Marx and Dialectical Materialism. I have some notes on my desk to answer or include in the next "lesson," but would mention two now.

One is to suggest, for those interested in labor, "Building Unions, Past, Present and Future", a 38 page paperback, illustrated, $8- for full info write: people@poclad.org or visit the web site: www.poclad.org and then to take your mind off your troubles (I mean, if you think your apt. is dirty, visit this one!) try "the Marxists apartment" - good for a laugh - [Dead link removed. - Editor]

I have a good reason (not an excuse) for being late. I damn near lost my nerve. The very idea of someone trying to cope with Karl Marx (and Frederick Engels) in so short a space! You may find (as I have) much help from google.com in checking info on Marx, Engels, etc. You may also want to flag this site: http://www.marxists.org as a source of information on almost anyone in the history of Marxism.

"THE PHILOSOPHERS HAVE ONLY INTERPRETED THE WORLD, IN VARIOUS WAYS; THE POINT IS TO CHANGE IT." Karl Marx

When we deal with Marx we are dealing with one of the major figures of the past two centuries - and one of the most controversial, since he is an "oppositional figure," all of his life and his teachings aimed like a bolt of lightening square against "things as they are." Marx was not only a major philosopher and economist, he was also an organizer. He remains a giant, towering over his critics who have, since the publication of the Communist Manifesto, kept trying to dismiss his teachings. If Darwin forced us at great psyhic pain to realize we might be related to monkeys, he at least did not threaten "things as they are". Dawin informed society, he shocked it, but he did not seek to overturn it. Marx did.

Dialectics is the easier part and materialism more profound. Humanity has, since the birth of written history, sought answers to various questions, two of which concern us here - what causes social change and how does consciousness arise.

Dialectics deals with how things change, and for a Marxist it is a "material dialectic" because it relates to the material world, to who owns the means of production, and what the "mode" of production is. I don't find it hard to grasp. The material world dictates a great deal about human society. Human cultures are very different at the North Pole than in the Tropics. They are different along rivers and coasts than in the Sahara Desert. They are different from the material circumstances are different. When early humans (who were, in the time of prehistory, a rare species, not nearly as densely concentrated as we are now) began to farm, the religious figures were female and offerings were made to her, the giver of crops.

When those who remained nomads found they could get a good meal by raiding the farmers, the result was fences and walls - the beginning of the town and urban life. Out of the "dialectical conflict" of farmers and nomads came something entirely new - the walled village. If the "mode of production" was farming, that gave us one kind of society. If the society was more advanced - the Egyptians, for example - then, while the "mode of production" remained farming, the nature of society was determined by who controlled the means of production. Religious and legal institutions reflected the need to protect those "at the top." As we think of the Egyptians when we think of pyramids, it is also helpful to think of the pyramids when we think of society itself - a tiny thin layer at the top, with slightly larger layers of priests, technical experts and military figures just below, and then gradually as you go down the slopes to the bottom, you encounter the vast majority of people, the ones who actually do the work and yet remain "nameless" to historians, who have traditionally seen history as the stage upon which great men act their roles. Because those at the top controlled the means of production, they would survive even in times of famine. And they would be educated, though almost all others were illiterate. (In fairness, the amount of "surplus" value created was hardly enough to provide for all - but, for those who had won the battle over controlling that surplus, it did mean that a thin layer of society would be better off).

The term "dialectic" refers to three propositions - the "thesis," the "antithesis" and the "synthesis." It is not true that the thesis and antithesis are opposites - they are simply two very different things which, as they act on each other, produce something entirely new - the "synthesis." If you put a kettle of water on the stove and light the fire, the result of the interaction between the heat and the water is something quite different from either of them - steam. Or, to give an example of unexpected social change, when the British, in 1757, captured India from the French, they found it essential to train Indians in many of the routines of running a modernized "imperial" society - largely because not many English wanted to go and live in India with its stifling heat, and its combination of months of dust and months of monsoon. So the native population was trained in the English language, taught how to run a bureaucracy, to run trains, to fight wars, etc. In the course of this, the native population was brought into contact with all of the glories of English civilization - including its traditions of an elected Parliament, limited government, and human rights.

Inevitably those who, on a day to day basis, "ran India", found British rule to be in violation of what they had just been taught about Great Britain. They found it ironic that they, who not only did the factory and farm labor, but who also made "things work" in terms of banking, the courts, etc. were outcasts in their own land, forbidden to enter "European only" clubs and institutions. Thus, from the innocent effort of the British to train people to run what the British thought of as "their country", they had brought into being an educated and trained Indian elite which, under Mohandas Gandhi, was able to organize a movement powerful enough the throw the British out.

In Europe the factory system, designed to make production faster and cheaper, brought workers into contact with one another and led to the creation of trade unions - something which the factory owners had hardly intended! The "material dialectic" leads to endless change and, in Marx's view, would end with the working class seizing power, and thus ending the dialectic of class struggle. For Marx all of human history was one of class struggle in one form or another. (Remember the lines from the International: "Tis the final conflict, let each stand in his/her/their place, the International Party/Working Class/Soviet shall be/free the human race" - sorry for the confusion but I am giving the "alternate" versions people sing depending on their politics).

Materialism is in many ways a more revolutionary development. If anyone "killed God" I think the blame can best be laid at the door of Marx and Engels. Hindus held that all reality was an illusion (a view which is more or less confirmed by modern physics). Christians believed there was a God in Heaven, a Devil in Hell, and we were more or less trapped "here on Earth", waiting our death and transition to Heaven or Hell. Those who built the cathedrals may well have felt the God they could not see was more important - and real - than the stones with which they worked. We lived in a world buffeted by angels and spirits of one kind or another, with God keeping, always, his personal eye on each of us.

We had been taught that our "consciousness" had been given to us by God. But along comes Marx and says no, all that we are, all that we think and believe, is a reflection of the material world. As the world changes, so does our consciousness. The reason the Old Testament is less bloody in its later books is not because "God has changed" but because human society has changed and so the view of God has changed. The reason the Christian Gospels are so different in their view of God than the God of the Old Testament is, again, because we have changed - not God.

Marx erases God, the Devil, the host of angels, all creatures of superstition and fear. We are reflections of the world in which we grow up. (Part of the "material environment" which shapes us is that seemingly non-material framework of family, culture, class, sex, or race into which we are born - yet Marx says that these, too, have a material basis). To the old question of whether we owe more to genes or to environment, Marx would say "both are material aspects that shape us".

Marxism is clearly an atheist positon. Not agnostic. It is not "uncertain" about God, but emphatically clear that God is no more than a creation of human culture. No wonder Marxists found themselves involved not only in a struggle with the ruling class but with organized religion (which are, after all, at the service of the ruling class). But if materialism destroyed God, leaving us alone on the planet, at the mercy of storms and plagues and famines, without recourse to hope of rescue by spells and prayers, so it also meant that we could shape and change our future. If the material world shaped us and our culture, so, if we transformed the relationship with the means of production, or the mode of production, we would find we had changed the world itself.

Next two lessons - Marx and Class War and Marx and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.