Carl Marks: Why don't you ever get a salary on the end of the month?

(Charge from Conica.al) 

Most people agree with the idea that we should somehow improve our economic system. It threatens our planet through excessive consumption, distracts us from advertising everywhere, leaves people hungry and without health care, and promotes unnecessary conflicts. However, we are often inclined to reject the ideas of the most famous and ambitious critic, Carl Marks.

That's not very strange. In practice, his political and economic ideas have been used to design destructive economies and bad dictatorships. Honestly, the legal tools Marks proposed for the world's recently sounded a little crazy. He thought we should take out private property. People shouldn't be allowed to possess things. At certain times someone could repent. All of this seems similar to trying to prevent gossip or stop television. It's like fighting human nature.

And Marks believed that the world would be put on a straight line by a dictatorship of proletarity; but these ideas are not so much ignored today.

However, we should not reject Marks in such a hurry. We should view it as a guide whose diagnosis of the evil of capitalism helps us to sail toward a more promising future.

Karl Marks was born in 1818 in Trier, Germany. He comes from a long line of rabbis, but his family became Christians when he was six years old in order to assimilate themselves into German society.

At Bonn's beautiful and prestigious university, he went into huge debts, was imprisoned for drunkenness and disturbing calm, and entered a duel. He also wanted to become a critic of the drama. Disappointed, Marx's father sent him to Berlin's most serious university, where he joined a group of philosophers known as the Young Hegelians, who were extremely skeptical of modern economy and politics.

Soon Marks was included in the Communist Party, a small group of intellectuals who opted for the overthrow of the class system and the removal of private property. He worked as a journalist and was secretly engaged to a wealthy young woman, Jenny von Westhalen. Because of his political activity, the young couple had to leave Germany and eventually settled in London.

Marks wrote a large number of books and articles, one even with his friend Friedrich Engels. Some of the important ones are Critical of Hegel Law Philosophy (1843), Holy family (1845), The thesis on Feuerbach (1845), Manuscripts (1844), German Ideology (1845), Communist Manifest (1848), Report critic Gotha (1875)And a lot of volume. Capital (1867-1894).

Mostly, Marks wrote about capitalism, the kind of economy that dominates the Western world. It was, in his day, still present, and Marks was one of the most intelligent and sensitive critics. These were some of the problems he identified:

One: Modern work is “other”

One of Marx's greatest knowledge, delivered to an early book known as Manuscripts In 1844, work can be one of the sources of our greatest joys. That's because Marx had high hopes for his job that he was so angry at the miserable work that most of mankind is forced to endure. To feel fulfilled at work, Marks wrote that workers should see themselves in objects they have created.

In her best interests, the work offers us a chance to highlight what is good within us (let us say our creativity, our severity, our logic) and give it a stable form in some kind of independent object or service from us.

Our job should be if things go right a little bit better than we can be every day, because it allows us to concentrate and design our best parts.

Think of the person who built this chair - it's direct, strong, and elegant. Now her creator would not always have been this: sometimes he or she could have been bad, desperate, insecure.

However, the chair is a memorial of his or her position of character. That's the ideal job, Marks thought. But he also noted how in the modern world, few jobs have this characteristic of allowing us to see the best in what we do.

Another part of the problem with modern work is that it is highly specialized. One might say why people have such strange job titles and qualifications: we can find experts in packing technology, alcohol distribution officers, gastronomic hygiene technicians, and informative architects.

These jobs require training to master, which makes the modern economy very efficient, but we end up in a situation where it is rarely possible for the true nature of man to find expressions in what he is accomplishing every day. In Marks' eyes, we're all universal inside. We are not born to do just one thing in life, but capable of many things.

It's just the economy that for its coveted intentions it makes us sacrifice ourselves in a single discipline, making us (Marks words) <x) unilateral and dependent” and “physically and mentally depressed in the state of a” car.

It was in the manuscripts of 1844 when Marks first argued that modern work leads to” extant” German, Entfremdung. In our hearts, we are much more and less despised than the modern economy: under the smooth external facade of the accountant, there can be someone who digs through the garden landscape. Many poets would like to go to work in industry for a few years.

Marks knew our multiple potential. Specialization can be an economic imperative, but it can also be a human betrayal. Marks also wants to help us find more meaningful jobs.

Work becomes meaningful, Marks says, in one of two ways: either directly assists the employee to reduce the suffering of another or helps them in a tangible way to increase their satisfaction in others. Very few types of work, like being a doctor or an opera star, seems to fit in. Project so perfect.

But people often leave work and say: I don't understand working on either selling or creating a garden furniture advertising campaign or learning French in children who don't want to learn.

