Background

The Grundrisse is a collection of notebooks Karl Marx wrote in 1857-58. As such, it forms a bridge between his philosophical writings that were heavily influenced by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel from the 1840s and the critique of political economy culminating in the first volume of Capital in 1867. The Grundrisse, particularly its Introduction, is crucial for understanding the methodology of historical materialism that Marx uses to analyze and criticize the totality of social relationships across various periods of history. Marx wrote these notebooks at a furious pace in the midst of an international capitalist crisis. As described in a letter to Friedrich Engels in 1857, “I am working like mad all night and every night collating my economic studies so that I might get the outlines clear before the deluge.” It is an unpolished and highly fragmented text, but also a more open-ended one, which covers a wide range of topics and offers a firestorm of brilliant, if scattered, insights; it is more than simply a preparation for Capital. The Grundrisse has since become the basis for a number of reinterpretations of Marx’s thought by Antonio Negri, Moishe Postone, Michael Lebowitz, and many contemporary Marxists.

Critique of contemporary political economy

The Grundrisse’s introduction begins with a critique of political economy and the presumptions of liberal individualism common at the time and still common today. Marx breaks with Adam Smith and David Ricardo over the myth of the “individual and isolated hunter and fisherman,” recalling the story of Robinson Crusoe on his imaginary island. Liberals in Marx’s time, much like the neoliberals of today, always begin their stories about economics and society with this imaginary individual and then project his existence back through history. In other words, Smith and Ricardo take the specific kind of human nature created by capitalism and inflate it into a universal human nature.

In contrast, Marx argues that the individual is always a product of history and society. When we look back in history, we find that individuals have always been interdependent parts of a greater social whole. The economist’s image of production by “an isolated individual outside society… is as much of an absurdity as is the development of language without individuals living together and talking to each other.” So whereas liberal (and today’s neoliberal) economists presume an opposition between the individual and society, Marx talks about social individuals. The image of an isolated individual constantly seeking to maximize his self-interest is an absurdity, but one that serves an ideological purpose: it makes capitalism seem natural and eternal, not what it really is: a product of history and thus subject to change.

As a revolutionary alternative to liberal political economy, Marx outlines his own method for analyzing capitalism as a “totality” of moments: production, distribution, exchange, and consumption. These key concepts–totality and moments–represent a fusion of Marx’s economic critique with the philosophical method he inherited from Hegel. The idea is that these “moments” of production, distribution, exchange, and consumption can only be understood in relation to one another, as an organic totality, whereas liberal political economy isolates and abstracts them as separate categories. For Smith and Ricardo, it was enough to empirically observe everyday economic transactions, abstract the core idea or essence of what was happening, and then make conclusions about the world by presenting all these ideas together. In particular, Smith, Ricardo and others treated the process of production as if it were “encased in natural laws,” leaving distribution as the sole issue to be settled by society. Marx argues that production is every bit as socially constructed as any of the other moments in the totality. In no sense is capitalist production a naturally occurring human phenomenon.

Contextualizing Marx

Marx’s more holistic view of these economic categories represents a fusion of his economic critique with the philosophical method he inherited from Hegel. But it would be incorrect to say that Marx merely appropriated the work of Hegel to criticize the political economists. As Marx mobilizes Hegel’s concepts to critique the political economists, he simultaneously calls into question Hegel’s entire philosophical system.

What was Hegel’s system? For our purposes, we can be very reductive and say that Hegel saw a nonphysical totality called “Spirit” as the subject of history. “Spirit” can roughly be understood as the collective mind of the human species as it develops in history. Hegel thought history advanced through the development of rationality in human societies, with new forms of rationality coming into tension with existing social and philosophical ideals. Thus, as new ideas arose from these contradictions in history, Spirit ascended to more developed and sophisticated forms. The total effect of this is a dynamic that suggests the development of personal and collective freedom corresponds to the arc of history.

Here we see why Marx can be so difficult to read: his work is tied up in multiple disciplines and discourses at once. Indeed, Marx has one foot in British political economy and another in the philosophical tradition of German Idealism. And it is the fusion of these two fields–and thus the transformation of both of them–that gives Marx a new way of looking at history. But of course, Marx does not do this for parochial, academic reasons. He does this to criticize the political programs of French Utopian Socialists for not understanding the real requirements and possibilities of a revolutionary project for universal emancipation from within a capitalist society.

