Karl Marx - one of the most famous people in history. He has long held first place in the ranking of the most cited thinkers - at least as early as 1993 it was exactly the case. According to the poll, conducted in 1999 by BBC, Marks was named the greatest thinker of the millennium. According to the U.S. Library of Congress catalog, Marx devoted more scientific papers than any other person. He heads a list of 100 most studied figures in history.
Marx earned fame as a philosopher, an economist and, finally, as the author of the influential theory of social structure and mechanism of its development.
During his life, Karl Marx wrote a lot: he was, among other things, a talented political journalist and chief editor of opposition newspaper - but is best known acquired the two texts of Marx. This, of course, "The Communist Manifesto" and a lot of work with the laconic title of "Capital". On these two works of Marx heard, probably, all literate people, but that's what it referred to a fair presentation have a very, very few. It is therefore still possible and even necessary articles such as this.
Marx was born in Germany in Trier, in 1818. He graduated from Berlin University in the "philosophy", but the rest of his life continued to educate ourselves: devotedly studied economic science (which in his time called "political economy"), and sociology. So that we can imagine with what Marx dedication to educate ourselves, allowed such a comparison: If Karl Marx lived in the XX century and put the same passion and the will not to self, and in the construction of his body, the world will likely never would have learned about Arnold Schwarzenegger. Because the seven-time Mr. Olympia definitely would not Schwarzenegger, and Marx.
The motivation that prompts Marx continually learn, was an inordinate intellectual ambition. Marx was convinced that he should establish a fundamental theory of society, giving detailed answers to questions about the internal structure of society, the laws of its development, and the purpose for which it ultimately seeks to develop. Throughout his life he worked to develop this theory, while actively participating in the political life of Europe, driven by different governments, pursued by family tragedies (in Marx and his wife were born seven children, four of whom died at an early age) and always the results of its unsatisfied titanic intellectual work. If it were not for material support from his friend of many years of Friedrich Engels, Marx himself would have died of starvation and his family drove up to poverty - to such an extent he was obsessed with what he thought were his calling.
Marx died, of course, politically settler in Western Europe, in which dissident oasis where to run their governments to the entire opposition, including our Herzen - in London, in 1883.
Intellectual heritage of Marx consists of three parts. They are:
1) The philosophical part, which includes dialectical and historical materialism;
2) the economic part - this is the doctrine of surplus value;
3) Finally, the third part of Marxism - the theory of class structure of society and is inextricably linked with the doctrine of class struggle, which should result in a dictatorship of the proletariat to an entirely new classless society based on social ownership of means of production.
Briefly reveal the contents of each of the three components of Marxism.
Dialectical materialism, or, as mentioned briefly in the USSR, dialectical materialism - the doctrine of the laws of development (nature, man and society). According to dialectical materialism, matter - the only basis for peace, and consciousness - this is one of the properties of matter. The main tenet: the source (driving force) of the contradictions, that is, development occurs because of the special properties inherent in matter - properties that can be called "need" to overcome all sorts of contradictions. It is because of the crucial role assigned to this theory, the existence of contradictions and overcome them, and it is called "dialectic" (dialectic in Greek - is the art of argument, that is, the ability to detect contradictions.)
Dialectical materialism is not merely asserts that the driving force behind the development of the contradictions, but also gives a description of the three fundamental laws, under which the development is carried out.
1) The law of unity and struggle of opposites states that although opposites that make up the contradiction, and are in constant struggle, none of them can not completely overcome and displace the other, because they are both different sides of the same, and each can be known only through a comparison with the other. The Chinese, incidentally, were already aware of thousands of years ago (the symbol of Yin and Yang is just a thing), but in the philosophical thought of Europe has grown to the unity and struggle of opposites only in the XIX century.
2) Law of transition from quantitative to qualitative changes described, which leads to a struggle of opposites. It leads to the accumulation of certain changes in the system, which initially did not change the quality of the system as a whole, but at some point reach a certain critical threshold - and then the system abruptly changes its quality;
3) The law of negation of negation tells us exactly how the system changes its quality threshold for quantitative changes. It changes it so: first, the system denies its previous state, and then, at a new stage, rejects the previous denial, thereby taking the best from both the initial state and of its opposite. The initial state of the system, Marx, following Hegel, calls the "thesis", the first denial - "antithesis", well, the second denial - the "synthesis". Clearly, this is the synthesis immediately becomes a proposition for a new round of development, and the whole triad is repeated, allowing the new conflict. This process is called - the Marxist dialectical spiral of development.
