The Philosophy of Karl Heinrich Marx

THE PHILOSOPHY OF
KARL HEINRICH MARX

INTRODUCTION
•Karl Heinrich Marx (1818-1883) is a famous

German philosopher, economist, political
scientist, historian, and labor movement
activist.
•He was born from a wealthy assimilated Jewish family in

the city of Trier, in the Prussian State.
•He started his studies in philosophy and law at the

University of Bonn, and transferred to the University of
Berlin, in a city that was considered a great center of
learning.
INTRODUCTION
•During Marx time, the intellectual landscape of

Germany had been under the spell of Georg
Wilhelm Friedrich von Hegel (1770-1831), an
idealist thinker who emphasized the
supremacy of the spirit over matter, and
matter's being mere expression of the spirit.
•In this landscape any living

thinker who wanted to be
recognized as such had to
address the overarching
thoughts of Hegel, and
Marx did so by joining the
left wing Hegelians.
INTRODUCTION
Considered themselves as the
orthodox followers and interpreters of
Hegel. They followed his idealism
Mainstream Hegelians and believed that the unfolding of the
(Right-Wing) spirit in the material world is a
completed process and has its
crowning glory in the Prussian State,
the perfection of governance, public
service, education, and industry.
HEGELIANS
Inverted Hegel's idealism by
emphasizing the supremacy of
matter over the spirit. They
contended that the dialectical
Young Hegelians process of unfolding is still an
(Left-Wing) ongoing activity, and that the
Prussian State was definitely far from
being perfect, with its obvious
economic miseries, totalitarian
tendencies and religious intolerance.
INTRODUCTION
•Marx’s youthful involvement with the left wing Hegelians
exerted a great influence on the course of his philosophy
and life.
•The group’s emphasis on matter over spirit directed him

towards materialism, such that he wrote his dissertation on
the atomism of Democritus and Epicurus, and later on
developed the theory of dialectical materialism.
•The notorious radicalism of the Young

Hegelians prevented him from having a
comfortable post and tenure in the
understandably conservative enclaves of
the universities, and pushed him into the
shabby and impoverished existence of a
wandering journalist and free-lance thinker.
INTRODUCTION
•In 1845, in Paris, as an editor and publisher of
the journal Franco-German Annals, Marx met
Friedrich Engels (1820-1895), a son of a
wealthy German textile manufacturer.
•Engels, who had been

asked by his father to run a
cotton factory in England,
was aware of the miserable
plight of the English factory
workers, and had
developed some sort of
materialistic social and
economic speculations that
ran parallel with that of
Marx.
INTRODUCTION
•The two intellectuals sooner

started their life-long
philosophical collaboration.
Marx took the role of the
unemployed philosopher
and wise man, while
Engels, his material
provider, his interpreter and
communicator.
•Marx was a tenacious thinker and scholar, as well as a
prolific writer. The best known and the most influential
among his works are his collaborations with Engels, The
Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital.
INTRODUCTION
•These works gave rise to an

intellectual movement that
we know today as Marxism,
as well as to the political
movement of communism.
•Our discussion of his philosophy, however, focuses on just

four important aspects:
1. his theory of class conflict;

2. his critique of the Hegel's idea of alienation and dialectics;
3. his critique of industrial capitalism; and
4. his ideas on base, and superstructure
THEORY OF CLASS CONFLICT
•Marx made extensive and comprehensive reviews of the
history of humanity.
•His historical theory was different from the other historians.

Where others saw organization, he saw conflict; where
others saw harmony, he saw antagonism; and where
others saw development and evolution, he saw revolution.
•The story of humanity is for Marx a story of conflict and

struggle.
•He periodized history in accordance to how human beings

organized the production and sharing of goods and
wealth, which he called the “mode of production.”
•Based on this mode of production, there are five stages of
history:
some people controlled
manufacturing and commerce
and binding other people to a
life of urban toil
Primitive people
shared and enjoyed Capitalist
everything in Stage
common
Communism
Primordial Advanced Agricultural

