Unit 7: Radicals of Political Thought in the 19 ^th Century

Introduction

This chapter focuses on two main thought traditions, Marxism and Anarchism in the 19 ^th century. Marxism refers to an organized body of thought which has been developed after Marx’s death, and aimed to condense the ideas of Marx into a systematic and inclusive world view that suited the needs of the growing socialist movement Anarchy is typically defined as a society without state. Anarchism aims to eliminate the state and liberate people from political domination and economic exploitation.

The Economic Theory of Marx: Alienation and Surplus Value

Marx believed that humans express their creativity, develop their humanity, and fulfill themselves through work. Work, in other words, is a form of self-creation. However, work under capitalism causes alienation. Alienation is the process through which the workers become foreign to their labor, species, and themselves. The three aspects of alienation can be summarized as follows:

1. First, the working conditions were very heavy in the 19th Century and work itself became a form of persecution for workers rather than a joyful process of the self-creation.
2. Second, workers became a part, a gear of the machine they operate. They worked even without knowing what exactly they were producing, because they were deprived of the information about the whole process of production.
3. Third, working under these conditions, workers were also alienated to their species, their population, and their fellows.

In his surplus value theory, Marx adopts Ricardo’s iron law of wages. Ricardo asserted that the fundamental motivation of capitalists is to make profit and accumulate capital. Therefore, they would pay wages just enough for the survival of the workers, because this wage is enough for the workers to come back to work the next day.

The Historical Theory of Marx: Dialectical Materialism

Dialectical materialism is the scientific foundation of Marx’s theory. The roots of dialectical materialism lie in the dialectic method of Hegel, who developed a theory of history focusing on change. According to Hegel, the world moves toward a goal, which is predetermined by God. He called this goal as “idea” and believed that people could not understand, change or escape from it. The history for Hegel is the process of change brought on by a struggle that only ends when the idea is fulfilled. Until then, the existing stateof affairs, or any “thesis” is to be challenged by a new idea that is known as the “antithesis” in his perspective. Then, a conflict occurs between the thesis and antithesis, which is called the “dialectic process”, and results in a “synthesis” that consists of all the good parts of both. Marx accepted and adopted the dialectic as the essential logic of history. But, he did not accept the metaphysical assumptions of Hegel. Like Hegel, Marx also considered the dialectic as a means of accomplishing historical progress through struggle; yet he changed it since, for Marx, it was materialism which inspired the dialectic, not spiritualism. Marx claimed that the dialectic was a conflict among worldly interests, and ideas were the results of such conflict. According to Marx, class differences caused conflict among human beings. What ended a historical era and caused the rise of a new era so far has been the struggle between opposing social classes. Humans have passed through four historical stages, all of which had particular economic (the foundation) and political (superstructure) systems. These stages are the primitive communism, slavery (empire), feudalism and capitalism.

The Sociological Theory of Marx: Economic Determinism, Society’s Structure

Marx developed his theory on the assumption of the economic determinism that attains to economics a primary role and considers it as a source of motivation in human life. It suggests that all social and political arrangements are formed on the ground of economic relations. However, this does not mean that people are pupils of economic power or structure. According to Marx, the ideology hinders people to see the fundamental nature of the economic and social relations among themselves.

The Substructure and the Superstructure

According to Marx, there are two basic parts in every society, these are the substructure and the superstructure. The economic system is the foundation of the society. In other words, it is the substructure, or material base. The substructure is divided into two factors, the means of production and the relations of production.

1. The means of production are the resources and technology that a society makes use of.
2. Means of production include tools, machinery, factories, materials and land; and together with labor power, they constitute productive forces.

The superstructure of the society is composed of all of the non-material institutions in the society such as religion, government, law, education, art, values, ideology and so forth. It is determined by the foundation of the society; and every institution it includes is arranged to suit the ruling class.

The Political Theory of Marx: The State, Ideology, Class Struggle and the Proletarian Revolution

Marx considered that politics is a reflection of the underlying nature of the form and relations of production under modern capitalism. As the dominant social class under capitalism is the capitalists, they are also the dominant political force. Likewise, the proletariat, the subordinate class, is politically powerless.

The State

For Marx, the state is historically inevitable, but it is also a deception. The state both helps and oppresses the proletariat in the meantime. On one side, it teaches them issues such as universal right to vote, individual rights or prospective benefits of communal political action. Thus, it empowers them to get rid of ignorance. On the other side, such rights and opportunities are not provided in order to help workers to gain more freedom. In fact, they create a form of deception.

State is a very powerful social institution which gives most of the power and resources to a small group of officers and institutions. The officers and institutions that hold such power can make vital decisions about the people, such as declaring war, and can force the people to obey them. But these decisions are limited by the nature of capitalism, meaning that the decisions of the political leaders should be compatible with the interests of the capitalist system. There are two main factors constrain the power of the state: The first is the capitalist system, and the second is the capitalist class. Since the state is a ruling device of the capitalist class, when the classless society emerges and there is no oppressing social class, the state would disappear. The classless society will be the beginning of a truly humane history.