If dialectical materialism - is the theory of evolution as such, historical materialism (in abbreviated form - historical materialism) - this is the doctrine of the development of a specific object, namely, the human society. According to historical materialism, the most important thing in any society - this is how it produced wealth, that is what in this society are the productive forces and relations of production which consist of people, the members of this society, in connection with the use of these productive forces . For his role in industrial relations people are divided into two classes: the working-class producers and owners of the means of production.
Specific to the combination of society's productive forces and relations of production, Marx considers the basis, and everything else - that is, the totality of political, legal, cultural and religious institutions of society, including developed their moral, aesthetic, legal, philosophical and other beliefs - Marx refers to superstructure.
The productive forces are continuously developing as it is necessary to meet the ever increasing needs of people in material wealth. At some point, develop the productive forces to such an extent that the existing relations of production no longer meet them. Then add-in (which is always one way or another, reinforce existing relations of production) becomes a brake on economic development. At such times there is a change of socio-economic system that is changing an outdated add a new one.
Depending on how smoothly it goes change, it can be evolutionary or revolutionary. When change and add a transition to new relations of production is through a revolution, its driving force has always become the forces of society who suffer most under the current state of the superstructure and, accordingly, more than any other interest in her shift. In other words, the driving force of revolution is a class of workers producing class, directly engaged in the production of the most important for the society (or for that era) of the product. Since the entire property is always in the hands of another class of workers in ancient Rome, said that they do not own anything except the kids. Hence the name of the "proletariat" (from the Latin proletarius, ie, "producing offspring").
In Marx's time staple of the era were the material wealth produced by industrial way, so the proletariat then were workers who worked hard in factories. If, however, to apply Marxist theory to our post-industrial era, today, the proletariat are the ones who obtains new information and develops advanced methods of information processing - that is, scientists of various profiles (all men of intellectual labor) and software developers in particular. They are something SE Kurginyan and calls kognitariatom.
Marx attached great importance to the question, what exactly is the mechanism of exploitation of the proletariat class of owner-capitalists in the modern era to him. The answer to this question was introduced by Marx in the scholarly notion of surplus value.
Even before Marx's English economists Adam Smith and David Ricardo formulated the labor theory of value, the main provision of which was the assertion that the cost of goods is an expression of labor expended in their production. Here in this theory, Karl Marx and introduced the concept of surplus value.
What is surplus value?
Imagine a shoe factory. The skin on her converted into shoes. Suppose a factory bought the skin for a hundred dollars. After passing through the factory process, the skin turns into a shoe worth, say, two hundred dollars - that is, the value added of the skin for another hundred dollars. Where did the new value? It was created by the entrepreneur, the owner of a shoe factory, and an employee. The owner has provided for an industrial process plant and machinery, as well as pay for all expenses, and workers provided their labor and have done for a specific work shoes. Joint efforts of these members of the production process - the owner of the means of production and its employees - has created a new value of one hundred dollars.
So, this new value - it is internally heterogeneous. Part of the new value is the direct expression of the employees spent working. Just this side and returned to employees after the sale of shoes made by them in the form of wages. But there is another part - of which the lion's share goes to the owner in the form of business profits, and in addition, paid taxes, paid taxes, excise taxes and so on. This is the surplus value. The source of surplus value, according to Marx, is that the owner, or as we say familiar, the capitalist, continued to use the labor of their employees longer than the time during which played its own cost of labor. In other words (if they explain quite "on the fingers"), after the employee has completed his wages, the capitalist makes it work again.
In this case, according to Marx, and is a hidden economic essence of capitalist exploitation - that is, use class of producers of wealth class of owners of means of production.
As in Marx's time, and in more recent times, many responding to the abandoned Marx's indictment of the exploitation of workers by the owner, said, well, the owner and that no man? He does not need to eat, drink, dress, feed the family? How did he take a livelihood, if not from the surplus value? And how can one argue that the owner did nothing to produce new value - that is, to convert raw material cost of one hundred dollars in goods worth two hundred? The owner gave the plant and machinery, without which there would be nothing at all - and, by the way, workers who are now complaining about the service, simply be sitting without work and starving.