Marx and Hegel

So what is Marx’s relationship to Hegel? This is a question that has been fiercely debated by Marxists for a long time. Rather than attempt to give a definite answer, let’s instead return to our discussion of classical political economy to see what preliminary conclusions we can draw.

A crucial point about Marx’s notion of organic totality is its complexity. In the economic sphere, there are moments of production, distribution, exchange, and consumption. While these moments form an inseparable unity, they are not identical. This point is to say that they do not hold equal weight or causal significance within the totality. Finally, their relationships are characterized by conflict and contradiction within the capitalist system, rather than harmony.

So what is the difference between Marx and Hegel that we can see here? As Marx tells us, there is “nothing simpler for a Hegelian than to posit production and consumption as identical.” This problem of not seeing the difference between production and consumption is to “regard society as one single subject,” which for Marx, is “to look at it wrongly” or “speculatively.” For Marx, it is clear that once the moments of the totality are seen correctly, production has a predominant role. To be sure, the totality involves a process of “mutual interaction” such that production is both determined and determining, but Marx still emphasizes that it is more dominant than the other moments.

As we can see, the classical economists and Hegel commit a similar error: despite their claims to the contrary, their approaches are speculative, rather than scientific. Their understanding of the world fails to grasp the complexity of the social whole, and the irreparable contradictions created by capitalism, and therefore, can offer no viable prescriptions for how to organize human life in capitalist society.

This realization brings us to another important point that Marx makes: in capitalist society, appearances can be deceiving. Indeed, sometimes it seems like distribution is the determining moment, and production determined. What we see are the results of production in the form of the commodity (a packaged piece of beef) but the labor processes that produce that commodity are obscured and mystified (the work of slaughtering a cow). In other words, a key characteristic of the capitalist system is a natural obfuscation of its real, complex processes.

Political use and conclusion

So what’s the point of all this? How does Marx’s analysis inform the way we actually do politics? This question is a complicated one. If we follow Marx, the first thing we must recognize is that society cannot be thought of in abstract terms; society cannot be thought of as being composed of isolated, autonomous individuals. After all, the concept of “society” doesn’t tell us anything about the conditions in which people live or the determinant relationships between groups of people that structure the society. The notion of “society” just says that there are living people. For Marx, if we want to transform our society in a way that secures the best life for the most people, we must have a concrete understanding of the particular relationships people have to each other, and the particular relationships groups of people have to things.

Marx shows that the historically contingent capitalist mode of production is what produces the capitalist society that the classical economists suggest is natural and eternal. Thus, overturning the capitalist mode of production requires transforming the particular social relations that reproduce private property, the bourgeois state, and something integral to the production of commodities that Marx analyzes in Capital called the value-form. In other words, Marx helps us understand the condition of capitalism so we can recognize its symptoms and cure the disease by abolishing capitalism itself. For Marx, the revolutionary agent is the working class due to its unique position within the capitalist system: if the workers of the world unite, they would become the Trojan horse that topples the entire system.

Since capitalism is a system of determinate forces that emerge from peoples’ relationship to one another over time, it is very dynamic and adaptable. While the capitalism of Marx’s time is different from our own, we can study Marx’s method to analyze our complex moment in a scientific way. This method includes assessing Marx’s work and the rich revolutionary tradition that takes his name.

Armed with a concrete analysis of the current moment, we can unite with the other working and oppressed peoples of the world to free ourselves and all of humanity.

Capitalism is a global system of production and exchange that has expanded to nearly every corner of the world. It is a system that has been revered for its capacity to produce unprecedented amounts of food and wealth in human history. So then why in the richest country in the history of the world in which 133 billion pounds of food can be thrown away in a year, are one out of every 6 children in the US food insecure? 

How do we account for this failing? How are we to account for what Mike Davis has called the “Sophie’s choice” that working people have faced during the coronavirus pandemic in which they are forced to choose between earning an income or their health? How are we to account for international climate scientists declaring that unless the world is radically transformed in the next decade, the earth will become an increasingly impossible place to live for millions of people and countless other species? 

