Marxism

Shore’s own judgments and connections

Industrial society swaps nobles and peasants for two classes: a bourgeoisie defined by owning factories rather than inherited title, and a proletariat of urban workers employed in them.

Put simply Marx: industry replaces nobles and peasants with two classes. The "bourgeoisie" own the factories, rather than inheriting titles; the "proletariat" are the city workers employed in them.

Factory work estranges workers from labor itself: hired by the hour, tending machines, performing one fragment of a process whose finished product is never theirs.

Put simply Marx: factory work cuts workers off from their own labor. Paid by the hour, they tend machines and do one small step of a process, and the finished product is never theirs.

Marx inverts Hegel, turning dialectics into dialectical materialism: history's driver is not Geist but socioeconomic forces, so philosophy must leave the metaphysical and ideal for the material and concrete.

Put simply Marx turns Hegel upside down. History is driven not by "Spirit" but by social and economic forces, so philosophy must turn from abstract ideas to material, concrete life. This is "dialectical materialism".

In the text In the 1873 Afterword to Capital, Marx writes "My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite" and speaks of "the materialistic basis of my method".

All history so far is class struggle, and each order carries the seeds of its own destruction: feudalism yielded to capitalism, whose bourgeoisie produces "its own grave diggers."

Put simply Marx: all history so far has been a struggle between classes, and every social order breeds its own downfall. Feudalism gave way to capitalism, and the capitalist class produces "its own grave diggers."

For Marx, your place in the socioeconomic structure, the base, determines your thinking; consciousness, culture and art, the superstructure, derive from it.

Put simply Marx: your place in the economy (the "base") determines how you think. Your ideas, culture and art (the "superstructure") grow out of it.

Where to read it Marx, Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859); Engels, letter to Joseph Bloch, 21–September 22, 1890.

What proved truly fatal for the twentieth century, on Berlin's thesis, was not the arrival of Marxism in the Russian Empire but the arrival of Hegelianism.

Nothing in the twentieth century makes sense until students take the imaginative leap and grasp why Marxism seduced so many people, in so many places, for so long.

Put simply Historian Tony Judt's advice to Shore: nothing in the twentieth century makes sense until students imagine their way into why Marxism attracted so many people, in so many places, for so long.

Shore's question about Marx is not whether he was right, which she pointedly does not claim, but what gave his picture of the world such a grip on people.

History cannot be run backward: the Bastille, once stormed, stays stormed, and whatever actually happens is in some sense what ought to have happened.

Put simply Hegel: history cannot be undone. Once the Bastille was stormed in the French Revolution, it stayed stormed. And whatever actually happens is, in some sense, what ought to have happened.

Other readings Terry Pinkard (Does History Make Sense?, 2017) defends Hegel's philosophy of history against the common reading of it as a theory of inevitable progress, grounding it in an account of human subjectivity.

Where to read it Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Preface; Encyclopedia Logic §6.

Hegel's image for history is a "slaughter bench": the suffering piled up along the way is the price paid for progress toward a somewhat mystical end-point.

Where to read it Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History, Introduction.

History's telos is a reconciliation in which the great oppositions, being and thought, freedom and necessity, fact and value, subject and object, dissolve into a single whole.

Put simply Hegel: history is heading for a final reconciliation in which the great opposites (thought and being, freedom and necessity, facts and values, mind and world) merge into a single whole.

For Hegel the subjective is nearly a term of abuse: freedom means recognizing necessity, identifying with history's objective movement until you stop wanting it otherwise.

Put simply Hegel has little patience for the personal, the "subjective." Freedom means seeing that things must happen as they do, and siding with history's course until you no longer wish it were different.

In the text In the Philosophy of Right (§124), Hegel calls the right of subjective freedom "the pivot and center of the difference between antiquity and modern times"; "freedom is the insight into necessity" is Engels's summary of Hegel in Anti-Dühring.

Other readings Robert Pippin (Hegel's Practical Philosophy, 2008) reads Hegel's freedom as a relation: agents take their purposes as their own and act within institutions of mutual recognition, so the individual's own endorsement matters.

With Hegel, History acquires a capital H: in the Hegelian sense it is a phenomenon of its own, with a dialectical forward motion.

Put simply Hegel: History, with a capital H, becomes a force of its own, not just a record of what happened. It moves forward through clashes between opposites.

On Berlin's reading, Hegel admits only one evil: resisting the world process, reason incarnate. Those who wring their hands over history's victims are thus not merely blind but immoral.

Put simply Berlin's reading of Hegel: the only evil is resisting the march of history, which Hegel sees as reason made flesh. So people who lament history's victims are not just blind but immoral.

What decisively shapes modern social behavior, for Marx, is industrialization: modernization in a technical and empirical sense rather than modernity as a broad condition.

Put simply Marx: what most shapes how people behave in modern society is industrialization, the concrete technical change of factories and machines, rather than "modernity" as a broad condition of life.

Industrial society swaps nobles and peasants for two classes: a bourgeoisie defined by owning factories rather than inherited title, and a proletariat of urban workers employed in them.

Put simply Marx: industry replaces nobles and peasants with two classes. The "bourgeoisie" own the factories, rather than inheriting titles; the "proletariat" are the city workers employed in them.