This, of course, is common sense - but the fact is that in Marx's operation was of absolutely predatory in nature. Working day in factories continued for at least 12 hours. Widely used labor-age children. In hazardous areas of production, where there was a high risk of losing an arm or leg due to simple mistakes in handling the machine, people were working at your own risk - about any insurance could not be considered. As for wages, it was so low that workers are constantly living on the edge of poverty. This pushed the women of working families to the panel, to somehow feed the children, and so on. The lives of workers in major industrial centers of Western Europe was a nightmare, and no lumen was not visible.
Not surprisingly, in a production environment, great popular works of prominent French socialists: Fourier, Saint-Simon, and so on. The Socialists have written that modern system is horrible and should be replaced by a more just society, where there will be no division of society into classes, nor, consequently, use. But if the concept of operation was known to Marx, for disaster workers were on everyone's mind were, as mentioned above, the monstrous character, thanks to Marx socialists were finally able to point to the economic nature of the operation and show the class of owners, in addition to accusations of moral order, and more specific economic claims. These claims are still valid today.
Especially in order to knock out from under the feet of the socialists solid economic ground, identified by Marx in the XX century in the West were produced resounding debunking of the labor theory of value. Cornerstone of this theory - that the cost of goods is an expression expended in their production work - the provision set out, as already mentioned, not Marx, but the liberals favorite economist Adam Smith, the inventor of the "invisible hand" - this provision has been subjected to ostracized.
As it is, say, the cost of labor is the expression? Yes unless the buyer agrees to pay a particular sum of money for goods due to the fact that the production of this commodity has been, you know, someone's spent it work? Nothing of the sort! The buyer pays money for goods, as regards this kind of product usefulness for yourself, a loved one. And depending on whether, how high, to provide the buyer, the usefulness of the product, he agrees to pay a greater or lesser amount of money. And how much there was spent working on the production of goods - the buyer does not care. The cost of the goods, expressed in the market price is determined by only one thing: the level of demand for the product on the market, and demand depends on the subjective views of the usefulness of buyers for them this good.
Called it all "theory of marginal utility", and it was created, again, specifically in order to drive out of the hands of Marxists is their main economic indictment of the capitalist system - the doctrine of surplus value. For many, many years in all schools of economic theory, this is presented with this same sauce - they say, there was an economist, Karl Marx-educated, came up with the absurd teoriyku about the cost, but supposedly that says about all this modern economics ...
However, it is easy to see that here, as often happens when the theory is not create in the search for objective truth, and to order, that is to protect someone's specific economic interests, put the cart before the horse. It is not necessary to be a doctor of economic sciences, to see what the demand is the cause of the emergence of a new product on the market, not the source of its value.
For example, when the U.S. came first cars, they were very expensive, and arose the demand for cheap car that can afford very wide range of consumers. The answer to this demand was, as you know, "Ford Model T," people's car of Henry Ford, which is specifically for the production of this model even made the Industrial Revolution through any given car plant - put the pipeline. This allowed the distribution of duties among all employees of the plant so that the amount of labor expended by workers on the production of one car dropped sharply - and thus diminished and the cost of the product. Thus, demand actually led to lower prices for goods - but not directly, but indirectly, through one intermediary. And this was not an intermediary other than a reduction in labor expended to produce one unit of goods. As they say, QED.
In addition, if the value of the goods does not depend on the effort spent on its production work, then there would be no noticeable difference in price between the goods on the production of which is spent huge amount of labor and goods that are produced with minimal effort. What is known is not observed.
Thus, introducing the concept of surplus value, Marx identified the economic entity operating a class of employees - the class of owners of the means of production. And as we know, historical materialism states that when there is a contradiction between the new, advanced productive forces and backward relations of production, class struggle will inevitably worsen. This is what Marx saw around him.
The productive forces of the capitalist epoch brought mankind to such heights of productivity, which previously could not even dream of. Labor productivity achieved in the industrialization of the production was so high that they could have been properly feed and clothe, at least, the people of those countries where industrialization took place - the entire population, without exception. Why do some swimming in luxury and gilded palaces to live in, while others huddled in miserable huts, and were constantly on the verge of poverty?
Marx explained why: because the relations of production, where one class is constantly robbing the other hand, do not correspond to the level of development of productive forces. Capitalist production relations based on class antagonism and exploitation, must be replaced by some other - these relations of production that will open up access to a decent standard of living as a wide range of people, not just the narrow group.
On what foundation are capitalist relations of production? That generates the class antagonism? Private ownership of the means of production.