Our response to these issues depends on our understanding of capitalism and its historical development. For example, if capitalism seems the only way human life can be organized, if it seems that capitalism has always existed, then we surely cannot imagine doing away with it. But if we see that capitalism has never been our fate but has always been constructed, imposed, and managed by and for the benefit of relatively few people, then we see that there is no reason that we must accept it.

Capitalism can and must be abolished. While it may be hard to see what new world is possible, we must insist that this world, full of irrationality and horror, is not necessary.

What Came Before Capitalism?

Prior to the rise of capitalism in Europe, feudalism was the dominant economic system for centuries. Based in the countryside, the feudal system consisted of large landed estates under the absolute rule of manor lords. Feudalism was an economy in which birth dictated destiny. Those born into the nobility enjoyed a privileged life, but the serfs on the manors worked long and hard and had few rights. They were “tied to the land” and by law were not allowed to leave.

As an economy, feudalism lacked competition. The manors were for the most part self-sufficient and produced only to satisfy the needs of those on the manor with everyone’s role in production fixed and strictly defined. There was no job mobility. Serfs were required to work on the manor lord’s land a set number of days per week; otherwise, they produced for themselves. Within the towns small-scale production proliferated with a workforce that was organized into guilds that by law had a monopoly over the production of specific products, thereby again precluding competition. 

Because of its rigidity, feudalism was not equipped to deal effectively with changing circumstances. At times the standard of living of the population suffered steep declines. 

The lack of individual rights only compounded the misery of the majority of the population who had no voice in how their society operated. Rulers enjoyed absolute power bestowed by “divine right” and conferred privileges on other members of the nobility through personal contracts. But this left the vast majority with no rights and without a voice. 

Philosophers of this period defended this structure by comparing society to a kind of organism composed of different organs where each organ played a special role defined by its specific function. Analogously, they continued, people have different aptitudes: some are good at manual labor while others excel intellectually. In order for society to properly operate, everyone must devote themselves to the task they were best qualified to perform, which for these philosophers was defined by birth. If you were born into the serf class, it was because you were good with your hands.

The Rise of Capitalism

In the 14^th through 17^th centuries, capitalism’s emergence in Europe shattered the entire network of feudal social relations. Capitalism reorganized society, both economically and politically, on an entirely new philosophical foundation. At that time, apologists of capitalism argued, in stark contrast to the philosophy of feudalism, that people are all creatures of nature and are “naturally” and equally self-interested and selfish. While capable of living in isolation, we form societies out of individual self-interest once we realize that far more wealth can be produced by cooperating with one another. Capitalism was thought to be a more rational way to organize production than the estate system because it allowed for a fluid and effective division of labor

Capitalism was accordingly constructed on this atomized, individualistic vision of the human being where everyone is assumed to be naturally competitive and “out for themselves.” 18^th century philosophers such as Adam Smith argued that in pursuing our self-interest we promote the common good: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages.” In this way each person “intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end [“that of society”] which was no part of his intention.” 

In other words, by incorporating human selfishness, competition, and individuality into its inner mechanism, capitalism, it was argued, would unleash the creative and productive powers of humanity that had been suppressed by feudalism and create a society of wealth and prosperity. And in fact, capitalism soon far out-produced the former feudal economies of Europe. 

Capitalism did not only revolutionize the economy. The new philosophy of human nature underlying capitalism gave birth to an entirely new set of political institutions. Given the view that we are all fundamentally and equally natural creatures, where no one stands above another, a democratic system based on the equality of human beings seemed appropriate. Political leaders no longer ruled by “divine right” but by the consent of the people being governed. Equal human rights were assumed to be everyone’s birthright.

The Heavy Price of Capitalism

Although capitalism succeeded in multiplying the productive powers of humanity many times over, before long it became apparent that these gains were won at a heavy price for most of humanity. What Adam Smith did not emphasize was that capitalism rapidly became defined by a clash between two fundamentally different classes. On the one hand, there is the capitalist class. On the other, the working class.