Agricultural
Communism Nomadic Stage Stage
Stage
A band leader Some people claimed People would

gradually took control ownership over plots agree to pool all means
over a group of of land and binding of production of goods
primitive people other people to the and wealth in common
life of rural toil again
•In between the stages of primordial communism and the

hypothesized communism, conflict and struggle between
the dominating and the dominated groups are the rule of
the day: the conflict and struggle between the band leader
and the group; the conflict and struggle between the
landowners and serfs; and the conflict and struggle
between the capitalists and wage earners.
•Marx believed that the suffering of

the serfs and wage earners would
sooner or later drive them to fight
the dominating classes and topple
the present oppressive orders to
bring about his hypothesized
communism.
•He believed that the natural logic of events would lead

humanity to the future that is communism.
•But Marx also believed that the

natural logic of events could be
hastened by his historical research
that is not only geared towards the
description and interpretation of
society, but more importantly
towards establishing a more just,
egalitarian, and humane society.
•He famously asserted: “philosophers have only interpreted

the world, in various ways: the point however is to change
it.”
CRITIQUE OF THE HEGELIAN NOTIONS
OF ALIENATION AND DIALECTICS
•It is well known that Marx used the Hegelian schema of

dialectics and alienation in plotting his reconstruction of
the history of humanity.
•For the idealist, Hegel, the ultimate reality is the Absolute

Spirit, which is constantly obsessed with the drive towards
higher and higher levels of self consciousness.
•Just as for a person to have knowledge of his/her own self,

he/she has to interact with others and test his/her
capacities by actually doing specific tasks and things; the
Absolute Spirit has to alienate itself by pouring itself into
material forms and events.
•As an idealist, Hegel believed that no matter how beautiful

and perfect a material form is it can never match the
beauty and perfection of the spiritual idea upon which
such a material form was modeled upon.
•Thus, he called the process “alienation” for the reason that

the superior Absolute Spirit has to mingle with the inferior
material forms and events.
•Hegel argued that after the Absolute Spirit poured out itself
into a material form, or event, it realizes that such material
form, or event, is so imperfect.
•Thus, the Absolute Spirit has to correct and improve the

initial form, or event, by alienating itself again in another
form, or event, which would be antithetical to the initial
form, or event.
•The tension, or contradiction, between the initial and the

second material forms, or events, is resolved by the
emergence of a new material form, or event.
•Hegel called the first alienation, the “thesis,” and the

second corrective alienation, the “antithesis.”
Absolute Thesis Anti- Syn- Thesis Anti- Syn- Thesis

Spirit thesis thesis thesis thesis
•The emergent material form, or event, that resolves the

contradiction between the thesis and the antithesis was
called the “synthesis,” and the whole process was called
the “dialectics of the Absolute Spirit.”
•Hegel added that even the synthesis is still imperfect, and

thus can be assumed to be a thesis for another antithesis,
and consequently for another dialectical process.
•The dialectical process can go on and on until the

Absolute Spirit reaches its most perfect outpouring.
•The materialist, Marx, adopted this idealist theory of

alienation and dialectics after subjecting this to a thorough
critique.
•If Hegel started his alienation and dialectics from the
Absolute Spirit, Marx traced his idea of alienation and
dialectics from the basic material realities of human
existence.
•Marx saw that Hegelian alienation is rooted on the idealist

bias against material forms and events.
•Idealism takes material forms and events as always

inferior in stature to spiritual forms and events.
•Hence, the Absolute Spirit’s mingling with material forms

and events was seen as alienation.
•Marx started his critique by pointing out that it is neither

matter nor spirit that generated the phenomenon of
alienation, but the concrete and actual human person.
•Marx understood Hegelian alienation as the valorization of

the spiritual and the de-valorization of the material, and
traced its root to the alienation of human nature.
•Because of the human person’s mangled self-esteem,

he/she looks down upon the material things, and gazes
towards the dazzling promise of spiritual things.
•In religion, alienation is present in the human person’s
relegation of his/her own glory to God.
•In politics, alienation is

present in the human
person’s relegation of his/her
own desires and interests to
the ruler.
•Even in Hegel’s philosophy, alienation is present in his

