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Background:
Dialectical
Materialism
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- This
proposition … in my opinion, is destined to do for history
what Darwin's theory has done
for biology. (Engels, The Communist Manifesto, Preface to the 1888
English Edition)
- In
short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement
against the existing social and political order of things. In all these
movements, they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the
property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time.
Finally, they labor everywhere for the union and agreement of the
democratic parties of all countries. (Marx & Engels, The
Communist Manifesto, Preface to the 1872 German Edition)
- The
Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare
that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all
existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a
communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their
chains. They have a world to win. (Marx & Engels, The
Communist Manifesto, Preface to the 1872 German Edition)
- Working
men of all countries, unite! (Marx & Engels, The Communist
Manifesto, Preface to the 1872 German Edition)
- It
must ... be understood that all the worth which the human being
possesses -- all spiritual reality -- he possesses only through the
State. ... Thus only is he fully conscious; thus only is he a partaker
of morality -- of a just and moral social and political life. For Truth
is the unity of the universal ... and the Universal is to be found in
the State, in its laws, its universal and rational arrangements. The
state is the Divine Idea as it exists on Earth. (G. W. F. Hegel, The
Philosophy of History)
- Thereby
the dialectic of concepts itself became merely the conscious reflex of
the dialectical motion of the real world and thus the dialectic of Hegel
was turned on its head; or rather, turned off its head. on which it was
standing, and placed upon its feet. {Engels, Ludwig Feurerbach and
the End of Classical German Philosophy, Part IV)
- The
basic thought running through the Manifesto -- that economic production,
and the structure of society of every historical epoch necessarily
arising therefrom constitute the foundation for the political and
intellectual history of that epoch; that consequently (ever since the
dissolution of the primaeval communal ownership of land) all history has
been a history of class struggles, of struggles between exploited and
exploiting, between dominated and dominating classes at various stages
of social evolution; that this struggle, however, has now reached a
stage where the exploited and oppressed class (the proletariat) can no
longer emancipate itself from the class which exploits and oppresses it
(the bourgeoisie), without at the same time forever freeing the whole of
society from exploitation, oppression, class struggles -- this basic
thought belongs solely and exclusively to Marx. (Engels, The
Communist Manifesto, Preface to the 1883 German Edition)
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Alienation
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- From
political economy itself we have shown that the worker sinks to the
level of a commodity, and to a most miserable commodity; that the misery
of the worker increases with the power and volume of his production;
that the necessary result of competition is the accumulation of capital
in a few hands; and thus a restoration of monopoly in its most terrible
form; and finally that the distinction between capitalist and landlord,
and between agricultural and factory worker, must disappear, and the
whole of society divide into the two classes of property owners and
propertyless workers. (180)
- What
is embodied in the product of his labor is no longer his own. The greater
this product is, therefore, the more he is diminished. The alienation of
the worker in his product means not only that it becomes an object,
assumes an external existence, but that [it] ... stands opposed to him
as an autonomous power. The life which he has given to the object
sets itself against him as an alien and hostile force. (181)
- Finally
the external character of the work for the worker is shown by the fact
that it is not his own work but work for someone else, that in work he
does not belong to himself but to another person. (181)
- The
devaluation of the human world increases in direct relation with the
increase in value of the world of things. Labour does not only
create goods; it also produces itself and the worker as a commodity, and
indeed in the same proportion as it produces goods. (180)
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Surplus
Value
and the
Exploitation
of Workers
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- [T]he
appropriation of unpaid labor is the basis of the capitalist mode of
production, and of the exploitation of the worker that occurs under it:
even if the capitalist buys the labor power of his laborer at its
full value as a commodity on the market he extracts more value from it
than he paid for it, and in the ultimate analysis this surplus value
forms those sums of value from which are heaped up the constantly
increasing masses of capital in the hands of the possessing classes.
(181-182)
- The
contradiction between socialized production and capitalistic
appropriation manifested itself as the antagonism of proletariat and
bourgeoisie. (182)
- [The
solution) can only consist in the practical recognition of the social
nature of the modern force of production, and therefore in the
harmonizing of the modes of production, appropriation and exchange with
the socialized character of the means of production. (182)
- In
communist society . . . society regulates the general production and
thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow
.... (183)
- The
extraneous objective forces that have hitherto governed history pass
under the control of man himself. Only from that time will man himself:
more and more consciously make his own history -- only from that time
will the social causes set in movement by him have, in the end in a
constantly growing measure, the results intended by him. It is the
ascent of man from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom.
(183)
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Theory of
Social
Causation
Friedrich
Engels
(1820-1895)
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- History
is economics in action.
- [T]he
prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social
organization necessarily following from it, form the basis upon which is
built up, and from which alone can be explained, the political and
intellectual history of that epoch; [and] consequently the whole history
of mankind has been a history of class struggles. (184)
- What
else does the history of ideas prove than that intellectual production
changes in character in proportion as material production is changed?
The ruling ideas of each age are the ideas of its ruling class. (184)
- The
executive of the modern state is nothing but a committee for managing
the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie. (Marx & Engels)
- Religion
is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless
world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the
people. (188)
- [Established
law, morality, religion, and culture are] merely so many bourgeois
prejudices behind which lurk just as many bourgeois interests. (186)
- The
Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional
property relations; no wonder that its development involves the most
radical rupture with traditional ideas. (187)
- Material
force can only be overthrown by material force; but theory itself
becomes a material force when it has seized the masses.
- The
abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of man, is a
demand for their real happiness. The call to abandon their
illusions about their conditions is a call to abandon a condition
which requires illusions. (188)
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Assessment
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- The
chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism ... is that the
object, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object
of contemplation, but not as human sensuous activity, practice,
not subjectively. (191)
- The
philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways; the point,
however is to change it . (191)
- The
proof of the pudding is in the eating. From the moment we turn to our
own use of these objects, according to the qualities we perceive in
them, we put to an infallible test the correctness or otherwise of our
sense perceptions. If these perceptions have been wrong then our
estimate of the use to which an object can be turned must also be wrong,
and our attempt must fail. (19l )
- The
bourgeoisie is unfit ... to rule because it is incompetent to assure the
existence of its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help but
let him sink into such a state that it has to feed him, instead of being
fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in
other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society. (185)
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