Basics of Marxism Leading to an

Understanding of Communism

Basnillo, Ruth AnnAngiwot, Jennifer

Franco, KimNebres, Annaliza

Rafael, Henry

Understanding Marx’s Theories

Karl Heinrich Marx

• born on May 5, 1818• Jewish• Philosopher,

Political Economist,

Historian, Sociologist,• converted as a Christian• founder of communism• died on March 14, 1883

Communist Manifesto– published by Marx and Engels on

behalf of a group idealistic workers– originally drafted as a program for

an international “communist league”

– become one of the most important political documents of all time

– left an incredible mark on human progress

Key Demands

• Abolition of property in land and application of all rents on land to public purposes.

• A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

• Abolition of all right of inheritance. • Confiscation of the property of all

emigrants and rebels.

Key Demands

• Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.

• Centralization of communication and transport in the hands of the state.

• Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

Key Demands

• Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state, the bringing in cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

Key Demands

• Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of population over the country.

• Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its resent form.

Three Parts of Marxism

• Philosophical basis– Derives much from Hegel– Neatly inverts the key central idea of

Hegelian perspective• Theories of political economy

– Follow from the philosophical position– Theory of Surplus Value – Labor theory of Value

• Theory of revolution

A Materialist World

• our ideas do not make the world, the world makes are ideas

• the dialect made Marx and Engels theories scientific

• free of mysticism and metaphysics but describing something like a scientific “law” (inevitably)

Modernist Optimism

• a view that underneath the haphazard and contingent ordinariness of everyday life were certain dynamic power that while remaining hidden, controlled the way things changed and determine the future

• materialistic and positivistic • believing in progress through an

accumulated of knowledge

Class Struggles

Class Struggle

• active expression of class conflict looked at from any kind of socialist perspective

• Main class struggle– Bourgeoisie– Proletariat

Class • refers to the hierarchical distinctions

between individuals or groups in societies or cultures

• social classes in capitalist societies – Bourgeoisie

• Petite Bourgeoisie– Proletariat

– lumpenproletariat – landlords – peasantry and farmers

2 Main Class Struggles

Bourgeoisie

• those who own means of production

• control the process of production• buy labor power from proletariat• Their wealth depend on the work

of the proletariat• exploit proletariat

Proletariat

• individuals who sell their labor power

• add value to the products • do not own means of production • labor power generates surplus

value greater than the worker's wages

Stages of Development

Stages of Development

• Primitive Communism• Slave Society• Feudalism• Capitalism• Socialism• Communism

Primitive Communism

• as seen in cooperative tribal societies – everyone would share in what was

produced by hunting and gathering – no private property – primitive society produced no surplus – few things that existed for any length

of time were held communally – there would have been no state

Slave Society

• when the tribe becomes a city-state. Aristocracy is born – Systematic exploitation of labour – Compelled to work for another – held against their will from the time of

their capture, purchase, or birth – deprived of the right to leave, to

refuse to work, or to receive compensation in return for their labour

Feudalism • aristocracy is the ruling class• Merchants develop into capitalists

– derived from the Latin word feodum – composed of a set of reciprocal legal

and military obligations among the warrior nobility

– revolving around the three key concepts • lord• Vassals• fiefs

Capitalism

• ruling class, who create and employ the true working class – Economic system in which the private

ownership of property is protected by law

– mode of production characterized by• predominant private ownership of the

means of production• distribution and • exchange in a mainly market economy

• has been dominant in the Western world since the end of feudalism

• provided the main, but not exclusive, means of industrialization throughout much of the world

Capitalism

Socialism

• Dictatorship of the Proletariat • workers gain class consciousness • share the belief that capitalism

unfairly concentrates power • achieved via class struggle and a

proletarian revolution which represents the transitional stage between capitalism and communism

Communism

• classless and stateless society • socioeconomic structure and

political ideology• based on common ownership of

the means of production and property in general

The Prophecy

• Revolution would be preceded by a series of intensifying crisis

• Goods would be produced which the impoverished proletariat could not afford to buy

• More workers would be forced out of work because their labor was not needed

The Prophecy

• This would drive wages down further

• Lessen the ability of people to buy the products of capitalism

• Enterprises would collapse and be swallowed by larger organization in the centralization of capital

Class Status and World

View

Class • Identity of a social class is derived

from its relationship to the means of production.

