Karl Marx Works Essay
While the free essays can give you inspiration for writing, they cannot be used 'as is' because they will not meet your assignment's requirements. If you are in a time crunch, then you need a custom written term paper on your subject (karl marx works)
Here you can hire an independent writer/researcher to custom write you an authentic essay to your specifications that will pass any plagiarism test (e.g. Turnitin). Waste no more time!
How can a book written in one historical epoch have a meaning for another? If the author has tried to answer the questions posed by the way of life of the people around him, what can these answers mean for those living under changed conditions and facing quite different questions? [1] In the case of Karl Marx, we have yet another barrier to penetrate. At the end of the twentieth century, when we pick up a text like the Manifesto, we already have in our minds what “everybody knows” about it. Before we even glance at its pages, distorting spectacles have been placed on our noses by the tradition known as “Marxism”. Even today, Stalinism's obscene misuse of the word “communism” colours everything we read.
The upholders of “Marxism” thought of it as a science, and at the same time declared it to be a complete world outlook. These claims, which clearly contradict each other, make it impossible to understand the task which Marx set himself, a task that, by its very nature, no body of “theory” could complete. For his aim was no less than to make possible “the development of communist consciousness on a mass scale”. It was not enough just to prepare the overthrow of the ruling class. This particular revolution required the alteration of humans on a mass scale ... because the class overthrowing it [the ruling class] can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages. [2]
So the first step was not a “political theory”, not a “model of society”, not simply a call for revolution, but a conception of humanity. What Marx aimed at was, simultaneously, a science that comprehended human development, an understanding of how that development had become imprisoned within social forms that denied humanity, and a knowledge of the way that humanity was to liberate itself from that prison. Indeed, only through the struggle for liberation could we understand what humanity was. In essence, it was that “ensemble of social relations” [3], which made possible free, collective, self-creation. He showed how modern social relations fragmented society and formed a barrier to our potential for freedom, while, at the same time, providing the conditions for freedom to be actualised.
If we want to understand the Manifesto, we must read it as an early attempt to tackle all of these issues, set within the framework of a political statement. More clearly than any other of its author's works, it contradicts the “Marxist” representation of Marx as a “philosopher”, an “economist”, a “sociologist”, a “theorist of history”, or any other kind of “social scientist”. To grasp what he was doing, we have to break through all the efforts of academic thinking to separate knowledge from the collective self-transformation of humanity. Indeed, one of the tasks of the Manifesto is to lay bare the source of all such thinking, finding it precisely within humanity's inhuman condition. Marx's science situates itself inside the struggle to transform our entire way of living.
Of course, in the past fifteen decades, the forms of capital and the conditions of the working class have changed profoundly in innumerable ways. But we still live in the same historical epoch as Marx, and, if we listen to what he has to say, we shall discover him to be our contemporary. So let us attempt to remove those “Marxist” spectacles, which prevented us from seeing just how original was Marx's conception. Then, perhaps, we shall be able to confront this product of nineteenth-century Western Europe with the agonising problems of today's “globalised” society. The essence of the Manifesto is not merely relevant for our time; it is vital for us, if humanity is to grope its way forward.
The Communist League
The Communist Manifesto was written in a Europe that was on the eve of the revolutionary upheavals of 1848, and that also still lived in the shadow of the revolutionary struggles of 1789-1815. It is a response to both of these, the storm to come and the one that had passed. Between 1844 and 1847, in Berlin, Brussels, Paris and Manchester, Marx and Engels had encountered the ideas of the various groups of socialists and communists, and had also studied the organisations of the rapidly-growing working class. Hitherto, these two, socialism and the working class, had been quite separate from, or even hostile to each other. The achievement of the Manifesto was to establish the foundations on which they could be united.
From this work came a new conception of communism, situated within the historical context of their time. As the Manifesto puts it, communism was not “based on ideas or principles that have been invented or discovered by this or that would-be universal reformer.” [4] It had to be seen as the culmination and meaning of working-class struggle, and this struggle itself provided the key to understanding the existing economic relations. The “Marxists” thought they found in the Manifesto a “theoretical” analysis of “capitalism” and a “theory of history”. Actually, Marx was scornful of all pretence of having a “supra-historical theory of history” [5], never used the word “capitalism” and spent his life writing a critique of the very idea of political economy.
Every line of the Manifesto is permeated with his conception of communism. This was not a plan for an ideal future social set-up, worked out by some reforming genius, to be imposed on the world by his followers. Instead, it was to be the outcome of the development of the working-class movement itself, and therefore arose within the existing social order. Marx had turned towards the ideas of communism in 1844, Engels preceding him by two years. For three years, they discussed — and argued — with the many socialist and communist sects in Germany, France, Belgium and England, but joined none of them. Then, in 1847 they decided to join together with some former members of one of these secret groups, the League of the Just.