relegation of all human perfection, intelligence, will power,
and genius to the fictive entity which he called the
Absolute Spirit.
•After tracing the root of Hegelian alienation to the
alienation of the concrete and actual human person, Marx
raised the question, what is the cause of the human
person’s mangled self-esteem?
•For him, alienation, the

mangling of the human
person’s self-esteem, and
the debasement of human
nature, are caused by the
alienation, mangling, and
debasement of human
nature’s most direct
manifestation: work, or
labor.
•In Marx’s theorized stage of primordial communism, labor

was supposed to be free, rich, creative, varied, satisfying,
pleasant and liberating.
•But as humanity progressed

into the other stages of history
where conflict, struggle and
domination became the role of
the day, labor became
bondage, miserable,
monotonous, repetitive,
unpleasant and oppressive.
•It is in the stage of capitalism where such alienation,
mangling and debasement of labor became so intense,
and these had as their repercussion a multi-layered
alienation, mangling, and debasement of humanity.
First, as the human person is forced to sell his labor in

exchange for daily wage, there emerged an alienation between
the human person and his own nature, for the reason that
his/her direct manifestation is changed into a commodity.
Second, as every good has become a commodity for

exchange, there emerged an alienation between the human
person and his/her fellow human persons, for the reason that
the bond of communal sharing was eroded with greed and
desire for ownership.
Third, as the human person became a paid daily wage earner,
there emerged an alienation between the human person and
his/her product, for the reason that the product now belonged
to the one who pays the daily wage.
•Hence, being alienated, mangled and debased in multiple

counts, it would not be surprising that the human person
developed a very low esteem of his/her own nature.
•This multi-layered alienation, mangling and debasement

are the causes why the human person would readily
relegate whatever is duly his/her to another more powerful
entity, such as God, the ruler, or even the fictive Hegelian
Absolute Spirit.
CRITIQUE OF INDUSTRIAL CAPITALISM
•Among the five stages of the history of humanity, Marx
identified the capitalist stage as the meanest of all.
•It is important to make a distinction between merchant

capitalism and industrial capitalism.
•Merchant capitalism is not a

widespread mode of
production and was
practiced by traders long
before the emergence of
industrial capitalism.
•The merchant capitalists merely bought goods in one

locality and sold them in another locality.
•Since goods are valorized differently by differently
localities, the merchant capitalists earned their profit from
the differences of the local values of a given good.
•For example, spices were highly valorized in Renaissance

Europe, but were taken for granted in many Asian
societies; just as beads and trinkets were highly valorized
in many Asian societies, but were taken for granted in
Renaissance Europe.
•So European merchant capitalists traveled to these Asian

societies to barter their cheap beads and trinkets with
expensive spices, and traveled back to Europe to sell their
expensive spices and in the process generated fabulous
profits.
•Industrial capitalism, on the

other hand, is a widespread
mode of production that
created profit on the
difference between the cost
of input and the cost of
output.
•In order to generate profit, the industrial capitalists had to

minimize the cost of input and maximize the cost of output.
•The most effective and rampant way of cutting the cost of

input is to cut down the cost of labor, and in places where
there are great numbers of potential wage earners, the
daily wage can indeed be cut down to sub-human levels.
•This is the reason why Marx loathed so much the

industrial capitalist mode of production.
•Marx further explained why the conditions of the working

class are expected to deteriorate under capitalism.
•First, as a mere input in the process of production and

manufacturing, labor’s cost had to be maintained by
industrial capitalists in the lowest possible figure.
•Second, in order to maximize the output, the factory

workers had to be constantly pushed to the limits of their
efficiency in order to boost production.
•Third, in order to maximize further

the output, the industrial capitalists
had to invest in more efficient
machines, reducing the factory
workers as mere attendants and
extensions of such machines.
•Fourth, as the efforts to boost production rise, the market

becomes saturated with the same product.
•Following the law of supply and demand, less and less

people would be interested with the overly supplied
product, causing the sales to drop, factory workers to be
laid off, and factories to close, resulting to more miseries
for the already miserable factory workers.
•Whether in good business times or in bad it is the factory