The capitalist class are the owners of the means of production (the buildings, the machines, and the raw materials used in the production process) who wield unprecedented wealth and power. The company’s profits go entirely to them. And unless they encounter resistance, the capitalists dictate who has a job, how long the workday lasts, every step of the work process, and what pay the workers receive. The working class is at their mercy until they decide to organize and fight back.

By the mid 19th century, it was clear to many that capitalist society was far from perfect. The rate of exploitation of the working class became so intense that the working day was extended to 18 hours in some places, making the life of a feudal serf look enviable. But it was Karl Marx who was the first to show why with the most complete theoretical account of the capitalist system that has ever been produced. In his seminal work, Capital, Marx showed that irreconcilable, antagonistic class interests define the relation between the capitalist class and the working class. 

As a rule, capitalists must compete with each other for survival, and those with a higher profit margin have a competitive edge. Therefore, capitalists have a strong incentive and are at times compelled to reduce wages to a minimum – even below the minimum – for their own survival. But the working class wants a comfortable life with sufficient money to support themselves and their families and enjoy leisure time. Consequently, there is an ongoing war between these two classes, each fighting for its own interests. 

The Class War

The capitalist class has intensified this class war during the past five decades when barriers to world trade dropped, globalization took root, and competition heated up. In response to this new dynamic, the US capitalist class unleashed a massive assault on the working class. 

Part-time, temporary, and precarious work has rapidly replaced better-paid, secure positions. Super-exploited gig workers have proliferated. The capitalists’ war on unions has seen the percentage of unionized workers plummet from 35 percent of the workforce in the mid-1950s to 11 percent today. Workers who attempted to unionize have been threatened by their bosses: “57 percent of their employers had threatened to close the business if a union was formed; 47 percent threatened to cut wages or benefits; and 34 percent fired workers who supported unionization.” 

With the decline in unions, wages have dropped. The federal minimum wage in 1968 was $11.55 in today’s dollars compared with $7.25 today. And here is a typical trend: “In the nation’s slaughterhouses, the average worker in 1982 made $24 an hour in inflation-adjusted dollars, or $50,000 a year. Today the average meatpacker processes significantly more meat — and makes less than $14 an hour.”

Employers have routinely stolen from their workers with impunity: “The Economic Policy Institute estimates that employers illegally deprive workers of more than $50 billion in wages each year by underpaying them or requiring unpaid work; violators are rarely punished.” 

To keep different groups of workers competing with each other, capitalists have aggressively used the timeless strategy of “divide and conquer.” This strategy has proved effective for maintaining their dominance to maximize their profit margins. “As the share of female workers in a given industry increased, wages fell for employees of both sexes.” By severely underpaying and under-employing Black American workers, employers save money on two fronts: They save by not paying Black American workers as much as white American workers. And everyone loses since white American workers are less likely to complain when they see others who are worse off. In order to maintain systemic racism especially against Black Americans, police have played the role of an occupying force in Black communities and have been allowed to commit rampant murder with impunity. Because of the divide and conquer strategy, the capitalist class has not only encouraged racism and sexism, but many forms of hatred, especially against those in the LGBTQI community. While abolishing capitalism alone will not eliminate this hate, it will represent a significant step in that direction by removing the monetary incentives to treating some people as second-class citizens.

An Assault on Everything

Far from Adam Smith’s claim that people promote the common good when they aggressively pursue their own interests, just the opposite has happened: While pursuing their private interests, capitalists have produced misery for the rest of humanity, not to mention jeopardizing all life on earth.

The attack on the working class has been accompanied by a wholesale attack on all living creatures as the fossil fuel industries, which are subsidized by the US government by billions of dollars every year, continue to fill the atmosphere with CO2 and imperil the planet, all for their private profit. And there is a long history of industries polluting our rivers, our air, and the ocean, which is developing huge “dead” zones. Today, thanks to capitalism, we are witnessing a massive extinction of species without even a second thought from the corporations that are responsible and with little media attention. But human lives are dependent on a rich biodiversity. When we harm other species, we harm ourselves. 