Ideology

Marx considers that the material conditions under which people live shape their conscious. With his own words, “life isn’t determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life”. Ideology is a part of the superstructure of a society; and it functions like the traditions and culture. The dominant ideas of an era are the ideas of the ruling class indeed. These ideas express dominant material relationships which cause a class to rule the other. The goal of ideology is to legitimize the position of the ruling class and to curtain the oppression and exploitation of the subjective class.

Class Struggle in Capitalist Society

Marx’s thoughts on social classes in general include the following notions.

There are two main social classes in all stratified societies, these are a ruling class and a subject class.

1. The ruling class owns and controls the means of production such as land, capital, labor, buildings and machinery.
2. The ruling class exploits and oppresses the subject class in order to maintain and reinforce its advantages.
3. There is a fundamental contradiction, a conflict of interest between the two classes.
4. The institutions of superstructure (social institutions such as religion, law, political system etc.) serve to the ruling class and function as tools for the ruling class domination.
5. The exploitation and oppression of some people by others would only end when classes disappear, and classes would disappear only when the means of production are commonly owned by the society.

In capitalist societies, there are two major classes. One of them is bourgeoisie who is an owner of the means of production and purchaser of labor of the workers. The other is proletariat who does not own the means of production and sells their labor to capitalists. Besides, there is a middle class, which consists of

• Petit bourgeoisie (who owns means of production but does not purchase any labor),
• People engaged in the circulation of commodities (marketing, purchasing, sales),
• Mediators (wholesalers, stockers, shop owners),
• Managers, accountants, lawyers, journalists, clergy, army and police officers.

Although there is a middle class, Marx considers that capitalism tends to condense the capital in the hands of fewer capitalists, to push the middle class towards being proletariat and transform every kind of labor into paid labor. This process is called the polarization of the classes. There are mainly three steps in this process:

• First, because of the competition in the capitalist market, capitalists will increase the use of machinery in the factories.
• Second, as the capital continues to accumulate in the hands of the capitalists, the capitalists will become richer and the workers will become poorer.
• Third, because of the extreme competition -a fundamental trait of capitalism and particularly of the monopolies, petit bourgeoisie (the owners of small businesses) will lose their properties (means of production) and become a part of proletariat.

The Proletarian Revolution

Marx believed that technological change cannot be ceased, when the resources finish, new means of production will evolve and create economic change, which would create social change in return. However, the rulers feel threatened by changes in the means of production and they use their governmental power to resist the change whilst maintaining their positions. Marx considers that capitalism inevitably would be overthrown by a proletarian revolution. This revolution would not just eliminate the state machine or the ruling elite, it would establish a new mode of production.

According to Marx, there are three antecedents or preconditions for the revolution in relation to economic factors, social factors and the creation of class-consciousness for the proletariat. These factors can be summarized as follows:

1. Economic preconditions:

• First, Marx believed that the capitalists’ extreme desire for profit will produce an overabundance of commodities that exceed the purchasing power of the market.
• Second economic precondition is the centralization of capital.
• The third economic precondition is the deterioration of the heavy burden on the working class, namely the pauperization.

2. Social preconditions:

• First, Marx believes that urbanization will be a promoting factor for the revolution. Workers in urban centers are mainly employed in factories and exposed to the most dehumanizing forms and environments of work.
• The second social precondition is the greater communication possibilities in the urban environments.
• The third social precondition is politicization.

3. Class consciousness: As mentioned earlier, class consciousness among the members of the working class is a requirement for the revolution. Among these preconditions of the revolution, the economic and social preconditions are called “objective conditions” of revolution, while class consciousness is called the “subjective condition” of the revolution

Internationalism

Marx considered that the nation-state system is a part of the capitalist superstructure. National borders and identities are artificial divisions which served to reinforce the capitalist system, because they separate people who indeed share much in common. For Marx, people from the same social class in different nations have more in common than people who are from the same nation but different social classes.

Anarchism in the 19 ^th Century

Anarchy is typically defined as a society without state. Anarchism aims to eliminate the state and liberate people from political domination and economic exploitation. The roots of anarchism can be found in the thoughts of Taoists in ancient China, Greek philosophers, rioters in Middle Age Europe, and the leftists in the English Revolution. But it has become a clear ideology only after the collapse of feudalism. Anarchism is usually seen as equal to anarchy. Anarchy, a condition of being totally free of any state, being equal on the base of a rational self-interest, cooperation or reciprocity, is the goal of anarchists. Although anarchists define anarchy in a number of ways, they all regard anarchy as an ordered way of life. However, the popular conception of equating anarchism to anarchy has important negative effects, because the tag of anarchy evokes noticeably negative conception. Especially in popular culture, anarchy is superficially understood as chaos, disorder, the collapse of order, confusion due to lack of state, or violent disorder. However, these are not the aims of anarchists. Indeed, anarchists consider the opposite would occur in the absence of state. Another misinterpretation about anarchism is that it is a leftist and violent ideology. Anarchism, however, does not have to be violent. This depends on which anarchist theory is adopted. Likewise, Anarchism may be at the left or right end of the political spectrum. All anarchists share the aim of elimination or reduction of the state. But considering the reason of this wish, there are important differences among them.

