Karl Marx

For his second entry in History of Political Philosophy, Joseph Cropsey turns his attention to Karl Marx, one of the most radical philosophers in the book. For Cropsey, Marxism must be seen as an account of human life in past, present in future as grounded in continuous change. Furthermore, Cropsey notes that Marx sees economics as the foundation for all of society, so to understand economics is to understand society. Because of this, humans must be understood as empirical creatures attempting to fulfill their biological and economic needs.

Humanity’s economic conditions are determined by the tools they have available. These tools create the conditions that determine the prevailing property relations. These property relations create social relations that create a division between the people who own the means of production and those who work the means of production. Thus, for Marx economic “laws” are not really laws as they are a product of the particular economic conditions of the historical period in which they exist. Marx does not merely think this about economics either as for him all of human thought is grounded in the particular historical period they inhabit. Every historical period has been divided between the workers and owners and it is this conflict that drives the historical process as the workers have been prevented from becoming fully human. For Marx, these divisions are rooted in in natural inequality in the distribution of talent.

Marx also sees civil society as an outgrowth of the fractioning of society as civil society works as an individualistic oasis against the community. For Marx, this is a highly negative aspect as for Marx, people’s status as a social creature demands that institutions be public. But because this is not the case, a badly divided society forms which needs coercion in order to stay together. According to Marx, this is where the state comes from. Because of this, people are discouraged to work with each other. In order to solve this problem, a proper alignment of the means of production are needed in order to bring people together. Under current conditions however, other people are seen as more of a product than as full human beings.

Marx takes a dim view of much of what made of the discipline of political economy of his day. This is because for Marx, as economics are rooted in the particular historical period it exists in, political economy is essentially a tool for the ruling class. Marx sees society as being in constant flux and sees this flux as being grounded in the material conditions. Marx calls this process dialectical materialism. According to Marx, all of history is governed by this process. This process will eventually bring about the end of capitalism as machinery will become more and more developed, but under private ownership the lives of the workers will become worse and worse. As a result of this process a revolution will eventually occur which will bring about the end of capitalism. Once this has occurred, the workers will abolish private ownership and with that, the class system. This move will mark the beginning of purely human history. Marx says that the workers will establish socialism, but he does not explain how socialism will work because he saw his main task as offering a critique of capitalism.  

One of the most significant contributions Marx made to political philosophy is his work on value. For Marx, the capitalist concept of profit distorted true value as value is grounded in labor. Marx saw a distinction between value in use and value in exchange with value in exchange producing distortions if value in use. Without these distortions, labor could be more properly seen as the basis of value. Under capitalism however, these distortions are inevitable as capitalism a turned labor power into a commodity. This is because there is, under capitalism, a discrepancy between the amount of labor done and the amount of labor paid for. This creates a surplus which the capitalists take. Capitalists have an incentive to increase this discrepancy, primarily by pushing the use of machines that cause more pauperization. Because of this push towards the greater use of machinery, capitalism must be in ever increasing flux to survive. Marx sees this as the natural process of capitalism, and because of this, the bourgeois (middle class) will become proletarianized (working class) while the proletariat is reduced to poverty.

Marx’s predictions on capitalism have not panned out while his predictions on socialism have not been falsifiable as every existing socialist society has claimed to be in a state of transition. Still, under socialism Marx thinks that people will achieve the ancient ideal of the active man. Because of this, Marx sees socialism as people’s highest calling. It should be noted, that whatever faults Marx has, one of the most important parts of his legacy is his unwillingness to make peace with the currently existing order as many of those who came before him did. For Marx, people may be imperfect, but it that imperfection that moves history towards to perfection of humans and Marx sees this desire as having very old roots as in many ways, Marx sees socialism as being the actualization of religious longing for justice to correct currently existing injustice.