When the work seems meaningless, we suffer even if the salary is worthy. Marks was thus making a first sketch of how to refocus the economy; we need an economic system that allows more of us to reduce suffering or increase contentment.

We basically want to feel that we are helping people. We should feel that we are addressing real needs, not just serving random desires. Marks was aware of many jobs where a person generates money but cannot see their energies anywhere “accumulated”. Their intelligence and skills are disseminated.

They can't run something and say: “I did this, this is me” This may harm people who do work that looks attractive on the outside or a catwalk model. The first few days are exciting. But with the years, there's nothing. Their efforts do not accumulate. There is no long-term target to address their work. After a few years they just stop.

It's the opposite of an architect who can work for five years for a big project, but all millions of details, which can be boring and frustrating in themselves, in time turn to an overall and complete achievement. And whoever's part of this, it's in terms of direction and purpose. Their work is necessary to bring something wonderful into existence.

Two: Modern Work Is Uncertain

Capitalism makes the human being completely and easily accessible; just one factor between other production forces and one that can be thrown away in the minute that expenses increase or savings can be made through technology. There is no security of work in capitalism. Yet, as Mars knew, deep down within us, we want security with intensity similar to what we feel in a relationship.

We do not want to be thrown away without waiting and thinking, we dread being abandoned. Marks knew that we are the object of the use of others, all depends on cost and need. But he has sympathy for the worker's emotional desires. Communism in an emotional sense is a promise that we always have a place in the heart of the world that we will not go out. This is deeply moving.

Three: Workers are paid little while capitalists place the wealth pile

This is probably Marks' most obvious joke about capitalism. In particular, he believed that capitalists reduced workers' salaries as much as possible to compensate for a wide margin of profit (he called this “primitive processing” or in German language Ursprünglice Akcumulation).

They were not in desperate need of employment, but their owners and employers could plot to keep them desperate by raising the price of living along with any wage increases. Contemporary life also brought new challenges that kept the proletarate weak - neighborhoods filled with people, diseases, crime cities, factory injuries. In brief, Marks wrote, workers could be exploited almost indefinitely.

Four: Capitalism is very unstable

Long Before Great Depression or the computer market market, Marks realized that capitalist systems are characterized by a series of crises. This is partly because capitalists seek ever greater risks to make even greater profits, and this speculation upsets prices and employment. But capitalism is not only unstable because of human competition and weakness.

In Marx's view, it's essentially unstable a force that constantly dominates itself, a <x0->magist who is no longer able to control the powers of the underworld he called by his magic” Ironically, Marx noted, we have crises in capitalism not because of lack, but because of abundance; Our factories and systems are so efficient that we can give everyone on this planet a car, a house, access to a school and a good hospital.

Few of us would have to work. But we don't set ourselves free. Marks thinks this is absurd, the result of some kind of pathological massism. In 1700, he gained the power of almost all adults to feed one nation. Today, a developed people hardly need employment in agriculture. Car creation needs virtually no employees.

Unemployment is currently terrible and viewed as a bad disease. But in Marks' eyes, this is a sign of success: it's the result of our incredible production powers. The work of a hundred people can now be done by a machine. And yet, instead of drawing a positive conclusion from this, we continue to see unemployment as a curse and a failure. Logically, the aim of the economy should be to make as many of us unemployed as possible and to enjoy that fact as progress rather than failure.

Marks believes that because we do not distribute wealth to all, nor do we seek and celebrate unemployment, we are plagued by instability, discontent and unrest. “Society suddenly finds itself turned into a present barbarity state,” he wrote. And why? Because there are many civilizations... many industries, many trade”.

Five: Capitalism Bad for Capitalists

Even though Marx sometimes called capitalists and bourgeon “vamipire” and <x2 voracious brothers”, he didn't think they were bad at heart. In fact, he believed they were also victims of the capitalist system.

For example, he was well aware of the secret pain and agony that remained behind the bourgeois marriage. The wealthy people of his day spoke of family in the most honorable and sentimental ways. But Marks argued that marriage was actually an expansion of business. The marriage centered money on men who used them to control their wives and children.

The idealistic family of debt was actually filled with tension, oppression and discontent, and remained together not because of love, but because of financial reasons. He simply believed that the capitalist system compels all to put economic interests in the heart of their lives, so they cannot recognize deep and honest relationships rather than money. He called this psychological tendency <x0fethecism of goods” (Warrenfetesschmus) because it makes us appreciate things that are not objective and encourages us to see our relationships with others primarily in an economic way.