It was she who determines the class structure of society, here is the line between the owners of the means of production - and employees who are the owners operate, squeezing them out of surplus value. Hence, in order to switch to other, more progressive industrial relations, private property should be abolished, and instead enter the public domain. In the transition to public ownership of the means of production disappears, and the reason for the division of society into classes - there classless society, where every employee and at the same time, it is a direct manufacturer of material goods, and co-owner of all the factories. And since the institution of the state apparatus is the rule of one class over another, therefore, in a classless society, Marx said, the state would become unnecessary and wither away.
As a person who thinks highly realistic, Marx was well aware that members of the class of owners who quietly amassed a way their profits on the ruthless exploitation of female and child labor - would never agree to part with property and power. Marx was aware of: they will resist. Be a real war, class war. It is from this natural way has increased the doctrine of the dictatorship of the proletariat - a necessary intermediate step between the modern society of class antagonism and the future of a classless society. A specific definition of the proletarian dictatorship gave VI Lenin: "The scientific concept of dictatorship means nothing else than the unrestrained by any laws, no absolute rules are not constrained by directly relying on violence rule."
Concepts of operation, classes and class struggle existed before Marx. The idea of the state as an instrument of force by one class over another is actively promoted by anarchists. Therefore, Karl Marx himself valued his contribution as follows:
"What I did was new was to prove:
1) that the existence of classes is only bound to certain historical phases in the development of production;
2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat;
3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a society without classes. "
(From a letter to an American journalist Joseph Weydemeyer, which published an article by Marx's "dictatorship of the proletariat" in the newspaper New York Times)
Briefly and superficially, this is Marxism.
WHY MARX AGAIN? SOMETHING ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE MAIN scientific foresight MARX
Why then, at the start of the second decade of the XXI century, we again appeal to the intellectual legacy of Karl Marx? Than it can be useful to us - 20 years after the first-ever state built the Marxists came down from the stage of history?
We are writing today to Marx, because, first of all, Marx was right. We appeal to Marx, as it had pointed the way to the highest social ideal - in the second. Finally, thirdly, we turn to Marx, as the story of humanity on the path indicated by Marx, we can - and so should - that we, Russian.
In what way Marx was right?
It would seem that history has shown the complete bankruptcy of Marx's theoretical and Marx the prophet of proletarian revolutions.
Marx predicted that the proletarian socialist revolution will cover multiple countries at the highest (for its time) the level of industrialization - the countries where the factory and factory workers have recognized themselves as a single class of employees, property owners opposing the class of capitalists. When Marx's life such countries were Britain, Germany and America.
Instead, the first in the history of the revolutionary government proclaimed a policy of building socialism and communism, according to the covenants of Marx, emerged in Russia - a country where the urban industrial proletariat has only just begun to form, the country's agrarian, underdeveloped compared with the same Germany or Britain.
Marx argued that the primitive communal system replaced slavery, slavery - feudalism, feudalism gives way to capitalism, but capitalism comes to replace the dictatorship of the proletariat, which has no other outcome than a classless society, which stands for flawless foundation of public ownership of means of production. And this sequence, according to Marx, is due to the indisputable law, so that no "reverse" can not be. Instead, we see that the story is how can give a "reverse": up to return to the earliest phase of the capitalist system - the initial accumulation of capital.
What is the rightness of Marx? How right he was, and why today we can - and so should - rightly say that the theory of Karl Marx not only helps to explain events, but also correctly predict them?
Rightness of Marx that was fulfilled his main thesis - namely, the thesis about the inevitable end of capitalism. And in this case it is not only - or even mainly - about Russia, where capitalism was built instead of socialism.
This, oddly enough, is about the West.
"It was stupid, Winston, stupid! I was expecting from you a better answer. Now I'll answer that question. Here's how. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We do not take someone else's benefit, we only took power. Neither wealth nor luxury, nor a long life, no happiness - only power, pure power. What does pure power, you'll soon understand. We know what we're doing, and in this we differ from all the oligarchies of the past. All the others, even those who resembled us, were cowards and hypocrites. <...> We do not like that. We know that the government has never seized to give it up. Power - not a means, it is - the goal. Establish a dictatorship, not in order to safeguard a revolution; revolution is to establish a dictatorship. The purpose of repression - the repression. The purpose of torture - torture. The purpose of power - power. <...> Power is to hurt and humiliate. In fact, to break people's minds to pieces and make again in a way in which you want. Now you see what kind of world we create? <...> In our world, not other emotions except fear, rage, triumph and self-abasement. Everyone else we shall destroy. With the variety of pleasures <...> we end. But always - remember, Winston - always intoxication of power, and more and more, the sharper. Always, at every moment to be shrill joy of victory, enjoying the fact that came to a helpless foe. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.
