Marks and Engels: the town and the

capitalist mode of production

Anka Stpie, MA
Sosiologi Perdesaan dan Perkotaan
Fak. Sosiologi, UMM
General background:
great transformation in Europe and USA the Industrial Revolution
(18th-19th century),
urbanization and industrialization (industrialization is the process by
which an economy shifts from an agricultural to a manufacturing base
during a period of sustained change and growth),
changes in farming mechanization and consolidation of farms,
new techniques and institutions of both production and
transportation of food,
Shifts mengubah
the appearance of factory-made goods. Manufacturing base basis manufaktur
Sustained tereus-menerus
Consolidation gabungan
Mechanization mekanisasi
Appaearance - munculnya
Throughout Europe, only 17% of the population lived in cities in 1801. By 1851, the percentage increased to 35%, and by
1891, it was 54%.
 The rate of growth was so rapid that city services could not keep pace.
Cities were places where lack of sanitation, accumulation of sewage, high
rates of disease, high rates of crime, and desperate poverty all existed.
Heavy use of coal led to accumulations of dirt and grime.
One of the chief consequences of this growth was class segregation, as
the bourgeoisie and upper classes were forced to inhabit the same
confined space as workers.
How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York,
published by Scribner's Books in 1890.
Keep pace mengimbangi
Sanitation kebersihan
Sewage, grime kotoran
Confined terbatas
Tenement rumah petak
Urban planning, after mid-century became common-place. One of the
forms it took was the provision for parks within and around cities to
provide relief from the congested urban environment. It also involved
razing old sections of the city and replacing them with public buildings,
broad avenues, monuments, and impressive railroad stations.
The pattern was established by the city of Paris in the 1850's under
Napoleon III. Other major cities followed suit.
Urban improvements continued throughout the 19th century as
technology offered new opportunities.
Provision persediaan
Relief bantuan
Congested padat
Razing penghancuran
Avenues - jalan
Hausmanns renovation of Paris, 1853-1870 (1927)
The old ship of Paris was torpedoed by
Baron Haussmann and sunk during his
reign. It was perhaps the greatest crime of
the megalomaniac prefect and also his
biggest mistake...His work caused more
damage than a hundred bombings. It was
in part necessary, and one should give him
credit for his self-confidence, but he was
certainly lacking culture and good taste...In
the United States, it would be wonderful,
but in our capital, which he covered with
barriers, scaffolds, gravel, and dust for
twenty years, he committed crimes, errors,
and showed bad taste. douard Manet, A Bar at the Folies-Bergre, 1882

(Ren Hron de Villefosse, the 20th

century historian of Paris)
 The rapid growth of cities was among the most obvious and potentially
disruptive of all social changes at that time.
Increase in size of urban population came to be associated in the minds
of many politicians and commentators with the growth of urban
problemsthe spread of slums and disease, the breakdown of law and
order, the increase in infant mortality rates and many more.
Sociologists discussions of cities - critiques of the common experience
of urbanization. The great city, metropolis = an inhuman, debasing,
social environment.
The classical sociologists - the first writers to undertake the systematic
analysis of urbanization as a force for change. Rapid cepat
Disruptive mengganggu
Spread penyebaran
Breakdown kerusakan
Infant morality kematian bayi
Debaising menurunkan nilai
Marx, Weber, Durkheim none of them considered useful or necessary to develop a specifically urban
theory. All three seem to have shared the view that, in modem capitalist societies, the urban question must
be subsumed under a broader analysis of factors operating in the society as a whole.

When they discuss the city, they did it only in one of two ways:
1. the city as an historically important object of analysis in the context of the transition from feudalism to
capitalism in western Europe;
2. as a secondary influence on the development of fundamental social processes generated within capitalist
societies. The city, in other words, is analysed not as a cause, but as a significant condition, of certain
development.

Urban sociology pays a little attention to what Marx, Weber and Durkheim had to say about the city, for it is
apparent in their work that the city in contemporary capitalism does not itself constitute a theoretically
significant area of study.

Subsumed digolongkan
Generated dihasilkan
Apparent jelas kelihatan
 Marx dialectical materialism

any whole is comprised of a unity of contradictory the term materialism in this context is
parts, such that it is impossible to understand any generally used in contradiction to
one aspect of reality without first relating it to its idealism - the material world exists
context; prior to our conceptions or ideas about
no single aspect of reality can be analysed it,
independently of the totality of social relations and reality may rarely be directly reflected
determinations of which it forms a necessary part. in consciousness,
Whole utuh, seluruh the way the world appears to us, in
Comprised terdiri other words, may conceal or distort its
Contradictory kontradiktif essential character.
Determinations penentuan
Contradistinction pertentangan
Prior lebih dahulu
Reflected tercermin
Consciousness kesedaran
Conceal menyembunyikan
Distort - mengubah
 SCIENTIFIC UNDERSTANDING
=

