Marx: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

by Peter Singer

The fact that the worker obtains only the exchange-value, rather than the use-value, of his labour, means that in order to earn enough to support himself he has to work a full day—say, twelve hours—whereas his labour produces the use-values of the necessary food, clothing, shelter, and so on in, say, six hours.

Other chapters describe how the increasing division of labour eliminates intellectual and manual skill and reduces the labourer to a mere appendage to a machine; how industrialization has ruined cottage industries, forcing hand-workers to starve; how capitalism creates an ‘industrial reserve army’ of unemployed workers, subsisting in the direst poverty, to keep the ‘active army of workers’ in check; and how the agricultural population of England had their land taken from them by landlords and capitalists, so that they could survive only by selling their labour-power

Marx asserts that all profit arises from the extraction of surplus value from living labour; machines, raw materials, and other forms of capital cannot generate profit, though they can increase the amount of surplus value extracted. This seems obviously wrong. Future capitalists will not find their profits drying up as they replace their last workers by intelligent robots. Instead, the profits will flow from their competitive advantage over other manufacturers who produce at higher cost because they are still paying human workers.

Many of Marx’s other theories have been refuted by events: the theory that wages will always tend downwards to the subsistence level of the workers; the theory of the falling rate of profit; the theory that under capitalism economic crises will become more and more severe; the theory that capitalism will force more and more people down into the working class; and the theory that, to force wages down, capitalism requires an ‘industrial reserve army’ of paupers, people who are unemployed or irregularly employed, and living near the subsistence level.

If Marx’s mission in life was to contribute to the overthrow of capitalism and the liberation of the proletariat, his theories of history and of economics were intended to do this by showing the workers their role in history and making them conscious of the manner in which capitalism exploited them. While theory could describe existing reality in this way, however, for theory to reach ahead of its time was another matter altogether. Marx derided as ‘utopian’ those socialists who thought that the way to bring about communism is to produce a blueprint of a future communist society in which everyone works happily together and no one has to live in poverty. In contrast to these utopian socialists, Marx claimed that his work had a scientific basis because it was built on knowledge of the laws of history that would bring socialism into existence.

Utopian dreamers and revolutionary conspirators fancy that the laws of history will bend to their desires. Marx prided himself on his freedom from this delusion. He saw his role as raising the revolutionary consciousness of the workers and preparing for the revolution that would occur when conditions were ripe.

In 1844 Marx saw communism as the answer to every problem, and indeed as a virtual paradise on earth.

Capitalism, however, heightened the conflict by turning everything into a commodity, leaving ‘no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”

Greed, egoism, and envy are not ingrained forever in the character of human beings. They would disappear in a society in which private property and private means of production were replaced with communal property and socially organized means of production.

Citizens of the new society would find their own happiness in working for the good of all.

So, for example, the legal freedom of the worker to sell his labour to whomever he likes on whatever terms he likes conceals the fact that he is really no more able to avoid exploitation by capitalists than the feudal serf is free to avoid working on his lord’s land.

In a communist system of production there would be no exploitation to be concealed. Everything would really be as it appeared to be. Moral illusions would crumble along with the religious illusions against which the Young Hegelians so fiercely argued.

Marx says that freedom begins ‘only where labour determined by necessity and external expediency ends’. He goes on to say that it is part of the ‘very nature’ of things that when we are producing to satisfy our needs we are not free.

Perhaps it will eventually be possible to replace that kind of labour by artificially intelligent machines. If this happened in a communist society, the production of these machines would be distributed to everyone—for example by the payment of a universal basic income—and people could choose to engage in more creative labour in which they value what they are producing for its own sake, and not merely because it provides them with the means to buy the necessities of life.

Mechanization and automation will continue to develop as they had developed under capitalism, though without their degrading effect on the workers, and presumably with a drastic reduction in the hours of necessary labour.

More than a century after Marx made these predictions, most of them are so plainly mistaken that one can only wonder why anyone sympathetic to Marx would attempt to argue that his greatness lies in the scientific aspects of his work.

We regard Hegel as a philosopher, not a scientist, and we should think of Marx primarily in the same way.

Defenders of capitalism can readily admit that some capitalists may be greedy, but they can also point out that no one is forced to work for or buy from any individual capitalist. So the greed of individual capitalists is not a reason for condemning the free enterprise system.

Where those who hold the liberal conception of freedom would say we are free because we are not subject to deliberate interference by other humans, Marx says we are not free because we do not control the social and economic arrangements that dominate our lives.

Rationally organized, industrialization should enable us to enjoy an abundance of material goods with a minimum of effort. Under capitalism, however, these advances simply reduce the value of the commodity produced, which means that the worker must work just as long for the same wage.

We are not truly free until, instead of letting our creations control us, we collectively take control of them.

Marx favours moving to a planned economy. In an unplanned economy, human beings unwittingly grant the market control over their lives. If we all plan the economy cooperatively we will, in Marx’s view, be reasserting our freedom as a community or even as a species.

how do we obtain the cooperation of each individual in the joint endeavour of controlling our economy and our society? This unsolved—and largely unaddressed—problem in Marx’s critique of liberal freedom is one of the threads that link his theory with the murderously authoritarian regimes that subsequently purported to follow his ideas.

Marx shattered the assumption that our intellectual and spiritual lives develop independently of our economic existence. If ‘Know thyself’ is the first imperative of philosophy, Marx’s contribution to our self-understanding is another reason for ranking him highly among philosophers.