socialism human nature essay

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Why Socialists Should Believe in Human Nature

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It's tempting to argue that "human nature" doesn't exist, but that's wrong. All people want freedom from abuse and exploitation and the ability to lead decent lives.

Gustave Deghilage / Flickr

Last year,  Jacobin published The ABCs of Socialism , designed to answer the most common and most important questions about the history and practice of socialist ideas.

To coincide with our second printing of the book, Jacobin  recently hosted a series of talks with ABCs contributors. You can buy a copy of the book for $5 here .

Here is an edited transcript of Adaner Usmani’ s remarks on whether human nature really exists and whether it is compatible with a socialist society. You can also listen to a podcast of his talk here .

Let’s set a scene. You’re with your extended family, and discussion meanders to an observation about you. Someone notes that, “Hey, on Facebook, it looks like you been going to protests — looks like you’ve been casting aspersions on capitalism, American imperialism, Ezra Klein. You’ve been using words like neoliberalism and reading Trotsky. It seems like you’re a socialist — maybe even be a commie?”

Someone at this gathering immediately responds to this revelation with disdain — maybe a cousin who overdosed on econ classes at college. This cousin turns to address you: “Socialism is all well and good on paper. Caring, sharing, all sounds great. But you’re preaching to the wrong species. Humans aren’t hippies. They’re selfish and care only about themselves — hence war, plunder, exploitation, violence. With the raw materials that are human beings, you’ll never build anything other than what we have today.”

When confronted with this objection, I’m guessing that most of us respond in roughly the same way — something like, “Look, cuz: the humans you know, they are monsters. Not only because you only hang out with douchebags, but also because you only know ‘capitalist man.’ Capitalist man sucks. But socialist man, on the other hand — he would be caring and compassionate.”

Finishing with a flourish, we’d probably say something like, “The bottom line is, there is no such thing as human nature .” Humans are made, they aren’t born.

In short, in response to the argument that humans are inherently competitive and selfish, you argued that in fact, there are no attributes or drives that adhere in humans. There is no such thing as a human nature. Let’s call this the “Blank Slate Thesis.”

The Blank Slate Thesis is wrong. It’s the wrong way to confront your cousin’s objection to socialism, and it’s the wrong way to defend the possibility of another type of society.

The Moral Problem

The Blank Slate Thesis leads socialists into three kinds of insoluble problems; three difficulties that reveal that most of us don’t even believe that there is no such thing as a human nature, even if we’ve made the opposite argument to stubborn cousins. There’s a moral difficulty, there’s an analytical difficulty, and there’s a political difficulty.

First, the moral difficulty. The thesis that humans have no inherent human nature makes our moral project incoherent.

By this, I mean one very simple thing. When you or I look at the world around us and find that something is amiss, that something immoral is afoot, we fixate on certain elemental forms of deprivation.

People are deprived of the basic things that they need in order to reproduce themselves comfortably. Many people in this world go to sleep hungry. They’re worried they may not survive their next pregnancy, their next illness, their next marriage. They’re worried that the oceans may rise to flood their home. They work meaningless jobs for petty tyrants. They can’t send their children to decent schools.

We agree that these things are terrible, they ought to be eliminated from our world. But you think these things are outrageous because you correctly believe that the people living in these conditions must themselves be outraged.

You believe that the average human being should not be forced to live impoverished, stunted lives because you impute to the average human being certain unshakeable interests — being fed when hungry, quenched when thirsty, free when dominated.

Consider the glorious socialist invocation, “Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains.” That’s a universal injunction. And why is that compelling? Because we all know that nobody likes being in chains.

The slogan is not, “Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains. Unless, in some cultures, people like being in chains, in which case, we demand that those people be allowed to keep their chains.”

This belief that these universal interests exist is rooted in a belief that humans universally are everywhere basically the same. You believe that people are meaningfully animated by their human nature whatever the influence of culture or history on them.

The Analytical Problem

So that’s the first point. Our moral projects are normative projects that require a commitment to some model of what human beings demand everywhere by virtue of their very nature.

Second, an analytical point. If humans were blank slates, it would be very difficult to make much sense of the laws of motion of human societies. It would lead to an analytical impasse.

As Vivek Chibber recently argued , socialists fixate on class because class analysis holds diagnostic and prognostic insight. Both of these claims are versions of a more general claim that socialists make about human history, which is referred to as “historical materialism.”

