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Hegelian Marxist philosopher.
Born in Slovenia, capital of present day Slovenia.
His first book in English The Sublime Object of Ideology

Communism
Communism is the only horizon from which to critique and analyze capitalism.
Humanism is capitalism with a human face.
The antagonisms of Capitalism can be resolved through socialist policy.

Communism and internet
Assange: the spy for the people
The public should be aware of how state and companies watch on us.

Wikipedia: Excludes information that should be available in the public discourse.

****The question of the revolutionary ***
The new Left, vacillation between Meta-Classism and Hyper-Classism.

Meta-classism: Find a particular of the revolutionary class

WHAT IS FOR ZIZEK TO BE A COMMUNIST IN 2021?

Page 61 "The very nature of the web seems to be Communist."

Page 60 "Wikileaks is doing practical communism"

*** Is there space for an alternative?

Towards a new master:
One supplement of this horizontal social movements.
"Marek Edelman, the new master"

WHAT IS COMMUNISM

Communism is today the name of the solution, and the name of the problem, the problem of our genetics commons, intellectual property, commons at the universal state of humanity where nobody should be excluded.
Our horizon has to be communist, horizon not as an innacessible deal but as a space of ideas.

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Why doesn't he like humanistic approaches on the study of Marx.

Failed to denounce Stalinism. He was very worried about moving away from class struggle.

Humanists say that it's humans who make history. It's not men making history is the mixes that make history.

In early 1967 Althusser published an article "the humanist line turns the workers away from the class struggle, prevents them from using the only power they possess which is the organization as a class to fight"
(because humanism is focused on individuals)

Structuralists also opposed humanist approaches. Althusser is picking up things that were in the air in 1960s in a world of literary criticism and translating those from analyses of literary texts to Marxism.

The structuralists tended to see literary texts as symtomps of people. Not the works of individuals.

Society is itself a system, a system of relationships. And the components he understood as part of the system (in Luckasian totality) one can only understand the totality of the system by referencing to society.

It is clear to Althusser that a structuralist understanding of how society works parallels what Marx was saying, vastly different from the humanistic problematic of Feuerback or Hegelians from earlier generations.

From ALTHUSSER TO ZIZEK
Zizek translated Althusser to Slovenian. He was very interested in Althusser. He incorporated psychoanalytic ideas in his analyses.
Zizek made a second doctorate in psychoanalysis. After being attracted to philosophy, he made the same kind of jump that Althusser had made.

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Born in 1915 in Algeria and grew up as a Catholic. During WWII he was a prisoner and during his time confined he read lots of philosophy and once the war was over he wrote some theses and join the French Communist Party.
He remained Catholic despite being a Communist.

He became known by the contributions he made and had a severe mental and emotional difficulties. He suffered from bipolar disorder and spent some time in mental institutions.

He went through a severe depression when his wife died (he killed her.)

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Advanced industrial society is a one dimensional society.
There is unnecessary suffering of society which arises from false needs.

THE NEW FORMS OF CONTROL
A current society where the technological and material conditions are in place. We are living in a near totalitarian society.

Marcuse: "the use of the word totalitarian is supposed to be provocative and evoke backlash"

To break out of the totalitarian society system, we need to replace false with real needs.

These are the basis of why we choose the state of conformity.

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The Philosophical Inquiry into Freud

He's not going to focus on specific methodologies of psychoanalysis. He's approaching psychoanalysis into a philosophical way.

He focuses on repression and systems of domination.

Eros and Civilization: Grew out of a series of lectures in the school of psychiatry. The language used in this text was separated from what he calls Neofreudian (a dissenting voice)
He refers to Civilization and his discontents. Freud understand civilization as the repression.

Civilization and Culture are interchangeable terms. The word instinct is derives from tribes. The primary drivers of civilization.

Pleasure principle and reality principle

These terms are correlated to specific parts of the mind. The pleasure principle is connected to the conscious.
The unconscious come in conflict with reality.
Repressive not only come with these. Humans desire what is useful above the specificity of their human instincts.

Ontogenesis: Concerned with individual's mental apparatus. The tension between Eros and Tanatos. This relation remains obscure. Never again was Tanatos as salient and intertwined with Eros.

EGO Preservation of self.
SuperEGO: Father, the patriarch.

The part

These have an intercourse that bring the perception of reality.

Performance principle

Filogenesis:
Humans are defined by their archaic upbringing, identity.
The Oedipus complex kills the father and then the guilt brings back the wheel.

Libidinal sexuality is transformed into work.
This is going to be transformed in an eroticization of institutions and the world. A reality in which reality is not based on labor but on satisfaction.

WHAT IS PEOPLE FANTASIZING ABOUT INSTEAD OF WORKING?
Sexuality is not necessarily genital.  Polymorphist remains in psyche in our fantasies.

We fight surplus repression. But Marcuse didn't identify the agent of repression.

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Marcuse involved in training Washington officials in psychoanalysis. He used his analytical abilities to contribute to combat Hitler.

When the war was won, they left Washington to pursue their academic interests. He didn't leave Washington. His son is Peter Marcuse (Professor at Columbia, now retired)

As the war was winding down, his wife got cancer and because he has this governmental job, he took advantage of his access to medical services.  He continued working for the OSS. He was very committed to his wife.

Only after his wife dies of cancer that he started to pursue his academic career. When he published Eros, he was a research professor at Brandeis.

The ways in which this work has to be read is through the lenses of Marxism.

Marcuse was more leftist and pessimistic than Adorno.

Marcuse says that the insights of Freud in the human psyche that have changed in 10000 years. What is the difference between past and present. Repression of the erotic instincts and the death instincts make civilization possible according to Freud. According to Marcuse the level of repression is far beyond the usual level of repression.

The term surplus repression? Marxist idea of surplus value. Marcuse deliberately uses the term combine both.

What is the relations of Marcuse with the left?
Did he influence the left? YES
Marcuse was invited to speak to a panel in 1965 to a scholars conference. But he decided to go somewhere instead.
He then received dead threats when California was controlled by highly reactionary people. In theoretical terms he had less impact than thought. He was widely invoked (as if he was a hero).

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There's is some level where contemporary films are more part of the problem than the solutions.

For Adorno, film industry serves the purpose of entertaining and relaxing people.

For Adorno, Benjamin's piece is undialectical.

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There is an actually of common threads and continuities in Adorno's ideas.

ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM
P.21

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Characteristics of the authoritarian personality

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Characteristics of the authoritarian personality

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Speech from Adorno:

What are the traits that are found in the authoritarian personality? (YMCA?)

1. Mechanical acceptance of conventional values
2. Submission to authority
3. Violent aggressive attitude to those who don't belong
4. Stereotypical thinking
5. Vilification of human
6. Behavior patterns denying oneself.

The argument of the authoritarian personality is consistent with the economic theory in antisemintism and rather a social than a psychological phenomena.
For Adorno, neither the psychological explanation nor the materialist explanation could suffice.

They wanted to overcome the boundaries of only psychological or materialistic to explain the current reality.

Read in isolation (particularly the Authoritarian Personality) he has an overly psychologized vision and that he doesn't consider other social and political aspects.

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Born in Germany in 1903. Son of a German merchant under another name. Adorno's mother was a Catholic. Adorno decided to take his mother's name instead.

He was from Jewish roots but wasn't exposed to any Jewish education.

He was raised in a protestant church.

The household of  Adorno was rather well-off. (upper-middle class).  During that time well-off families tended to expose their kids to music. He was exposed to music early on his life and studied philosophy and sociology and obtained his PhD at Frankfurt.

After his dissertation he wanted more formal and extended musical training. He studied with a composer and took lessons with prominent pianists.

He began to work (a second dissertation) and his ideas for this work revolved around the reformulation of Freudian ideas. He discovered in 1928 that his academic advisor didn't like his work. He went then to devote himself to music.

He proposed another topic for his dissertation on Kierkegard and was accepted by the U. of Frankfurt and published later on.

During this early period he benefited from and read books from other thinkers, Luckacs and Horkheimer. His interest in Luckacs defined his political sympathies.