This is another important aspect of Marx's work: it makes us aware of the secret and delicate way in which an economic system colors the kinds of ideas that people will have about all sorts of issues. The economy generates what Marks called ideology. In His Work 1845 German IdeologyHe wrote, the <x0ides of the ruling class are in every era the dominant ideas”.

One capitalist society is where most people, rich and poor, believe in all the things that are really just values judgments related to the economic system, for example: that the working person is practically worthless, that if we just work hard we will get ahead, the things that belong to us will make us happier and the valuables (and people) will always make money.

In short, one of the worst criminals in capitalism is not that there are corrupt people at the top that is true in every human hierarchy, but capitalist ideas teach us all to be concerned, competitive, consistent and self-conformed politically.

Marks wrote very little about what a communist system should look like. He believed that his writings were mostly descriptions, more than predictions, of what would come. When criticised for his fairly unclear predictions (that there would be a “characterisation of proletariat”, for example), he joked that he did not want to write recipes “for future cooking stores”.

Perhaps he wisely felt how difficult it is to think about future tastes, both in the culinary and in politics. However, we look at Marks' utopia hidden in his writings. The Communist Manifeste describes a world without private ownership, with no inherited assets, with a high income tax, with centralised control of the banking industry, communication and transport industry, and free public education for all children.

Marks also expected that communist society would allow people to develop many of the different aspects of their nature. In German Ideology, he wrote that “in communist society... is possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, take care of animals in the evening, criticize after dinner, as I have one mind, never becoming a hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.

We could examine all the different parts of ourselves... our creativity, our intellect, our mildness and our cruelty... and everyone would have little time to do philosophy.

After Marks moved to London, he was supported as ironic of fate by an anti-capitalist from his friend and intellectual partner Friedrich Engels, a wealthy man whose father owned a cotton factory in Manchester. Engels cleared Marks ' debts, made sure that his works were published and (to avoid Mrs. Marks) even claimed the pregnancy for a child who was likely an illegal child of Marx.

Marks was not a well - known or popular intellectual in his day. He spent much of his time bringing in the chambers of British Museum reading by slowly writing an endless book about capital. He and Engels always tried to avoid the secret police (including Marks ' brother - in - law, who directed the Prussian Secret Service).

When Marks died in 1883, he was a person with no citizenship; Less than a dozen people attended his funeral.

Respected, conventional Marks-era people would have laughed at the idea that his ideas would be “rion” the world. However, just decades later: his writings became a cornerstone for some of the most important ideological movements of the 20th century. Marks had an extremely wide view of contemporary problems.

He created inspiring terms such as “dialectic materialism”, because he wanted to challenge us to link our daily experiences and choices with major historical forces to help us see ourselves as part of a larger, moral struggle.

His work is sometimes confused, not only because he changed his mind during his lifetime but also because he wanted to develop his own language to describe modern problems in a way that was neither expressive nor strictly scientific.

We must resist a ruthless reading of Marks on the basis of what happened to his ideas in the 20th century, because he is especially useful to us at this present moment.

Like many of us, he wanted to understand why the modern economy seemed to produce so much misery along with its material wealth. He was surprised by the power of capitalism, the way it allowed the <x0 subservation of natural forces to man... by clearing entire continents for cultivation, making river sewers, entire populations were extracted from the ground”.

But he could also see that Capitalism does not make us happier, wiser, or better, or can't guide us essentially to be more human or more fully developed.

Given the failures of previous regimes inspired by Marxism, we are unlikely to improve things by implementing the kind of revolutions Marks predicted. But we need to think very seriously about what it tells us about the deeper problems of capitalism.

For a long time, being Marksist meant agreeing with the least impressive part of Marx's ideas: his solutions to the world's wounds. And because they seem so strange, everything else he has to say comes out of the way.

But Marks was like an excellent doctor in his early days of medicine. He could know the nature of the disease, although he had no idea how to heal it. He became obsessed with certain moves that may have seemed reliable in the 1840 ' s but that today offer little instruction. At this point in history, we must all be Marksists in the sense of reconciliation with his diagnosis of our problems.

But we have to go out and find the cures that really work. They're really there, scattered in this and that research paper and economic book set aside by mass media. We need to consider how to build an economy not only that brings us greater prosperity, but also a better relationship with nature, with money, with each other and with ourselves.

We don't need a dictatorship of proletariat, but we need to review why we value work and what we want to get from it. We shouldn't get rid of private property, but we need a more careful, authentic relationship with money and consumption. And we should start reforming capitalism not just by bringing down the directors of banks, but by overturning the content of our minds.

Only then will we be able to imagine an economy that is not only productive and innovative but also promoting human freedom and fulfillment. As Marks himself stated, “philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. However, the essence is to change it.