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1. Political Internet: State and Politics in the Age of Social
Media, (Routledge 2017)
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2. Intimate Speakers: Why Introverted and Socially Ostracized Citizens
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Biju
P R
Author,
Teacher, Blogger
Assistant
Professor of Political Science
Government
Brennen College
Thalassery
Kerala,
India
My Books
1. Political Internet: State and Politics in the Age of Social Media,
(Routledge 2017), Amazon https://www.amazon.in/
2. Intimate Speakers: Why Introverted and Socially Ostracized Citizens Use Social Media, (Fingerprint! 2017)
Amazon: http://www.amazon.in/dp/
1. Political Internet: State and Politics in the Age of Social Media,
(Routledge 2017), Amazon https://www.amazon.in/
2. Intimate Speakers: Why Introverted and Socially Ostracized Citizens Use Social Media, (Fingerprint! 2017)
Amazon: http://www.amazon.in/dp/
Historical materialism
Materialism is the basis of his sociological
thought
Materialism simply means that it is matter or
material reality, which is the basis for any change
Materialism means the materialist structure of
society
Marx’s general ideas about society
In Marx’s own phrase, it is the “guiding thread”
of all their works
It is the materialistic interpretation of the
history of societies
Historical materialism is based upon a
philosophy of human history
best understood as sociological theory of human
progress
it provides a scientific and systematic research
programme for empirical investigations
Theory is contained in ‘preface’ to A
Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859).
Actual basis of society is its economic
structure
Economic structure of society is made of its
relations of production
Legal and political super structure of society
is based on relations of production.
Relations of production reflect the stage of
society’s forces of production
For Marx material conditions or economic factors
affect the structure and development of society
Material conditions essentially comprise
technological means of production
Human society is formed by the forces and
relations of production
In historical materialism Marx has traced the
evolution of human societies from one stage to another
Marx has interpreted the evolution of societies
in terms of their material or economic bases
All society passes through unilinear evolution,
Every society progresses stage by stage
Every society has marched ahead.
Stages- Primitive Communism → Slavery →
Feudalism→ Capitalism →Socialism →Communism
All objects, whether living or inanimate are
subject to continuous change
The laws of dialectics determine the rate of
this change
New developments of productive forces of society
came in conflict with existing relations of production.
When people become conscious of the state of
conflict, they wish to bring an end to it
This period of history is called by Marx the
Period of Social Revolution
The revolution brings about resolution of
conflict.
It means that new forces of production take
roots and give rise to new relations of production.
Growth of new productive forces which outlines
the course of human history
Productive forces are the powers society uses to
produce material conditions of life.
Human history is an account of development and
consequences of new forces of material production. This is the reason why his
view of history is given the name of Historical Materialism.
Terms mentioned in Marx’s theory of Historical materialism
Social relations, over and above individuals:
Man must live to eat
Production of material requirements of life,
compel individuals to enter into definite social relations that are independent
of their will.
Infrastructure and Super-structure
Every society has its base and superstructure.
Social relations are defined in terms of
material conditions which he called infrastructure.
The economic base of a society forms its
infrastructure.
Any changes in material conditions also imply
corresponding changes in social relations.
Forces and relations of production came in the
category of infrastructure.
Within the superstructure figure the legal,
educational and political institutions as well as values, cultural ways of thinking,
religion, ideologies and philosophies
Forces and relations of production:
The forces of production appear to be the
capacity of a society to produce.
This capacity to produce is essentially a
function of scientific and technical knowledge, technological equipment and the
organisation of labour force.
The
means of production include things that are necessary to produce material
goods, such as land and natural resources.
They also include technology, such as tools or machines, that people use to
produce things. The means of production in any given society may change as
technology advances. In feudal society, means of production might have included
simple tools like a shovel and hoe. Today, the means of production include
advanced technology, such as microchips and robots.
The relations of production arise out of the
production process but essentially overlap with the relations in ownership of
means of production.
Relations of production should not be entirely
identified with relations of property.
Throughout
history, the relations of production have taken a variety of forms—slavery, feudalism,
capitalism—in which employees enter into a contract with an employer to provide
labor in exchange for a wage.
