Page 238 - DPOL201_WESTERN_POLITICAL_THOUGHT_ENGLISH

Western Political Thought

Notes 3. ..............was the first to point out the contradictions within the revolutionary slogans of liberty
and equality.
(i) Francois Noel Gracchus Babeuf (ii) Marx
(iii) Hegel (iv) None of these
4. The poem ‘The player’ was written by ..............
(i) Marx (ii) Bentham
(iii) Hegel (iv) None of these
5. ..............was known as the Pope of Marxism
(i) Karl Johann Kautsky (ii) Marx
(iii) Lenin (iv) None of these

12.12 Summary

• Marxism’s dream of creating a classless society beyond conflict and based on equality remained
illusory. However, its critique of exploitation and alienation, and the hope of creating a truly
emancipated society that would allow the full flowering of human creativity, would continue
to be a starting point of any Utopian project. In spite of Marx’s Utopia being truly generous,
it displayed a potential for being tyrannical, despotic and arbitrary. Centralization of power
and absence of checks oh absolute power were themselves inimical to true human liberation
and freedom. He “offered no good reason to believe that the power politics of radicalism
would prove to be less authoritarian in practice than the power politics of conservative
nationalism”. Commenting on the activities of his fellow comrades, which were in total
negation of his ideals, Marx once proclaimed that he was not a Marxist. This proved to be a
serious limitation of his theory, even during his lifetime, as it was after his death. He would
be remembered at best as a critic of early nineteenth-century capitalism and politics. The
limitations and inadequacies within the doctrine are reminders that his blueprint was, as
Koestler remarked, “a God that failed”.
• Marx’s class theory rests on the premise that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the
history of class struggles.” According to this view, ever since human society emerged from
its primitive and relatively undifferentiated state if has remained fundamentally dividend
between classes who clash in the pursuit of class interest. In the world of capitalism, for
example, the nuclear cell of the capitalist system, the factory, is the prime locus of antagonism
between classes-between exploiters and exploited, between buyer and selles of labour power-
rather than of functional collaboration. Class interests and the confrontations of power that
they bring in their wake are to Marx the central determinant of social and historical process.
• Marx’s analysis continually centres on how the relationships between men are shaped by
their relative positions in regard to the means of production, that is, by their differential
access to scare resources and scarce power. He notes that unequal access need not at all times
and under all conditions lead to active class struggle. But he considered it axiomatic that the
potential for class conflict is inherent in every differentiated society, since such a society
systematically generates conflicts of interest between persons and groups differentially located
within the social structure, and, more particulary, in relation to the means of production.
Marx was concerned with the ways inwhich specific positions in the social structure tended
to shape the social experierices of their incumbents and to predispose them to actions oriented
to improve their collective fate.

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