He fled to stay out of trouble. But he stayed in Germany for a while even when Nazis were raising their power. In 1933 he was stripped from his right to teach at the University of Frankfurt mainly because his father's Jewish roots.

His home was ransacked and he was prosecuted and then he fled to in 1934.

It was the antisemitism that ultimately turn his attention towards the Jews and racism. Jewish was an imposed identity.

In 1938 he received a letter from Horkheimer inviting him to work in a radio project that is being organized by another exiled.

"Scientific experience of a scholar in America"

He didn't know what a radio project was but he accepted. But he makes clear that he is a philosopher first and foremost, not someone with expertise in radio. But in these tumultuous times he moved from England to NY.  So he worked part time at the radio project and part time at the Institute.

His descriptions with the encounters to the radio project sound like a stranger in US. He had no clue about the geography of New York. It was located in north NJ, a very industrial area.

In the project there was a jazz musician. The problem is that Adorno didn't want to do what he was asked to do.  Some of his experiences fro his radio project were included in the authoritarian personality.

This played an important role to teach him how to incorporate empirical research with theory.

They received some money from the American Jewish Society. Adorno became officially part of the Institute and moved to LA.
Then moved back to NY and organized the project called "The Authoritarian Personality"
(These members were not part of the Critical Theory)

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Son of an industrialized. Parents were Jewish and his father hoped that Max took over the family's textile business.
During WWI Horkheimer was already a junior executive in the company. But after the war in 1917 he was conscripted into the German military and was soon rejected on medical grounds. When he came back from the military his father tried to press him to work in the family business but he decided to study instead.

Socialism does not fall for the work discovered by Marx, the illusion is hardly less of a danger to correct action that this skeptical disbelief.

Horkheimer was not engaged in party politics and was critical of the two major leftist parties from the time.

The institute should include INTERDISCIPLINARY people, economists, sociologists, philosophers, investigating the same thing. Specialization needs to be overcome by defining the big issues that we ought to address and having people fromm different kinds of training researching those while all being open enough to learn from the other.

What then will form the overarching motiv of the Frankfurt School?
We have the look at the interactions between the economic right of society and the development of individuals and transformations of the individual. That is going to be necessary to analyze everything.

ERICH FROMM
Psychoanalitical part of the Frankfurt School.

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Was never a formal organism. And an institution called the Institute of Social Research funded in 1924. It was an entity devoted to research history of socialism and the labor movement. Initially headed by "Gunddeg"

What's the significance of it?
Frankfurt was a much less conservative place than other German cities of the era (1920s) and it was a liberal university. It wasn't a Medieval university. It was open, a little more willing to experiment and one scholar emigrated to Argentina and made a lot of money. And the heir of the Veil family didn't have to work. The father founded the institution to get the son busy.

Korsch for example was part of this group.

This was something new, an academic entity that was going to study things from the Marxist perspective and the first director who started off by associating scholars and students from different kinds. And these students were interested in economic and socialist thought in the classic sense of the termm. And what happened is that in 1928 Gungberg had a stroke. And he was unable to continue his task.

And the institute and the university began to search for somebody who was able to jump in and be in accord with the general vision of the Institute. And in 1930 Max Horkheimer who was recently appointed in a position as a professor, began to serve as director (initially)

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Gramsci believes cultural hegemony is essential. In the 1940s and 1950s. The Frankfurt schools says: "dominant forces found ways to manipulate, coopt our culture and desires and thinking in ways beyond our Gramscis imagination.

One way of thinking about the

However things were bad for G
they were pessimistic Horkheimer and Adorno.
The ship is sinking.
They are throwing messages in bottles to see what happens.

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The strength of the ruling class wouldn't allow for workers to set a frontal attack to the bourgeoisie.

Lenin thought that he could export the Russian model to Western Europe.

Gramsci thought that different were different, and that revolution is actually a process of change in society. And only by destroying the cultural hegemony that it happens.

Revolution is a creative process.

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It is a non-institutional intellectualism rooted in the working class.
All human beens have the capacity of being intellectuals.
Intellectuals as he described them, are intellectuals that play a social role.
If you look at the Catholic Italian priestshoods, they are organic intellectuals bounded to...

Working class can produce intellectuals that pursue the interests of the working class.

How is this different from previous thinkers?
The party should be made of organic intellectuals and all members of the party should be intellectuals. People able to explain what's going on in the world to other sectors of the population. And his argument after the defeat of factory councils.

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Governing classes not only do politics and economics but also play a role in cultural and intellectual life. And he it is the intellectual supremacy of the bourgueoise which brings the control of society.

What explains the continuous dominance of capitalism is its hegemony over intellectual and cultural class.

Proletariat can manipulate culture and become hegemonic as well.

Workers must intellectually liberate themselves, create their own values, understanding of society prior to a successful political and economic revolution by creating a counter hegemony.

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Gramsci was born in Serdenia in 1891. Studied at the U of Turin and by then was influenced by Hegelian ideas. He joined the Italy's socialist party in the WWI.
He worked as a journalist for the major Italian socialist papers. When WWI was coming to an end, Italy was in a very deep economic crisis. It was a period of rampant inflation, people lost their employment. This was exacerbated of by the mobilization of troops. These ex-military intended to enter the job market.

This influenced his views on the union movement and his dissatisfaction with the workers movement.

The system of council was strongly endorsed by Gramsci. The councils came during the strike era, and emerged in part continuously because of Gramsci's actions in the movement.

The council system was based on direct participation of workers organized in their workplaces. What is important for Gramsci was the way it was organized and the role they could play.

And he tried to distinguish what the councils could be, from the trade union movement and from political parties. What's the function of trade unions?

Trade unions are working to get better conditions for the proletariat and the political party had an ideological function. Gramsci argued that the council were a new form of organization that can take functions not only of organization but also to takeover the role of the capitalists.

By 1919, 1920, he believed that the council played an important role and that they shaped what could be after the revolution.

Councils could be the vehicle through which transformation could take place.

Gramsci had to advance culturally too, intellectually and spiritually. The council system shouldn't restrain to political and economic activities.  The idea of councils is to transform workers from being dependent to being independent.

He argued that councils can prepare workers to lead themselves, they can participate in what is going to be the socialist society.

Gramsci about Russia (in 1919) depicts the Italian factory councils as the Italian version of the Soviets. At the time Lenin was calling a victory slogan "victory of the proletariat..."

Gramsci knew little about Lenin at the moment. The only work to which Gramsci was committed with Lenin is "State and Revolution"

What Gramsci thought that was going on in Russia versus what was actually happening?

By 1920 the defeat of worker's movement made Gramsci rethink whether the movement of councils could actually succeed.

His understanding of party is not that of Luxembourg and Lenin.

In 1921 following Lenin's recommendations and other people's, Gramsci established the Italian communist party. In May if 1922 Gramsci went to Russia as the representative of the Communist party of Italy. There were several ideological fights in the communist party of Italy but after this battle, Gramsci was recognized as the head of the Italian Communist Party.

In 1926 Gramsci was arrested and he spent the rest of his life arrested and died in 1937 when he was only 46. He wrote an enormous amount in prison and covered a wide range of topics.

Gramsci's prison notebooks only appeared after WWII. And after the absortion of what he wrote, some scholars said that Gramsci was the most original Marxist there was.

What was the source of Gramsci's optimism?

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Students are being overly ambitious given the circumstances (not having direct access to libraries or archives) is going to be difficult to conduct research projects.

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Korsch was immediately critiqued not only by the right but also by the left.
Korsch not only criticized Lenin and Marx but attempted to make an extension of Leninism,
The Communist forces recognized that the dialectical works of Marxism were not going to be easily contempted.
Korsch is an idealist. He must be drown out of the movement.

Punchline: Where Lukacs responds by saying "you're right comrad" Korsch declines to do so. He counterattacks.

The German Communist Movement  describes Korsch as an extreme leftist. Korsch said they misunderstand what I'm up to the don't understand my theories. Korsch was elected in the KPD and continued to represent the party however the party was distancing from him
With the rise of fascism Lukacs responded by going East. Korsch goes West.
First to Denmark, and then under the Nazi threat he fled to US and lives there and never succeeds finding a place in the US. He was jumping here as there  as a lecturer, as an assistant professor....