The League, which was largely German, and which had mainly consisted of workers and artisans [6], had more or less disappeared by that time. Its old members had outgrown the ideas of their leading figure, the heroic founder of the German workers' movement, Wilhelm Weitling, and come closer to Marx's view of communism. Marx and Engels, on the basis of their new-found ideas, resolved to bring these people together in a new kind of organisation. On one thing they were quite determined: this was not going to be a secret society, like the conspiratorial sects that abounded throughout Europe. It would be an open organisation, with a clearly expounded programme and outlook. The Communist League was formed at a conference in London, in the summer of 1847. A newspaper, the Kommunistische Zeitschrift, issued by the London branch in September of that year, carried the slogan “Proletarians of all Lands, Unite!”. In November, a second conference assembled. After ten days of discussion, Marx was instructed to prepare a “Manifesto of the Communist Party”, based upon Engels' draft “catechism”, the Principles of Communism. Marx's work was not finished until early in February, 1848. (As usual, he made slow progress in carrying out their instructions, and the delay brought forth an angry letter from the Committee.) Before printing was complete, the insurrection had broken out in Paris.
What role did the Communist League play in the revolutionary events of 1848-9? As an organisation, almost none. Its individual members, of course, were to the fore in many parts of Europe. Marx and Engels, in particular were leading figures in the Rhineland, where they produced the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. But, as a body, the League itself did not function during those stormy years. In 1850, after the defeat of the movement, exiles in London made an attempt to re-form it, but soon a fierce dispute broke out among them. Willich, Schapper and others dreamed that the revolutionary struggle would soon break out again. Marx and Engels and their supporters were convinced that the revolutionary wave had passed, and that a long period of development of capital would ensue. In 1851, leading members of the League in the Rhineland were arrested and tried in Cologne. After that, the organisation was allowed to disappear. Marx deliberately cut himself off from the exile groups, and did not resume active political involvement for the next twelve years.
The Manifesto and the Class Struggle.
The first thing to note about this document is that it begins and ends with declarations of openness.
It is high time that Communists should openly ... publish their aims...
The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims.
Marx was always totally opposed to the idea that social change could be brought about by some secret group, working behind the back of society. This tendency, identified with the heroic but ineffectual conspiracies of Auguste Blanqui and his friends, was also the target of Marx's much-misunderstood phrase “dictatorship of the proletariat”, first used by him four years later. In “Marxism”, the central meaning of this formula was badly distorted. Quite contrary to any modern connotation of tyranny, Marx wanted to stress that the entire working class must govern, as opposed to any secret group, however benevolent its intentions.
The history of all hitherto existing society has been the history of class struggles.
So runs the famous opening of the first section, “Bourgeois and Proletarians”, but what does this mean? (Engels' 1888 footnote, excluding pre-history from this statement, does not really help. [7]) As is well known, the idea of class struggle as a way of explaining history was not invented by Marx, but had been employed by French bourgeois historians in the 1820s. Marx gives it a totally different content. For him, class struggles are an aspect of alienated society, and communism implies their disappearance.
It is quite wrong to read this section as if it presented history as a logical argument, with a deduction of the communist revolution as a conclusion. Ten years later, Marx depicted human history in terms of three great stages:
Relationships of personal dependence (which originally arise quite spontaneously) are the first forms of society ... Personal independence based upon dependence mediated by things is the second great form, and only in it is a system of general social exchange of matter, a system of universal relations, universal requirements and universal capacities formed. Free individuality, based on the universal development of the individuals and the subordination of their communal, social productivity, which is the social possession, is the third stage.[8]
Of course, in 1848, Marx was not able to put the matter so clearly, but already the essence of his point of view is precisely that expressed by these lines. The class struggle was for him a feature of the second of these “stages” only, and bourgeois society marked the end of this entire period. This was the phase of “alienated life”, where individuals had no control over their own lives. Only in this stage could you speak about “historical laws”, since individuals were not yet the governors of their social relations. The Manifesto's paeon of praise for the achievements of the bourgeoisie refers to their (of course, involuntary) work, which prepares for the great advance of humanity to its “third stage”, communism....
MLA Style
. EssayMania.com. Retrieved on 25 May, 2012 from
<http://essaymania.com/70780/karl-marx-works>
More College Papers
Australian Information Mangement Ethics And Law essay
In the new electronic age, we are relying more and more on information technology to streamline government, educate our children, make health care more accessible and affordable, and make our businesses more productive and competitive. This rush to embrace a new age of technology must not, however,
Australian Identity essay
Identity is a debate that many Australians are still arguing today. After all these years of living in Australia, the identity of the country is still something that cannot be agreed upon. Though many seem to have their own idea of what an “Australian” is, there is no clear cut view of this thus the
Australian History essay
With the merging of big players within and between such industries as insurance, business services, banking & finance, media and technology I propose to investigate the impact and feasability of a higher degree of vertical intergration in the form of mergers, acquisitions, convergence, complimentary