Marx earned fame as a philosopher, an economist and, finally, as the author of the influential theory of social structure and mechanism of its development.
During his life, Karl Marx wrote a lot: he was, among other things, a talented political journalist and chief editor of opposition newspaper - but is best known acquired the two texts of Marx. This, of course, "The Communist Manifesto" and a lot of work with the laconic title of "Capital". On these two works of Marx heard, probably, all literate people, but that's what it referred to a fair presentation have a very, very few. It is therefore still possible and even necessary articles such as this.
Marx was born in Germany in Trier, in 1818. He graduated from Berlin University in the "philosophy", but the rest of his life continued to educate ourselves: devotedly studied economic science (which in his time called "political economy"), and sociology. So that we can imagine with what Marx dedication to educate ourselves, allowed such a comparison: If Karl Marx lived in the XX century and put the same passion and the will not to self, and in the construction of his body, the world will likely never would have learned about Arnold Schwarzenegger. Because the seven-time Mr. Olympia definitely would not Schwarzenegger, and Marx.
The motivation that prompts Marx continually learn, was an inordinate intellectual ambition. Marx was convinced that he should establish a fundamental theory of society, giving detailed answers to questions about the internal structure of society, the laws of its development, and the purpose for which it ultimately seeks to develop. Throughout his life he worked to develop this theory, while actively participating in the political life of Europe, driven by different governments, pursued by family tragedies (in Marx and his wife were born seven children, four of whom died at an early age) and always the results of its unsatisfied titanic intellectual work. If it were not for material support from his friend of many years of Friedrich Engels, Marx himself would have died of starvation and his family drove up to poverty - to such an extent he was obsessed with what he thought were his calling.
Marx died, of course, politically settler in Western Europe, in which dissident oasis where to run their governments to the entire opposition, including our Herzen - in London, in 1883.
Intellectual heritage of Marx consists of three parts. They are:
1) The philosophical part, which includes dialectical and historical materialism;
2) the economic part - this is the doctrine of surplus value;
3) Finally, the third part of Marxism - the theory of class structure of society and is inextricably linked with the doctrine of class struggle, which should result in a dictatorship of the proletariat to an entirely new classless society based on social ownership of means of production.
Briefly reveal the contents of each of the three components of Marxism.
Dialectical materialism, or, as mentioned briefly in the USSR, dialectical materialism - the doctrine of the laws of development (nature, man and society). According to dialectical materialism, matter - the only basis for peace, and consciousness - this is one of the properties of matter. The main tenet: the source (driving force) of the contradictions, that is, development occurs because of the special properties inherent in matter - properties that can be called "need" to overcome all sorts of contradictions. It is because of the crucial role assigned to this theory, the existence of contradictions and overcome them, and it is called "dialectic" (dialectic in Greek - is the art of argument, that is, the ability to detect contradictions.)
Dialectical materialism is not merely asserts that the driving force behind the development of the contradictions, but also gives a description of the three fundamental laws, under which the development is carried out.
1) The law of unity and struggle of opposites states that although opposites that make up the contradiction, and are in constant struggle, none of them can not completely overcome and displace the other, because they are both different sides of the same, and each can be known only through a comparison with the other. The Chinese, incidentally, were already aware of thousands of years ago (the symbol of Yin and Yang is just a thing), but in the philosophical thought of Europe has grown to the unity and struggle of opposites only in the XIX century.
2) Law of transition from quantitative to qualitative changes described, which leads to a struggle of opposites. It leads to the accumulation of certain changes in the system, which initially did not change the quality of the system as a whole, but at some point reach a certain critical threshold - and then the system abruptly changes its quality;
3) The law of negation of negation tells us exactly how the system changes its quality threshold for quantitative changes. It changes it so: first, the system denies its previous state, and then, at a new stage, rejects the previous denial, thereby taking the best from both the initial state and of its opposite. The initial state of the system, Marx, following Hegel, calls the "thesis", the first denial - "antithesis", well, the second denial - the "synthesis". Clearly, this is the synthesis immediately becomes a proposition for a new round of development, and the whole triad is repeated, allowing the new conflict. This process is called - the Marxist dialectical spiral of development.