Four Modes of
Production:
1. Asiatic mode of Production:
The concept of Asiatic mode of production refers
to a specific original mode of production.
This is distinct from the ancient slave mode of
production or the feudal mode of production.
It is characterised by primitive communities in
which ownership of land is communal.
These communities are still partly organised on
the basis of kinship relations.
State power which expresses the real or
imaginary unity of these communities controls the use of essential economic
resources and directly appropriates part of the labour and production of the
community.
This mode of production constitutes one of the
possible forms of transition from classless to class societies.
It is also perhaps the most ancient form of this
transition.
It contains the contradiction of this
transition, i.e. the combination of communal relations of production with emerging
forms of the exploiting classes and of the state.
2. Ancient mode of Production:
Every part of history has its end point.
So primitive communism was to go and slavery
came into being.
People who had physical, political and material
strength had authority over others.
So two
classes were found and this is where the concept of private property emerged.
There were two classes—the owning class, they
are the masters, and non-owning class, they were the slaves.
In course of time different people grabbed
certain plots of land as a result of which there was grabbing and as a result
of which a large number were left wretched.
So they had to depend on these owners in order
to make a living and it went on rising and so when they would not pay their
debts they were sold and engaged under the so called masters.
Slaves were mere chattels.
They had no right and were used like commodities
and they could be bought and sold.
So individuals were slaves and it went on
resulting in a family of slaves and masters were masters.
So it became very heinous of people worked
without any voice, even if the torture was unbearable. Slaves were made to work
under stringent physical conditions.
They were engaged in agricultural, menial and
physical labour.
If the society has experienced heinous system at
any point of time, it is slavery.
So it was to go and another stage was to come.
So, towards its end, a sort of internal struggle
was found so that the slaves, peasants started a revolution against the masters
so as to release certain slaves from the clutches of the masters.
Slavery is called the stage of initial
agriculture.
So agricultural capitalism was to come.
Agricultural innovations would take place.
Technology was applied to agriculture.
People started to understand the dignity of
labour and the stage came, i.e. Feudalism or Agricultural capitalism.
3. Feudal Mode of Production
Marx said throughout the pages of history we
find two classes.
They were feudal lords and serfs.
Lords owned the land in their favour and their
job was to lease land and employ agricultural labour in their lands.
The owners who were leased had to pay certain
taxes and the labourers were given wages.
This is even a heinous system and the lords
exploited by not paying the labour its due.
So Marx said that this stage was also
exploitative in character.
Heavy taxes were imposed on serfs.
This stage could not grow much as industries
were growing and people sought their job in industries and in cities. So the
serfs fought against the lords.
With the spreading of industries, urbanization
grew, so emphasis was on industries and came the next stage, i.e. Industrial
capitalism.
4. Capitalistic mode of production
Marx was very much bothered about this stage
because this represented the most heinous and migration was found from rural to
urban areas.
Those who worked in agricultural lands shifted
to industries.
There were two classes— the working classes, the
proletariats and the bourgeoisie.
Marx wanted to champion the cause of proletariat
and he wanted that the exploitative character must go and equality be
established.
So Marx was Futuristic.
Socialism is the stage where the society is
classless and it is based on the principle of equality.
Marx had experienced socialism and there was
spread of socialism based on his ideas.
Communism is the ultimate final stage where
there is prevalence of equality among all.
Everybody works according to his capacity and
gets according to his due, when capitalism goes and communism comes into being
there are some elements found in some form or other of capitalism in socialism.
As per Marx, socialism is the initial communism
and communism is the later socialism because everybody is equal and can stand
in the same queue and communist society is thoroughly equal and no concept of
private property ownership.
In socialism, there are two ownership structures
1. State ownership
2. Ownership by co-operatives
However, under communism there is single
ownership; i.e. State /Community ownership.
Everybody gets as per his due and works as per
his capacity.
This stage was difficult to find.
So we find that with spread of Marx’s ideas we
find communism in Russia and China.
But socialism is the gap that still remains.
