The Analysis of the Way Marx's Characterizes the State - Coursework Example

In the history of human thought, the value of the ideas of Marx is hard to overestimate, since his progressive vision has changed the understanding of political, economic and social processes in the twentieth century. With the appearance of Soviet Union, welfare states, and cultural industries, the reality was also changed under the Marxist influence. In this essay, the analysis concentrates on the way Marx characterizes the State. In particular, it raises the questions of the character and the way the State functions, defines its place between economic struggle and individual freedom, criticizes its neutrality and clarifies the task for revolutionary leadership. As a result, it turns evident that Marx is critical to the role of the State and encourages the humanity to change the situation to the more natural for the majority of currently oppressed people state, or communist ideal. To start with, Marx is interested in determining the appearance, type of activities, and social consequences of the State. In this context, he provides a progressive vision on its role in creating the justification of economic disparities in society. In particular, he criticizes the vision of Young Hegelians movements, the part of which he used to be.1 In Marx’s opinion, the religious influence of the State’s image was significant, since he proclaimed the specific dogma, or “cult of the State,”2 to appear within German philosophic system. In other words, Germans got used to transfer to the State some kind of transcendent spirit (offered by Hegel), and this phenomenon enables to perceive country’s leadership in certain irrational light. Because of such wrong beliefs, European revolutionary mobs have mostly lost and the political systems remained “much the same” in the nineteenth century (even though these processes sprang all over the continent, from France and Belgium to Hungary).3 For instance, Napoleon had easily changed the Second Republic to the Second Empire after “the revolutionary fervour abated,”4 and France came to the regime it opposed. In order to explain the given consequences, Marx proposes to be more down to earth, and concentrate on the real relations in the life within the State borders. In the presented example, the misunderstanding appeared since the desperate French masses only “hoped to have their interests represented by Louis Bonaparte,”5 but did not change the core problem of the situation. For this purpose, he introduces specific materialistic method of social analysis, which concentrates on people’s lives in terms of “the material conditions under which they live.”6 In short, such a new approach means turning Hegelian vision upside down, or to “ascend from earth to heaven.”7 Consequently, Marx states that the State is an organization of civil society as “the whole material intercourse of individuals”8 not the transcendent and unchanged creature. In other words, Marx sees governmental apparatuses as the consequence of materialistic situation in Europe, which determined the necessity to create supreme structure of the State. Nevertheless, the roles and functions it enjoys does not include the majority of interests of its creators, since most of the people understand its role in the wrong way. On the relationship between economic, individual, and political phenomena, Marx defends an assumption of economic basis of all the social and political manifestations. However, he supports a statement that humanity deserves to live in natural environment and individuals should construct their own existence as “who they are.”9 Nevertheless, modern history causes the deep connection of natural existence with production, as value of material goods “is the amount of labour that goes into it.”10 Thus, Marx analyses all individual activities regarding to the economic struggle they are built in. In other words, he concentrates on materialistic part of living conditions for the humanity. In this context, Marx does not represent the social structure as an entity of separated individuals; on the contrary, he believes that “society itself produces man as man, so is society produced by him”11. As a result, the society appears to be divided into classes, depending on the type of economic activity it is busy with: “either industrial and commercial” (later separated) or “agricultural” sector.12 Based on this interdependence between natural and social activities, Marx introduces the term of “productive force” as a certain “mode of co-operation between them.”13 At the same time, this situation leads to the appearance of internal conflict within the society; in Marx’s words, this means “a cleavage … between the particular and the common interest.”14 For this purpose, he introduces the term of “political economy”15 in order to explain the flaws of economic division in political sphere. In other words, human beings by being preoccupied with certain activities on a regular basis and in the group of other individuals create stable structures; in return, they empower these spheres to such an extent that they start to steadily dominate over them. Hence, individuals had lost control over certain political phenomena, even though these processes still have economic nature and each individual plays his part in their functioning. In order to illustrate the power of contemporary external forces, Marx underlined the role of world market on the alienation of the societies,16 which is the result of recent Industrial revolution. In short, Marx