Marxism
is “the economic and political theory and practice originated by Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels that holds that actions and human institutions are
economically determined, that the class struggle is the basic agency of
historical change, and that capitalism will ultimately be superseded by
communism” (Collins English Dictionary 1994). Marx accurately predicted how
capitalism would inevitably come about with both the proletariat and the bourgeois
competing for power through the economy within society today. Marxism offers an
accurate analysis of the contemporary British state, not only because of its precise
prediction of capitalism and class structure but also the way the state has
followed many themes within Marxism. These include alienation, historical
materialism, the labour theory of value and commodity fetishism.
Alienation
is the concept that the proletariat becomes estranged from the workforce and
himself as the capitalists continue to own and dictate the mode of production. “In
Marxist literature, alienation is often taken to be a concept which describes
and criticises the social and economic conditions of capitalism.” (Sayers, date
unknown, p1). Marx emphasised “that man’s labour is the origin of culture and
society, instead of the other way around, whereby man is subordinate to the
state… Man is not a predicate of society, society is made by man” (Madrid 2014,
paragraph 3). This is to say that private ownership of production from the
bourgeois deprives the working class of pride over their work as well as their personal
identity because they are exploited as just another ‘tool’ in production. The
products of the worker’s labour is not owned by them but by the seemingly
hostile and manipulative capitalists, which some of the time consider their
workers to be disposable. As Madrid argues, “capitalism carries with it the
integral components of private property, and the profits of capital. Both of
these elements require a division of labour whereby the workers become a mere
commodity of the capitalist’s mode of production” (Madrid 2014, paragraph 4). The
proletariat thus regards their work as just a means of survival, rather than
considering it as their own creative hard work as the capitalists continue to
exploit and expropriate their products to sell it on for profit. Therefore, the
“worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates” (Marx
1978, p72). Some argue that advances in technology has allowed for “goods to be
made in smaller numbers and still be cost effective” (Faulks 1998, p112). This
encourages skilled workers to be innovative as they are well paid and expected
to execute multiple production tasks which challenges them and inspires
creativity and pride in one’s work. However, despite this improvement,
peripheral workers are used more often “by the policy of contracting out and
the privatisation of state services where union membership is discouraged and
wages are kept at a minimum.” (Coats 1989, cited in Faulks 1998, p112). As well
as this, many workers are still “excluded from key areas of decision making,
for example concerning when and where to invest capital” (Basset 1987, cited in
Faulks 1998, p112). This shows how alienation is still a prevalent issue in
Britain today and is arguably the most damaging in our society. The elite still
treats the working class as a means to an end and continues to alienate them
from their work, prohibiting them from feeling as successful or powerful. Another
way in which our state is closely related to Marxism is through our society and
its history.
Historical
materialism is the notion that history is made up of different modes of
production that have been created in order to satisfy the material desires of
humans. Marx saw human history as just the succession of many different
economic systems to produce material things. This gives rise to conflict and
adversary between different social classes over these material goods, thus
stimulating the formation of new societies and systems of economic thought. “The
key to the understanding of history is the material desires of men; hence, the
key to the explanation of history is man's belly, and his greed for material
satisfaction…history (is) based on the fact that men are "the authors and
actors of their history." (Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe 1932, cited in Fromm
1961, paragraphs 7 & 8). This demonstrates how man strives for more and more
material comforts thus supporting that our main drive in life is money. The
development of production creates diverse forms of class societies as well as
different production relations. Class
in this case is “a group of people in society with the same relationship to the
means of production. The class which owns and controls the means of production
rules society. This, at the same time, enables it to force the oppressed or
labouring class to toil in the rulers' interests. The labouring class is forced
to produce a surplus which the ruling class lives off.” (Brooks 2002, part
unknown). Critics argue that Marxism can be more closely seen (through this
way) “in those countries of Latin Europe where the mass Communist Parties
presented a formidable threat to the existing system…a 'regional crisis'. In
other capitalist countries, like Britain, the situation was different, since
there had never been mass Communist Parties to attract the same hopes”
(Anderson 1983, p42) and so contemporary Britain cannot be fully analysed
through Marxism like other countries can. Nevertheless, Britain still reproduces
historical materialism because class and social divisions are ever-present
within society. The elite own a large amount of private and state property in
Britain whilst also securing ownership of distribution and the modes of
production in which many of the proletariat would like to possess. Many
including the Socialist Party of Great Britain believe that “The relations of
production are anti-social because the object behind production is not the
satisfaction of social need but the amassing of profit and the accumulation of
capital.” (Executive Committee of the party 1975, paragraph 1). There are
constant trade union strikes in order to receive better payment and conditions,
‘Unite’ being the largest in Britain. In this way, this is an accurate analysis
of the internal conflicts within society in Britain. Other ways in which
Britain can be analysed through Marxism is through the commodities it produces.
