Marxist Theory: A Critical Analysis
The Unity of the Proletariat and the Abolition of Private Property
Marx proposed that the united action of the proletariat, who must overthrow the capitalist bourgeoisie and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat, is the recipe to end the state of affairs where a minority controls the means of production and exploits the majority. In this dictatorship, private property is abolished. This is a transitional phase that should ultimately lead to a classless society.
The proletarians have nothing to lose; they have nothing and also defend the interests of the majority, as they are the majority. If they are the hardest-working but have the least, it can only be because “all property is theft” and must be eliminated through the establishment of a communist system. Property becomes collective, something accessible to the individual who is invested in “expanding, enhancing, and enriching the lives of workers.” It aims to put man at the center, not under the command of the structures. Man is an end in himself and cannot be used as a means: the system of bourgeois private property and the culture of exploitation have turned the human being into a mere instrument serving interests other than human nature, alienating the worker from their work.
The Dialectical Process: Historical Materialism
Hegel’s central idea was the dialectic as a fundamental structure of all historical change. Every process goes through three phases: first, the thesis or claim; second, the antithesis or negation of the thesis; and third, the synthesis or overcoming of the antithesis. Marx gives a new interpretation, putting it “upside down” by converting the material into the true substance of any changes: now the protagonists of history are the material conditions, systems, and relations of production. If you want to change history, you intervene in the material base by re-volution (re-doing). Two reasons:
- The particular individual becomes a victim of the structure in which they are embedded and which exceeds them, a structure of relationships in which they are a mere link.
- In the synchronous cross-section that any human society undergoes, we always find the same dual structure: on the one hand, the infrastructure or material economic base, consisting of the relations of production; on the other hand, a superstructure that rests on the previous one, depends on it, and gives it legal, political, and intellectual cover and justification.
Criticism of an Unfair Situation: Exploitation, Private Property, and Class Struggle
Marx assumes the critical spirit of Kant but puts it into practice beyond rational, dispassionate, and passive contemplation of the circumstances. It is not enough to find and expose injustice; we must implement mechanisms for its elimination. This critique is carried much farther than Kant did; it is more radical, and Marx’s contribution will consist of radicalizing earlier positions, carrying the merits of the issues to their logical conclusions.
Class Struggle
What really happens is that man is a wolf to man. The history of mankind is reduced to a class struggle that has always resulted in a ruling and exploiting class and a dominated and exploited class. The purpose of this struggle is the maximization of private property. What in Marx’s time is the struggle of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat was once the confrontation between free men and slaves, patricians and commoners, teachers and officers.
The Economic Base
The transformation of one fight into another is due to certain changes in the material base of the process, the system of commodity production. These are elements that are mutually reinforcing: greater industry involves more trade and vice versa; higher demand requires an increase in industry and production. The distribution of power groups is, in turn, a byproduct of these changes and the set of ideas that blesses them. Everything is viewed from the perspective of money: work is paid, reduced to making money, not a creative activity but an object to sell. The worker receives much less than they produce, which is why production and profit are maximized everywhere.
The Internal Contradiction
The process of class struggle, exploitation, and domination of one over the other carries within it the bomb that will explode and produce a new system of things: its internal contradiction makes it untenable. The capitalist system of production tends to be a progressive and unstoppable agglomeration and accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few. At the end of the productive forces, increasing cheap labor or direct strike, the proletariat must necessarily rebel against the capitalist system of production. This system involves another major manufacturing defect: its cyclical commercial crises. This is a phenomenon never seen before: overproduction can lead to huge economic depressions, an increase in misery in the world; that is, people die of hunger because of wealth. Capitalism solves such crises in a way that could be called homeopathic, i.e., using more of the same: reducing costs, laying off workers en masse, but expanding markets and exploiting existing ones.