Assignment #3
Camera Obscura
Karl Marx (1845-1846)
The fact is, therefore, that definite individuals who are productively
active in a defnite way enter into these definite social and political relations.
Empirical observation must in each separate instance bring out empirically,
and without any mystification and speculation, the connection of the social
and political structure with production. The social structure and the State
are continually evolving out of the life process of definite individuals,
but of individuals, not as they may appear in their own or other people's
imagination, but as they really are; i.e., as they operate, produce materially,
and hence as they work under definite material limits, presuppositions and
conditions independent of their will.
The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first
directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse
of men, the language of real life. Conceiving, thinking, the mental intercourse
of men, appear at this stage as the direct efflux of their material behaviour.
The same applies to mental production as expressed in the language of politics,
laws, morality, religion, metaphysics, etc., of a people. Men are the producers
of their conceptions, ideas, etc.-real, active men, as they are conditioned
by a definite development of their productive forces and of the intercourse
corresponding to these, up to its furthest forms. Consciousness can never
be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men is their
actual life-process. If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear
upside-down as in a camera obscure, this phenomenon arises just as much
from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina
does from their physical life-process.
Excerpt from "The German ideology," Robert C.
Tucker3 ed., The Marx-Engels Reader) 2d ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978),
P. 154.
Class Struggle
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (1848)
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class
struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master
and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition
to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight,
a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution
of society at large, or in the Common ruin of the contending classes.
In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated
arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social
rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in
the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices,
serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.
The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal
society
has not done away with clash antagonisms. It has but established new classes,
new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old
ones.
Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinctive
feature: it has simplified the class antagonisms: Society as a whole is
more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great
classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.
From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the
earliest
towns. From these burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie were
developed. The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up
fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets,
the colonisation of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the
means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation,
to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary
element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development.
The feudal system of industry, under which industrial production was
monopolised by closed guilds, now no longer sufficed for the growing wants
of the new markets. The manufacturing system took its place. The guild-masters
were pushed on one side by the manufacturing middle class; division of labour
between the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division
of labour in each single work shop.
Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even
manufacture no longer sufficed. Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionised
industrial production. The place of manufacture was taken by the giant,
Modern Industry, the place of the industrial middle class, by industrial
millionaires, the leaders of whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.
Modern industry has established the world-market, for which the discovery
of
America paved the way. This market has given an immense development to
commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has,
in its turn, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as
industry, commerce, nav igation, railways extended, in the same proportion
the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background
every class handed down from the Middle Ages.
We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of
a long
course of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production
and of exchange.
Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a
corresponding political advance of that class. An oppressed class'under
the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self-governing association
in the mediaeval commune; here independent urban republic (as in Italy and
Germany), there taxable third estate" of the monarchy (as in France),
afterwards, in the period of manufacture proper, serving either the semi-feudal
or the absolute monarchy as a counter poise against the nobility, and, in
fact, corner-stone of the great monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has
at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world-market,
conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political
sway. The execution of the modern State is but a committee for managing
the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.
The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all
feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder
the motley feudal ties that bound man to his "natural superiors,"
and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest,
than callous "cash payment." It has drowned the most heavenly
ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine
sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved
personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible
chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom-Free
Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political
illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured
and
looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer,
the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage-labourers.
The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and
has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.
The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display
of vigour in the Middle Ages, which Reactionists so much admire, found its
fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. It has been the first
to show what man's activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders
far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals;
it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of
nations and crusades.
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments
of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the
whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production
in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence
for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production,
uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty
and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All
fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable
prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated
before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy
is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his
real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.
The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the
bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere,
settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.
The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world-market given
a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country.
To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet
of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established
national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They
are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death
question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up
indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones;
industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter
of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the productions of
the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products
of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seculsion
and selfsufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence
of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The
intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National
one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and
from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.
The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production,
by
the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most
barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of its commodities
are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with
which it forces the barbarians intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners
to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt
the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls
civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In
one word, it creates a world after its own image.
The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns.
It has created
enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared
with the
rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the
idiocy of rural life. just as it has made the country dependent on the towns,
so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilised
ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.
The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state
of the
population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated
population, centralised means of production, and has concentrated property
in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralisation.
Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests,
laws, governments and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one
nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class-interest,
one frontier and one customs-tariff.
The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created
more
massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations
together. Subjection of Nature's forces to man, machinery, application
of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric
telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of
rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground-what earlier century
had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap
of social labour?
We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation
the
bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain
stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the
conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal
Organisation of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the
feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already
developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be
burst asunder; they were burst asunder.
Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and
political
constitution adapted to it, and by the economical and political sway of
the bourgeois class.
A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern bourgeois
society
with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society.that
has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like
the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether
world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past the history
of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive
forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations
that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeoisie and of its
rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical
return put on its trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of
the entire bourgeois society. In these crises a great part not only of
the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces,
are periodically destroyed. In these crises there breaks out an epidemic
that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity-the epidemic
of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state
of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation
had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce
seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilisation,
too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The
productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the
development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they
have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered,
and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the
whole of bourgeois society, en danger the existence of bourgeois property.
The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth
created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On
the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on
the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation
of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and
more destructive crises, and'Dy diminishing the means whereby crises are
prevented. The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the
ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.
But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death
to itself; it
has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons-the
modern working class-the proletarians.
In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the
same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, devefoped-a
class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find
work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who
must sell themselves piece-meal, are a commodity, like every other article
of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition,
to all the fluctuations of the market.
Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of labour, the
work of the
proletarians has lost all individual character, and consequently, all charm
for the
workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most
simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack) that is required
of him. Hence, the cost of production of a workman is restricted, almost
entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for his maintenance,
and for the propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore
also of labour, is equal to its cost of production. In proportion, therefore,
as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases. Nay more,
in proportion as the use of machinery and division of labour increases,
in the same proportion the burden of toil also increases, whether by prolongation
of the working hours) by increase of the work exacted in a given time or
by increased speed of the machinery, etc.
Modern industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master
into
the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of labourers, crowded
into the factory, are organised like soldiers. As privates of the industrial
army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers
and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of
the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine,
by the over-looker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer
himself. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and
aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is.
The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual labour, in
other
words, the more modern industry becomes developed, the more is the labour
of
men superseded by that of women. Differences of age and sex have no longer
any distinctive social validity for the working class. All are instruments
of labour, more or less expensive to use, according to their age and sex.
No sooner is the exploitation of the Tabourer by the manufacturer, so
far, at an
end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other
portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker,
etc.
Excerpt from "Manifesto of the Communist Party,"
Robert C. Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader, 2d ed. (New York: W. W. Norton,
1978), pp. 473-479.
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