You should be able to put these into a narrative, a story, of how Marx’s theories seek to explain or even predict.

• Human potential, ‘species being’ … Marx perceived that humans were social beings, but they were also a species, and possess material requirements to survive. They are a part of nature, even if it doesn’t always seem that way.
• Production factors—land, labor, capital … try making something without one of these. Let me know how that goes. And for each, Marx described how they translated into actual production, and how capitalists acquired these production factors, which allowed them to . . . produce. Land’s is rent, labor’s is wage, and capital’s is interest.
• Classes … Sociologists speak and write often about race, class, gender, etc. We might discuss lower, middle and upper income classes, for instance. The leisure class was a construct of Sociologist Thorstein Veblen, observing the rise of the wealthy in the 1920s.

Marx thought of the world in terms of classes of people. But he wasn’t measuring household wages and trying to put people into categories. For Marx, what mattered was who owned and controlled the means of production, the mode of production. In Medieval Europe, it was the Lords, the Dukes, the Counts … the nobility. They were landed, the landowners, often living in castles (Britain’s upper chamber of parliament is still the House of Lords, versus the House of Commons). In earlier societies, the so-called ‘hydraulic societies,’ for instance, where irrigation allowed for the production of surplus food, the ruling class was comprised of the nobility, the clergy, then there were the artisans, the engineers, soldiers, and . . . the laborers (and sometimes even a hierarchy there, at the bottom of which were slaves). So for Marx, there were two classes–the owners of wealth and the means to produce, or the capitalists, the bourgeoisie–a small minority of the overall population–and the rest of society, the workers, working class, or proletariat. So if you wanted to understand a society and where it was headed, according to Marx . . . think less about individuals and more about the classes they belonged to, and for him there were only two that mattered (and they were based on producing material conditions that sustained the society)–the capitalists and the workers.

• Work, life, community, production . . . these were all interconnected for Marx. Work was an important part of making meaning for humans. Capitalism, he thought, robbed the worker of the connection between work and meaning and fulfillment–people were (in today’s lexicon) just working for The Man.
• Use value vs exchange value . . . Marx believed that two kinds of values pervaded capitalist societies and economies. ‘Use value’ referred to the actual physical properties of a commodity (a thing, presumably of some value) produced. ‘Exchange value’ referred to the value of some good produced in exchange, for instance, in a market (so exchanged for currency, or in some bartered arrangement). He said that in a capitalist system, exchange value tended to become more important–the amount of money a good is worth. Whereas Marx believed that a good’s value should be based on the labor embodied in its production. Exchange value therefore should simply represent how much labor went into the cost of producing a good (really …).
• Alienation, appropriation . . . Marx believed that workers who were merely making something for someone else’s use or enjoyment would become alienated from their work, from production, and ultimately from nature. Capitalists appropriate their labor and pay them a miserable wage, he might say, which is alienating, impoverishing, and degrading because they don’t even derive meaning or fulfillment from their work–it means nothing to them, things get produced and shipped off to be consumed by someone in the consuming class.
• Labor theory of value (absolute and relative) . . . Marx didn’t use that term, but he did content that the value of a good or service came from the amount of labor needed to produce it. Many businesses today turn this logic on its head, referring to labor not as value, but as a cost of production (Andrew Yang built an entire political campaign around automation or the replacing of workers with machines and technology). Marx discussed the ‘surplus’ value of labor, which is the value (in exchange) beyond the value of the labor to produce a good or service. Marx said that surplus labor was skimmed off as ‘profit’ by the capitalist class (another element in his narrative of workers’ exploitation).
• Technology and industry (emancipatory potential) . . . Marx was a keen observer of technological change that industrialization brought. He believed that industrialism could generate massive wealth, perhaps even reducing some of the drudgery and poverty of the working class. It had potential to emancipate the workers (although, perhaps not until capitalism, through its ruthless and relentless exploitation of the working class, collapsed of its own weight and ushered in socialist societies where wealth was more equitably distributed (and, ultimately, communism–but don’t confuse Marx’s idea of communism with historical examples like Russia or China, though, where power and wealth are simply concentrated in the political party rather than a class of owners)
• Capitalism—property, profit, entrepreneurs, labor markets, dynamic system . . . This set of concepts was so vast it required outsourcing to a separate web page …
• Expansionist nature of capitalism (competition, exploitation). . . Marx saw capitalism as an entity that tended to grow and expand. One McDonald’s restaurant? Are you kidding?? If it’s profitable here, why wouldn’t it be profitable somewhere else? Same with any industry. And owners, investors, well, they expect to see large and increasing returns on the money they invest.

