Karl Marx
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Total reviews: 4
Average rating: 4.5 of 5
good intro to Marx's thought 4 out of 5 stars.
17 of 18 people found this review helpful.
In addition to Marx's writings, this book consists of introductions to various sections of Marx's writings by Prof Kamenka, a chronology of events in Marx's life, letters and other documents by and about him and a glossary of Marxian terms. The writings can be tedious, windy full of run-on sentences, sometimes unreadable. I skipped some of them, including his speech "Value, price and profit," which Kamenka claims was a good laymen's introduction to the ideas of "Capital," but I gave it up after a few pages. The first section of writings is from before 1844. In the tradition of the enlightenment, he discusses the concept of "alienation," how human nature is based on the need to maximize one's creative potential. Yet under capitalism, the worker is turned into a machine; the product he makes, or help makes under the division of labor, does not give him any value, but the wealth from it goes to his boss. The workers intellectual capabilities and self-esteem are stunted. Thus, a truly just society would give the worker the freedom to pursue his dreams, not having to worry about renting himself out to capitalists to survive. Workers, those who actually produce wealth, would directly manage businesses (not state bureaucrats). As we progress along the years with Marx, he begins to develop his redoubtable historical materialist conception of history. This is a "scientific" thesis that all societies pass through slavery, feudalism, and capitalism and then capitalism starts to break down because of its own "contradictions." In unrestrained capitalism, capitalists try to maximize profit anyway they can. They build up excess capacity of factories and other facilities to try to compete but unfortunately in unregulated competition, all but a select few are destroyed. The petit bourgeoisie i.e. peasants and small business owners are also wiped out by big business. The capitalists in order to keep up their rate of profit, increase the hours of their slaves and try to reduce their wages and getting out of doing anything for them to make their conditions better. The capitalist system will eventually collapse from all of this and the urban wage slaves, the proletariat will take over the means of production, eventually instituting democratic workers control over these means. As Prof. Kamenka notes later, it is rather vague if Marx conceived of various measures to forestall capitalism's, destabilization. ...
His writings from the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte are certainly interesting, though his efforts to apply his theories to the situation in France somewhat take away from his analysis of the events. He conceives the France under Louis Philippe (1830-48) to be under the control one of section of the bourgeoisie, basically stock market swindlers. The rest of the proprietered classes revolted against this one faction in 1848. The ruling classes promised the proletariat radical democratic reforms to get their support for the overthrow but once they had consolidated their power, they massacred them into submission. The peasants were the majority of France at that time, and they, of course, valued stability above all else to maintain their meager property. The Bourgeois republic that was consolidated in 1848 could not provide the requisite stablity for capitalist operations, so up rose Louis Bonaparte, nephew of Napoleon to establish a dictatorship.
In his article,"The Indian revolt" from 1857 he breaks free from the vague theorizing and comes out with first rate journalism pure and simple. He reminds his readers that with all the hocus pocus of holy horror in England of the atrocities of the Indian sepoys , British troops were raping and burning down villages in China not that long ago. He quotes the proud numerous proud accounts from British soldiers of routine racist massacre and torture. Such as "not a day passes but we string up ten to fifteen of them(noncombatants)" and "every nigger we meet we either string up or shoot."
Another first rate piece of journalism, is his inagural address to the international working of 1864. Again, no tedious theorizing but a straightforward report on the condition of the British working classes. This was in a period, he notes, which the Chancellor of the Excheqeur slobbered over as a period of unprecedented expansion of wealth for all Britons. He contrasts this with a quote from William Gladstone that this increase in wealth was actually exclusvely confined to the property-owning minority. He quotes extensively from house of lords reports that worry about the severe malnourishment among agricultural laborers and which also noteed that the worst conditions of these laborers was better than the average amongst urban laborers.
The best writing by far is his stuff on the Paris commune of 1871, after France's defeat by Bismark's Prussia. Prussia and the French elite combined to crush these communes. These communes were set up as local, regional and national bodies. However, the local communes had the predominant power. Each body selected delegates to the higher bodies. Each body had reprehensive from the working class paid at workingperson's wages. Any government official could be removed from power at anytime by a recall type action. This is clearly what Marx had in mind as a system to govern the "transition to communism," instead of the dictatorship over the proletariat that was set up in the so-called "communist states" under his name.
The Critique of the Gotha program for 1875 consists of Marx attacking the German workers party somewhat pedantically but it consists of interesting comments. He denounces the party for its advocacy of state power to achieve its ends. He even denounces them for calling for government control of the schools.