He was almost completely isolated not only in academic but also in political terms. After 20 years of living in the US there was a point in which he was invited to a meeting of auto workers in Detroit.  That was the most exciting thing that happened to him.

The Frankfurt school was more sympathetic to Korsch. They succeeded moving their movement. They were funded. They had a journal. They never admitted Korsch as a member of the school but every once in a while would give him a comission to do this or that.

Lukacs was marginalized and put aside. He was very close to Korsch in the 1920s in their views of Hegel, their Sympathy for the Lenin project. Their careers were parabolic.

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Up until 1920 Lucaks was the leader of a socialist movement. He was kicked out of the administrative movement. He was still part of the communist party. Because he criticized Marxism

With the rise of fascism and Nazism in the 1930s, Lucaks fled the Soviet Union and there he was denounced by Stalin and Lucaks recanted the views that he purported in 1923.

Them Lukacs followed each change in the Stalinist system.  But Lukacs criticized Stalin after he left. And when he moved back to Hungary he supported the Hungarian uprising.

He defended Stalinism to keep alive. He was defending lines that were in Stalinism before Stalin came to power.

He was kicked out of the Hungarian Communist party and was readmitted in 1967.

Lukacs justified his theoretical position over time by insisting that the world socialism is best that any capitalism and it was necessary for him to defend Stalinism given the attacks from Nazism and fascism and he was intending to defend socialism for his enemies. He allowed himself to become the most outstanding philosopher of Stalinist era and beyond.

In HISTORY AND CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS Lukacs does a great work by writing in a elevated language, he made European academics to take Marxism seriously and this opens new doors to Marxist work. Precisely by introducing Hegelian terminology and by contrasting Marxism with other philosophers.

It can be said that much of Marxist thought into the 19th Century and beginning of the 20th Century the philosophical development was shallow. Lucaks was able to cope with that in ways that other Marxists couldn't. He had interesting things to say.

In next class we will talk about how Frankfurt school was critical of Lukacs.

Philosophically he played an important oratory.

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Differences in the understanding of totality between Lukacs and Korsch

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Differences in the understanding of totality between Lukacs and Korsch

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For Korsch there is more of a philosophical ideas.

Using Marxism as methodology you find with Lenin's thoughts. In State and Revolution, Korsch claims that his own study of his relation with Marxism to philosophy...
Korsch sees one of the main aims of his work as studying ideology. Insofar as he has an original contribution to make to the renewal of Marxism is an extension of ideas that Lenin put forth.

Is Korsch extending Lenin's work, is it a significant contribution?

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The relation between theory and praxis is self dialectical.

"we must organize a systematic study of Hegelian in a materialist way"

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Taking social relations for things.
Marx doesn't use the term reification. He uses the fetishism of commodity
Lukacs what not familiar with the economic and political manuscripts. The inspiring things of his work is that he could predict what Marx could have said and his sense was corroborated when the Economic and social manuscripts were published.

Enfrengdum =  separation of individuals from the things they have created.

Reification =  Turning something into a thing.

Reification is one of the ways in which alienation is manifested. Reification takes concepts, notions created by humans and turn them into things.
And Lukacs is going to extend his analysis beyondn to what Marx wrote: Is not only labor but all human activity that is becoming reified (p93)

"Just as the capital system produces and reproduces itself economically at higher levels the structure of reification comes strongly into the consciousness of men"

The worker becomes increasingly passive, increasingly individualized, increasingly spectator.

So the belief that more and more workers will come together to destroy capitalism, on the contrary the forces of capitalism induces individualism and appears to workers that there are forces beyond the control of humans and they can't do anything about.

Not long ago, an article in the New Yorker mentioned changes in the employment. One of the things is that there is a natural rate of employment, there was a point in which Americans reached a level of unemployment as low as naturally could get.

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What is false about the false consciousness?

The proletariat from the center is able to see the totality.

The consciousness that a class would have if it were aware of its own interests. Members of the proletariat don't know what is good for them. But it is possible to know what consciousness they have if they thought correctly.
The mechanism to get there (according to Lenin and Lucaks) is the Party.

For Lukacs socialism is not something that is guaranteed by history as Engels suggested and is not a moral imperative as Bernstein suggested, Socialism is the result of consciousness of the proletariat. Without the party the proletariat can't converge into their struggle and make the revolution possible.

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Institutions bring men together in society thus from it emerge consciousness.

False consciousness: Something that takes place before the onset of capitalism. The class that have the most class consciousness is the bourgueoise. Their mentality

Lukacs doesn't explicitly explain class consiousness. But it starts with notion of the present and the present situation.

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After WWII Habermas becomes one of his key students. At the timme Habermas showed at the institute, the leaders of the institute went to discuss the ideas of Marx.
One day desperate the original sources the

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The true is the whole. And even if one can't have sense of the rest of what Hegel is that the part must be interpreted in the light of the whole. You can't understand the part if you don't understand the whole.

The whole as a concept must exist before we can understand the part which are components of the whole.

As far as Lucaks is concerned this is what Marx is concerned with and this is the difference of Marxism as compared to other systems of thought.

On Rosa Luxembourg Pg 27 Lucaks writes: The point of view of totality. The whole over the part is the essence of the method which Marx took from Hegel and took into the foundation of a new science.

What it means to have a sense of totality.

"if the movement don't understand the totality of the movement there would be some explosions but there won't be change"

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Korsch and Lukacs have a devotion for Hegel.

It is an acceptance of the Marxist method and not a blind acceptance.

Engels misses the dialectical dynamics of the subject and object.

All human relations are reified ignoring the human characteristics and abilities.

"Everything goes in terms of money"

Things get the meaning we ascribe to them. Only the dialectical method allows us to see this.

Marcial: Was worried that Lucaks that the facts are so relevant then Marxism could be demonstrated to be incorrect.

With Capitalism society interacts.

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In the years preceding the war (Lucaks was younger than Luxembourg) he was a character identified mainly with literature and lyrics. He was not interested in left politics.
But he went through a metamorphoses and started getting interested in Marxism and emerged as a Hungarian leftist leader.
(History and Class Consciousness his work) It has become widely known as the key document of western Marxist tradition.

Most of following authors, Frankfurt School and so on were highly influenced by Lukacs. They were indebted from his work on class consciousness.

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We should submit a one page paper proposal.

The final paper should be handed the last day of classes.

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To what degree Lenin's view of imperialism explains United States' FP

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To what degree Lenin's view of imperialism explains United States' FP

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Capitalism, banks.

Lenin uses a very specific term.

Labor aristocracy.

Successful imperialist countries have generated super profits for themselves getting them from the colonies.

Leaders of the Social Democratic Parties have developed positions in which they enjoy certain benefits that come from imperialism.

This implies engaging in wars.

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Democracy and State?
P 368
The abolition of the State means also the abolition of democracy. Withering away from the state means withering away from democracy.

Democracy was the state in form of development. If the state dissapears, democracy dissapears.
Marx didn't explicitly discussed this but Engels did. In page 360: If one thing is certain is that our party and the working class are coming to power only in the form of democracy, that is the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat as the revolution has already shown.

Engels is saying the dictatorship of the proletariat will be democratic in form.

The question is what happens next is another question. For Engels the dictatorship of the proletariat should be internally democratic.

LENIN was distorting the understanding of Marx and Engels on this issue.

In 1917 Lenin saw a parallel between the Paris Commune and the Soviets as they were running Russia. Marx saw the Paris commune as a dictatorship of the proletariat.

Why?
Kerensky scheduled an election after the February revolution. Lenin endorsed Kerensky's idea of an election.
And Lenin declared that he endorsed the constituent assembly.
But it actually happened under Bolshevik rule.
Some seats were taken by other parties but only 175 of the seats were held by the Bosheviks.
After the election of this assembly, Lenin advocated for the dissolution of the assembly.
HE WAS IN FAVOR UNTIL HE LOST. When he lost, he pledged allegiance to the Soviets.