Dialectical materialism
History and philosophy of dialectics: Idealistic
Dialectics (Hegel) Historical Materialism (K. Marx), Dialectical Materialism
(F. Engels , K. Marx)
dialectical
materialism, official philosophy of Communism, based
on the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, as elaborated by G. V. Plekhanov, V. I. Lenin, and Joseph Stalin.
In theory, dialectical materialism is meant to
provide both a general world view and a specific method for the investigation
of scientific problems.
The basic tenets are that everything is material
and that change takes place through "the struggle of opposites."
Because everything contains different elements
that are in opposition, "self-movement" automatically occurs; the
conflict of opposing forces leads to growth, change, and development, according
to definite laws.
Dialectics is the
philosophy of motion.
Everything is in a
constant state of flux and change; all reality is matter in motion.
Nothing in life is
static
Greek philosopher
Heraclitus: "All things flow, all change."
Dialectics is nothing more than the science of the general laws of motion
and development of nature, human society and thought." (Engels:
Anti-Duhring)
Marx and Engels
elaborated three broad and interconnected laws of dialectics,
The law of
quantity and quality
Just as a scientist
is familiar with the concept of things altering their quality at certain
quantitative points (water into steam at boiling point), so too an observation
of the evolution of class societies illustrates the same law.
Society does not
develop in a slow, evolutionary manner
The
Interpenetration of Opposites
The Law of Unity and Conflict of Opposes
Dialectics applied to the class struggle does
not have the same degree of precision as it does in the science laboratory.
The role of individuals, political parties and
social movements is not scientifically pre-ordained.
A trade union leader might be a respected
left-winger, but may capitulate when faced with a determined onslaught from the
bosses.
A moderate trade union leader may surprise
himself or herself however and become much more "militant" than
intended, when faced with mass pressure from below.
There are no absolutes in the class struggle!
Within every economic growth of capitalism are
the seeds of future recession and vice versa.
The Negation of the Negation
Described by Engels as "an extremely
general, and for this very reason extremely far-reaching and important, law of
development of nature, history and thought", the negation of the negation
deals with development through contradictions which appear to annul, or negate
a previous fact, theory, or form of existence, only to later become negated in
its turn.
Capitalisms economic cycle illustrates this law.
Great wealth is created in the boom, only to
become partially destroyed by episodic crises of over-production.
These in turn create afresh the conditions for
new booms, which assimilate and build upon previously acquired methods of
production, before once again coming into contact and being partially negated
by the limits of the market economy.
Everything, which exists, does so out of
necessity.
But everything perishes, only to be transformed
into something else.
Thus what is necessary in one time and place
becomes unnecessary in another.
Everything creates its opposite, which is
destined to overcome and negate it.
The first human societies were classless
societies based on the co-operation of the tribe. These were negated by the
emergence of class societies basing themselves upon the developing material
levels of wealth.
Modern private ownership of the means of
production and the nation state, which are the basic features of class society
and originally marked a great step forward, now serve only to fetter and
undermine the productive forces and threaten all the previous gains of human
development.
The material basis exists now to replace the
bosses system with socialism, the embryo of which is already contained in class
society, but can never be realised until the working class negates capitalism.
Class Theory
The history of all hitherto existing society is
the history of class struggles (The
Communist Manifesto)
Ever since human society emerged from its
primitive and relatively undifferentiated state it has remained fundamentally
divided between classes who clash in the pursuit of class interests
for example, the nuclear cell of the capitalist
system, the factory, is the prime locus of antagonism between classes--between
exploiters and exploited, between buyers and sellers of labor power--rather than
of functional collaboration
He focuses on dialectical class conflict to control the means of production as the driving force behind social evolution.
According to Marx, society evolves through
different modes of production in which the upper class controls the means of
production and the lower class is forced to provide labor.
In Marx's dialectic, the class conflict in each
stage necessarily leads to the development of the next stage (for example, feudalism leads to capitalism).
Marx predicted that class conflict between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat would lead to capitalism's downfall.
According to Marx, under capitalism, workers
(the proletariat) must alienate their labor.
The bourgeoisie try to preserve capitalism by
promoting ideologies and false
consciousness that keep workers from revolting.
