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Western Political Thought

Notes while studying and developing his economic and political theories. Above all else, Marx believed
that philosophy ought to be employed in practice to change the world. The core of Marx’s economic
analysis found erly expression in the Okonomisch-philosophische Manuskripte aus dem Jahre
1844 (Economic and Political Manuscripts of 1844) (1844). There, Marx argued that the conditions
of modern industrial societies invariably result in the estrangement (or alienation) of workers
from their own labour. In his review of a Bruno Baier book, On the Jewish Question (1844), Marx
decried the lingering influence of religion over politics and proposed a revolutionary re-structuring
of European society. Much later, Marx undertook a systematic explanation of his economic theories
in Das Kapital (Capital) (1867–95) and theory of surplus (1862). Marx and his colleague Friendrich
Engels issued the Manifest der kommunistischen Partei (Communist Manifesto) (1848) in the explicit
hope of precipitating social revolution. This work describes the class struggle between proletariat
and bourgeoisie, distinguishes communism from other socialist movements, proposes a list of specific
social reforms, and urges all workers to unite in revolution against existing regimes.
In 1844 Marx wrote Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts. In this work he developed his ideas on
the concept of alienation. Marx identified three kinds of alienation in capitalist society. First, the
worker is alienated from what he produces. Second, the worker is alienated from himself; only
when he is not working does he feel truly himself. Finally, in capitalist society people are alienated
from each other; that is, in a competitive society people are set against other people. Marx believed
the solution to this problem was communism as this would enable the fulfilmentof “his potentialities
as a humna.”
Marx’s concept of alienation is based on his analysis of alienated labour. Through political economy,
he sees that the worker is degraded to the most miserable commodity, i.e., the misery of the
workers increases with the power and size of their production. Marx depicts political economy as
the following:
The workers becomes poorer the more wealth he produces and the more his production increases
inpower and extent. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more goods he creates.
The devaluation of the human world increases in direct relation with the increase in value of the
world of things. Labour does not only create goods; it also produces itself and the worker as a
commodity and indeed in the same proportion as it produces goods.

12.1 Class Struggle and Social Change

Marx articulated the idea of human liberation distinct from political emancipation. The aim of
human liberation was to bring forth the collective, generic character of human life which was real,
so that society would have to assume a collective character and coincide with the life of the state.
This would be possible if individuals were freed from religion and private property. The proletariat,
by being the universal class in chains, would liberate itself and human society. Relations of
production in reality were class relations. Class antagonisms were crucial to the workings of all
societies, as Marx observed that, “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class
struggles”.
In every society there were two classes, the rich and the poor, one that owned the means of
production, and the other that sold its labour. During different historical phases, these two classes
were known by different names and enjoyed different legal statuses and privileges, but one thing
was common, that in the course of all these phases, their relationship had been one of exploitation
and domination. Marx wrote: “Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-
master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one
another”.
Marx objected to the idea of the middle-class historians that class struggle had ended with the rise
of the bourgeoisie, just as he opposed the perceptions of the Classical economists that capitalism

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