German Idealism

British Political Economy

French Revolution

Proceeds from the principle that the

spiritual and non-material, is primary and
material is secondary.
It regards consciousness in isolation from
nature, as result of which it inevitably
mystifies human consciousness and the
process of cognition.

Constructs the world on the basis of

individual consciousness.
It denies the existence of the objective
reality independent of the will and
consciousness of the subject.

It regards as the prime source of being not

the personal, human mind, but some
objective otherworld consciousness, the
absolute Spirit, Universal reason.
Plato considered general concepts as
existing eternally in the world ideas, while
material objects were shadows of these
ideas.

As the point of departure for his philosophy,

Hegel chose the identity of being and
thinking, i.e. the conception of the real
world as a manifestation of an idea, a
concept, or spirit.
This identity he regarded as the historically
developing process of the absolute ideas or
spirits cognizing itself. e.g. the State as a
realization of reason.

The dialectic is essentially a method of

expounding our fundamental categories.
It is a method of exposition in which each
category in turn is shown to be implicitly
self-contradictory and to develop
necessarily into the next.

Category A contains in itself its contrary

category B.
Conversely that category B contains
category A, thus showing both categories to
be self-contradictory.
This negative process has a positive
outcome, a category C. This new category
unites the preceding categories of A and B

The new category C contains both A & B

It unites them in such a way that they are
not only preserved but also abolished.
In the new category C, the original senses
of A and B are modified.
This modification of their senses renders
them no longer self-contradictory.

The attainment of the new category C

denotes the completion of one level of the
dialectic.
We pass to a new level where category C
plays the role that was formerly played by
category A.
The cyclical process culminates in allembracing category called the Absolute
Idea

For Hegel, the historical process was a

movement and conflict of abstract
categories of which real individuals are
simply the playthings.
For Marx, the history of human society is
fundamentally the history of the conflict of
classes.

Primitive Communistic society

Feudal Society
Capitalist Society
Socialist society
Communist Society

Mode of Production of a particular society

consists of Two of socio-economic elements:
Means of Production and the Relations of
Production

Labor
Object of Labor
Instrument of Labor

The social relations that are formed

between the people in the process of
production, exchange and distribution of
material wealth.

The production and appropriation of surplus

value express the basic relations of
production under the capitalist mode of
production.
Surplus value is a value created by the
wage workers labor over and above the
value of his labor power and appropriated
by capitalist without remuneration.

The commodity labor power is able, in the

process of labor, to create new value, which
is greater than its own cost.
The capitalist achieves this by making the
worker work more than the time necessary
to reproduce the value of his labor power.

Under Capitalism, part of the working day

during which a worker creates surplus value
appropriated by the capitalist.
The labor expended during that time is
called surplus labor.
In the quest for surplus value, the capitalists
try to increase surplus working time.

1.

2.

By an absolute increase in the working

hours over and above the necessary
working time.
By reducing the necessary working time,
and correspondingly increasing the surplus
working time.

1.

2.

The worker is alienated from the product

of his labor. The product in which he
expresses and realizes himself does not
belong to him. It is appropriated by the
capitalists and sold on the market.
The worker is alienated from the act of
producing itself. The realization that his
labor has become already become a
commodity on which he has no control.

3. The worker is alienated from his being a

member of the human species and from his
humanity as being a fellow being with other
human beings. His involvement in the
production activities as social activity, turns
into a means for his individual existence.
This implies his alienation from other
human beings with whom he competes for
scarce jobs.

Classes refer to the objective position of a

group in a specific social formation and are
thus rooted in economic reality. This
position is chiefly determined not by
income and occupation, but by the groups
relation to means of production.
The conception of two basic or
fundamental (antagonistic) classes: owners
and non-owners of means of production.
There are also non-basic classes. e.g.
Middle class

A class, according to Marx, becomes a class

only when it gets united and organized in
defense of its classes interests.
Class consciousness comes into existence
only when divisions between classes are
perceived to be antagonistic and become a
basis for organized political action.

is the struggle between two fundamental classes

whose interests are incompatible or are in
contradiction with each other.
In pre-capitalistic societies, contradictions are
distinguishing features rather than essential
conflicts. Feudal society is characterized by
hierarchy, not by a polarization of opposing
groups.
In pre-capitalistic societies, the struggles were
predominantly spontaneous.
Under capitalism, the struggles are organized.

Class struggle against capitalism assume

three main forms: economic, political and
ideological.
Economic: against all sorts of economic
exploitation.
Political: establishing the rule of working
class.
Ideological: liberating working class from
the influence of bourgeois ideology.

The concept of ideology did not originate

in Marxism.
The term ideology was first used by Destutt
de Tracy at the end of the 18th century and
was fully developed as a concept during 19th
century.

Ideology was constructed based on the

abstraction of human sensations.
Ideology was limited to accounting for
individual representations by a causal
psychology.

The notion ideology was used by Marx to

understand the collections of
representations characteristic of a given
epoch and society.

1.

2.

Ideology as False Consciousness:

ideology is inverted and distorted
reflection of reality. In ideologies men
and their conditions appear upside down
like images on the lens of a camera.
Ideology as a site of Political
Consciousness: Once ideology is related
to the real conditions that gave rise to it,
it ceases to be completely illusory,
entirely false.

Class ideologies create three images of the

class that is struggling for dominance: 1. an
image for itself, 2. images of the other
classes and 3. images for the other classes.

Ideology is based on political faiths.

Ideological is the political move against any
form of ideological dominance of the
dominant class and the State that represent
the interests of the dominant class.

Marx used the analogy to make sure that

nobody would separate politics or ideology
and the rest from economics.
According to Marx the relations of production
form the base or economic structure of
society.
Superstructure comprises a broad spectrum
of political, religious and cultural practices as
ideological forms in which people become
conscious of the basic economic conflict.

Causal relationship is a misunderstanding

of Marx meant.
The misunderstanding is the result of the
pre-suppositions of a mechanical
materialism which looks at matter as the
cause of everything else.
Marx does not intend to reduce everything
else to economic causes. He aimed at
relating everything to the whole society by
exploring its connection with the economic
relations of a particular society.