If dialectical materialism - is the theory of evolution as such, historical materialism (in abbreviated form - historical materialism) - this is the doctrine of the development of a specific object, namely, the human society. According to historical materialism, the most important thing in any society - this is how it produced wealth, that is what in this society are the productive forces and relations of production which consist of people, the members of this society, in connection with the use of these productive forces . For his role in industrial relations people are divided into two classes: the working-class producers and owners of the means of production.
Specific to the combination of society's productive forces and relations of production, Marx considers the basis, and everything else - that is, the totality of political, legal, cultural and religious institutions of society, including developed their moral, aesthetic, legal, philosophical and other beliefs - Marx refers to superstructure.
The productive forces are continuously developing as it is necessary to meet the ever increasing needs of people in material wealth. At some point, develop the productive forces to such an extent that the existing relations of production no longer meet them. Then add-in (which is always one way or another, reinforce existing relations of production) becomes a brake on economic development. At such times there is a change of socio-economic system that is changing an outdated add a new one.
Depending on how smoothly it goes change, it can be evolutionary or revolutionary. When change and add a transition to new relations of production is through a revolution, its driving force has always become the forces of society who suffer most under the current state of the superstructure and, accordingly, more than any other interest in her shift. In other words, the driving force of revolution is a class of workers producing class, directly engaged in the production of the most important for the society (or for that era) of the product. Since the entire property is always in the hands of another class of workers in ancient Rome, said that they do not own anything except the kids. Hence the name of the "proletariat" (from the Latin proletarius, ie, "producing offspring").
In Marx's time staple of the era were the material wealth produced by industrial way, so the proletariat then were workers who worked hard in factories. If, however, to apply Marxist theory to our post-industrial era, today, the proletariat are the ones who obtains new information and develops advanced methods of information processing - that is, scientists of various profiles (all men of intellectual labor) and software developers in particular. They are something SE Kurginyan and calls kognitariatom.
Marx attached great importance to the question, what exactly is the mechanism of exploitation of the proletariat class of owner-capitalists in the modern era to him. The answer to this question was introduced by Marx in the scholarly notion of surplus value.
Even before Marx's English economists Adam Smith and David Ricardo formulated the labor theory of value, the main provision of which was the assertion that the cost of goods is an expression of labor expended in their production. Here in this theory, Karl Marx and introduced the concept of surplus value.
What is surplus value?
Imagine a shoe factory. The skin on her converted into shoes. Suppose a factory bought the skin for a hundred dollars. After passing through the factory process, the skin turns into a shoe worth, say, two hundred dollars - that is, the value added of the skin for another hundred dollars. Where did the new value? It was created by the entrepreneur, the owner of a shoe factory, and an employee. The owner has provided for an industrial process plant and machinery, as well as pay for all expenses, and workers provided their labor and have done for a specific work shoes. Joint efforts of these members of the production process - the owner of the means of production and its employees - has created a new value of one hundred dollars.
So, this new value - it is internally heterogeneous. Part of the new value is the direct expression of the employees spent working. Just this side and returned to employees after the sale of shoes made by them in the form of wages. But there is another part - of which the lion's share goes to the owner in the form of business profits, and in addition, paid taxes, paid taxes, excise taxes and so on. This is the surplus value. The source of surplus value, according to Marx, is that the owner, or as we say familiar, the capitalist, continued to use the labor of their employees longer than the time during which played its own cost of labor. In other words (if they explain quite "on the fingers"), after the employee has completed his wages, the capitalist makes it work again.
In this case, according to Marx, and is a hidden economic essence of capitalist exploitation - that is, use class of producers of wealth class of owners of means of production.
As in Marx's time, and in more recent times, many responding to the abandoned Marx's indictment of the exploitation of workers by the owner, said, well, the owner and that no man? He does not need to eat, drink, dress, feed the family? How did he take a livelihood, if not from the surplus value? And how can one argue that the owner did nothing to produce new value - that is, to convert raw material cost of one hundred dollars in goods worth two hundred? The owner gave the plant and machinery, without which there would be nothing at all - and, by the way, workers who are now complaining about the service, simply be sitting without work and starving.
This, of course, is common sense - but the fact is that in Marx's operation was of absolutely predatory in nature. Working day in factories continued for at least 12 hours. Widely used labor-age children. In hazardous areas of production, where there was a high risk of losing an arm or leg due to simple mistakes in handling the machine, people were working at your own risk - about any insurance could not be considered. As for wages, it was so low that workers are constantly living on the edge of poverty. This pushed the women of working families to the panel, to somehow feed the children, and so on. The lives of workers in major industrial centers of Western Europe was a nightmare, and no lumen was not visible.
