CENTENARY
Karl Marx has been a time and nonsense. In the colour supplements and newspaper articles, the reader will be hard put to it to find what Marx's important theoreticlast week's press has Bernard Levin of arguing that Marx was the Statesman in an ignorant 'Labour should junk all this Marx. The party owes him His heritage Even Neal Ascherson in the Observer goes on about where 'Marx went wrong'. So what were the theoretical breakthroughs that made? And how do they aid the struggle of the working * The theory of historical materialism Historical materialism, systematically expounded in the GerIdeology (1845), the fundamental discovery of Marx. He himself summed it up with remarkable clarity and acuteness in his famous Preface of "The general result at which I arrived and which once won served the guiding thread studies can be briefly formulated as follows: in the social production of their life men enter into definite relations which are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to definite development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, which rises a legal sunerstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of duction of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but their social being that derermines men consciousness'.
careful reading nassage reveas that. Marxism is tar from being the 'economic' theory that bourgeois ideologues assert. contrary Marxism explains that the 'social relations of production' fundamental, determining social reality. Marx first without scientific given epoch duction. Marx's eno en une understand the my modern society, political representative of ullate cas stage of 'penetrated', development of on and political them.
pro- * The theory value the of this market.
On the propertyless class forced to level of workers' The ideology, law and politics of a understood outside of the social relations of pro'guiding thread' worker movement to development of value. the emergence of capitalism, and its own role as the La subor— the proletariat.
Historical materialism does away al a stroke with une view or mislor. as the doings of great people, and enables the tangled skein of history to revealllthe fundamental modern classes — the bourgeoisie and the proletariat - and the ideological and political forces which represent of surplus Marx's second great discovery was the real nature of the wage labour-capital relationship. Liberal economic theory walt labour-capital relationship as a free exchange on the The workers sold their labour in return for a wage of equal value — an equal transaction freely struck. Marx explained that the proletariat was a sell its power. In exchange for the labour power the capitalist advanced a portion of his existing capital (which Marx called 'variable capital') as wages. The capitalist then appropriated the result of the workers production, a newly created 'surplus' of surplus value Inis lneory created scientific basis understanding the mechanism capitalist exploration.
*The Marxist theory capitalist crisis The derivative of Marx's theory of capitalist production was his insight into capitalist expounded at length in volume 3 of Capital.
Capitalism invariably through Siles. capitalist production, the incentive to gel ll going is me producuol surplus value, and its result for the capitalists — profit.
general decline in the rate of profit (the capitalists' "return'), leads to a period of disinvestment, closure factories unemployment. Each capitalist crisis the result of a combination of specific factors.
But there is a general towards crisis in capitalism through the 'tendency of the rate of profit to fall'. As the capitalist production cycle develops, proportion of accumulated • capital factories, machines ete - in the production process becomes more technologically intensive. It becomes more and more expensive to produce a given amount of surplus value. The for average rate of decline, unless counterveiling tendencies intervene.
In the resulting amounts of capital are destroyed as of capitalists go bankrupt and the conditions for recreated.
* The theory of the state The state only came into existence with class society. Although the state exists to ensure the continued production of the general conditions of production (in capitalism for example the postal service, a central bank, the fire service, etc) each state represents the interests of a particular class, the ruling class. Part of its function in maintaining the general conditions for the the continued domination of the ruling class is its repressive tuncion. As Engels put it: 'the state is in the last instance of a body of armed men.' The expencili trend convinced Marx that 'the state cannot be seized by the working class and wielded for its own ends'. It must be broken up, ding army replaced by the workers in world history.
classes, hand weapons The uniquely But 1980's economic danger rent crisis.
Dha. DAVIN KING Archive Marx timental Production will more begins crisis, huge profitable production are • Ine Marx. 50p. of the Paris Commune "smashed', and the stanpostage. * The revolutionary role of the working class The proletariat plays a unique role in All previous revolutionary classes have been propertied able to use tael growing economic power against the ruling class. The working class on the other Towns property. Its sole are its collective organisation and its consciousness.
proletarian revolution is a conscious revolution order to accomplish its historical task of overthrowing capitalism the working class needs to understand society to act on it. The world outlook of the proletariat is Marxism itself.
revolutionary con-sciousness is not created spontaneously, but is the work of a revolutionar! political party which links up with. and explains, the spontaneous strug gles of the class.
It is clear that in the world of the wracked with capitalis crisis, the ever present of imperialist war, savage capitalist offensive against the working class world-wide, Marxism is the only theory wnich explails lt inter-action of the economic, political and ideological elements of the curThe immense interest in the centenary in the labour movement stems not from as Peter Kellner seems to think, but from the fact that Marxism continues to be unrivalled in its explanatory power and its ability to guide the political actions of the working No amount of pompous drivel Marx's bourgeois, liberal and social democratic detractors conceal this fact from increasing numbers in the Labour Party and trade unions.
On historical materialism:
• The German Ideology. Part 1 Marx and Engels. (Lawrence and Wishart). £2.50.
Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels. (Pathfinder).
On surplus value:
Wage Labour and Capital. Introduction Marxist Theory. Mandel.
(Pathfinder). £1.75 On capitalist crisis:
• Capital Vol. 3. Introduction b!
Mandel. (Penguin). £6.95 On the Marxist theory of the state:
• State and Revolution Lenin 50p On the revolutionary role of the working class • What is to be Done. Lenin. 76 Leninist Theory of Organisation. Mandel. 25p.
The Other Bookshop. Plus 20 per cent for
14: Socialist Action 25 March 1983
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WHAT MARX REALLY SAID