Karl Marx is a prominent figure in the history of philosophy. He thought that philosophy, up until his time, had not done anything at all to alter the state of the world—in other words, he leveled the typical claim against philosophy that it is just useless theorizing. But Marx had higher hopes for philosophy. He thought philosophy could changes things; it just hadn’t yet.

But before we get directly into Marx’s ideas, it is always protocol to take a brief look at the philosopher who had a great influence on Marx: Georg Hegel (1770-1831 c.e.). Hegel thought that history unfolds according to a process called the “dialectic.” He thought that reality itself is a sort of cosmic consciousness unfolding. The dialectic begins with two ideas, one is called the “thesis” and the other the “antithesis.” For Hegel, the thesis and antithesis throughout history are represented by the general attitude or spirit of a given time (also know as a “zeitgeist”). These two ideas struggle against each other until a new idea is born: the “synthesis.” The synthesis now becomes the thesis, and the process goes on.

Marx lived an interesting and oftentimes rough life. His brush with the rough side of things would eventually have a great influence on his philosophy. He felt deeply for people that lived in poverty and he felt anger toward those in power whom he felt were creating the poverty. Furthermore, he grew up around the time of the industrial revolution when young children, among others, were being put to work mercilessly in huge factories. His observations of this experience greatly influenced his philosophy as well. Please watch the short video of the industrial revolution below.

Marx’s Dialectic

Marx took Hegel’s idea of the dialectic and applied it to material historical progression rather than mind or spirit as Hegel had done. For Marx, the world changes through material means. Rather than a tension between one zeitgeist and another zeitgeist, Marx saw the tension as being between the middle class (the bourgeoisie) and the working class (the proletariat). Marx’s dialectic goes through five stages: (1) primitive, hunter gatherer (2) slave (3) feudal (4) capitalist (5) communist. Unlike Hegel, Marx completes the dialectic. Marx thought that history had been unfolding and that, in his time, humans were in the fourth stage, ready to be led to the fifth.

For each stage to come about, according to the dialectic, there has to be a struggle between the existing economic system and the one that will take its place. Capitalism was the thesis for Marx, and a socialist economy was the antithesis. From this struggle, thought Marx, will emerge a meaningful society where the wealth is divided evenly and everyone lives rich, full lives.

As mentioned, Marx hated philosophy that was highly abstract like Plato’s idea of forms or Aristotle’s four causes. Marx thought anything not grounded in the material world (material for Marx includes economic and social relations) was useless. Rather than ideas shaping society, as many thinkers are apt to believe, Marx thought that the social and economic system shapes our ideas. This is what is known as “economic determinism.” So, if you are poor, you’re going to grow up believing certain things based on the fact that you are surrounded by people with certain beliefs, including parents and friends. And if you’re rich, you’re likewise going to grow up believing certain things based on your economic situation. Why is it that more often than not, the children of Republicans end up Republican and the children of Democrats end up Democrats?

Substructure and Superstructure

Marx divided society into a substructure and a superstructure. The substructure contains the means of production (the resources), the forces of production (the machinery to control the resources), and the relations of production (the owners of the resources and the machinery). The superstructure is everything that is not part of the economic system: art, philosophy, games, religion, etc. According to Marx—and this is the crux of economic determinism—the substructure shapes the superstructure.

The economic principle of supply and demand controls prices on the market. And yet, the wages that laborers get paid is very low, so no matter how much demand there is for some product, the laborers don’t see the profit since the owners (capitalists) take it. This profit is known as surplus value. Thus, capitalists can continue to earn more and more and pay the laborers next to nothing.

The paradox of the capitalist system, says Marx, is that the very people being exploited grow to love it. This is because their values are shaped—through education and the media, for example—by the capitalists themselves. Moreover, the people being exploited by capitalism (the proletariat) learn to love capitalism itself. The owners make them believe they can rise to the top through, for example, advertisements which glorify the capitalist life. But can they? No matter what the workers are led to believe, says Marx, they will always be kept in their place by the owners. They are also kept in place by the very things that their labor produces—games, movies, plays, and other forms of entertainment. But to Marx these are just other distractions that keep the proletariat down. Other distractions are when the workers fight against each other, failing to recognize their true enemies: the bourgeoisie (the owners).

The Worker as Commodity

Marx thought that the Bourgeoisie, with their view to profit in the capitalist economy, turned the labor of professions that once induced pride into a mere number. For capitalists, it doesn’t matter how much skill and personality you put into building a wooden desk; it matters how quickly you can produce it and how much money the finished product can procure. Any and all professions are exploited in capitalism and there is no end to the exploitation: the doctor becomes a number, the teacher becomes a number, the blacksmith becomes a number. They are only valuable insofar as they can make a profit for the capitalist.

Have you ever felt like your labor was nothing but a commodity to your boss? I personally worked at a department store when I was younger. At the end of the night, we used to have to straighten all the items on the shelves. I used to often feel like I was doing the most meaningless, repetitive, uninteresting work. When I look back I think of Marx. Anyone else feel ever feel this way? Ever feel like the guy on the left?

When the system of capitalism gets the very people it’s exploiting (the proletariat) to believe, falsely, in the inherent good of the system, Marx calls it “co-option.” Being tricked into thinking a system that exploits you is good means you are being co-opted.

A New Social Order

For Marx, the solution is for the proletariat to stop living in the dark and become aware of its condition of exploitation. He believed that the capitalist system cannot go on forever. As the conditions of the proletariat grow worse and worse, a point is reached in which the bourgeoisie is no longer compatible with society as a whole. This is the point when the proletariat join together to violently overthrow the capitalist leadership. Here a new social order emerges. Remember the dialectic? This new social order is the final stage in Marx’s dialectic: communism.

But the critique of capitalism isn’t over yet. At the base of capitalism, for Marx, is something inherently wrong that occurs when the laborer is disconnected from his labor—when his labor turns into a commodity. When any worker starts seeing everything around her in her working conditions—her work, other employees, tools of the trade—in terms of how much money it can or cannot get her, she is alienated. Alienation is what Marx says happens to the proletariat in capitalism.

The problem with alienation is that it takes the inherent joy out of creating and this, in turn, takes the artistic and personal nature out of the finished product. What has more value, a 4-pack of plates from Walmart or a meticulously-carved plate that was hand-painted by a native Venezuelan? For Marx, the hand-painted plate is most likely free from alienation. It has a personal element that the plates from Walmart lack. For Marx, work should be an expression of you, not just something you do. In the new social order, alienation will disappear and the worker and his products will return to a state of creativity.

Now, you might be wondering, why haven’t we seen the last stage of the dialectic emerge? Well, for one thing, so many things have changed since Marx’s time that he couldn’t have predicted—one of those things being the incredible technological revolution we’ve seen and are continuing to see. Another thing that sprung up in capitalist economies like the US are labor unions. Despite the fact that much of the wealth remains in the hand of the few, labor unions exist to protect some workers.