workers who always suffer.
•With this expected deterioration of the conditions of the
working class, Marx reasoned out that when the working
class is finally pushed to their limits, their survival instincts
will goad them to fight back the oppressors and topple the
unjust social order.
•Thus, with or without the communist movement, Marx

foresaw a bloody revolution.
•The communist movement

is only necessary for
propagating the class-
consciousness and the
knowledge of the working
class’s inhuman existence
under capitalism, to hasten
the outbreak of a revolution.
BASE AND SUPERSTRUCTURE
•If the history and the world are characterized by conflict,

struggle, domination and oppression, why is it that human
persons survive in it without engaging in violent
revolutions?
•Why is it that there are in fact many other historians who

insist that human society is characterized by organization
and harmony?
•Marx addressed this problem by pointing out that society

has its own mechanism to allow human persons to survive
in its oppressive order, as well as to simulate organization
and harmony for the eyes of the other historians.
•As a materialist philosopher, Marx again founded this

mechanism on the very same economics of the modes of
production.
•Although it is easy to agree with Marx that the mode of

production is certainly important to any human society, it is
also easy to see that the human society is not just about
modes of production.
•Human society is also about politics, law, morality, religion,

values, arts, literature, science, other intellectual
endeavors, and many things more.
•Why then would Marx insist on the primacy of the mode of

production in explaining society’s mechanism against
revolution and self-destruction.
•He insisted, however, that the mode of production is the

base, or the infrastructure, upon which all other cultural
practices stand, as well as the foundational force that
shapes and determines the modes of all other cultural
practices.
•Ever since humanity progressed into the advanced

nomadic mode, the mode of production has been
generating conflict that can unleash the powerful emotions
of aggression among the oppressed and dominated
human persons.
•If this flow is left unchecked, the social order can easily be
shattered by an immediate outburst of violent revolution.
•Hence, in order for any society to survive, there has to be
a more powerful mechanism of containing and re-
channeling these potentially destructive energies.
•Marx theorized that it is the superstructural cultural

practices that contain and re-channel such destructive
energies. Using the Hegelian dialectical plot, we may
picture the process in the following diagram:
Economic Conflict and Super- Social

Base Aggression structure Order
(Thesis) (Antithesis) (Synthesis)
•Though no society can survive without a mode of

production, no society can either survive with just a sheer
mode of production.
•The aggressive and destructive energies emanating from

such a mode of production is more than enough to
instantaneously shatter the same society.
•Thus, in order to contain and re-channel these aggressive

and destructive energies, society also needs politics, law,
morality, religion, values, arts, literature, science, other
intellectual endeavors, and many things more.
•Let us explore further this Marxist theory, by taking as our

example the social values.
•It is not a coincidence why in advanced nomadic societies,

the social values of family ties and loyalty to the group are
emphasized.
•They are there in order to mask and prevent the potential

conflict between the bandleader and the group.
•It is neither a coincidence why in agricultural societies, the

social values of private ownership and patronage are
emphasized.

conflict between the landowners and the serfs.
•Lastly it is not a coincidence why in industrial capitalist

societies, the social values of private ownership and laws
are emphasized.

conflict between the capitalists and the workers.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF
KARL HEINRICH MARX
End of Presentation
Marx
and
Marxism
I. Main Arguments of Marxist Philosophy
 At the very heart of his call for social reform,is a

philosophy of man that calls man at the very heart of
social critique. Considers all of reality including man as
material. There is no spiritual reality. The only real is the
material
 The absence of the spiritual realm puts all hoping and
believing in the absolute human strength. Man has to face
his concerns squarely and should not resort into the
dependence of any spiritual being or institution that
represents a spiritual being.
 Criticized Hegel’s Dialectical Idealism and replaced it
with Dialectical Materialism, a clash between two
opposing classes that would end in a struggle that paves a
new world order of a classless society.
 That social reality is constituted by ideologies of
oppression (capitalism) that needs to be changed,
unshackling the proletarian class from the bondage of
control and subjugation.
 Revolution is essential to attain a society without
classes (classless society: no rich; no poor; everyone
works as one big community where everyone is shared:
“From each according to his ability; to each according
to his needs.”
KEY CONCEPTS
1. Alienation
2. Base and Superstructure
3. Class Consciousness
4. Exploitation
5. Historical Materialism
6. Ideology (Capitalism creating a false
consciousness)
II. Marxism
 It is a method that analyses and critique the