To make matters worse, the working class cannot count on elected “representatives” to protect them from the power and greed of the capitalist class. Money underlies almost every government decision. As departing senator Tom Udall recently observed: “Secret money floods campaigns to buy influence, instead of letting the voters speak.” Two highly-respected professors conducted an extensive study in 2014 about who influences government decisions and concluded: “Economic elites and interest groups can shape U.S. government policy — but Americans who are less well off have essentially no influence over what their government does.” 

Not surprisingly, while the bankers committed massive fraud in the lead-up to the 2008 economic crisis they caused, it was the working class who paid the cost. No bankers were indicted for their crimes, but millions of working-class Americans lost their homes.

In 2020, California Governor Gavin Newsom declared a “climate damn emergency” in response to the devastating California wildfires. But his administration during the same year doubled the number of permits issued to oil and gas companies for drilling.

Perdue Pharma lied about the addictive powers of their opioids. They paid illegal kickbacks to doctors who promoted them. McKinsey, a consulting firm, encouraged Perdue Pharma to “turbocharge” their OxyContin sales because the profits were off the charts. Thanks to these companies and others like them, and thanks to corrupt doctors and corrupt retail outlets, 450,000 Americans got hooked on opioids and died from overdoses during the past 20 years, but the likelihood of any of the guilty parties going to jail for mass murder or any of the rest of their crimes is almost zero. This is a result of a system that is based on the principle of only looking out for oneself.

Corporations time and again initiate illegal schemes to fleece the public. Wells Fargo bank created millions of additional “services” for their customers without their consent or knowledge and then charged them for these services, raking in millions of dollars. The student loan industry has been plagued with corruption, resulting in students being forced to pay far more than they would otherwise owe. The worst a corporation can expect for punishment is a fine, making the risk often worthwhile. 

The public is often the victim of corporations using manipulative advertising to lure people in to deals that undermine their interests. The government refuses to challenge this predatory behavior.

Politicians ignore what the majority of Americans want, making a mockery of the claim that our major political institutions are “democratic.”

Not content with exploiting the American working class, the US capitalist class aims at dominating the entire world in order to safeguard access to raw materials, markets and cheap labor. With the most powerful military in the world, the US government does not hesitate to enforce its imperial interests in Latin America, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa by initiating wars of conquest or overthrowing unfriendly heads of state by covert operations.

In the 1930s the US working class responded to the Great Depression with a massive upsurge. They organized sit-down strikes, general strikes, and local strikes, at times engaging in direct battle with the police. They won the right to form unions, Social Security benefits, welfare, and pay raises across the country. But under capitalism, victories are never secure. By launching an assault in the 1970s, the capitalist class has reduced working-class conditions to those of the Gilded Age.

Under capitalism, the class war never rests. When the working class relaxes, it loses.

Socialism or Barbarism?

As Marx and Engels argued, in order to achieve the liberation of humanity, capitalism must be replaced by socialism, which is based on the principle that “the free development of each is the condition of the free development of all.” Socialism is a movement “of the immense majority, in the interests of the immense majority” where production is conducted “by freely associated men, and is consciously regulated by them in accordance with a settled plan.” In other words, it is a society governed by the democratic will of all its members, not the dictatorship of a small, wealthy minority who use the power of their money to exploit the rest of humanity for their own personal profit.

Science has now conclusively confirmed that the individualistic conception of human nature underlying capitalism is factually wrong. Humans are a social species. We cannot function properly when forced into extended periods of isolation such as solitary confinement. In fact, isolation makes us more vulnerable to mental problems. We need one another, not simply for the production of wealth, but for the satisfaction of deep psychological needs. This thesis received a striking confirmation during the colonial period of US history. Native American societies placed far more value on their communal relations with one another than on the accumulation of private, individual wealth. Accordingly, no Native Americans defected to join European colonial society, despite all its material wealth, but many of the European Americans left to live in Native American communities.

In direct opposition to capitalism, socialism represents a society where community takes precedence over the private accumulation of material things. It is a society where everyone’s basic needs are met, everyone has an equal voice, where policies are determined democratically after a full discussion, and where every individual is a valued member and recognizes that their own freedom is inseparable from everyone else’s freedom. Finally, it is a society that establishes a human relation to nature where we learn to live in harmony with it, using nature to fulfill our material needs while taking care not to permanently harm it, and where we protect and appreciate nature’s sacred places and awesome beauty.