Not surprisingly, in a production environment, great popular works of prominent French socialists: Fourier, Saint-Simon, and so on. The Socialists have written that modern system is horrible and should be replaced by a more just society, where there will be no division of society into classes, nor, consequently, use. But if the concept of operation was known to Marx, for disaster workers were on everyone's mind were, as mentioned above, the monstrous character, thanks to Marx socialists were finally able to point to the economic nature of the operation and show the class of owners, in addition to accusations of moral order, and more specific economic claims. These claims are still valid today.
Especially in order to knock out from under the feet of the socialists solid economic ground, identified by Marx in the XX century in the West were produced resounding debunking of the labor theory of value. Cornerstone of this theory - that the cost of goods is an expression expended in their production work - the provision set out, as already mentioned, not Marx, but the liberals favorite economist Adam Smith, the inventor of the "invisible hand" - this provision has been subjected to ostracized.
As it is, say, the cost of labor is the expression? Yes unless the buyer agrees to pay a particular sum of money for goods due to the fact that the production of this commodity has been, you know, someone's spent it work? Nothing of the sort! The buyer pays money for goods, as regards this kind of product usefulness for yourself, a loved one. And depending on whether, how high, to provide the buyer, the usefulness of the product, he agrees to pay a greater or lesser amount of money. And how much there was spent working on the production of goods - the buyer does not care. The cost of the goods, expressed in the market price is determined by only one thing: the level of demand for the product on the market, and demand depends on the subjective views of the usefulness of buyers for them this good.
Called it all "theory of marginal utility", and it was created, again, specifically in order to drive out of the hands of Marxists is their main economic indictment of the capitalist system - the doctrine of surplus value. For many, many years in all schools of economic theory, this is presented with this same sauce - they say, there was an economist, Karl Marx-educated, came up with the absurd teoriyku about the cost, but supposedly that says about all this modern economics ...
However, it is easy to see that here, as often happens when the theory is not create in the search for objective truth, and to order, that is to protect someone's specific economic interests, put the cart before the horse. It is not necessary to be a doctor of economic sciences, to see what the demand is the cause of the emergence of a new product on the market, not the source of its value.
For example, when the U.S. came first cars, they were very expensive, and arose the demand for cheap car that can afford very wide range of consumers. The answer to this demand was, as you know, "Ford Model T," people's car of Henry Ford, which is specifically for the production of this model even made the Industrial Revolution through any given car plant - put the pipeline. This allowed the distribution of duties among all employees of the plant so that the amount of labor expended by workers on the production of one car dropped sharply - and thus diminished and the cost of the product. Thus, demand actually led to lower prices for goods - but not directly, but indirectly, through one intermediary. And this was not an intermediary other than a reduction in labor expended to produce one unit of goods. As they say, QED.
In addition, if the value of the goods does not depend on the effort spent on its production work, then there would be no noticeable difference in price between the goods on the production of which is spent huge amount of labor and goods that are produced with minimal effort. What is known is not observed.
Thus, introducing the concept of surplus value, Marx identified the economic entity operating a class of employees - the class of owners of the means of production. And as we know, historical materialism states that when there is a contradiction between the new, advanced productive forces and backward relations of production, class struggle will inevitably worsen. This is what Marx saw around him.
The productive forces of the capitalist epoch brought mankind to such heights of productivity, which previously could not even dream of. Labor productivity achieved in the industrialization of the production was so high that they could have been properly feed and clothe, at least, the people of those countries where industrialization took place - the entire population, without exception. Why do some swimming in luxury and gilded palaces to live in, while others huddled in miserable huts, and were constantly on the verge of poverty?
Marx explained why: because the relations of production, where one class is constantly robbing the other hand, do not correspond to the level of development of productive forces. Capitalist production relations based on class antagonism and exploitation, must be replaced by some other - these relations of production that will open up access to a decent standard of living as a wide range of people, not just the narrow group.
On what foundation are capitalist relations of production? That generates the class antagonism? Private ownership of the means of production.
It was she who determines the class structure of society, here is the line between the owners of the means of production - and employees who are the owners operate, squeezing them out of surplus value. Hence, in order to switch to other, more progressive industrial relations, private property should be abolished, and instead enter the public domain. In the transition to public ownership of the means of production disappears, and the reason for the division of society into classes - there classless society, where every employee and at the same time, it is a direct manufacturer of material goods, and co-owner of all the factories. And since the institution of the state apparatus is the rule of one class over another, therefore, in a classless society, Marx said, the state would become unnecessary and wither away.
