Karl Marx,

Capitalism &
Historical
Dialectics
Riza Noer Arfani
[for PED class March 10,
2009]
 Understanding
Capitalism via Marx
• His ethics and methods
– Idea of alienation
– Historical materialism
• His analysis on bourgeois
capitalism
– Economic anatomy
– Social anatomy

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 Marx Ethics
• Idea of alienation
– Hegel’s thinking dialectics
– Marx critics to Anglo-Saxon
political economy
• Modern industrial
capitalism pattern &
behavior
– Creative human labor
degradation
– Forms of alienation

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 Alienation as Thinking
Dialectics
• Hegel’s parallel idea on
thinking & human-beings:
– Idealization of human-beings
as thinking beings acting in
the name of rationalism
• Where idea is the sole product
of such process
– But at the same time:
alienation persists as idea
reification & estrangement
prevail…

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 Idea of Alienation [Hegel]
• Reification  Estrangement 
Alienation  Super-session of
alienation
– Where:
• Reification: thoughts become things-
like
• Estrangement: the original thought
become lost
• Alienation: the original is now wholly
other
• Super-session of alienation: alienation
is overcome in discovery

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 Idea of Alienation [Marx]
• For Marx, Hegel’s idealism is
conservative…
– It ends up in the argument that
(Prussian) rational state is the
culmination of idea evolution
– Hence Marx rejects such idea
• Instead, Marx proceeds with
the argument that human-
beings=idea…
– Alienation is social and historical
phenomenon
– Existing is thinking…

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 State according to Marx
• Not pre-existed ahead of
society…
• It is society which materialize
the state, since society is
made of human-beings which
act as social animals then as
political animals
– Politics is routine negotiation of
social meanings
– Modern state is an alienated form
of political activity…

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 Anglo-Saxon
(Classical) Political
Economy
• Human-beings are
essentially egotistical…
• Abstract individual is in
pursuit of satisfaction
• Thus, consumption is
taken as the key to
human character
• Credo of INDIVIDUALISM

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 Marx Critics to the
Classics…
• The classics tend to take
for granted the existing
social, economic and
political system
characteristics, i.e. as
given systems…
• Abstract individual is a
naïve (ridiculous) way of
thinking, so that it ends
up in an absurd concept
of individualism

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 Labor according to Marx
• The classics fail to explain
the genuine meaning of
labor…
• Labor is produced in the
context of human-beings
create themselves and
their society in social
production, not through
the development of
individualism!
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 Degradation of
Creative Human Labor
• Modern industrial capitalism
degrades basic human
characters as creative human
labor by way of its materialistic
pattern and its individualistic
(egotistical) human behavior…
• It degrades creative human
labor to mere work
• It degrades human-beings to
worker…

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 Forms of Alienation
[Marx]
• Labor is alienated from the
product of his/her labor
• Labor is alienated from the
act of production
• Human-beings are alienated
from their ‘species-beings’
• Human-beings are alienated
from their fellows

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 Alienation #1
• Since in capitalist society
and its modern industry,
works are specialized,
routine and controlled by
other people, the product
produced by a worker is
far away and separated
from him/her…
• So, a worker is merely a
‘capital’ that generate
wealth of capitalist

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 Alienation #2
• Routinization, specialization,
submission to external control
and direction effectively
destroy the typically human
creativity of labor
– Labor creative capacity is not
considered
– Labor is merely an element of
bigger and longer process of
production…
• Labor in capitalist society is
not voluntary, it is coerced…

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 Alienation #3
• Capitalistic social
relations degrade the
collective human creation
of self and society by
reducing the social world
to the vehicle for the
satisfaction of private
wants
• It denies the social
character of labor
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 Alienation #4
• Capitalist social relations
are typically
fragmentary
– Diversified strata to meet
functional posts
• The relations are usually
role-incumbents…
– Diversified roles to meet
functional works

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 Recap on Marx Ethics
• Human-beings create
themselves and their societies
through their labor
• A productive system that
degrades labor into mere work
is thus a deformed system
inhabited by deformed people
• Fundamental contradiction of
capitalist society is precisely
on its concept of ‘private
control of social production’

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 Marx Method: Historical
Materialism [1]
Productive Activity

Cultural Superstructure

Human social life

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 Marx Method: Historical
Materialism [2]

• Productive activity: economic

base, economic activity
• Cultural superstructure:
cultural factors, law
(legal/political superstructure),
social consciousness, religion,
arts, etc.
• Sum total of these relations of
production = economic
structure of society, i.e. mode
of production

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 Marx Analysis on Bourgeois
Capitalism
Production

*Hidden law of
division of labor

**Market mechanism
[supply/demand]
Consumption

Production

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 Bourgeois Capitalism:
Marx Economic
Anatomy
• Commodities
• Use value
• Exchange value
• Surplus value
• Labor power
• Labor theory of value
• Exploitation
• Centralization & Concentration
(C & C)
• Contradiction

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 Commodity & its Use, Exchange
Values
• Commodity in capitalist society
are oriented towards market
exchange & production of
commodities, not for social
needs nor human needs…
• You can do something with the
commodity (use value) or
exchange it for something else
(exchange value)
• Exchange value is novel in
capitalism

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 Surplus Value
• necessary labor (nl) =
replacement needs (the value of
labor power, i.e. time taken to
provide the laborer's conditions
of existence, e.g. food, housing,
etc.)
• surplus labor [sl] = time during
which the laborer produce goods
above/over his replacement
needs, above and over the value
of his labor power
• sl is the source of surplus value

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 Labor & Exploitation
• Labor power: it's a commodity, it can be
bought and sold on the market…
• Labor theory of value: snlt = socially
necessary labor time
• Rate of exploitation = ratio of nl & sl
– Firms response to a shift in capital-
intensive industry*: increasing the
pressure of exploitation: longer hours,
lower wages, employee reduction &
rationalization, etc.
*Organic composition of capital ↑,
average rate of profit ↓ [the
economy as a whole may very well
generate more profit, but the
individual firms find that the rate
declines]

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 C & C = Contradiction
• Crises serve to encourage c&c
of firms; bankrupt firms are
taken over, ailing firms merge,
etc.
• Contradiction: triggering
endemic crises
• Crises are regulatory: crises
serve a regulatory function for
an anarchic and irrational
system, but they do cause
misery for the proletariat and
thus foster class
consciousness

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 Marx Key Claims on the
Economy
• All value is created by
expenditure of human labour
• Value = socially necessary
labor time (snlt), expended in
creating the commodity and
giving it its value
• The basic contradiction of the
capitalist system is the private
ownership/control of social
production…
• It is the overcoming of this
that ushers in socialism

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 Bourgeois Capitalism: Marx
Social Anatomy
• Class:
– class is not established by source of
income, neither is a functional position
within the division of labor]
– class points to the existence of groups
identified by the position occupied in
relations to the social means of production*
*a matter of ownership of private
property in the means of production, i.e.
'Bourgeois' vs. 'Proletariat'
• Ideology
– how people become conscious of conflicts in
their societies: class ideologies
• Base-superstructure
• The State
– key political institution of modern industrial
society
• The Party
• Revolutionary change

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