Marxism

• • for Marx, nothing beyond this world even exist
  • no God, there is no heaven
  • god = the opiate of the people
  • we try to convince ourselves there is a god because we don’t want to take responsibility for our lives
  • Reality is the connection between our consciousness and our culture
• • matter is reality
  • what makes us human is that we produce
  • Through productive activities we develop a society that in turn shapes us
• • Hegel
  • Geist = spirit is the movement through history
  • dialectic process - process repeats until we reach the ultimate end: Communism
  • thesis
  • antithesis
  • synthesis
  • Feuerbach
  • history is the result of economic circumstances that influence people’s mind and actions
  • humans aren’t products of God
• dialectical materialism

  • the driving force of the world is economics
  • the material factors in society determine the way we think and behave
  • 5 epochs in history
  • the primitive/communal (hunter gatherers)
  • slave
  • feudal
  • capitalist (now)
  • communism
  • the tension between the bourgeoisie (ruling class) and the proletariat (oppressed working class) in capitalism creatures conflict between rulers and the exploited
  • basis for each historical epoch = economic structure, production
• production

  • we are social animals with physical needs
  • we satisfy those needs by the “means of production”
  • the production of goods determines type of political, social, and religious life of every society
  • the economic structure controls the outlook of every human being, economic production shapes our ideas
• Polis

  • Marx: the political is similar to Plato’s consideration of the polis
  • polis
  • A natural association of citizens
  • this association nurtured all that is best in people
  • this association defined their character
  • Person = polis, mirror images
• alientaion

  • alienation = the separation of individual workers from the product of their labor
  • tribal societies: everyone helped to produce what the community needed
  • no separation between individual and the product of his labor
  • communities evolved and grew larger, so did production needs, division of labor
  • capitalism is the major oppressor
• • workers are slaves for another social class, transferring their labor/lives to the capitalist. in return, they get meager wages
  • capitalism dehumanizes workers, competition alienates them from each other and their product
  • labor produces for the rich ___, but for the worker ___
  • wonderful thing; privation
  • palaces; hovels
  • beauty; deformity
  • replaces labor with machines; back to barbarous kind of labor, workers now machines
  • intelligence; stupidity
• • alienated labor leads to
  • ownership
  • private property
  • human perversion
  • the need for money becomes the lust for money and greed keeps the process alive
  • devotion to money becomes a kind of religion
• communism

  • capitalism will continue until “all workers of the world unite” and become a revolutionary class
  • capitalism can’t survive the socialization of production, capitalism will faill
  • proletariat will overthrow capitalism
  • communisms is a classless society, economic struggle ends when all merge into the working class, no private property
  • dictatorship of the proletariat
  • a classless society will replace the proletariat
  • the people will own the means of production
  • labor will belong to the workers
  • capitalism will end