Wh

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What the state is?
What is its relationship with the proletariat.

A party of the workers???
Page 373
The dictatorship of the proletariat. Suppressing the oppressors, the counterrevolution.

What Marx never said is the use of authoritarian means. For him it consisted on the inner force of the majority.

For Lenin the "dictators" should be the elite of the party. An Avant Garde that has absorbed the revolutionary energy of that class.

In 1919 Lenin said: It is a dictatorship of one party, that is what we stand for and we won't move out of that position.
For Lenin, the dictatorship of the proletarian is an Avant Garde group that is the Bolshevik party which is the party that represents the workers for decades (false, it was a minority tendency in the socialist work of Russia)

For Lenin this understanding of the dictatorship of the Proletariat is the way he perceives the way things should be done.

QUESTION DOES THIS EXPLAIN THE COURSE OF SOVIET HISTORY?
Fiercely fighting anyone opposing them.

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Workers will define their own economic interest but they won't risk their lives for political ideas that are very distant from their day to day affairs.

Economists: The movement should arise from workers own opinions rather to teach ideologies and organizational.

In Germany the "revisionist" was the tendency that Bernstein was associated with.

Russian revisionists argued that the kind of tactics that Bernstein thought for Germany should be also applied in Russia. There should be a way of incorporating gradually socialist ideas into the system.

These revisionists went further and   tried to develop a liberal movement in Russia. They got interested in conflating Russian religious ideas with Liberalism.

HOW AND WERE THE WORKERS WILL GET THE CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS?

- Page 50.
Class consciousness would only come only from outside of the economic struggles.

How class consciousness will develop among workers according to Marx?

For Lenin it is not spontaneous activity what drives the movement.  The idea is to use the party's discipline. You need to create a cultural revolution with professional revolutionaries.

The revolution is going to be made by professional revolutionaries who are intellectual coming through workers. And he outlines the structure of the party in this paragraph:
Lenin was very closely associated with the newspaper the ISKRA (the spark)

KEY COMPONENTS OF THE PARTY (p 76-77)

There should be continuity
The sponteneity of the movement to take entire control.

The model of party organization was made for the Russian empire. There's got to be a professional group of leaders, a small group.

Lenin expanded this model from the Russian empire to other countries and suggested that what worked in the Russian empire should work in other countries in central and Western Europe.

Question: In order to handle this from a scholarly perspective, one important part of this debate is how to organize the Russian SDP. And he and Luxembourg had different perspectives on that

Luxembourg:
Lenin thinks too much about the German experience.

For Lenin party discipline is the way to keep party educated. Luxembourg says that this is were opportunists emerge.
Only from the masses is where the movement will get refreshed.

TO WHICH DEGREE IS LENIN UNDERSTANDING MARX?

Marx anticipated that the revolution would come when the workers would be the largest amount of population.
What would happen is that the majority would have class consciousness and will transform society.

Lenin says instead that the industrial proletariat was a small proportion of the population. Lenin explicitly advocates that this revolution should be led by a secret group and come to power on behalf of a larger entity.

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The fact that Lenin got interested in politics after his brother's execution and his contact with Marx's work.

Lenin's thought has similarities with non-Marxist Russian understanding.

All educated Russian radicals studied another text also called what is to be done. The novel by Nikolai Chernyshevsky

A girl, wants to study medicine on herself and she goes through different union meetings and she dreams of a world of gender equality and freedom.

This work had a profound impact on a Russian revolution, including Lenin.

In Russian political terms, the tendency that came after this novel was known as the populists.

The Narovnik movement, the populist movement, got inspired bu Chernyshevsky and aimed to withdraw the Tsarist regime.
They went all over Russia to try to convince the peasants of socialist ideas.

Beginning the 19th Century, this movement (the populist) attempted to assassinate several Russian officials including the Tsar.

Marxism didn't exist as an organized movement until late 19th Century.  Plekhanov, not Lenin, can be described as the father of Russian Marxism.

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1870. Same generation of Rosa Luxembourg. Born in a small town in the Volga river.
He wasn't a working class person.
His older brother known as Sasha got involved in terrorist underground organization and got hung in 1877.
Lenin wasn't interested in politics until his brother was executed.
Lenin was expelled from the university and was under surveillance.
In the late 1880s Lenin studied the works of Marx and Engels, he conducted the translation of the Capital. He went to prison and got exiled.
In Zurich the Tsarist government fell and he returned to Russia.

The Bosheviks overthrown the revolutionary party in 1917.

He was more willing to adapt his theories than Marx's.

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Did he advocate this because he wanted to serve the interest of the revolution or was a principle?

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Did he advocate this because he wanted to serve the interest of the revolution or was a principle?

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SDKPL Rosa's party opposed Polish independence.
The production and the market going on in Russia and Holland were interwined in a way that it couldn't be separated.
Economically there was an interdependence made that inconvenient.
She wasn't sympatetic to the demands that nationalities were making to get independent states (Czecks, Lituanians...) and her arguments were that the world were increasingly intertwined. The socialism movements would be better serve by staying the way they are.

When we turn to Lenin we will turn to see that Lenin did advocate the right of nations to self-determination.

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She gives some agency to individuals (workers)
"you can't take what happens in Russia and apply it to Germany, you have to analyze the historical moment"
Her understanding of historical necessity gives her faith.

In her thought you will have to differentiate NECESSITY and INEVITABILITY

In her last years of life (after the war ended) she didn't think socialism was inevitable, she thought that socialism WAS NECESSARY.

Society are at crossroads. It is either socialism or barbarism. Socialism is necessary. Barbarism was not only there, but the barbarians may as well win. (in the context of the end of WWI)

GUNIUS pampleth: She contributes to the idea of barbarism v.s socialism. Scholars have been looking for writings where Engels wrote something about Barbarism. She quoted Engels, but nothing was found .

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Written during the debate of two antagonist entities, Bolschevicks and Melchevicks.
She agreed more with the Bolschevicks.

Written during the Russian Revolution of 1905.

The mass strike.
There was a massive demonstration in St. Petersburg, and the government troops shot at the protesters. It is not known how many casualties there were.
This led to a series of political strikes Russia wide, and arose political demands (civil liberties, constituent assembly) and in 1905 the Czarist government decided to flexibilize and admit some of the demands and admitted the formation of a parliament like body that had limited powers.

This actually encouraged people to go for more.
This paralyzed the life of the country. It stopped in October 1905 in which the Czar admitted some liberties. However, not very long, the Czar began tightening the screws and the revolution was crushed and many of the revolutionists had to flee Russia.

Only until the beginning of WWI, revolution started to move again.

She was not associated with Bolschevick or Menschevicks.

ORGANIZATIONAL QUESTIONS

HISTORICAL NECESSITY
She opposes the Central Committee. She thinks that Lenin's ideas come from Blanquism. Social democracy is not joined to the proletariat, it is the proletariat!

She thinks that Lenin's understanding of discipline comes from bourgeoisie discipline.

How a socialist party can be organized in the Russian context?

1) Lenin is demanding blind subordination to the leaders of the party.
2) Lenin is demanding strict division from those inside and outside of the party
3) She thinks this can't be done in Russia at this point of the time.

Conclusion: It's only when workers can have political ability that they can develop. If workers can't have this in Russia, they won't have socialsim. What is happening in Russia is that a Centralist Socialist Party is neither desirable not credible.

She is already in this period (1905 period) she reads Lenin's ideas as the ideas of someone giving way too much power to the Central Committee.

Before the Bolschevick revolution, Luxembourg was making an argument on what could happen in a Russia with a Centralized party.

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What does Luxembourg wants to accomplish by engaging workers in intellectual activities?

Precisely by working in reform movement, class consciousness will be increased. And this will be demostrated that they can accomplish these goals without this.

Workers are moving to making the world better, to socialism even if the end is not as important.

Bernstein: REFORM and NOT revolution

Rosa: REFORM and revolution because revolution would increase consciousness.