The claim is that given certain information about how the total pie in any given society is produced — about who does the producing, who does the appropriating, who owns, who rents, who works — we can make certain inferences about who has power and who is powerless, about who will do well for themselves and who will do poorly.

We can say something intelligent, in other words, about the rhythms of economic life in that society, about the character of political conflict that might emerge, and even about the nature of ideas or ideologies that agents in that society will find compelling.

What’s relevant for our purposes is that it is impossible to make this argument without being committed to some stable expectations about what humans are like across time and across space. At its essence, historical materialism is a set of claims about how an abstract human is likely to behave when she finds herself with or without certain resources and arrayed against other humans who are similarly or differently positioned.

If you take out the anchoring model of what humans are like in the abstract, if you reject any and all claims about human nature, the whole edifice comes crashing down. You lose the ability then to make sense of these core questions.

Anyone who wants to change society has to ask: why are some people poor? Why are other people rich? Why are some people powerful? Are other people powerless? How do we counter the power of the powerful? If you take out the anchoring model, human societies become nothing more than a blooming, buzzing, confusion of an infinite number of hierarchies, roles, ideas, beliefs, and rituals, etc.

People on the Left are very fond (and rightly so) of quoting thesis eleven from Marx’s “ Theses on Feuerbach ”: “Philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it.” Thesis ten-and-three-quarters is definitely, “If you want to change the world, you have to make sense of it first.” The Blank Slate Thesis makes that impossible.

The Political Problem

So we’ve had a moral problem, and we’ve had an analytical problem. The third problem is a political problem: the Blank Slate Thesis leads to ruinous political analysis. It makes it very difficult for socialists to apprehend the tasks ahead of us in a non-socialist world. It leads to bad diagnoses and bad strategy.

What do I mean by this? Why would our position on human nature bear on our ability to win people to our politics? Let’s start with some sobering reminders first. We live in a society in which our politics are not mainstream.

It’s not a surprise. The enormous growth of socialist groups after Bernie Sanders, the widespread support for something like socialism among a younger generation at the polls — I don’t want to deny any of that.

But at the same time, we cannot forget that we’re still small, we’re still weak, and we’re still operating on the margins of this society.

When a small, weak, and marginal group looks out from its minoritarian vantage point onto society, there are two ways in which it tends to make sense of its own marginality. The first one is to believe that people aren’t signing up because they fail to see what we see. They don’t get it.

On the Left, enormous energy goes into these kinds of explanations. People aren’t with us because they aren’t woke. And why aren’t they woke? Because they’re bigoted, they’re stupid, they’re ignorant, they’re sexist, they’re racist, they’re nationalist, they’re xenophobes, and on and on.

That’s one way to make sense of why people don’t get it. And if I convince you of nothing else, please let me convince you that this is the wrong way.

The correct way, the better way, to make sense of our marginality is to invert this view — to flip it on its head entirely. We are few and they are not with us, not because they’ve failed to understand what we see, but because we’ve failed to understand what they have seen. We have failed to put ourselves in their shoes and take a walk through the world as they’ve experienced it.

What do I mean by this? Let’s take the enormous orange-haired elephant in the room . How are we to understand a white worker in West Virginia voting for a billionaire windbag? Or how 53 percent of white women could vote for the same man? Good answers to these sorts of political questions are distinguished from bad answers by one simple fact: they take seriously what it means to have lived the life of the person whose actions or beliefs you’re trying to explain.

In other words, a good political answer is one which puts you in the shoes of the person you’re trying to account for.

What does it mean to put yourself in their shoes? This is the critical point. It means remembering that a Trump voter is a human being animated by the same kinds of interests that animate you. She cares about her livelihood, her dignity, her autonomy, her family in much the same way that you do.

Your explanation and practice, in other words, should pass a simple litmus test: could it explain why I would have voted Trump, had I been born her?

If we fail to do this, we will find the tasks ahead of us impossible. Organizing is not really the task of preaching to the woke, but in large part, the task of awakening the not-yet-woke.

But if you can’t put yourself in their shoes, you will invariably find yourself talking down to them. Rather than meeting them where they are at, you will find yourself livid that they are not yet where you are. And that will lead to a lot of vigorous, condescending, and elitist finger-wagging.

So this is the third problem, the political problem: the Blank Slate Thesis encourages you to forget that people are always meaningfully animated by certain unshakeable concerns. If we’re going to win people to our side, we have to take these concerns seriously. We have to take their human nature seriously.

