Karl Marx

This text “Karl Marx,” which is taken from The Continuum Encyclopedia of Modern Criticism and Theory by Robert C Holub in Julien Wolfreys, Ed., features in B.Ed. 1^st Year’s General English book (Tribhuvan University). The key takeaways from the text are:

• Lived: 1818-1883, a political economic philosopher
• Nationality: Jewish German
• Ideological friend: Friedrich Engels
• Most important writings: Communist Manifesto; The Capital
• Marx’s greatest achievement for literary studies was his insistence that literature is never entirely autonomous, but represents a mediated ideological statement about genuine social struggle.
• Human history is the history of class struggle; struggle between haves and have-nots.
• Criticizes religion; compares religion with opium – he claims that our concern with the afterlife diverts our attentions from the pursuit of happiness in the world.
• Just as the critique of religion reveals the true character of belief, so too philosophy should set itself the task of clarifying the obscure aspects of the real world.
• For historical progress to occur, there has to be a real struggle involving a historical agent that will propel history forward. The proletariat, as the only class that could represent society as a whole, is appointed the task of redeeming society.
• Philosophy and the working class hold the hope for the future: the essential task is not just the interpretation of the world, but its wholesale transformation.
• Concept of self-alienation: God is self-alienated man, the essence of man abstracted and made alien or strange. Contemplating upon God is forgetting oneself; drawing near to God is straining away from oneself. Under capitalist forms of production the product of labour does not belong to the labourer. The product is thus alienated from the worker. The capitalist mode of production, which deprives the worker of the product of his labour, is the root cause of all generalized manifestations of social alienation.
• Fetishism of commodities: arises from a specific social arrangement, when commodities are taken to the marketplace and acquire exchange value. Our reflection on social life are necessarily distorted by the confusion wrought by commodity fetishism. Fetishism of commodities is thus associated with false consciousness.
• Ideology: materialist analysis of the social order. Marx says that ideals and ideas are based ultimately in the interests of a ruling class seeking to maintain or gain hegemony, and to the extent that literature contains ideological material, it too participates in class struggle.
• Bourgeoisie and Proletariat: Bourgeoisie refers to the capitalists who own factories and industries, whereas, proletariat refers to the industrial workers who earn wages for their labor. Marx considers the bourgeoisie to be a unique and essentially revolutionary class. Bourgeoisie, which was once a revolutionary class in the historical sense that it opposed and overthrew the feudal order, retains an aspect of its revolutionary promise even after it has gained power. In imposing a rational order on production, the bourgeoisie has also revolutionized the ideological sphere, doing away with the feudal superstitions and traditional notions that fettered individuals to a medieval hierarchy. It has lifted the veil of religious and political guises that formerly legitimated oppression of the lower classes, and substituted brute force and the cash nexus. Despite its despotic role in contemporary society, the bourgeoisie has propelled history forward, introducing a new ideological structure, and paving the way for its own downfall by introducing its own grave-diggers: the proletariat. Proletariat, according to Marx, will sooner or later have class consciousness and ultimately overthrow bourgeoisie and establish communism in the society.