As a person who thinks highly realistic, Marx was well aware that members of the class of owners who quietly amassed a way their profits on the ruthless exploitation of female and child labor - would never agree to part with property and power. Marx was aware of: they will resist. Be a real war, class war. It is from this natural way has increased the doctrine of the dictatorship of the proletariat - a necessary intermediate step between the modern society of class antagonism and the future of a classless society. A specific definition of the proletarian dictatorship gave VI Lenin: "The scientific concept of dictatorship means nothing else than the unrestrained by any laws, no absolute rules are not constrained by directly relying on violence rule."
Concepts of operation, classes and class struggle existed before Marx. The idea of the state as an instrument of force by one class over another is actively promoted by anarchists. Therefore, Karl Marx himself valued his contribution as follows:
"What I did was new was to prove:
1) that the existence of classes is only bound to certain historical phases in the development of production;
2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat;
3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a society without classes. "
(From a letter to an American journalist Joseph Weydemeyer, which published an article by Marx's "dictatorship of the proletariat" in the newspaper New York Times)
Briefly and superficially, this is Marxism.
WHY MARX AGAIN? SOMETHING ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE MAIN scientific foresight MARX
Why then, at the start of the second decade of the XXI century, we again appeal to the intellectual legacy of Karl Marx? Than it can be useful to us - 20 years after the first-ever state built the Marxists came down from the stage of history?
We are writing today to Marx, because, first of all, Marx was right. We appeal to Marx, as it had pointed the way to the highest social ideal - in the second. Finally, thirdly, we turn to Marx, as the story of humanity on the path indicated by Marx, we can - and so should - that we, Russian.
In what way Marx was right?
It would seem that history has shown the complete bankruptcy of Marx's theoretical and Marx the prophet of proletarian revolutions.
Marx predicted that the proletarian socialist revolution will cover multiple countries at the highest (for its time) the level of industrialization - the countries where the factory and factory workers have recognized themselves as a single class of employees, property owners opposing the class of capitalists. When Marx's life such countries were Britain, Germany and America.
Instead, the first in the history of the revolutionary government proclaimed a policy of building socialism and communism, according to the covenants of Marx, emerged in Russia - a country where the urban industrial proletariat has only just begun to form, the country's agrarian, underdeveloped compared with the same Germany or Britain.
Marx argued that the primitive communal system replaced slavery, slavery - feudalism, feudalism gives way to capitalism, but capitalism comes to replace the dictatorship of the proletariat, which has no other outcome than a classless society, which stands for flawless foundation of public ownership of means of production. And this sequence, according to Marx, is due to the indisputable law, so that no "reverse" can not be. Instead, we see that the story is how can give a "reverse": up to return to the earliest phase of the capitalist system - the initial accumulation of capital.
What is the rightness of Marx? How right he was, and why today we can - and so should - rightly say that the theory of Karl Marx not only helps to explain events, but also correctly predict them?
Rightness of Marx that was fulfilled his main thesis - namely, the thesis about the inevitable end of capitalism. And in this case it is not only - or even mainly - about Russia, where capitalism was built instead of socialism.
This, oddly enough, is about the West.
"It was stupid, Winston, stupid! I was expecting from you a better answer. Now I'll answer that question. Here's how. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We do not take someone else's benefit, we only took power. Neither wealth nor luxury, nor a long life, no happiness - only power, pure power. What does pure power, you'll soon understand. We know what we're doing, and in this we differ from all the oligarchies of the past. All the others, even those who resembled us, were cowards and hypocrites. <...> We do not like that. We know that the government has never seized to give it up. Power - not a means, it is - the goal. Establish a dictatorship, not in order to safeguard a revolution; revolution is to establish a dictatorship. The purpose of repression - the repression. The purpose of torture - torture. The purpose of power - power. <...> Power is to hurt and humiliate. In fact, to break people's minds to pieces and make again in a way in which you want. Now you see what kind of world we create? <...> In our world, not other emotions except fear, rage, triumph and self-abasement. Everyone else we shall destroy. With the variety of pleasures <...> we end. But always - remember, Winston - always intoxication of power, and more and more, the sharper. Always, at every moment to be shrill joy of victory, enjoying the fact that came to a helpless foe. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.