SMALL businesses can intervene in certain sectors of the economy. Where do you find such businesses and why? When there is a new technology and new ideas, many small companies come to adopt it.
One of the reasons is that the development of the tech sector, home computers some years ago, started in small companies.
The case of California.

As a part of this involves in the economy, large parts get involved too and these companies grow and very few players are left.

This explains the development of the tech era. This also happened at the beginning of the automotive industry.

Many SME still exist. But mostly they get cut down.

Democracy

Bernstein You can't have a democracy until you have a socialist system
Luxembourg Why can't she agree with Bernstein tactic.

Democracy serves the proletariat to change the bourgeoisie society. Democracy is indispensable not only because of the means.
For Bernstein is not about class but about the common good.

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Socialism is a historic necessity. She believes in Marxism understanding that produces Marxism as a historic necessity.

"Bernstein is a petty bourgueoise sell out"

She seeks the abolition of waged labor for the creation of a plentiful economy. The only factor transforming the movement would be the class struggle that would come to replace the bourgueoise.

She rejects Bernstein's reform agenda. She embraces the daily struggles for reforms. It's not a question of this can be separated from the revolution which Bernstein did. It is about using reforms to bring about a revolution and this is the only means to engage in socialism.

Understanding the social necessities of socialism. Here is were Bernstein brings the threat, he confuses the mases.

Some OPPORTUNISTS intend to get political power for their own gain and forget about Marxist ideals.

A large part of the revolution is about knocking down Bernstein's economic arguments.

In particular he talked about credit, ownership, trade unions, cooperatives, and democratization as a way to bring about socialism.
What are the practical day to day reforms that the socialist would do.

ROSA critiques Bersntein's understanding of credit (it brings more crises) criticices the role of cartels and businesses (it's not sustainable because it can't expand to each industry) The role of Small and MediumSized Industries.
He is using the wrong data, using the data of different times for different countries.

On private property:
For Rosa, private property is concentration of capital
For Bernstein is distribution

For rosa SDP can reform, but not end CAPITAL.

Bernestein forgot that class democracy is a Bourgueoise's creation.

Rosa shows the air of Bernstein in her understanding that the Bernstein democracy won't succeed in overcoming removing capitalism.

FOR ROSA EDUCATING the proletariat is of utmost importance (Quoting Lasalle)

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She was born in what it's now part of Poland. She was born in a Polish Jewish family. She left the Russian empire in 1895. She was politically active and went to have formal education at university.

She went to Switzerland and obtained a doctorate in Political science writing about the industrial development of Poland.

Shortly after finishing this dissertation she moved to Germany and started to agitate against Bernstein's program.

Reform or revolution is her critique to Bernstein's program and is also her first major political work. It was the platform to establish a reputation in Germany.

Anecdote: There used to be in Sammosh a plaque with marked the place were she was born... but the plaque was in the wrong place.

One question is: How was that plaque in Samosh and not in a large metropolitan area?

Some serious academic scholars wrote (Hito from Japan) was trying to finalize his dissertation topic.

He made money and created an entity to study Rosa Luxembourg. Every two years, Hito would sponsor conferences about the studies of Rosa.

He invited the Professor to some of these conferences. For example there was one in Beijing, in Moscow, Warsaw and so on. And during the conference in Warsaw he said, what don't we go to Samosh to check Rosa's birthplace?

In 2020, the government of Poland (a far right conservative party) insisted on moving Rosa's Luxemburg's plaque and get rid of it.

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The final paper:
Length: 18 to 20 pages. But the quality of argument is more important.
Generally speaking, students should demonstrate some familiarity with some primary and secondary sources and disagreements with what has been written and possibly try to reach an original conclusion after going through all the debate.

It is not necessarily a paper on comparative politics.

For example students have written about:
1) The decline of the far left in France. That involved the debates on Marxism in France and so on.
Other students have written about the relationship of British movement to Marxist tradition.

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Being a Marxist is a method, it's an approach.

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Being a Marxist is a method, it's an approach.

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What's more Marxist, remain with conclusions no longer valid or to question them.

BERNSTEIN: "I'm more Marxist than that"

INCIDENT INVOLVING MARX'S SON IN LAW

He tried to convinced Marx that he was wrong about matters of the day and went into a mechanical explanation. Marx's reply was that if that's Marxism I'm not Marxist.

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Bernstein

That what is general called socialism is nothing but the movement is everything.

Socialism is a process. By working in municipal governments the Social Democratic Movement is accomplishing very important democratic tasks.

Bernstein sees the SDM of his day and he concludes that it's time to stop pretending that you are something that you are not, you are not a revolutionary party, you are not wanting to overthrow the government.

"Don't be hypocritical, throw out "workers of the world unite" that's not real"

What you really are is a socialist party of reform.

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For Bernstein the crises of overproduction didn't happen and were not going to happen.

Reasons
Technological causes
Expansions of the world market
Logistical improvements.

The capitalists have found ways to mitigate some tendencies that Marx and Engels had envisioned.

Can one move to a socialist agenda through a democratic approach?
Bernstein: I want to focus on the present, on the go.
The ruling class will never allow the socialism. For example what happened in Chile in 1973.

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The work must be done within the democratic framework.

Socialists ought to work together with liberals in those points were they can find a better future. This is a matter of the point of history where they are.

FOR MARX: there is a point in which liberalism constrain the development.

Bernstein: We are not getting there and we might not get there.

Until few years ago Democratic Socialist of America was a small group. Just like 5000 members, a powerless organization and was having troubles attracting people. At this moment of time has 9.000 members and has been effective in attracting the youth. It is interesting trying to figure out what is happening here.

Was Bernstein pointing to an appropriate way to build a socialism movement in a capital country or not?
Bernie Sanders... Medicare for all, Green New Deal, Racial justice among other matters.

Why reading Bernstein in the present?

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It is an ideology. It is an insistence of the good will independent of the results.
Kant replied to Jeremy Bentley that what one needs to look at is the will, the motive, if the motive is a pure motive the result is not important.

MARX AND ENGELS thought this was abhorrent.

Bernstein says, Kant has a positive impact.

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Berstein p.46 is hostile to Hegelian dialectic. In Bernstein eyes, Marx and Engels didn't completely shaken off their Hegelian dialectic.

It was the Hegelian heritage as Bernstein understood that led Marx to have a deterministic view of history and to have a single cause to explain the apparatus of history.

Marx came to believe in a sort of historical determinism. As Bernstein understood this, it is the Hegelian tradition that is to blame about the Marx's beliefs of an imminent revolution.

BERNSTEIN PROBABLY DIDN'T UNDERSTOOD HEGEL COMPLETELY

What is it that Bernstein suggest to do to overcome the deleterious impact that Hegel had in the Marxist tradition?

How is that Bernstein wants to softpedal Hegelian influence on Marxism?
He is interested in ethical socialism, not in scientific theory that inevitably would lead to Hegelian socialism.
People should believe in socialist ideals, everyday ideals. Replacing with Kantian ideals.

Is there an ethical reason to believe in socialism and if so, how should that be?

In Kant epistemological writings there are two different ways of knowing things applying to two categories: through our senses, but that's not how morality works. Morality works through reason. There can be a supreme principle for morality because we are all rational beings.

we favor socialism because it is the right thing to do, because it thinks of others.

There was a school of Kantian Marxists.

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Do we see Socialism as an applied science?

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Do we see Socialism as an applied science?

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Is Bernstein correct in is assumption that Hegel dialectics limit the way in which we see the world?

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Is Bernstein correct in is assumption that Hegel dialectics limit the way in which we see the world?

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The preface of criticism to political economy:

What's the distinction of substructure and superstructure: Marx says that if you want to understand ideologies and philosophies, you have to understand that these are superstructural phenomena that is within understructured.

Bernstein says here that: "isn't the superstructure more independent of the economic substructre that this would suggest?"

Is his understanding of Marx a right understading of Marx? Did Marx suggest that superstructure was dependent of the substructure or was it a dialectical process?

To what degree do we accept Bernstein's reading of Marx and Engels?

Inherited in Marx's thought was the notion that as capitalist developed, the proletarian would become class conscious and their interests were going to make the revolution possible.