THEORY OBSERVATION
critique + development empirical investigation
of existing ideas of existing conditions
development of generalizations concern with specifics
elaboration of abstractions analysis of concret cases
Phenomenal appearances vs essential relations.
Reproductive explanation = explain observable phenomena by developing
hypotheses about underlying causes.
RE cannot support any conjecture (dugaan), since the hypothesized causes
must be able to explain evidence at the level of appearances. The
hypotheses can never be directly tested.
In other words, it is never possible finally to demonstrate that a posited law
of capitalist development is actually true since such a law refers to processes
which, even if they do exist, remain hidden.
In short, Marxs method can be used fruitfully to generate theories that are
plausible (masuk akal) to a greater or lesser extent but can never finally be
demonstrate. There is no reason to accept such theories other than ones
own political values and purposes.
Marxism, in other words, is as much a guide to political practice as a method
of scientific analysis.
The division between town and country had characterized all human societies from antiquity to modern
capitalism. The foundation of every division of labour which has attained a certain degree of development, and
has been brought about by the exchange of commodities, is the separation of town from country. One might
well say that the whole economic history of society is summed up in the movement of this antithesis.

The towncountry antithesis is, in other words, a phenomenon which has to be analysed in the context of the
underlying mode of production which sustains and is sustained through it in any given period of human history.
The analysis of the city and its relations to the countryside is thus premised on the analysis of class relations
inscribed within specific modes of production, for urbanism assumes a different significance in different social
contexts.

Mode of production cara produksi

Sustain menahan
Underlying mendasari
Premised didasarkan
Inscribed - bersurat
According to Marx, the first real class society was that of the ancient city (Rome):
society was based on a slave mode of production in which the wealth of the ruling class was
founded on agricultural land ownership - great estates;
landowners lived in the city itself, the mode of production remained rural,
the city never became the locus of a new mode of production,
the city was nothing more than an administrative centre ,
there was no basis in this society for the development of a qualitatively new mode of
production.

Mode of production cara produksi

Wealth - kekayaan
Slave budak
Ruling class kelas yg berkuasa
Ownership - kepemilikan
Middle Ages:
the opposition of town and country;
modern history is the urbanization of the countryside,
the growth of a merchant class in the established towns during the Middle
Ages had the important effect of extending trading links between different
areas,
the result was a division of labour between different towns and stimulation
of the growth of new industries.
The new system of capitalist manufacture, facilitated by merchants capital in the medieval towns, thus took
root in the countryside, and the great cities of the Industrial Revolution grew up around it.

The hierarchical obligations of feudalism were here replaced by relations based entirely on the cash nexus. The
new social relations of capitalism thus became established as the antithesis to the old social relations of
feudalism.

The contradictions between them, expressed in the class antagonism between industrial bourgeoisie and
feudal landowners, came to be represented directly and vividly in the conflict between town and country.

Manufacture pembuatan
Facilitated fasilitasi
Cash nexus perhubngan kas
According to Marx and Engels:
the urban proletariat to lead the struggle for socialism;
on the one hand that the city expresses most vividly the evils of capitalism, and on the other that it is
within the city that the progressive forces of socialism are most fully developed.

Marx and Engels study the capitalist city in two ways:

1. as an illustration or a microcosm of processes occurring at a different rate throughout capitalist society,
2. as an important condition of the development of certain specific processes within that society;

their concern is not with the city per se (sendiri) but with capitalist processes that are most clearly
revealed (mengungkap) in an urban context,
it is not the city that is held responsible for the poverty and squalor (kemelaratan) of the urban
proletariat, but the capitalist mode of production (cara produksi)

the city is portrayed as the hothouse (rumah kaca) of capitalist contradictions, the exaggerated
(berkelebihan) expression of essential (esensiil) tendencies within capitalism itself.
For Marx and Engels also see in the development of urbanization the necessary condition
for the transition to socialism. It is in the city that the revolutionary class created by
capitalism, the proletariat, achieves its fullest classic perfection. Precisely because the
tendencies within capitalism are most fully developed in the great cities, it is there that the
conditions for effective struggle against capital reach their maturity.

The tendencies for capital to become concentrated and for the classes to polarize develop
in the cities. It is in the cities that the concentration and common deprivation (kerugian) of
the proletariat is most likely to result in the growth of class consciousness and
revolutionary organization.

The workers begin to feel as a class, as a whole. The great cities are the birthplaces of
labour movements (gerakan buruh) ; in them the workers first began to reflect upon their
own condition and to struggle against it; in them the opposition between proletariat and
bourgeoisie first made itself manifest. Without the great cities (), the working class
would be far less advanced than it is (Engels 1969a, p. 152).
Works of Marx and Engels do not develop a specific theory of urbanism in capitalist
societies.

In their works the city illustrate the manifestations of essential tendencies within
capitalism. It may even influence the way in which these manifestations come to be
articulated in political struggle. However the city is not the essential cause of such
developments.

A Marxist analysis that seeks to go beyond the level of appearances and to posit the
existence of essential relations will not take the city as an object of analysis.

For Marx and Engels, it is capitalism rather than urbanism which constitutes the
essential object of analysis in the contemporary period. Any analysis which seeks to
attribute causal powers to the city (e.g. through explanations couched in terms of
urban problems or urban processes) is thus little more than an ideology, for in the
context of modem capitalism, the urban is a common-sense category with no scientific
status.