Marx on Capitalism and State

Karl Marx's ideas about the state can be divided into three subject areas: pre-capitalist states, states in the capitalist (i.e. present) era, and the state (or absence of one) in post-capitalist society. Marx coined the words *Communist* and *Socialist*; obviously, he was, has to be, the father of both.

“It is absolutely impossible to transcend the laws of nature. What can change in historically different circumstances is only the form in which these laws expose themselves.” – Karl Marx

“Mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, we will always find that the task itself arises only when the material conditions necessary for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation.” – Karl Marx

“Philosophy stands in the same relation to the study of the actual world as masturbation to sexual love.” – Karl Marx

“Colonial system, public debts, heavy taxes, protection, commercial wars, etc., these offshoots of the period of manufacture swell to gigantic proportions during the period of infancy of large-scale industry. The birth of the latter is celebrated by a vast, Hero-like slaughter of the innocents.” – Karl Marx 

“We should not say that one man’s hour is worth another man’s hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing: he is at the most time’s carcass.” – Karl Marx

“Capital is dead labour, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.” – Karl Marx

“All social rules and all relations between individuals are eroded by a cash economy; avarice drags Pluto himself out of the bowels of the earth.” – Karl Marx

“As in private life one differentiates between what a man thinks and says of himself and what he really is and does, so in historical struggles one must still more distinguish the language and the imaginary aspirations of parties from their real organism and their real interests, their conception of themselves from their reality.” – Karl Marx

“From the outset, the Christian was the theorizing Jew, the Jew is therefore the practical Christian, and the practical Christian has become a Jew again.” – Karl Marx

According to Marx, men and women are born into societies in which property relations have already been determined. These property relations, in turn, give rise to different social classes. Just as a man cannot choose who is to be his father, so he has not choice as to his class. [Social mobility, though recognized by Marx, plays no role in his analysis.] Once a man is ascribed to a specific class by virtue of his birth, once he has become a feudal lord or a serf, an industrial worker or a capitalist, his behaviour is proscribed for him. His attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours are all “determined.” The class role largely defines the man. In the preface to Capital Marx writes: “Here individuals are dealt with only as fact as they are personifications of economic categories, embodiments of particular class-relations and class interests.” Different locations in the class structure lead to different class interests. Such differing interests flow from objective positions in relation to the forces of production. In saying this Marx does not deny the operation of other variables in human behaviour; but he concentrates on class roles as primary determinants of that behaviour. These class roles influence men whether they are conscious of their class interests or not. Men may well be unaware of their class interests and yet be moved by them, as it were, behind their backs.

The division of labour gives rise to different classes, which leads to differing interests and gives rise to different: political, ethical, philosophical, religious, and ideological views. These differing views express existing class relations and tend either to consolidate or undermine the power and authority of the dominant class. "The ideas of the ruling class are, in every age, the ruling ideas; the class which is the dominant material force in society is at the same time its dominant intellectual force.” For example, the business of America is business. We think naturally in these categories. The goal of the economic system is to grow; our goal is to make more money to buy nice things. The point of the educational system is to provide education and training so that young adults can eventually assume their role in the workforce.

"The class which has the means of material production at its disposal has control at the same time over the means of mental production.” This is done through control over the media, educational curricula, grants and such. This is not the result of a conspiracy; rather it is the dominant viewpoint that pervades the culture. Because the dominant class owns and controls the forces of production, the social class in power uses the non-economic institutions to uphold its authority and position. Marx believed that religion, the government, educational systems, and even sports are used by the powerful to maintain the status quo.

Although they are hampered by the ideological dominance of the elite, the oppressed classes can, under certain conditions, generate counter ideologies to combat the ruling classes. These conditions are moments when the existing mode of production is played out; Marx terms these moments “revolutionary.” The social order is often marked by continuous change in the forces of production, that is, technology. Marx argued that every economic system except socialism produces forces that eventually lead to a new economic form. The process begins with the forces of production. At times, the change in technology is so great that it is able to harness “new” forces of nature to satisfy man’s needs. New classes (and interests) based on control of these new forces of production begin to rise. At a certain point, this new class comes into conflict with the old ownership class based on the old forces of production. As a consequence, it sometimes happens that “…the social relations of production are altered, transformed, with the change and development…of the forces of production.”

In the feudal system, for example, the market and factory emerged but were incompatible with the feudal way of life. The market created a professional merchant class, and the factory created a new proletariat (or class of workers). Thus, new inventions and the harnessing of new technologies created tensions within the old institutional arrangements, and new social classes threatened to displace the old ones based on manorial farming. Conflict resulted, and eventually revolution that established a new ruling class based on the new forces of production. A new class structure emerged and an alteration in the division of wealth and power based on new economic forms. Feudalism was replaced by capitalism; land ownership as the dominant form of capital was replaced by factories and the ownership of capital.

Those classes that expelCT to gain the ascendancy by a change in property relations become revolutionary. When this is the case, representatives of the ascending classes come to perceive existing property relations as a “fetter” upon further development. New social relationships (based upon the new mode of production) begin to develop within older social structures, exacerbating tensions within that structure. New forces of production—based on manufacture and trade—emerged within late European feudal society and allowed the bourgeoisie, which controlled this new mode of production, to challenge the hold of the classes that had dominated the feudal order. 

As this new force of production gained sufficient weight (through technological development and the resulting accumulation of wealth of the ownership class), the bourgeoisie “burst asunder the feudal relations of production” in which this new mode of production first made its appearance. "The economic structure of capitalist society has grown out of the economic structure of feudal society. The dissolution of the latter sets free elements of the former.”

Like feudalism, Marx maintained, capitalism also carries the seeds of its own destruction. It brings into being a class of workers (the proletariat) who have a fundamental antagonism to the capitalist class, and who will eventually band together to overthrow the regime to which they owe their existence. We will get into the evolution of the revolution in a future lecture.