Capitalism

Despite his criticisms, Marx was aware of the benefits of capitalism, and generally understood it to be a good thing. The productive capacity of capitalism could free people from need, and it delivered people from the traditions that have dominated them throughout history. Marx criticized capitalism from a future-oriented perspective, based upon his understanding of what capitalism, as a revolutionary force in modern society, was capable of, and what its limits were.

Marx thought that capitalism had fully developed itself and that it was ready to enter a new mode of production, communism.

The Materialist Conception of History

Marx's future-oriented perspective has its basis in his materialist conception of history. He suggests that the ways societies provide for their material well-being affects the type of relations that people will have with one another, their social institutions, and the prevailing ideas of the day. Marx uses the term "the forces of production" to refer to the ways in which people provide for their needs. He uses the term "relations of production" to describe social relationships that dominate the productive capacities of a society. Under capitalism, the forces of production lead to a set of relations of production which pit the capitalist and the proletariat against one another. To change the relations of production, Marx felt revolution was necessary. Revolution arises from exploited classes agitating for change in the relations of production that favour transformations in the forces of production.

Ideology

The relations of production act to dissuade revolutionary behaviour, as do the prevalent ideas within society. Many of these ideas cloud the true relationships that underlie capitalist society. Marx called these kinds of ideas ideologies. The first type of ideology is emergent from the structure of society, and can be seen in things like the fetishism of commodities, or money. The second type is used by the ruling class to hide the contradiction of this system when it becomes apparent. These explain away the contradiction by making them seem coherent (as in religion or philosophy), making them seem the product of personal pathologies, or making them seem a reflection of the contradiction within human nature itself and, therefore, immutable. Marx used equality and freedom, our ideas of which stem from the nature of commodity exchange in capitalist society. These mask the fact that we are neither equal with one another nor able to freely control our labour or the products of our labour. Capitalism inverts our notion of equality and freedom: it is capital that is freely and equally exchanged, not individuals who are free and equal.

Marx also viewed religion as an ideology. Just as freedom and equality are ideas to be cherished, religion also contains positive dimensions, but it has been used to disguise the true set of relations that undergird capitalism.

References

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