|
|
|
|
|
Scientific SocialismScientific Socialism is a socio-political-economic theory pioneered by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The reason why this socialism is "scientific socialism"(as opposed to "utopian socialism") is because, like science, observation is essential in this theory. Historical Materialism There is an emphasis on materialism, as opposed to religion or idealism. Marx and Engels observed history and came to the conclusion that history is shaped by materialism. This is called historical materialism, a fundemental theory within the theory. Class and Alienation Marx and Engels observed a number of issues and came to the conclusion of "alienation". Alienation is separation from what we really are. According to Marx and Engels the social system makes us aliens or strangers to ourselves. They thought people are stopped from being truly human by the stunting effect of a corrupt social system. The present system is called capitalism or the bourgeois order. Like previous systems, it distorts our true being, but our full humanity will flourish in the communist future. To be human, according to Marx and Engels in The German Ideology (1846) is to be a creative worker. This is the humanity we have been alienated from. The alienation took place very early in human history and was associated with the emergence of economic and social classes. When early societies produced more than they needed to exist on, the surplus was set apart for special communal purposes such as investment, defence or religion. The groups that took charge of this surplus became the ruling class and, since then: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." (The Communist Manifesto par.1.1). Economics Economics for Marx and Engels was not just economics: it was the explanation for everything. In capitalism, that is. In the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859) Marx explained how in the late 1840s he reached a "general conclusion" which "once reached, continued to serve as the leading thread in my studies". This is how he describes his conclusion: "In the social production which men carry on they enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material powers of production." "The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society - the real foundations, on which rise legal and political superstructures and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness." Marx 1859 In diagrammatic form, he is arguing that society can be divided into an economic base and a superstructure. The superstructure consists of everything else apart from the economy (he mentions law, the state and human consciousness). It is the economic base that determines what the superstructure will be. So whatever you are studying: sociology, psychology, law, social policy, urban studies, geography, social work, the family, music, religion, history, politics, sex or pop music, you should, according to Marx, start with economics. Economics, for Marx, is about human relations. In particular it is about class relations. Class relations, for Marx, are economic relations. So another way of saying that the economic base determines the superstructure is to say that "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles" Which is what Marx and Engels said in The Communist Manifesto. This was the Marx-Engels research programme: To reconstruct all past and existing ideas (history, politics, religion, family and sexual codes and everything else) as expressions of the material base of society. The prospect is mind-boggling. But not only did they set out to do it: but they also took it on as a part-time activity! Marx spent most of his academic effort trying to get the economics right (writing Capital), whilst Engels was busy earning the money to keep the Marx family alive. In their different ways they both concentrated on the economic base. Research into how the base determined the superstructure was largely left to later generations of Marxists to develop. According to Marx the three major differences between his analysis, and that of Adam Smith, Ricardo and the other economists were: 1. That Marx treats surplus value as having a general character: it is extracted in different ways at different periods of history. Rent and capital are ways of extracting surplus value that belong to capitalism. They do not exist for all time. 2. That "the economists, without exception have missed the simple point that if the commodity has a double character - use value and exchange value - then the labour represented by the commodity must also have a two-fold character." 3 "That for the first time wages are shown to be the irrational form in which a relation hidden behind them appears" (Marx and Engels/Selected Correspondence. 8.1.1868) Lets us start at point three and work backwards. Marx says the economic system described by Adam Smith appears to be fair - but isn't. Ordinary issues like buying and selling commodities and being paid a wage are superficial appearances that hide (mask) reality. (Marx 1867 pp 71-84) Labour is just as much a commodity as Omo or Daz. Under capitalism people buy and sell it. In fact that is part of the Marx's definition of capitalism: Capitalism is the mode of production under which capitalists own the means of production and the workers sell them their labour power. (See Marx 1867 pp 167-169) But here is a problem. Smith, Ricardo and Marx all say that the value of a commodity is determined by how much labour is put into it. So if the capitalist pays the worker the value of the worker's labour, and if the capitalist sells the product for the same value - where is the profit? To make a profit the: value the worker is paid has to be less than the: value of the product The extra bit is profit, or "surplus value" But if, according to the labour theory of value, the value of the product is the value of the labour put into it, where does the "extra bit" come from. Is it trickery? Is the labourer paid less than her labour is worth? Or is the consumer charged more than the product is worth? No, Marx says. It is the way that surplus product is extracted under capitalism. The extraction of surplus product is exploitation, but it is not trickery, just an illusion of fair exchange created by the market economy. To see what is happening we have to go back to the distinction between use value and exchange value that Adam Smith makes. Water and diamonds have use values and exchange values, so does human labour. It is because they are different that the capitalist gets a surplus from the exchange, Marx says. The exchange value of human labour can be worked out in the same way as the exchange value of any other commodity: it is the labour that it takes to produce. So it's the labour needed to rear, feed, clothe, educate, house and keep a worker in working order. It's her cost of subsistence. Capitalists have to pay this, Marx points out, or there would be no workers. Sometimes they try to economize by overusing the worker so that her health declines or her children are not properly cared for: but this is a short term economy and the sensible Government's stop capitalists doing this (Marx 1867 pp 238-239). This still leaves a surplus. The worker's use value is greater than her exchange value: She can produce more than it takes to maintain her. The consumer pays for the labour value of what the worker produces, not just the cost of producing her. It is this extra bit - the difference between the labour it takes to produce a worker and the labour the worker puts into production - that provides the capitalist's surplus value. (Marx 1867 ch.7) Under feudalism surplus value was extracted in clear, open manner: serfs were forced to work on their lord's land, for example. Under capitalism the illusion is created that surplus is no longer extracted: that everyone is paid the price for what they have to sell. But Marx believed he had shown that it was just extracted in a different manner. All class societies involve exploitation: the extraction of surplus from labourers to supply the wants of a ruling class. But Marx did not believe society has to be class society. A classless society is not only possible - history is actually heading that way. The reason (as with all reasons for historical materialism) is economic. Marx argued that revolutionary changes in society take place because the "forces of production" come into conflict with the "relations of production". "At a certain stage of their development the mutual forces of production in society come into conflict with the existing relations of production, or - what is but a legal expression for the same thing - with the property relations within which they had been at work before. From forms of development of the forces of production these relations turn into fetters. Then comes the period of social revolution." Marx 1859
|
 |
|
| Copyright 2005-2009 OnPedia.com. All Rights Reserved |
|
|