• Social Classes in Capitalist SocietiesProletariatBourgeoisie

• very wealthy Bourgeoisie• Petit Bourgeoisie

Lumpenproletariat Landlords Peasantry and farmers

Class Antagonism

• Hostility Between two antagonistic classes.

Exploiters Exploited

Revolution

Capitalism’s Role

• Capitalism: constitutes necessary and progressive step toward ultimate human liberation > Cause:

* Capitalists are alienated from their true human nature

Capitalism’s Role

• Capitalism cannot resolve the internal contradiction between its forces of production and its relation of production

> Forces of production: actual material methods of

production previously in a given society

>Relations of Production: human side of the production process

• Forces of production promises social wealth but relation of production remains unchanged.

• In short, capitalism produces the means of human liberation but prevents its realization

Rise of Revolutionary Consciousness

• in the boom and bust cycle of capitalism:

1. Poor becomes progressively poorer and their lives more intolerable.

2. Simple contrast with the bourgeoisie becomes too flagrant to be ignored because proletarian ranks have swelled.

Proletariat Victory• to experience indignities of starvation—

wages for years leads to outrage• It becomes clear that capitalists are not

honorable benefactors• working class matures and becomes

militant • workers realize that their agonies are

intrinsic to capitalist exploitation and that they will never be free unless capitalist system is smashed

Proletariat Victory

• Revolutionary moment arrives when the proletariat concludes that their bourgeoisie masters must be overthrown

• from sporadic, unsynchronized strikes, they will turn to well-orchestrated, economy-wide work stoppages and boycotts

• when repressive powers of the state are wielded against them—workers will be driven toward armed resistance

• In the end, the many will prevail over the few

Proletariat

• individuals who sell their labor power • add value to the products • do not own means of production• labor power generates surplus value

greater than the worker's wages

Proletariat as Universal

• Embodiment of everything that is wrong with capitalism

• very being refutes the bourgeoisies’ claim to have created a just and human society

• they do not wish to merely alleviate their own suffering

• their aim is to abolish themselves as a class

• because their degradation is limitless, and their dehumanization total, their aims are universal as well

Dictatorship of the Proletariat

• turns the table on what had been the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie

• for Marx, this would be more human and less dictatorial than its predecessor

1. Role of the great majority over the few minority

2. Coercive only in order to serve broad interests of humanity

3. explicitly a transitional stage

DAWN OF COMMUNISM

• arrives when the workers:>take control of the means of production>humanize the relation of production>unleash the forces of production allowing them to work without impediment for the general good

• release of the forces of production for the destructions of capitalism will make for a quantum leap in human material abundance

WITHERING OF THE STATE• results when a super-abundant,

classless society would be a society without dissension or coercion

> State would lose its functions> State would lack anyone to repress>in place would only be the

administration of things for the general good

• proletariat will have abolished itself and created a universal society

FUTURE COMMUNIST SOCIETY• Marx ideal communist society is

democratic in a radical sense• work, though it would still be

necessary, would no longer be drudgery

• possessiveness would disappear as its cause, scarcity was overcome

• conception of cooperative public ownership will be a communist alternative to private ownership

FUTURE COMMUNIST SOCIETY

• No longer would individuals be appendages to their social belongings and social statuses

• family would be replaced by new forms of human association

>equality, free choice, love, and human need are decisive

• there will be a creation of international working-class unity

Analysis

Although Marxism is an alternative for capitalism was a great idea, we still found this not good. Our reason is that if the country which is not that advanced would grasp this concept and apply this; we would also have a hard time. The equality in democracy that we have today could be means of having the will to achieve something. If communism would be applied in the Philippines, then, most of us would just be dependent since we could still have something for our living due to the equal distribution of resources.