Marx's understanding of history is called
historical materialism because it focuses on history and material (versus
ideas).
Class struggle pushed society from one
stage to the next, in a dialectical process. In each stage, an ownership class
controls the means of production while a lower class provides labor for
production. The two classes come into conflict and that conflict leads to social change.
For example, in the feudal stage, feudal lords
owned the land used to produce agricultural goods, while serfs provided the
labor to plant, raise, and harvest crops. When the serfs rose up and overthrew
the feudal lords, the feudal stage ended and ushered in a new stage:
capitalism.
Surplus value
Adhering to David Ricardo’s labour theory of
value, Karl Marx held that human
labour was the source of economic value
Each class society, part of society (the ruling
class) appropriates the social surplus product
Surplus value is a specific expression of the capitalist
form of exploitation, in which the surplus
product takes the
form of surplus value.
The production and
appropriation of surplus value constitute the
essence of the fundamental
economic law of capitalism.
Difference between a worker's wages (exchange
value) and the value of goods and
services he or she produces (use value). Since use value is (or should be) always higher than the exchange
value, workers produce a positive surplus value through their labor. German philosopher-economist Karl Mark (1818-83) used surplus value
as a measure of worker exploitation by capitalism.
Exchange-value
Exchange of labour (i.e., commodity production) is the “cell” of bourgeois society (i.e., capitalism).
Exchange of labour is not identical with cooperation or division of
labour, but is simply one, historically developed
system of social cooperation and division of labour.
Within the family, for example, the various
members of the family meet each others’ needs without the expectation of
something of equal value in return. In feudal society, the different classes
carry out work that is their duty according to feudal right, and do not expect
nor receive anything “in exchange”. In a future socialist society, people will
work within a developed division of labour without counting out their hours of
labour to ensure that they get the equivalent in return: in the words of Marx’s
Critique of the
Gotha Program: “From each according to his ability,
to each according to his needs!”
Exchange began at the margins of tribal society
in the form of occasional barter, and gradually grew until it engulfed the
whole of social life and gave birth to capital.
Exchange-value is the quantitative aspect of value, as
opposed to “use-value” which is the qualitative
aspect of value, and constitutes the substratum of the price of a commodity.
“Value” is often used as a synonym for
exchange-value, though strictly speaking, “value” indicates the concept which
incorporates both quantity and quality.
Exchange-value differs from “price” in two ways: firstly, price is the actualisation of exchange-value, differing from one
exchange to the next in response to a myriad of factors affecting the activity
of exchange; secondly, price is the specific value-form, measuring the value of the commodity against money.
In political
economy and especially Marxian
economics, exchange
value refers to one of four major attributes of a commodity, i.e., an item or service produced for, and sold on the market. The other three aspects are use value, economic value, and price.[1]
Thus, a commodity has:
·
an exchange value
Use value or value in use is the utility of
consuming a good—the want-satisfying power of a good or service in classical
political economy. In Marx's critique of political
economy, any product has a labor-value and a use-value,
and if it is traded as a commodity in markets, it additionally has an exchange
value, most often expressed as a money-price.
Dictatorship of
the proletariat
In Marxist sociopolitical thought, the dictatorship
of the proletariat refers to a state in which the proletariat, or the working class, has control of political power. The term,
coined by Joseph Weydemeyer, was adopted by
the founders of Marxism, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, in the 19th
century. In Marxist theory, the dictatorship of the proletariat is the
intermediate system between capitalism and communism, when the government is in the process of changing the
means of ownership from privatism to collective ownership.
Both Marx and Engels argued that the short-lived
Paris Commune, which ran the French capital for over
two months before being repressed, was an example of the dictatorship of the
proletariat.
According to Marxist theory, the existence of
any government implies the dictatorship of one social class over another. The dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is thus used as an antonym of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Rosa Luxemburg, a Marxist
theorist, emphasized the role of the dictatorship of the proletariat as the
rule of the whole class, representing the majority, and not a single party,
characterizing the dictatorship of the proletariat as a concept meant to expand
democracy rather than reduce it, as opposed to minority rule in the
dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, the only other class state power can reside in
according to Marxist theory.
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