d meant.”

Damn Commies.