On May 5th, 1818, Karl Marx, hero of the international proletatiat, was born. His revolution of Socialist theory reverberates throughout the world carries on to this day, in increasing magnitude. Every passing day, he is vindicated. His analysis of Capitalism, development of the theory of Scientific Socialism, and advancements on dialectics to become Dialectical Materialism, have all played a key role in the past century, and have remained ever-more relevant throughout.
He didn’t always rock his famous beard, when he was younger he was clean shaven!
Some significant works:
Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Critique of the Gotha Programme
Manifesto of the Communist Party (along with Engels)
And, of course, Capital Vol I-III
Interested in Marxism-Leninism, but don’t know where to start? Check out my “Read Theory, Darn it!” introductory reading list!
Marx states that all hitherto existing history is the history of Class Struggles. In analyzing tribal societies, he did so as they did indeed lack class, money, and a state, but were distinctly not “Communist” as production was low, and life relatively harsh and brutal. Communism as a mode of production is the classless society of the future, the end of class struggle. There will be new contradictions and new changes, most likely, but class as a concept is abolished through a global, publicly owned and planned industrial economy, in Marx’s analysis.
This is where i struggle agreeing with Marx, i find him to be selectively pragmatic and idealistic whenever the former or latter is convenient.
He acknowledges human nature is to oppress or be oppressed, as even in prehistoric human groups leaders would have formed and social rules enforced, we can assume this from our experiences in social groups. Yet does not believe that communism would lead to centralised oppression despite his historical studies, to me its either he chooses to ignore this factor or people misinterpret his writing and they cannot be applied in a post industrial capitalism society.
Marx doesn’t acknowledge “human nature is to oppress or be oppressed,” though. Marx builds the economic analysis of class society and charts how it will eventually erase its own foundations. Primitive communistic societies did not usually have classes, as they didn’t have an economic basis for it.
Communism would be centralized, but it would also be democratized.
If you define economics as have and have-not, they obviously had economics. Who are he to tell us that bartering didn’t happen on any scale within a tribe of cro magnom.
I think the point being is that economics is a large scale class system with fairly complex structures. There’s always been have and have-nots. Just look at a pride of lions on how they distribute the feeding based upon ranks within the pride. It’s not economics, but it’s s class based system with distributed means (i.e access to food).
So maybe all of nature is oppress or being oppressed in a way. We just industrialised it.
Nobody defines economics as “have or have nots” or denies that trade existed a long, long time ago. I think you’re missing the point of class society and how that plays in economics, but isn’t all-encompassing of it.
It isn’t about oppression or being oppressed.