Ah. But others might be watching the success of a company, or an industry, and think ‘I could do that better than they do for a lower price!’ And competition is born. Enter Burger King. Wendys. Jack-in-the Box. In-n-Out. Carls Jr. Then Taco Bell. Kentucky Fried Chicken (later KFC, probably a decision made by the corporate attorneys). All that competition can lead to lower prices, as each firm competes for customers and may use lower price as a lure. And with lower price comes a need for higher volume, to sustain profit. Market share. You get the idea. If burgers don’t work, consider wifi or cell phone service.

• Class consciousness—neither class is aware of its shared interests as a class (although there is pretty good evidence, in political sociology and network theory, that the so-called ruling class—being much smaller in number and likely well-connected through a loose network—has some awareness), although those with the power and resources are better equipped to influence public opinion. Marx thought that workers could achieve a ‘class consciousness’ and that this was the kind of worry that probably kept owners up at night. He also thought that capitalists could not fully attain class consciousness, because they don’t experience the exploitation at their own hands . . .  only the privilege, which appears to them as natural, earned.
• Collapse of capitalism. Marx said it was inevitable that capitalism would collapse under the weight of continual exploitation of a growing and increasingly impoverished working class (as capitalism expanded and competition drove down price, and wages), but this historic certain did have certain requirements:
  • Capitalist exploitation
  • Class consciousness
  • Praxis, action (what kinds of actions? Unionizing? Full-scale revolution?)
  • False consciousness – How to keep the workers from arriving at class consciousness? Marx discussed the possibility of ‘false consciousness,’ of distracting workers by providing them some of the table scraps (so to speak) of the capitalist, consumer economy. Was it a conscious strategy of the capitalist class? Or merely part of of the capitalist structure? Distraction? Competition for goods? Religion’s role? Marx referred to religion as the ‘opiate of the people,’ meaning that an ideology that focused their gaze on material sacrifice in this life would reap the rewards in the next. Marx said workers were caught up in consumption, and that the market plays an atomizing role that keeps them from recognizing their shared interests
• Commodities and commodity fetishism . . . Another way that workers can be distracted is through essentially the worshiping of commidities. That doesn’t happen in our society, does it? Gotta have the latest iphone, trade the Beamer in every couple of years, fashion from this year’s Milano runway, a 10,000 square foot house with an external garage for the classic car collection, a yacht and summer homes on the coast …. etc. Or maybe for workers it’s just a giant flat screen TV, access to loans to buy new cars, affordable goods and services where quality is secondary but hey, we all get a slice of the American Pie.
  • Cycle of Circulation of commodities (M-C-M vs C-M-C)
• Atomizing tendency of markets. So back to that ‘atomizing’ role. Markets are based on individual self-interest. The so-called ‘invisible hand’ of the market, envisioned by another social theorist from way back, Adam Smith, in Wealth of Nations:

As every individual, therefore, endeavours … to employ his capital … so … that its produce may be of the greatest value … He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. … [H]e intends only his own gain, and he is in this … led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. … By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. 

Markets appeal to that individual self-interest, but for every buyer, there is (theoretically) a seller, pursuing his or her own self-interest. So the market functions to create a balance of supply and demand–demand for goods will create incentives to increase supply, or even for invention or innovation.

Which doesn’t necessarily mean the worker’s lot will improve, but it does give you a sense of how other thinkers were addressing the ideas of capitalism, markets, and expansion/growth of an economy–it happens without any grand architect. To the benefit, Marx insisted, of the capitalist class that knew the rules and could access the production factors needed to create commodities (and markets).

Wages and capital

• Capitalism is inherently expansionist: As productive capital grows, industry/business expand, leading to greater competition among workers and capitalists, driving down costs and wages
• Geographic expansion (driven by resource exploitation / depletion? Colonialism)

Real world examples?

• Soviet Union
• China
• Cuba
• What would Marx say? Did any country really pursue the sort of social and political arrangements Marx thought would allow the Proletariat to achieve their full human potential?

Think about:

• Practical applications of Marx’s theory? How to apply it?
• Variables? Is there any sort of cause-effect relationship being proposed here? Upon what is Marx’s ultimate scholarly gaze fixed? And what drives historical change?
• Are Marx’s ideas testable? Can we set up a research design to test capitalist exploitation, or historical development of societies from tribal to feudal to capitalist to socialist to communist (Marx’s ‘end point’ of history)?
• Is it theory??
• Is it predictive?
• What kind of research did Marx do? Perspective (emic or etic)?
• Does it pass the test of time? Would a single contradiction disprove Marx’s theory (e.g., the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1989)?
• Alternative explanations for conflict, social change, inequality, poverty, marginalized groups? Is Marx’s explanation the most parsimonious, or powerful?
• What prevents revolution from occurring (now that might take an emic approach …)?