History as Class Struggle Lecture 4 (2024/25)

Transcript:History as Class Struggle Lecture 4 (2024/25):
History as Class Struggle Lecture 4 (2024/25) Historiography I 1818-35: childhood and early youth in a liberal bourgeois family in Trier. Exposed to Enlightenment, Romantic, liberal and radical world-views through family and acquaintances. 1835-36: University of Bonn. Heavy drinking, gambling, etc. – father intervenes to move him to Berlin. 1836-42: University of Berlin. Develops wide range of intellectual interests: jurisprudence, history, and especially philosophy. Involved in ‘Left-Hegelian’ circles. 1842-49: Cologne, Paris, Brussels, Paris, Cologne, Paris. Years of revolution and counter-revolution: for Marx, constant political exile and flight. Years of intense political agitation, radical political journalism (heavily censored). Marx begins studying political economy. Develops lifelong friendship with Friedrich Engels (son of wealthy manufacturer). 1849-1883: London. Marx’s Life Romanticism Industrial Revolution – Creation of Proletariat Alienated from their work and thus themselves Democratic Revolutions (1789, 1830, 1848) Further Context Influences Significant influence of Enlightenment histories with their ‘stadial’ view of historical progression (Ferguson etc.) – though with a twist English and Scottish political economy Adam Smith (1723-1790) David Ricardo (1772-1823) Utopian Socialism Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825) Charles Fourier (1772-1837) Robert Owen (1771-1858) German idealism: Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1765-1854) Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) Among the ‘Left’ Hegelians in Germany: In early phase, Marx is still philosophical and metaphysical: He assumes man’s creative ‘potential’ and sees history as the the gradual realization of it. Like Hegel: History as dialectic (tension) between ‘real’ and ‘rational’. This friction propels consciousness forward. Hegel’s Endpoint  full consciousness, at one with Absolute Spirit and the state. Man is reconciled with himself, society and nature. History driven by ‘ideas’. Starting point: Inversion of Hegelian dialectics “My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life-process of the human brain, i.e., the process of thinking, which, under the name of 'the Idea,' he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of 'the Idea.' With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought.” Karl Marx Dialectics (very simple definition): develop in three steps: Thesis – Antithesis – Synthesis (new quality) Dialectical and Historical Materialism Dialectical Materialism Materialist ‘inversion’ of Hegelian dialectics: ‘standing Hegel the right way up’ – Dialectical Method lasting