P.104. The proletarian didn't coalesce in one only class. There are other matters. What he was thinking about was the underlying economics. He is suggesting that the forces that Marx's inherited were not manifesting.

Why didn't the proletariat unite?

The greater democratization class collapse is reduced.

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Considered the first critique to Marxism.
Bernstein believed that the Bourgeoise wasn't shrinking and instead that it was expanding and that conditions of the proletariat were improving.

He introduces the idea of scientific socialism. Pure science is constant, universal principles are fixed. Any prediction of history is a speculation.

One of the major divergences is the view of Hegelian dialectics. For Marx it was constrained to a conclusion.

For Marx everything was about the class clash. For Bernstein there were other factors.

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I am a Fabian for he is the only socialist from who one can learn something.

Engels did not share Bernstein's positive attitude towards the Fabians. Engels wrote something critical about the Fabians. However, Engels trusted Bernstein and after Marx's death their relationship got closer. When Engels died, Berstein was the executioner of Engels will. Berstein was one of the chosen to pass on the legacy of Marxism.

Regardless of Bernstein criticism of Marxism, until the moment of Engels death, he was considered one of the most prominent leaders of the Orthodox Marxism movement.

That is to say that Bernstein understood Marxism at least in Engels' interpretation.

Then after Engels' death he felt psycologically free to publish criticisms about Orthodox Marxism.

Bernstein believed that Marx and Engels based their theories facts of their times, and what he did was to take the facts of its comtemporaneity and applied Marxism to it.

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Brendan will be presenting.

1. The differences between his understanding of the developing of the capitalist economy

2. Marxist economic understanding of capitalist economy.

What he is disagreeing with and why?

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They both had a tendency to believe that nationalism was an ideology. It was fostered by the bourgeoisie and that workers had no country.  "Workers of the world, unite!"
They had more things one another that the interests of capitalists in different countries.
What they anticipated was that the pattern that they saw in central and western Europe, expand to other parts of the world (this is very Eurocentric.) They thought that with the expansion of capitalism, the processes that took centuries in Europe would happen more rapidly in other parts of the world like in India or elsewhere. History had not yet touched certain people.

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Can the proletarian come to power via democratic means?

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Can the proletarian come to power via democratic means?

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What does this suggest in the nature of the state? How the state needs to change?

MARX:

ENGELS:

In his later writing Engels is more optimistic, more deterministic that Marx had been.

In Marx, there is the notion that the humans under a communistic society will be very different. REVOLUTION IS NECESSARY NOW.

In Engels, even in the reign of capitalism, communism will thrive (eventually). (1981, 1895....) our victory is at hands.
This had a vast impact in the forthcoming group of Marxists.

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1889 1940s, socialist parties of the world, including the socialist and Marxist parties discussed issues of mutual interests.
In the era of the second international when Engels was read in some circles more widely than Marx was.
Engels thoguths encouraged some movements as if....

Page 728 Do away with capital, the concentration of all means of production in the hands of the few, and the state will fall of itself. The difference is an essential one :without a previous social revolution the abolition of the state is

Marx's writes more about human agency whereas Engels thinks of the weight of history in the course of events.
MARX says PERHAPS
ENGELS says in INEVITABLE NECESSITY.

"Its growth proceeds
as spontaneously, as steadily, as irresistibly, and at the same time as tranquilly as a natural process. " p556 Engels

Engels became increasingly optimist about the Social Democratic Power through democratic ways.

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Engels thought that his job was to explain Marx's ideas for a broader audience.
"People is lazy to read Das Kapital"

He wanted to working class to understand. In order to make it accessible. He tried to systematize and boil down Marxist ideas through a series of words. Marxism then becomes a "cataclism"

"this is what you need to know" and things like that.

Page 681: "

How complementary are Hegel's dialectic and Darwin's

Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic
nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history : the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.;

Engels doesn't not an effort to explain Hegelian ideas for a broader audience.

The impact of Hegelian ideas on Marx is omnipresent.

* Engels is situating Marx in a rather different place:  He situates Marx as a scientist.

Such was the man of science. But this was not even half the
man. Science was for Marx a historically dynamic, revolutionary force . However great the joy with which he welcomed a new discovery in some theoretical science whose practical application perhaps it was as yet quite impossible to envisage, he experienced quite another kind of joy when the discovery involved immediate revolutionary changes in industry, and in historical development in general. For example, he followed closely the development of the discoveries made in the field of electricity and recently those of Marcel Deprez .

How complementary are the views?
1) The question is not whether Marx mentions Hegel but rather how Hegel impact upon him. Even if he doesn't mention Hegel, Marx's writings echoes Hegel.
2) History and class consciousness: What it is astonishing about is that Lucacz views an Hegelian influence in Marx without previously knowing about it. You can read "reification, alienation"

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When you compare him with Marx he was more concerned with economic and social issues. He "applied" Marx's lessons in the life of political processes. Despite that they have different backgrounds and so on, they complement each-other.

How are they complementary?
1. Tactics of social democracy throughout the text: Although street fighting ceased in 1840s is because conditions became better for the military than peasants.
About the social relations in Russia: He highlights the class relations.
"the workers would have to fight only against political power, the fight against it is easier"
Engels criticizes this by saying: "states represent the capital [p666]"
This writing embraces class antagonisms.

Another three points:
1) Marx = Darwin. , humans need shelter, food, before they can pursue other means.
2) Marx was an evolutionist. Humans need to emancipate.

How are they complementary?
Class antagonism.

Does Engels treat Marx as a scientist (Darwin)?

How can we define Engels to Marx? Partner? Friend?

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Another difference between Marx and Engels

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Another difference between Marx and Engels

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Engels: Nature functioning prior efforts of human to transform it. For him humans are subordinated to nature. From Marx nature is interesting, but Engels presents how nature unfolds and developed.

From history of class consciousness Lucacz says: The distinctions of Marx and Engels are rather important. The way they understand dialectics and nature. This has an impact in the differences of political approaches that they took.

It's not the case that Engels altered Marx's intent. Marx claims that dialectical forces apply to man and nature. It's clear that Engels views on that 1880s and 1890s are different that Marx's because Marx died and without Marx Engels became the most important interpreter. And a generation of posterior scholars (including Lenin) took Marxist view through Lenin's eyes.

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On Engels and his relationship with Marx

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On Engels and his relationship with Marx

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Some scholars believe that Engels' work is subsidiary of Marx's work. Sometimes Marx couldn't comply with some writing assignments he had, and Engels came in to write these works as written by Marx.

These scholars use Engels' writings to understand Marx's  writings.

ANOTHER SCHOOL OF THOUGHT.
Traces back to Gerorge Lucacz and Kalr Korsh. They accented the differences between Marx and Engels in order to attach Engels and undermine his authority. In later periods, Jean Paul Sartre, Altrusser also accent the distinction between Engels and Marx.

Engels was modest in assessing his own contributions.

"I cant deny that during my 40 years partnership with Marx, I had a certain independent work, but Marx is the author of the ideas. What I achieved in certain fields of study Marx could have achieved without me, but I couldn't achieved those without Marx"
Engels

Another indication of how Engels conceived this relations. there is a letter (P. 7,6,5)

It is important to understand that Engels lived about 12 years after Marx and that time, Engels was the authoritative source of all Marx's work. His own interpretations, giving more credence that there were due.

Engels contributed specially during the first stages of Marx. He forced focus on production and the industrial reserve army. It was Engels that described the state as an instrument of oppression in the hands of the ruling class. Engels work as a transmisor of some theories by which Marx work.

The fact that Engels transmitted these ideas to Marx implies that his role in Marx work is more important than he is willing to accept.

There are four different components on why it was that Marx and Engels differed in subtled and important ways.

1) they have very different Backgrounds. Engels was just 2 years younger but their family backgrounds differed. Marx's family was Jewish and his parents were not interested in religion. Engels family on the other hand was made of pietous protestant religious and he grew in that tradition. The break of Engels from religion was harder. Engels remained dependent on his family for many years and it was harder for him to assert a position that diverged dramatically from that of his parents.
Engels ended up with a more materialist view than Marx because it was more necessarily for him to respond fiercely. This helps to explain some philosophical and religious matter.

