Marx, Socialism and the Artificality of Man
- law, morality, religion - constructs
- all of society is class warfare
- historical materialism: historical progression of material forces, inverted Hegel
- industrialists alienating and exploiting the population
- human nature varies as the mode of production varies, there is no one human nature
- grounded explanation of social systems
- economic base + ideological superstructure
- sets of relation of production, and its what builds a society
- social ideas are products of the economic base, and so is capitalist law, nothing about it is universal
- the modern state government is a managerial buerou for the bourgeoise
- human nature is base dependent, yada yada
- alienation: innate productive forces used to dominate us
- species-being: desire to produce
- the burg. is also alienated (via all 4 alienations), but more comfortably so
- market hyper-expansion
- wages falling, no profit maintining, capitalist crisis
- historical determinism: history is always driven towards one singular end point, communism
- each era ends in violence, so will capitalism under a revolution
- communism will be the first free society, since productive forces will be freed
4 Forms of Alienation:
- from the product: that which you produce controls you, youre alienated from the fruits of your labour
- from the activity of labour: no free expression
- from species-being: creating only for survival, for a wage
- of man from man: we are made selfish and understand the other as not truly human