postulates the interconnection between politics, economy and society as “sum of productive forces, capital funds and social forms of intercourse”17 by stressing on the importance of economic element in each of these spheres. Concerning the neutrality of the State, above-mentioned assumptions enable Marx to claim that the existing political order has a speculative ground. In this context, he refers to “the ideas of the ruling class”18 to have the real power over the majority of people. Because of such an elusive impact of them, most of the national revolutions in the nineteenth century failed. If to concentrate on political history, Marx’s approach is to look behind the appearance of political events. In general, Marx opposes the habit to discuss history as “the political actions of princes and States,”19 and proposes to look at these acts as the illustrations of deeper motives, based on ground economical needs. For instance, he discusses German Wars of liberation (1813) as the result of coffee and sugar shortages under Napoleonic Continental System.20 In fact, Marx presents the State as a theoretical “superstructure” that appears in order to “bound together” members of society.21 Hence, the appeals to its naturalness and objectivity are doubtful, as certain cognitive practices of the ruling class create the grounds of its current appearance. Even though Marx stressed on the fact that political manifestations in the State (like laws, religion, or government) are the products of their environment, he also acknowledged the dialectical flow of ideas and materialism.22 It is so, since “the individual is a social being,”23 and each of social processes is the result of his actions or thoughts. In this situation, the State can never be a neutral structure, since it is a product of human activity.  In the given circumstances, socialist revolution is inevitable, but the task for the revolutionary leaders becomes complicated. Due to the existence of above-mentioned economic struggle, the conflict needs only time to appear; so, the revolutionary task is to arrange its success. In the opinion of Marx, the very reason to transform the existing situation in the society must combine the lack of property ownership by the majority of population (meaning the conflict between economic well-being and cultural expectations) and the developed state of productive forces, which enable the struggle to appear.24 Because of this, such a revolution fetches away from its local character and accomplishes its function to transform the social order. Nevertheless, this process requires the appearance of two stages. Precisely, the purpose for revolution has a severe importance of harmonization between nature and production (or “existence” and “essence”) for the humankind (meaning the living conditions for proletariat),25 but such a communist ideal is “the actual phase necessary for the next stage of historical development.”26 In its general plan, Marx’s idea of revolution correlates with the humanistic idea of the liberation of man,27 because he is worried of the real change in the way people forced themselves to live in the society. Nevertheless, the existence of the state forces Marx to discuss socialist revolution as the preliminary stage of communist transformation, in order to overcome the existing dilemma of the State. In order to sum up, Marx does not support the contemporary image and functioning of the State because ruling class uses this superstructure in order to exercise the power over the proletariat. At the very beginning, his defines his theoretical place in contrast to Hegelian belief in the existence of the spirit of the State. In his analysis, Marx does not pay attention to the appearance of the political struggle and concentrates on the way existing productive forces as the product of economic activity of several individuals make some people more powerful than the others. In the given circumstances, the State neither appears to be nor constitutes a neutral structure; on the contrary, it can change only with the ideas of the ruling class. However, the history of humanity in general and the revolutionary experience of Europe in the nineteenth century in particular reveals the failure of all the previous attempts to change social situation to the core. In the opinion of Marx, the existence of State significantly complicates the task for communist transformation; consequently, he introduces the social revolution as the preliminary stage of social transformation within state borders. However, the history of Soviet Union and Maoist China show that even socialist turn can hardly lead to the communist ideal; moreover, the State is still influential even in contemporary globalized world. Bibliography: Heilbroner, Robert L. (1999). The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers. Seventh edition. New York: Simon and Shuster, Touchstone Books. Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1968). The German Ideology (1845-1846). Volume I, Chapter I: A Critique of the German Ideology. London: Progress Publishers. Marx, K. (1959). Estranged Labour. In: Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts (1844). First Manuscript. Moscow: Progress Publishers. Marx, K. (1959). Private Property and Communism. In: Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts (1844). Third Manuscript. Moscow: Progress Publishers. Miliband, R. (1989). Marx and the State. In: G. Duncan, ed. (1989). Democracy and the Capitalist State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 85-104. Read More