2) Marx received higher education when a small percentage of population could study. Marx studied 7 years at Berlin University and his thesis was in Greek philosophy comparing epicurean ideas with other ideas, very complex ideas and subject.
Engels ended up in secondary school level. Not because he wasn't capable but the expectations in his family were that he joined the family business and take the strings. So he ended his school after secondary school.
And Engels picked up with his ideas in his spare time while devoting hours of complex businesses in different levels at different places. Engels company had interests in Manchester. He had to take responsibility for it.

3) During the long years of their cooperation Engels concentrated on defending Marx's views to the outside world. Marx concentrated on studying different issues, using key components of his theory and Engels concentrated in explaining those ideas and responding to the numerous attacks to Marx.

4)During Marx lifetime, Engels had his own interests that were different of those of Marx. And he pursued those interests. Engels was interested in military history (Marx wasn't) he was very interested in natural sciences. Marx was more concerned in political economy.

Marx and Engels were in agreement with most of the ideas. But they were not the same.

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What substantive critiques can we make for last classes two quotes.

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What substantive critiques can we make for last classes two quotes.

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1. Communist manifesto
"when in the course of devolopent of class distinction dissapears, the public power will loose its political power. The development of each is the condition for the development of all"

P490

2. The German ideology p.160

In communist society where nobody has a exclusive activity, society regulates production and allows me to hunt in the day and criticize in the night.

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Marx wrote very little about what he thought the communist society would be like. He insisted that he was not creating recipes for the kitchen of the future. It was irrelevant for him.

There is at least one important place where he describe what the process of moving towards a communist future would be like what a communist society would be like.

The critique of the Goethe program.
p 529, 530
Marx points out two revolutionary phases
The revolution
and the communist society.

In economic terms:
How does he think that the economy is going to work after the proletarian revolution.

Everybody will be expected to work!

The social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labour time of the individual producer is the
part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it.  He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such and such an amount of labour (after deducting his labour for the
common funds), and with this certificate he draws from the social
( stock of means as much as costs the same amount
of labour. The same amount of labour which he has given to society in one 'form he receives back in another

NO PARASITES.

Each gives according to his means and receives according to his means?

Transitional phase: Everybody who can will work and receive a certificate. The proletariat will have to defend againsts the remainders of the Bourgeoise class.

P538.
Between capitalist and communist society, there corresponds a period of political transition in which the state can be no other that the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Just as in the bourgueoise they have a dictatorship, all keys to power, when the proletariat will have despotic power in order to prevent the bourgueoise to regain power.

Marx says: The dictatorship of the proletariat is a transitional class. Once this happens, it has to give up political control altogether. He observes that the state is necessarily a tool of the ruling class. One there is no more a ruling class there is no need of a state.

The second stage of post-capitalist society
Self administration. The dictatorship of the proletariat was just a transition to the stateless world.

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Theses on Feuerback (taking back from last classes)

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Theses on Feuerback (taking back from last classes)

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The theses on Feuerback was a transitional piece between the economic and philosophical manuscripts and the German ideology.
In this piece Marx addresses himself to the question of how deterministic he is, how materialistic he is.

And he begins the theses on Feuerbach asking "are all human actions determined"

This is because he understands classic materalistic thoughts, so he says "yes"

The knowledge of humans can date back to material conditions. In the way that a cycle is predictable. And the brain is a predictable organ of the body.

Marx rejects this analyses. He rejects classic orthodox materialism. This is because he believes that consciousness affect history. And thus, the materialistic didn't recognize the role of humans in the history.

This reflects the impact of Hegelian ideas on Marx. The notion of power and consciousness comes from Hegel.
Hegel and the idealist tradition say that important activity goes in the mind. Hegelian history is history of the unenvolving of consciousness.

Changes in history are changes in consciousness.

But if Marx is influenced by Hegel, does it mean that he is an idealist????

NO

First thesis
143. "Idealist don't know sensuous activity as such."
Idealist were overly concerned with the power of the mind.

"I'm neither an idealist nor an orthodox materialist. I have a criticism for both"

"I recognize the contribution of Feuerbach and other that recognize the relation between consciousness and action"

Marx's perspective is a material view that ideas can affect the real world.

"Thought can affect reality"

II thesis

The question whether objective truth can be attributed to
human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question . l\1an must prove the truth, that is, the reality and power, the
this-sided ness of his thinking in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking which is isolated from practice is a
purely scholastic question

This thesis is an attempt to go to the eleventh thesis "philosophy must make a change"

"I'm not interested in scholarstic arguments and in aspects that can't be tested empirically" Any debate that is

TESTING the theories and ideas.

Third thesis:

The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances
and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of
other circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men
who change circumstances and that it is essential to educate the
educator himself. Hence. this doctrine necessarily arrives at dividing
society into two parts, one of which is superior to society .
The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human
activity can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionising practice.

He thinks that Feuerback was an Utopian idealist and Bauer was an utopian socialist.

Feuerbach forgot to mention that humans are able to  change the conditions in which they live.

Marx: "Let's assume that conditions structure the person, how is it possible that you are able to THINK about it"
Humans can also shape the circumstances of the world in which they live.

Owen: Wanted to create "the experiments" Communes of factories led by workers.
Owen is an elite! he doesn't apply his theories on himself. This is not about creating a society divided, a superior and workers needing to be educated.

Feuerbach as an Utopian socialist is saying "Marx does the same"

Marx's engagement with Feuerbach is superficial. However, his engagement with Hegel is critical

In sum Hegel argued that there is reason in history. History itself could be best understood as unfolding of reason in a vast period of time. "Hegel is the autobiography of God"... nothing changes in humans, rather the unfolding of the idea.

Second Hegel tries to give us microscopic points in the unfolding of spirit that helps us to differentiate one from the other. How to differentiate the. The stages of freedom.
How much freedom there is and who has freedom.
There are 3 states in history are:
1. Ancient stage (oriental stage)
The only free was the emperor, everyone served the emperor.

2. Grecoroman stage.
Some were free. In its heyday, citizens were free. And the kind of freedom they had was a high quality of freedom.

3. Germanic stage (early 19th Century.)
In the 19th Century in Europe, all humans had the potential to be free.
In this time Hegel is saying "history is coming to an end" because history is the "unfolding of consciousness"

What is different about these 3 stages is who had freedom and what kind of freedom.

Marx is engaged with these.

How about thesis V

Feuerbach, not satisfied with abstract thinking, appeals to sensuous contemplation; but he does not conceive sensuousness as practical, human-sensuous activity.

"Thought traces back to the sensous"

That is to say: "the sensory world has a social dimension, what is beautiful today won't be tomorrow"

His understanding of questions like language, education must be understood in social terms. Is how you understand things.  They are social products.

THE CENTRAL ISSUE IS WHAT'S MARX'S RELATION TO THE HEGELIAN TRADITION OF UNDERSTANDING HISTORY.

Marx: Feuerbach doesn't tell us how to overcome or to understand what happens next. Marx, critical of Feuerbach and Hegel,

Page 4 and 5. INFLUENCE OF HEGEL VISION OF HISTORY ON MARX
1. History is a process of development of history
2. Marx really understand history as a process where we can see the development of forces of production. *material productive process.
4. In the process of history there are walls and blocks and it's necessary to break those walls to continue.
5. They are both going to contend that the process that they go through is dialectical.

Both understand history as a process of development.

History is not an idea. History is made by humans.
Stages for Marx:

Asiatic,

ancient,

feudal,

and modem bourgeois modes of production

This is the development of the material forces of production. They are characterized by class domination.

Each of these modes of production is a way of controlling nature, technology and labor. For Marx HISTORY IS HISTORY OF HOW PROPERTY RELATIONS HAVE CHANGE OVERTIME.

Who OWNS and WHO controls the means necessary to produce.

Everything that has occurred through humans until now is prehistory. And prehistory is coming to an end.
When will this end and history begin? After the successful proletarian revolution.
How to represent it? Because we have been liberated of alienation and become fully and completely human beens. That's when history begins!

