Karl Marx
(1818-83) 

Prefatory Remarks

Historical context

Influence

"Marxism" and "dialectical materialism"

Hegel (1770-1831)

Ethics

 

Teleological Pattern

Not a moral theorist in the ordinary sense but he can be understood in light of the teleological pattern

a===> E

End = freedom = human essence

Alienation
(Estrangement)

The contradiction between humanity's existence and essence

In the mode of alienation

    Essence = Freedom
    Existence = Non-Freedom

Alienation is overcome when existence and essence coincide  

    Essence = Freedom
    Existence = Freedom

Human Essence

Freedom: activity which is an end in itself
    - Occurrence
    - Self-expression

The view that  freedom is the human essence is derived from Marx's analysis of history

History is a product of human’s own activity - their labor

LABOR: the conscious transformation of our material and social environment

Through labor humans create the content of their lives - they create their own world

The logical culmination of this process is to create a content which allows us to realize our own ends, i.e., to be free, to actualize our essence, our own inherent humanness/humanity

 

Human Existence

Economic activity - dominant means by which we create the content of our lives

Market - mechanism through which we do this in a capitalist society

Market determines
    - jobs: the division of labor
    - commodities: production and distribution

 

diagram of free market: if alternative format is needed, please contact Disability Support Services

        The particular contours of the market are an accidental outcome of the anarchistic actions of individuals pursuing their own self-interest
        While we humans create it, we do not control it

Modes of Alienation

Relationship to the product: alienation of the object - the product dominates the producer

Relationship to one’s own activity: self-alienation - life is but a means to life

Relationship to species-being (human essence): alienation proper - life activity (labor) is only a means, not an end in itself

Relationship to others: alienation of the individual human from humans in general

 

Nonetheless, this labor creates "essential objects for man"

Money

        In a market economy the appropriation of the essential objects is mediated by money.

        With money the outcome is "the universal inversion of individualities"

Freedom

Requires that we consciously create our own future, i.e., abolish capitalism which is premised on the anarchism of the market

Socialism - planned economies

The end of our "pre-history" and the advent of "human history"

Communism - "an association in which the free development of each [individual] is the condition for the free development of all." Marx & Engels, Manifesto (1848)

 Re: Ethics

The problems of ethics are not theoretical problems - at their root they are practical problems

"The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it." Marx, Theses on Feuerbach, Thesis XI (1845)