Human Nature in Capitalism

If you commit to the Blank Slate Thesis, as a socialist you face three kinds of problems. A moral problem, an analytical problem, and a political problem. So don’t do it. Don’t let your friends do it and don’t do it yourself.

But so far I haven’t made an argument on how to respond to our annoying cousin — just how not to respond. In fact, I’ve conceded that our cousin, our family free-marketeer, is right on two points. He’s right to argue that there’s a universal human nature, and he’s right to note that this means that people everywhere care about themselves and the interests of their loved ones.

Given these concessions to his argument, what distinguishes us as socialists from him? How should socialists respond? How do we defend the idea of a new society different from this one — a society in which people aren’t just out to maximize returns to themselves, a society which takes care of the weak, the vulnerable, the unfortunate?

To defend this vision against his, we have to make two clarifying arguments — one about this thing that we’re calling “human nature,” and one about how it expresses itself in social life.

The major mistake made by our family free-marketeer is that he paints a flat, simplistic portrait of what human nature entails. So of course he’s partly correct. Humans everywhere care about themselves. They care about having enough to eat, they want to be cared for when sick, they care about having a roof over our heads. We also care deeply about certain intangibles. Our autonomy, our dignity, and maybe even some unsavory things about ourselves — what people think of us, our standing in the eyes of our peers.

But our antagonist’s view of human nature is one in which we care only about these things, in which we only care about maximizing returns from the world to ourselves.

This is the bourgeois view. The abstract human is basically like a two-year-old on an airplane. Nobody else matters. And if this were true, our project would be doomed. Out of toddlers on an airplane, I think you’d probably be able to build a world of an Ayn Rand novel, but you wouldn’t be able to build socialism.

But the bourgeois view is only partly correct. Humans are capable of many things other than simple selfishness. We’re capable of caring for others, we’re capable of empathy and compassion, we have the capacity to distinguish fairness from unfairness, and the capacity to hold ourselves to those standards.

The bourgeois view inflates our selfish drives and ignores these other qualities. Socialists do not have to do the same. Human nature is not infinitely plastic. Its contain a variety of drives and capacities — some inner demons and some better angels, to quote Steven Pinker.

Here’s the second point. Notice what our antagonist’s argument entailed: that whatever the character of the society in which humans find themselves, their underlying selfishness, their underlying competitiveness, is going to eat away at social structures until those social structures have been rendered irrelevant or totally transformed. Biology overpowers society.

In response, it is tempting to argue that human nature does not matter at all. But this is wrong, for the three reasons already outlined. So what should we say, in response? We should argue that human nature is always relevant, but never decisive.

Think about the way in which society is organized. What do people have to do to reproduce themselves? What do they have to do to other people in order to reproduce themselves? These facts exercise selectional pressures on the set of drives that constitute our human nature. The socialist wager, in a sentence, is that a better society would encourage our better tendencies.

This is not to argue that the other aspects of our nature can ever be ignored. A better society will no doubt have to respect certain limits. It will have to satisfy our needs. It will have to grant us our desires for freedom, for autonomy, our need to be respected. Socialism will most definitely fail if it requires us to be altruistic or saints, because the vast majority of people are not built to be either of those things.

Whatever else socialism might mean, it cannot mean a society in which people are called upon to systemically sacrifice themselves for some ideal, be it the fatherland, the working class, the world revolution, the supreme leader. That road leads straight to Pyongyang.

However, a society which caters to everyone’s universal needs, which helps everyone flourish — this is a society that would encourage and nurture the good that lies inside all of us.

It is true in some important sense that our free-marketeer cousin knows only capitalist men and women. Socialist men and women would be different. They would still care about themselves and their needs, but a better society would also encourage them to take seriously the interests and needs of others.

Human Nature in Socialism

How would it do this? We can only speculate, of course. But I can think of two ways. First, a society which meets everyone’s needs is a society in which there would be less to quarrel about. Less reason for aggression, less reason for violence, less reason for predation. Compare the person you are when you’re sharing a box of cookies with your brother or sister, to the person you are when you’re sharing one cookie.

The second point is that socialism would also be a much more egalitarian society. People would be each other’s equals — not subordinates or superiors.

I’m sure many of you have heard of the Stanford prison experiment , which illustrated that hierarchies can make monsters out of ordinary humans. Well, the absence of these hierarchies should make it easier to bid farewell to the monsters inside us.