History shows that the future is not fixed. As the writer Ursula le Guin once said, “We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings.” Human beings succeeded in abolishing feudalism and overthrowing those kings. For the sake of humanity and for the sake of all living things, capitalism must be abolished. 

The following is a talk that was written for DSA SF’s monthly Intro to Socialism event. It was first delivered by Taylor B. on November 11, 2020.

Socialism and Capitalism

I have been asked to talk about socialism and capitalism. So we must ask: What is socialism? What is capitalism? These are really big, complicated questions, so I will only try to sketch them out in the limited time that we have. 

What is Socialism?

Let’s start with socialism. For our purposes we can be very general and say that socialism is the name of a diverse, global political tradition that has fought against the domination of the few over the masses by guaranteeing political, economic, and social rights for all people. We can oppose socialism as a political system to liberal constitutional democracy–like what we have in the US. For example, you have the right to free speech in the US, to practice your religion, to vote, to own as much property as you are able to acquire. But do you have the right to food? To clean drinking water? To safe housing? To medical care? To a job? You do not. Socialists have always pointed out the obvious: that the right to speech and a vote doesn’t mean much without the means to live. Real democracy requires guaranteed social rights.

Now there have been many movements for socialism by many different groups of people across particular times and places around the world, produced by a variety of historical circumstances. These movements have succeeded and failed to reform and overturn capitalist society. To put this very simply, socialists have always thought and disagreed over many important things. 

So what I think is important to emphasize is that in the final analysis, there are no experts to consult on how the world should be. There are no holy books that contain the “Truth” of how we should live and who we should be. By its very definition, socialism must always be redefined by the people who come together to demand it. Which means that our movement for socialism will be based on our collective struggle toward a vision for the future that we want based on our understanding of our moment. We all have a role to play in shaping that future.

Why Ask About Capitalism?

Let’s turn to our second question–what is capitalism? This question has been crucial to the socialist tradition and it was Karl Marx who was the first to seriously pose it. As Friedrich Engels shows in the pamphlet “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific,” what distinguished Marx from other socialists was his rigorous, scientific understanding of capitalist society. So allow me to talk about Marx for a moment.

Now we might know that Marx’s political goal was the emancipation of every human being from all forms of oppression. Marx called this society free of exploitation and oppression communist society, with socialist society being the transition between capitalism and communism. A socialist society would be the workers taking state power to end private property, reorganize society on the basis of greater equality and freedom, and abolish the state altogether. 

But we should be clear: for Marx, theorizing ideal socialist and communist societies was a complete waste of time. Why? Because for Marx the question was not what an ideal communist society would be, but what must be done to create a society free of oppression from the current one. As he wrote in 1852: “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.”

As the Guyanese revolutionary and historian Walter Rodney argues in a 1975 speech called “Marxism and African Liberation,” what Marx developed was a methodology for understanding capitalist society so that we can take concrete steps toward socialism. While some claim that Marxism is a European phenomenon, Rodney notes that these people don’t seem to realize that Marxism has “been utilised, internalised, and domesticated in large parts of the world that are not European.” Today we might be immediately familiar with Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba, and Venezuela. I think this list of countries is enough to support Rodney’s point.

Three Theses on Capitalism

So now that we’ve talked about socialism and why investigating capitalist society is directly related to building socialism, I want to advance three theses about capitalism. But I don’t think I will be saying anything you don’t already know.

Thesis one: capitalism is not a natural system that has existed since the beginning of time. It does not correspond to innate human qualities or characteristics. It is a system that, through many sputters and starts, through a great deal of trial and error, has been created and corrected and maintained by people who have an interest in doing so. Capitalism has produced incredible productive capacity and wealth for a few while simultaneously condemning the masses to immiseration. Genocide, slavery, war, ecological destruction, and famine have been common occurences in the course of the development of the capitalist system. The point here is that if capitalism is sustained and reproduced by people, then it can also be ended by other people. Which is to say that as much of a struggle as it might be, we can end capitalism. This is possible.

