KARL MARX
(Turner, Zeitlin, Marx)

LARGER CONTEXT (Zeitlin)

SPECIFIC ELEMENTS OF THEORY/CONCEPTS

IDEALISM

DEBATE BETWEEN HEGAL AND MARX

Marx as Young Hegelian

at University of Berlin he encountered Hegel's idealism (page 90, Turner)

young hegelians saw themselves as radicals (Turner, page 90)

after studying Hegel's idealism, he wrote to his father 'I arrived at the point of seeking idea in reality itself." (page 90, Turner).

this means he was rejecting Hegel's idealism in favour of studying 'reality itself'

POLITICAL ECONOMY

Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Pierre Proudhon

MATERIALISM

Feuerbach

Hegel argued that objects perceived by senses are not real (Turner, page 95)


Marx strong rejected this idealism, and said that when empirical phenomena are understood only as thoughts, people's more significant practical problems are ignored (Turner, Page 96)

Neither material objects, nor relationships can be changed by merely thinking about them. (Turner, page 96)

Marx contended that although Hegel correctly graps labour as the essence of man. but the only labor which he recognises is abstractly mental labor. (Turner, 97)


yet people have physical needs, Marx noted, such as those for food, clothing, and shelter which can be satisfied only by productive activity in the finite world. (Turner, 97)


Hence for Marx, the most significant labor is productive activity rahter than maental activity. (Turner, 97)

DIALECTICS from Hegel

despite the rejection of idealism, Marx saw a significant tool in Hegel's us eof the dialectic. (Turner, 98)


he said Hegel's dialectic is standing on its head. it must be turned right side up again (Turner, 98)


the process by which Marx turned the dialectic right side up involved its application to the finite world where people make history by producing their sustenance from the environment. (Turner, 98)


Rather than being concerned with the existence of God, Marx emphasized that focus must be on concrete societies and on actual people who have conflicting intereets (Turner, 98)

Feuerbach undercut both Hegel and the Young Hegelians by arguing that religious beliefs arose from people's unconscious deification of themselves. (Turner, 101)

According to Feuerbach, human beings have taken all that they believe is good in themselves and simply projected these characteristics onto God. (Turner, 101)


he argued that theology was simply a mythical vision of human aspirations and that what man praises and approves, that is God to him; what he blames and condemns is the nondivine. (Turner, 101)

religion is man's earliest form of self-knowledge. (Turner, 101)

Feuerbach decisively rejected any analysis that reated theology as existing independently of empirical activities. moreover, although many young hegelians still accepted the idea that God necessarily directed human affairs. (Turner, 101)

Fuerebach was a materialist in the sense that he believed that people's consciousness of the world wa the product of their brains and, hence, of physical nature. (Turner, 101)

dialectics

Marx has learned from Hegel and Feuerbach that history moves in a dialectical pattern (Turner, 102)

Adam Smith

  • invisible hand
  • demand and supply

relationship between social existence and social consciousness

"My dialectical method is not only different from the Hegelian, but its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life-proces of the human brain, i.e. the process of thinking, which, under the name of the 'idea', he even transforms into an independent subject, and the reala world is only the external, phnomenal form of the idea. with me, on the contract, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind. and translated into forms of thought." (Zeitlin, 94)

Religion

Alienation/Estranged Labour (Marx's EPM)

Labour theory of value

Surplus Value

  • Concept of History
  • Interpretation of history
  • stages of human history

Theory of class and class struggle

Social Labour

Labour Power

Socially necessary labour time

time and speed

use value and exchange value

laour time

From object of labour

in the production process

from species-being