In a more developed, and more egalitarian society, better humans will flourish. Socialists one, libertarian cousin zero.

You have perhaps been tempted in the past to make the argument that there is no such thing as a human nature. That temptation is understandable — I’ve been there. But it’s wrong for three reasons: a moral reason, for an analytical reason, and for a political reason.

Socialists do believe — we must believe — that there is something called human nature. In fact, I believe that you believe it, whether or not you believe that you believe it. But we make two arguments that distinguish us from our bourgeois antagonists.

First, human nature comprises not just an interest in ourselves, but also compassion, empathy, capacity for reflection, capacity to be moral. And second, the way in which society is organized can amplify these drives and downplay others.

All this means that another world is definitely possible. Don’t let the fools get you down and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

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Common Humanity (Socialism)

Last updated 29 Jun 2020

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Socialism is built around the assumption that man is a social animal. As such, we seek to realise our goals on a collective basis and thereby co-operate with others to serve the common good .

The socialist stance on human nature differs sharply to all other ideologies. As previously mentioned, human nature can be improved by the overhaul or reform of capitalism. Our behaviour is moulded by societal forces (particularly the economic system) and capitalism cannot facilitate the best of human nature. It is therefore imperative that we replace an unethical, amoral and ‘dog eat dog’ system with a more socially equitable alternative. In doing so, socialism rejects the conservative argument that human nature is immutable and cannot be altered.

Socialism is built around the assumption that man is a social animal. As such, we seek to realise our goals on a collective basis and thereby co-operate with others to serve the common good . All socialists agree that industries should be owned or regulated by the state in order to serve the broader public interest. As such, the socialist position on the role of the state inevitably follows from their perspective on human nature and the importance of community.

Socialists also believe that each of us is of equal worth and opportunities should be spread as widely as possible. This may be achieved via an evolutionary style of politics or a full-blown revolution led by the disaffected. The dependent factor is the strand of socialism in question – an area considered in appropriate detail later. In addition, there is also no natural order or hierarchy. Inequality within a capitalist society is used to justify the way things are, but these are merely as transient as any other social construct. Socialists dare to dream of a better world based upon egalitarianism, fraternity and equality. This has long been part of its appeal and a source of criticism.

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Human Nature in Socialist View Since 1800 Essay

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In this paper, two projects from different epochs will be analyzed to comprehend if there are some changes in the socialistic understanding of human nature. The work by Robert Owen, “Lectures on the Rational System of Society”, is written in the middle of the 19 th century. “Socialism and Human Nature” is created by Arnold Peterson in the middle of the 20 th century. Both authors succeed in presenting their own arguments about how they see socialism and what its impact on human nature is. The creation of a practical system in society helps to provide every human being with happiness through all succeeding generations (Owen 1841).

Owen (1841) underlines the necessity of change and the establishment of a new era and argues that human nature is a “compound of animal propensities, intellectual faculties, and moral qualities, or the germs of them” (p. 48). He tries to explain that one day a person can see how mistakenly the idea to respect human nature can be. At the same time, he offers to clarify what can make a person blind at the moment and introduces religion as one of those evils that confuse people and increase their miseries.

If Owen saw socialism as a kind of salvation for human nature and the possibility to promote a change that could make people happy, Peterson argues that socialism is incompatible with human nature (2005), it is against human nature, and people should realize that this beautiful dream cannot be taken for granted. Human despair is the reason why socialism has already gained so much power over people. People want to believe that they may control socialism as the ideology they have already established. Collective and governmental production can be used to meet the needs of people. However, people cannot be sure if they use the sources properly without hurting human nature.

Both authors create their works to demonstrate their attitudes to socialism and the importance of changes. Though the authors introduce different opinions, both of them help to realize that people cannot stop living in a mess they create day by day. Owen says that socialism is the answer to the question of how people can improve their lives, and Peterson wants to believe that socialism is the kind of hope people should be provided with. These two projects help to realize that socialist understanding of human nature has been changed considerably between the 19 th century and the present times because people start doubting the quality of socialism and its possible positive impact on human nature.

Devoted socialists believed that classless society could be happy and successful. The social vision of the chosen texts is the governmental control of all activities and decisions made. The government should help to eliminate the competitions that could take place between people and provide all people with the same opportunities. However, the works of Owen and Peterson show that different epochs have different understandings of human nature and its importance.