development of capitalism especially in its
absolute hold in the process of production
 That the long standing control of consciousness
of the masses engender a cultural mindset of
submission and subjugation known as false
consciousness.
 That history is a story of class struggle a
continuous tug-of-war that requires either a
drastic overturn of the status quo like bloody
revolution OR a subtle but systemic social
transformation such as the birth or rebirth of a
common Proletarian Consciousness
As a consequence, followers of Marx are divided into two
groups:
1. The Orthodox/Classical Marxists
a. Marxism and Leninism-Stalinism

 A combination of Leninist political praxis and
Marxist socio-economics.
 Political Praxis:
 The creation of a Vanguard Party (The
Communist Party) of professional revolutionaries
from the working class
 Centralism of Power that determines al state
policies
 Lenin’s communism is regional: USSR.
 From a capitalist state to a socialist state
 State ownership of the mode of production or state
capitalism
 Single party-rule
 Equality of sexes; everybody works according to their
abilities and needs
 Planned economy: production and distribution of good
are centralized and policies are made by the Com.
Party
 Universal health care
 Free public education
 Social benefits
 Elimination of patriarchy; equality of sexes
 Legalization of divorce, abortion, no bastardization,
 No private property
 From socialist state to a communist state
b. Revisionists or Neo Marxists

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF

KARL HEINRICH MARX

•Karl Heinrich Marx (1818-1883) is a famous

•He was born from a wealthy assimilated Jewish family in

•He started his studies in philosophy and law at the

•During Marx time, the intellectual landscape of

•In this landscape any living

•The group’s emphasis on matter over spirit directed him

•The notorious radicalism of the Young

•Engels, who had been

•The two intellectuals sooner

•These works gave rise to an

•Our discussion of his philosophy, however, focuses on just

1. his theory of class conflict;

•His historical theory was different from the other historians.

•The story of humanity is for Marx a story of conflict and

•He periodized history in accordance to how human beings

Primordial Advanced Agricultural

A band leader Some people claimed People would

•In between the stages of primordial communism and the

•Marx believed that the suffering of

•He believed that the natural logic of events would lead

•But Marx also believed that the

•He famously asserted: “philosophers have only interpreted

•It is well known that Marx used the Hegelian schema of

•For the idealist, Hegel, the ultimate reality is the Absolute

•Just as for a person to have knowledge of his/her own self,

•As an idealist, Hegel believed that no matter how beautiful

•Thus, he called the process “alienation” for the reason that

•Thus, the Absolute Spirit has to correct and improve the

•The tension, or contradiction, between the initial and the

•Hegel called the first alienation, the “thesis,” and the

Absolute Thesis Anti- Syn- Thesis Anti- Syn- Thesis

•The emergent material form, or event, that resolves the

•Hegel added that even the synthesis is still imperfect, and

•The dialectical process can go on and on until the

•The materialist, Marx, adopted this idealist theory of

•Marx saw that Hegelian alienation is rooted on the idealist

•Idealism takes material forms and events as always

•Hence, the Absolute Spirit’s mingling with material forms

•Marx started his critique by pointing out that it is neither

•Marx understood Hegelian alienation as the valorization of

•Because of the human person’s mangled self-esteem,

•In politics, alienation is

•Even in Hegel’s philosophy, alienation is present in his

•For him, alienation, the

•In Marx’s theorized stage of primordial communism, labor

•But as humanity progressed

First, as the human person is forced to sell his labor in

Second, as every good has become a commodity for

•Hence, being alienated, mangled and debased in multiple

•This multi-layered alienation, mangling and debasement

•It is important to make a distinction between merchant

•Merchant capitalism is not a

•The merchant capitalists merely bought goods in one

•For example, spices were highly valorized in Renaissance

•So European merchant capitalists traveled to these Asian