Thesis two: the capitalist mode of production requires people to play particular roles in relation to each other to reproduce the capitalist system. That’s a bit of a mouth-full. Let’s take the capitalist and wage-worker roles for example. I assume most of us are very familiar with playing the role of the wage-worker. So it will be no surprise to hear that this relationship is characterized by the capitalist’s domination over us, the workers.

For the capitalist to be a capitalist, they must own capital to invest in the production process, and constantly accumulate more of it because they compete with other capitalists on the market. When the capitalist hires us wage-workers, it is on the condition that the final product belongs to the capitalist so it can be sold for a profit. The profit motive of the capitalist is what drives the entire system. Marx compares the capitalist to Sisyphus of Greek mythology, who is condemned to forever push a boulder up a hill only for it to roll back down again: the capitalist invests money only to make more money to invest again. There’s no point to the system beyond that. Furthermore, capitalists must compete against one another to survive, and those with the greatest profit margins prevail. In order to maximize profits, capitalists must try to get everything that goes into their product for as cheap as possible, which means keeping the wages of their respective workers low.

Now for workers to be open to working for a capitalist, they must not have any other option. I mean who just voluntarily chooses to work 15 hours a day in a dangerous workplace without any breaks for minimum wage to make something so a rich person can sell it to get richer? Not a great deal! Without capital of their own or access to the means of production, without any access to a house or food or water or any means of sustenance, we workers have no choice but to sell our ability to work in exchange for a wage for a set duration of time. 

So we can immediately see the key contradiction in capitalism: production is a social process that involves many people working together, but the fruit of our collective labor is taken or expropriated by one or a few people. We see that at the heart of capitalism is a deeply undemocratic and unjust relationship that is completely legal in liberal constitutions. Ironically, it is these liberal constitutions that promote democracy, freedom, the rights of man, and so on. And yet there really isn’t much freedom for either the capitalist or the worker in the capitalist system.

Thesis three: the relationship between the capitalist and us workers is fundamentally antagonistic. This unresolvable conflict between the capitalist and us workers is overcome by oppressed and working people of the world uniting to abolish class society and capitalism itself.

We should ask what this means in relation to things like taxing the rich to fund schools, Medicare for All, and the Green New Deal. While these are important reforms, we should recognize that they do not end the capitalist’s domination over us workers. As Rosa Luxemburg pointed out, socialism has to tie together social reforms with social revolution: “The struggle for reforms is its means; the social revolution, its aim.”

Now why is this? Since capitalism is a global system, progressive policies or even socialism in one or several countries cannot on its own end capitalism: immiseration will simply be displaced onto a different set of workers. After all, the history of colonialism and imperialism clearly shows that exploitation of people in one place can easily be the basis for a better standard of living for people in another. This is why at the end of The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels call for workers of the world to unite: international solidarity and anti-imperialist struggle is the only way capitalism can be eradicated. 

Conclusion

So as I said, for Marx socialism was about reaching communism, which would mean the complete emancipation of all humanity. For Marx, the revolutionary subject in a capitalist society that could bring socialism is the working class. This was not because Marx had a romantic notion of working people, but because of their unique structural position within the capitalist system. If we workers realized our power and withheld our labor, then we could be like a Trojan horse that would topple the system. Regardless of how the world has changed since Marx’s time, this remains true.

But we must be very careful here: Marx did not think the working class was inherently revolutionary or that revolution was inevitable. Socialism has always only ever been a possible tendency that could emerge from capitalist society. In this sense, we can say that the working class is unique for its revolutionary potential. We can say that realizing this revolutionary potential is the task of organizing. And of course organizing is what we’re here to do in a socialist organization. So it’s a very good thing you’re here because we have a lot of work to do.

Texts referenced in this talk:

“Socialism: Utopian and Scientific” by Friedrich Engels

“The Communist Manifesto,” by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

 “Marxism and African Liberation,” by Walter Rodney

“The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon” by Karl Marx

Capital Volume 1 by Karl Marx

“Reform or Revolution?” by Rosa Luxemburg