Hegel: 19th Century ends history
Marx: Before 19th Century is prehistory

PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION IS ABOUT TO OCCUR.

HISTORY
Hegel argues there are walls in history and for the processes to continue the walls need to be broken. What breaks the wall? WORLD HISTORIC INDIVIDUALS who play a role in history that is larger than themselves. The role than spirit wants them to play. NAPOLEON is a classic example of that.
Individuals don't know why individuals are called to play such roles.

Marx
What is it that makes possible the transformation?
THE CLASSES.
Bourgueoise from feudalism to capitalism
Proletariant from capitalism to communism.
Individuals DON'T make history. Individuals are not as important to this problem. It is classes.

THEY BOTH SEE POINTS IN WHICH THE MOVEMENT MOVES FORWARD.

Fifth parallel between Hegel and Marx:

The use of the dialectical method to understand the system. Hegel: The early stages are evolved and transcended into next stages.

Marx
Bourgueoise trascends from lords

THERE IS A CONFLICT OF CLASSES.

None of the relations of the production that have existed in the past endured forever, nor can they endured forever.

No social order ever perishes
before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have
developed; and new, higher relations of production never appear
before the material conditions of their existence have matured in
the womb of the old society itself. P.5

Consider the gestation of a chicken, comes from and egg. Early weeks, days in the development of the egg, the egg provides it with the necessary nutrients in its environment. But when the chicken grows inside the egg, there is a point in which the egg is constraining the egg, thus the chicken needs to break the egg. this is THE PROLETARIAT!

WHY THIS IS DETERMINISM?
Is Marx saying that a proletarian revolution is to come?

We make history constrained by the circumstances in which we are born.

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Increasing alienation:
- Students not even turning on video
-

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The estrangement of men to men.
If men are to survive in a capitalist society, if he is to compete.
Bourgueoise will use men to survive... he will treat these men as objects for his survival, therefore he is estranged from them.

And they will be estranged from other workers because of competition.

4 elements of alienation.
Product
Process
Human
and other people.

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The animal is immediately identical with its life-activity. It does
not distinguish itself from it. It is its life-activity. Man makes his
life-activity itself the object of his will and of his consciousness. He
has conscious life-activity. It is not a determination with which he
directly merges. Conscious life-activity directly distinguishes man
from animal life-activity. It is just because of this that he is a species being. Or it is only because he is a species being that he is a
Conscious Being, i.e., that his own life is an object for him. Only
because of that is his activity free activity. Estranged labour
reverses this relationship, so that it is just because man is a conscious being that he makes his life-activity, his' essential being, a mere means to his existence.

In tearing away from man the object of
his production, therefore, estranged labour tears from him his species life, his real species objectivity, and transforms his advantage

P76.

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In capitalist society the labor is alienated and there are two aspects:

1. Alienation from the things that the worker produces.
2. Alienation from the process of deduction and therefore from himself. What it means to be a worker.
3. Alienation from the very things that make a worker a human been.
4. Alienation from other men.

(p70)

This fact expresses merely that the object which labour
produces-labour's product-confronts it as something alien, as a
power independent of the producer. The product of labour is
labour which has been congealed in an object, which has become
material: it is the objectification of labour. Labour's realization is
its objectification. In the conditions dealt with by political economy this realization of labour appears as loss of reality for the workers; objectification as loss of the object and obiect-bonda,ge; appropriation as estrangement, as alienation.

The way capitalism works, the worker sells labor power and produces objects and those objects go away

Capitalism has paid to get the objects, the worker is estranged from the product that he/she produces.

Hegel in phenomenology: An early state of consciousness in which slaves are forced to work and as a result of their work they shape and mould nature and produce objects that reflect them.

Marx response: The workers don't have any chance to recognize themselves in their product because they don't have power over the fate of their products... they have no idea.

These labor contributes not to the liberation of the worker but rather to bondage. They don't become a master. More of a slave.

Page 73, line 5

The object becomes a slave of the product.
The more he produces, the more bounded it gets.

You are a worker producing shoes.

The owner of the factory gives you a wage and he sells them... with the profit, the owner will use the profit to get machines.
This technology will get your work less and less interesting and you will feel more and more alienated.

As a result of the product you produced, it becomes harder and harder for you to live and get money for living.

The mass production and repetitiveness of a single task in the line of production also creates this estrangement.

Marx is not talking about alienation in nature... he is talking about alienation in Capitalism. And part of the process to get there is the development for the means of production.

P73 and 74

How would the worker come to
face the product of his activity as a stranger, were it not that in the
very act of production he was estranging himself from himself? The
product is after all but the summary of the activity of production.
If then the product of labour is alienation, production itself must
be active alienation, the alienation of activity, the activity of alienation. In the estrangement of the object of labour is merely summarized the estrangement, the alienation, in the activity of labour
itself.
What, then, constitutes the alienation of labour?
First, the fact that labour is external to the worker, i.e., it does
not belong to his essential being; that in his work, therefore, he
does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content
but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental
energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind.

If you are creative, productive, free.... you are human!

Alienation from product
Alienation from being human

How Marxist is it to have a notion of human nature?

What Marx means by species character is what defines humans...
What defines us as humans is FREE CONSCIOUS ACTIVITY.

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The standpoint for the work of Marx and Engels.

What is the difference between Marx and Engels?

Page 70
1;The worker descends to the category of commodity... insulation

2; The richness of the worker is in inverse proportion and the magnitude of production in society

3. the necessary result in the economy is the accumulation of capital in a small amount of hands and thus disparity. Class distinctions.

Class distinctions from the past and for Marx is the Bourgueoise and the Proletariat.

If we want to understand what's happening in philosophical terms, we have to understand the political terms.

THE MOST IMPORTANT CONCLUSIONS is that the workers are going to an isolation of the productivity.

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We can now turn directly to the manuscripts and we would have to focus on the question of estrangement.

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The economic and philosophic manuscripts.

He didn't pulblish these manuscript during his  lifetime... especially the theses on Feuerback nor the German Ideology (published in 1932)

The philosophic and economic manuscripts and the german ideology the ffact that they were unknown had enormeous impact in the ways in which Marx was understood in the end of 19th Century

TRosky? when he understood Marx there was little enthusiassm about Marxs ideas and his link to Hegel.

The Marxism of the second international. There was an attempt to codify Marx into Historical Materialism.

1844 Philosophical and economic works... the publication of these manuscripts sparked a huge debate in understanding Marxism and it is a debate that continued for many decades and that's where we are now.

One of the contributors to that debate was Marcuse. He first published a review on Marx. The way Marx was understood during the second international is problematic. Marcuse says in 1930s that the economic and philosophical manuscripts "demonstrate the bases for the context in which Marx was writing das Capital and so on"

Henry Levreg published a French version of the manuscripts. In 1934, 35 he wrote a full scale work assessing the corpus of Marxs ideas in the light of the manuscripts. Ever since, economic and philosophical manuscripts make part of the assessment of these thoughts.

How strong are the links between the early Marx and the late Marx?

What is the impact that Hegel had on Marx's ideas?
Was he a determinist?
These are matters important for this course.

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Economic and social manuscripts!
Alienation

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Traditions of Western Marxism.
Adorno, Benjamin, Marcus...
1920s to early 1970s.

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Research term paper
That is the key

15-20 pages is modest

In addition to the research paper, every member is going to be asked to lead one class session. Lead a discussion on class on a particular thing or work.

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Student of Marxism for many years.
Interested in the Marxism of late 19 Century. Interested in the generation of Marx itself.

Interested in Marxist and the Jewish community. How Jewish became interested in Marxism.

After his publication of first book, he became interested in the subsequent developments of Marxism. He discovered a massive transcript read by the Frankfurt school (unpublished) ... Leo, study of Antisemitism...

He published a book on that material. And that's where he stands now... Authoritarianism and fascism in the 21st Century.

Do the works written in the 1960s help us to understand what happens now?

jjacobs@gc.cuny.edu