Factory work estranges workers from labor itself: hired by the hour, tending machines, performing one fragment of a process whose finished product is never theirs.

Put simply Marx: factory work cuts workers off from their own labor. Paid by the hour, they tend machines and do one small step of a process, and the finished product is never theirs.

Marx inverts Hegel, turning dialectics into dialectical materialism: history's driver is not Geist but socioeconomic forces, so philosophy must leave the metaphysical and ideal for the material and concrete.

Put simply Marx turns Hegel upside down. History is driven not by "Spirit" but by social and economic forces, so philosophy must turn from abstract ideas to material, concrete life. This is "dialectical materialism".

In the text In the 1873 Afterword to Capital, Marx writes "My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite" and speaks of "the materialistic basis of my method".

Hegel's dialectic, in Engels's image, is standing upside down; the task is to take it "off its head" and plant it on its feet.

Put simply Engels: Hegel's way of explaining history through clashing opposites, his "dialectic," is standing on its head. It needs to be turned the right way up and set on its feet.

In Capital's afterword Marx credits Hegel with first setting out how dialectic works, though mystified: stood right side up, it reveals "the rational kernel within the mystical shell."

Put simply Marx, in Capital: Hegel was the first to set out how the dialectic, thinking through clashing opposites, works, but in a mystified form. Turned right side up, it reveals "the rational kernel within the mystical shell."

In Hegelian fashion, the Manifesto makes no distinction between forecast and prescription: the proletariat's triumph is predicted, predestined, and right, all at once.

Put simply Marx, like Hegel: the Communist Manifesto does not separate what will happen from what should happen. The workers' victory is predicted, fated and right, all at once.

All history so far is class struggle, and each order carries the seeds of its own destruction: feudalism yielded to capitalism, whose bourgeoisie produces "its own grave diggers."

Put simply Marx: all history so far has been a struggle between classes, and every social order breeds its own downfall. Feudalism gave way to capitalism, and the capitalist class produces "its own grave diggers."

In the Manifesto's picture, capitalism's profit motive converts what ought to be relations between persons into relations between things, and human beings themselves into commodities.

Put simply The Communist Manifesto: chasing profit, capitalism turns what should be relations between people into relations between things, and turns people themselves into goods for sale ("commodities").

Class consciousness, in Marx's near-technical sense, is the moment workers grasp both that the bourgeoisie exploits them and that nothing short of worldwide violent revolt will end it.

Put simply Marx: "class consciousness" is the moment workers realize that the factory-owning class exploits them and that only a worldwide, violent uprising of workers will end it.

In the text In his speech at Amsterdam (September 8, 1872), Marx says that in some countries, such as America and England, "the workers can attain their goal by peaceful means"; for most of the Continent, he says, force must be the lever.

Where to read it Marx, speech at Amsterdam, September 8, 1872; The Communist Manifesto, Part IV.

After the revolution the proletariat must rule dictatorially for a transitional period, because the bourgeoisie will never surrender its property voluntarily.

Put simply Marx: after the revolution, the workers must rule as a dictatorship for a while, because the factory-owning class will never give up its property willingly.

Where to read it Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program, Part IV; letter to Joseph Weydemeyer, March 5, 1852.

For Marx, religion is a drug for the masses, dangled before the exploited so that a promised reward in the next world reconciles them to suffering in this one.

In the text In the 1844 Introduction, Marx writes that religious suffering is "the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering", and calls religion "the sigh of the oppressed creature" and "the opium of the people".

The bourgeoisie, like the workers, are also self-alienated under capitalism; the difference is that they are content, since they are making money.

Put simply Marx: under capitalism the factory owners are alienated from themselves too, just like the workers. The difference is that they do not mind, because they are making money.

Where to read it Marx and Engels, The Holy Family (1845), ch. IV.

For Marx, your place in the socioeconomic structure, the base, determines your thinking; consciousness, culture and art, the superstructure, derive from it.

Put simply Marx: your place in the economy (the "base") determines how you think. Your ideas, culture and art (the "superstructure") grow out of it.

Where to read it Marx, Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859); Engels, letter to Joseph Bloch, 21–September 22, 1890.

Shore poses a Calvinist-style puzzle for classical Marxism: if the proletariat is predestined to win anyway, why act at all? That is the problem Lenin will take up.

Put simply Shore's puzzle for classic Marxism: if the workers are destined to win anyway, why act at all? It echoes Calvinism: if God has already decided who is saved, why go to church? Lenin will take this up.

Marx's father, an Enlightenment figure who "knew Voltaire by heart," converts to Christianity to pursue a career as a lawyer.

Marx, who began law at Bonn aged 17 (1835), transfers to Berlin in 1836 and there encounters the Young/Left Hegelians (Doctors' Club, 1837).

Marx and Engels meet at the Café de la Régence in Paris and begin their collaboration.

The Holy Family Die heilige Familie

The German Ideology Die deutsche Ideologie

The Poverty of Philosophy Misère de la philosophie

Manifesto of the Communist Party Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei

Springtime of Nations: wave of liberal-nationalist revolutions across Europe.

The Communist Manifesto is published.

Capital Das Kapital