Marxism Notes

Marxism is a holistic theory of society that challenges the models of Hegel, narrative history, and political economy as defined by Adam Smith or Jeremy Bentham. Marx satirizes Von Ranke's grand history as lacking a coherent theory and labels it the product of the dominant ideology. For Marx there are patterns of historical motion that are visable through objective analysis. Like rational choice, Marxism presupposes the existence of a division of labor, the commodization of labor, and the inevitablity of monopoly in a capitalist society, but Marxists want to explain how that development occured and how individual responses to it are conditioned to the larger superstructure of socialization that the dominant mode of production imposes on society.

For Marx, society is a mode of production which includes structure, forces, matieral relations, culture, values, in total, a way of life, that proceeds any individual and encompasses him. It is an absolute rejection of that society which is deemed the sum of its parts. One is born into a structure which necessarily dominantes but does not necessarily determine behavior inspite of powerful conditioning.

A mode of production = a mean of production. For capitalism, the mode of production is the creation of commodities. This is directly related to the social relations of production which include the market itself, forms of private property, the state, ideas, culture, and a class structure. Revolution occurs when the mode of production alters, as in the case of factory. History, therefore, is a linear sequence of modes of production in which each is distinguished by a unique set of class relations. Class is very specifically defined as having the same relationship to ownership over the means of production: for capitalists, it is the capacity to call labor into being.

Revolution is occasioned by the internal contradictions between the means of production and social relations becames totals and inescapable. Changes in ther means of production lead to older ideologies contradicted by new ones. If your real class position is x, but you think of yourself as y, there must be a social revolution from the subjective classes to alter the situation.

Base and superstructure: there is an intimate relationship with the productive nature of society and the state, culture, and ideas of it. Ideology is a false consciousness, which is still a force of production. Individualism and religion, for instance, are ideologies which force people to act in certain ways, the former of the two marking the triumph of capitalism. Ideologies are te ruling ideas of every age and represent the dominant interests of the ruling class because they control the means of production. The state exists as the executive arm of the ruling class.

Man is alienated from the fruit of his labor. People do not own their labor power, or the product of it. No one likes work, instead we work to eat. In this sense we are alienated from nature and alienated from our selves, and competition alienates us from others. The degree to which human beings are alienated varies with the modes of production. In general, the greater the productivity, the more alienation. The capitalist system finds all society falling into 2 and only 2 classes.

Major criticisms: If you disagree, it is because you are alienated. Marxism remains too philosophical for social scientist methodologies. Like rational choice, historical materials are only exemplifications of the logic of structure. There is no agency, no attention to structure, no laws of motion exist in real contingent histories. Sociologists and political scientists find it crude. Cultural scientists doubt ideas, ideologies, and identities can be so easily reduced.