The labour theory of value states that the
value of goods is determined by the amount of labour that was put into
producing the item. This is one way to determine commodities’ values, as all
goods have the fact that it is a product of labour in common. This is a
fundamental part of exploitation for Marx. Capitalists can set working hours and
wages anyway they wish according to how much labour they can extract from their
workers at the lowest cost possible. This use of their power takes advantage of
their workers and treats them unfairly, thus “Wage earners of various kinds
were portrayed as moving in response to higher wages, a fact that to Locke
argued for the necessity of keeping England's money supply, and therefore wage
rates, equal to other European countries to avoid suffering an emigration of
English labourers” (Vaughn 1978, p320). This demonstrates the fact that wages
are far too low for some of the working class in Britain today. The
bourgeois further exploit their workforces by selling their worker’s products
at a higher price than what they paid for, “rather than buy or sell products at
their true exchange-value, as determined by the labour that went into making
them, capitalists enrich themselves by extracting a “surplus-value” from their labourers…exploiting
them. Marx pointed to the abject poverty of industrial workers in places like
Manchester for proof of the destructive effects of this exploitative
relationship.” (Tiwari, date unknown, p5). This supports how in industrial
areas of Britain, the working class have to endure the limitations of poverty because
of capitalist exploitation methods such as this. However, John Locke disagrees
with Marx’s theory of value saying “if all the output from an Indian's land in America were sold at current
market prices in England, the Indian would receive only 1/1000 of the income an
Englishman would receive from the output of a comparable piece of land in
England. For the Englishman had laboured to make his land productive while the
Indian did little more than gather the bounty of nature” therefore “the measure
of that value is not the amount of labour which goes into producing it, but the
market price at which it can be sold” (Vaughn 1978, p315). The Englishman’s
land is more valuable not because of the amount of labour but the type of
labour that was put into making the land more productive, hence more valuable. This
theme of Marxism is possibly the weakest as it is the least convincing of
Britain’s current state, nonetheless, it still provides a good basis to
analyse the exploitation of British workers. Focusing on British society’s
perception of economics help towards analysing the reasons behind greed,
poverty and capitalism as a whole.
Commodity
fetishism is the idea that society fixates on money and commodities to the
point where they have become blinded from the truth of capitalism. This is the
most poignant theme as it considers what could be if there were to be no
‘fetish’ for money as well as showing the power capitalism has in hindering a
socialist revolution due to the economic mind-set of western culture as a
result of years of capitalism. Marx argued that it was this that prevents
people in realising that the elite rule production and exploit the very
labourers that grant them such vast wealth. For capitalist states like Britain,
“people have an experience of being controlled by the activities and movements
of inanimate objects (commodities). For instance, people are compelled or
bribed to move between jobs by the changing relative values of different
commodities.”(Robinson 2010, paragraph 7). This allows for the manipulation of
the working class with the changing values of goods and shows how fixated
society is on prices. This is the very reason capitalists are allowed to get
away with such large scales of human exploitation in developed countries like
Britain. However, some criticise it saying “commodity fetishism is applicable
in a capitalist society to the relations between capitalist commodity
producers, but the working class does not participate in capitalist society as
a commodity producer, so that the theory of commodity fetishism has no
immediate application to the capitalist class relation.”(Clarke 2002, p53).
Yet, in discussing capitalism as a whole, one cannot leave out the proletariat
from the debate when analysing it through the themes in Marxism. Commodity
fetishism applies to all classes and can be considered to be representative of
the collective human desire and folly in our current economic system.
Ultimately, “The continuous bombardment of consumers by messages designed to
manipulate their wants and desires creates a public jaded and cynical about
information in general…as it presents a considerable obstacle for any movement
that attempts to convince the population to actually acquire information about
the processes or relations of production.” (Hudson and Hudson 2003, p417). If
we were to overcome this fixation, the elite consumer producers could be held
to account by their own workers and on a larger scale in order to retrieve some
economic power. In Britain today, consumerism is aided by commodity fetishism
and this is what halts any chance of change in capitalism, because people are so
dependent on commodities.
Marxism has not only offered very precise predictions for society’s
economic systems but also given an overall accurate account of the contemporary
British state. The themes alienation and especially commodity fetishism are the
most comparable to the British state and seem to be the most persuasive. If
commodity fetishism were to gradually erode, Marx’s prediction of communism
could quite literally be the future of western economics (however distant or
unlikely that prediction may be). Marxism is not only an accurate account of
the British state but many other capitalist states.
xx
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