These differences become obvious in looking at social (leftist) anarchists and individual (rightist) anarchists. Leftist anarchists, who are also known as social anarchists, consider that the state prevents individuals from contributing to society with their maximum potential. Rightist anarchists advocate a society in which the differences of individuals are minimized. They wish the government to be diminished, so that individuals would achieve the best for their own interests.

Similarities between Marxism and Anarchism

Keeping in mind that anarchism is not a homogeneous ideology, there are some notions that Anarchism and Marxism share in common.

These are:

• Both Anarchists and Marxists have their roots in the Industrial Revolution.
• Both are materialists and believe that people are shaped within the social and economic context of the society they live in.
• They both accept Marx’s theory which suggests that labor creates value and much of this value is seized by capitalists during the production process.
• They both believe that due to their role in the production process, working class has potential to destroy capitalism and create a classless society.
• Both believe that the only way to destroy capitalism is revolution that must be international to be successful.

The differences among them are largely related to state and leadership.

• For anarchists, the main source of social injustice is the existence of the state. Marxists on the other hand, think that the state is an end-product of the class conflict.
• The ruling class in Marxism is considered rather in narrow economic terms. In anarchism, the ruling class that exploits and oppresses the masses consists of those who have any kind of privilege in society, including but not limited to the wealth and power.
• According to Marxism, political organization and political leadership are necessary for working class. However, according to anarchists, political leadership is also a source of oppression such as state itself.

The Prominent Anachists in the 19 ^th Century

Anarchists can be classified in a number of ways. Some of them advocated communist societies whilst some others advocated individualist societies. For some anarchists, atheism was a goal, while some others suggested people to be organized as religious unions without a state. Some accused government for hindering human progress, some others accused it because it protected the weak. Some advocated the use of violence for social change, and some others condemned the use of violence. The anarchists in the 19th century are classified in two groups as pacifists and revolutionaries.

The Pacifist Anarchists

Pacifist anarchists have a lot of differences among themselves, but they share an important notion of pacifism. All of the pacifist anarchists believe that the use of violence is not a viable way for social change, violence and war are unjustifiable, indefensible and all changes should be made with peaceful means. However, they have different ideas about what these ways should be.

William Godwin

Godwin is commonly accepted as the founder of modern anarchism. He was born in a Calvinist family and became a minister like many of his ancestors.

However, his familiarity to rationalist ideas in return caused him to leave out of this career. Educated within the non-conformist philosophies of Radical Protestantism, Godwin thought the church and the state were conspiracies which would have a few people benefit in the expense of the many.

Pierre Joseph Proudhon

Proudhon shared Godwin’s objection to the state and its supportive institutions. On this ground, he provided economic perspective and philosophical depth to anarchism and transformed it to an applicable political ideology. He defended the claim that property is theft.

Leo Tolstoy

Tolstoy is regarded as one of the greatest anarchists, particularly within the Christian Anarchism. He was a devoted Christian and believed that Christianity demanded peace and human justice. However, the state was using force, its armies were turning against their own people as well as those who it was supposed to protect.

The Revolutionary Anachists

Mikhail Bakunin

Bakunin is known as the founder of collectivist anarchism and violent anarchism. He thought that the greatest obstacle in front of human freedom was the state. He advocated terrorism, destruction and revolution for social change. He thought that the social institutions were devices to deprive people of their freedom, dominate and enslave them. He rejected religion and belief in God, because he thought that believing in a superhuman power such as God meant the abandonment of free human spirit, and the enslavement of people to a suggested supreme being.

Peter Kropotkin

Kropotkin thought that the government divided individuals against the other individuals, class against class, country against country, and this had destructive effects on human progress. He opposed to the dividing, separating politics of the government.

Errico Malatesta

Malatesta advocated a form of communism which involved the common ownership of property and the socialization of production. This communism was based on human solidarity, which would endure the progress and development of humans. The fundamental law of solidarity would be achieved by mutual aid or cooperation.

The Individualist Anarchists

The main difference between the social anarchists and the individualist anarchists is related to individual freedom.

Max Stirner

For Stirner, the state of nature of humans was not isolation, it was the membership of society. However, he thought that the individual has to get rid of some claims of the society and move from social relationship to egoistic relationship, so that s/he can escape from subjection. Stirner thinks that the state will eventually be removed as a result of the spread of egoism; it is not the responsibility of the individuals to eliminate the state.