Radical humanism: secular not theistic (vs Old Hegelians)
Political radicalism: make the actual rational
David Friedrich Strauss, Life of Jesus Critically Examined (1835): "All [the narratives of Christ] spring [f]rom the depths and divine impulses of the human mind"; "As long as man knows not that he is a spirit, he cannot know that God is man."
Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity (1841)
materialism
Example: Marvin Harris, Cows, Pigs, Wars, Witches
reduces theology to anthropology: "Religion is the dream of the human mind"; God is a projection of humans.
Marx's break (a) Marx agrees man creates religion (b) Marx disagrees about the source of our ideas. For Feuerbach, it's "feelings"; for Marx, economic conditions.
What's Hegelian about Feuerbach?
Feuerbach's idea of a 'true' consciousness: being one with our essence as a species-being
what is it to be a species-being?
self-consciousness
ability to empathize
religion separates us from our essence as a species-being
religion need not do this
Marx and the young Hegelians
shares in the criticism of religion
agrees man is alienated from his essence as species-being
Marx goes beyond Feuerbach and the young-Hegelians regarding the source of alienation
Marx on theory vs. practice
Hegelians: changing consciousness changes the world
Marx: no, must change the world
Karl Marx
Life (1818-93; student days; poverty of; workaholic)
Works
Early writings
German Ideology (1845-6, with Engels)
materialism
ideology
On the Jewish Question (1843)
Bruno Bauer (1809-1822) on the Jewish question
Marx's response: political vs. human emancipation
Theses on Feuerbach (1945), Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts (1844)
Historical materialism and scientific socialism
historical materialism
The Marx/Engels problem (does Marx think there are laws of history like laws of physics, or is that only Engels' view?)
Economic writings
Wage Labour and Capital (1947-9)
labour power is a commodity
theory of how value of labour power is set
the law of capitalism: increased productivity leads to less demand for labour; "the forest of uplifted arms demanding work becomes ever thicker, while the arms themselves become ever thinner"
Grundrisse (1857-58; seven notebooks)
Das Kapital (vol. 1, 1867)
labor theory of value
commodity: a thing with use value and value (exchange value)
use value: the utility of a thing; independent of the labor required to appropriate a thing's useful qualities
value (exchange value): market price; independent of the properties giving a thing its use value
Exchange value is determined by the labor embodied in the thing ("as values, all commodities are only definite masses of congealed labour time")
how capitalism works
M-C-M' (vs. C-M-C)
Source of surplus value (profit)
cost to capitalist is wages: the value of labour power is the labour time necessary for its production and reproduction
income: exchange value of goods
profit arises because it costs less to keep the labourer alive one day then what he produces in one day: "The fact that half a day's labour is necessary to keep the labourer alive during 24 hours, does not in any way prevent him from working a whole day."
relative surplus value
Is capitalism unjust, to Marx?
No: "The circumstance, that on the one hand the daily sustenance of labour-power costs only half a day's labour, while on the other hand the very same labour-power can work during a whole day, that consequently the value which its use during one day creates, is double what he pays for that use, this circumstance is, without doubt, a piece of good luck for the buyer, but by no means an injury to the seller."