At the end of the 20 th century and even today, people continue living in an industrial society that requires the required forms of government and administration. At the same time, Peterson (2005) follows the idea that people should try to maintain freedom and order. People should never lose their hope to become better and satisfied with the conditions they have to live and work under “while a spark of the light of reason and of the flames of liberty still remain – while hearts still pulsate, and hands remain capable of grasping and holding aloft the torch of truth and freedom (Peterson 2005). Nowadays, many socialists view human nature as an economically dependent body that is in need of changes and improvements.

Still, Peterson, as well as many current representatives of socialism, believes that it is possible to provide every person with a national living wage, free higher education, and strong environmental and racial-justice policies (Purdy 2015). Peterson considers the opinions of different socialists and their opinions on how it is possible to keep human nature safe. He does not want to support either some radical changes or even gentle reforms.

His position seems like it is ok to continue keeping the status quo and discussing how the past and the present can be interrelated and influence the future. This project seems to be a logical interpretation of the ideas with the help of which the reader can understand that human nature serves as the best explanation of the majority of actions. If people make mistakes, they say that it is human nature to make mistakes. If a woman cannot achieve the required goal and protect her rights, she can say that it is her human nature.

Though Owen’s ideas do not actually contradict the opinion that is introduced by Peterson, it is possible to say the Owen is more confident in his words and suggestions. His intentions may be explained by the fact that he was a kind of socialist pioneer in Britain, and his experiments had to be confident and certain to attract the attention of other people (Simeon 2012). His idea that human nature is the combination of animal propensities seems to be a powerful contribution that makes people believe that it is not enough to keep the status quo or promotes some gentle reforms. Radical changes and the creation of a new society is the solution offered by Owen because humans nature is not fixed yet but malleable (Roberts & Sutch 2012).

People should not despair and continue changing something in their lives. As well as Peterson, Owen stays logic in his interpretations and underlines the power of thought and explanation in all ideas and suggestions.

Nowadays, many opinions about the role of socialist and the understandings of human nature are developed by the representatives of socialism. Sometimes, the association of socialism with social justice confuses people and makes them come to not always appropriate conclusions (Kabbany 2016). Peterson seems to be a more successful analyzer of socialism and its understandings of human nature. He considers the historical examples like slavery can prove that socialism is usually against human nature.

As for Owen, the Industrial Revolution can be used as the historical evidence of his ideas because it caused the development of divisions between people and the inabilities to comprehend what changes were really important. Owen tries to provide employees with equal rights and opportunities. His focus on human nature as something that can be changed in particular is powerful indeed. It is easy to find the successful implications of this argument, even in the work of Peterson.

Peterson is more convincing than Owen because he relies on his personal experience and finds support in the theories of Marx and Owen. He spreads a kind of new light on the socialist understanding of human nature, offers to combine hope and rationale to introduce human nature as the cooperation people can develop in order to survive, and proves that socialist understanding of human nature in the 20 th century differs considerably from the one given in the 19 th century because of the power of society on a person.

Reference List

Kabbany, J 2016, ‘ Socialism-loving professors and their ignorance ’, National Review . Web.

Owen, R 1841, Lectures on the rational system of society, derived solely from nature and experience , The Home Colonization Society, London.

Peterson, A 2005, Socialism and human nature . Web.

Purdy, J 2015, ‘ Bernie Sanders’s new deal socialism ’, The New Yorker . Web.

Roberts, P & Sutch, P 2012, An introduction to political thought: a conceptual toolkit , Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh.

Simeon, O 2012, ‘ Robert Owen: the father of British socialism? ’, Books and Ideas . Web.

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IvyPanda. (2020, September 8). Human Nature in Socialist View Since 1800. https://ivypanda.com/essays/human-nature-in-socialist-view-since-1800/

"Human Nature in Socialist View Since 1800." IvyPanda , 8 Sept. 2020, ivypanda.com/essays/human-nature-in-socialist-view-since-1800/.

IvyPanda . (2020) 'Human Nature in Socialist View Since 1800'. 8 September.

IvyPanda . 2020. "Human Nature in Socialist View Since 1800." September 8, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/human-nature-in-socialist-view-since-1800/.

1. IvyPanda . "Human Nature in Socialist View Since 1800." September 8, 2020. https://ivypanda.com/essays/human-nature-in-socialist-view-since-1800/.

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Human nature and Socialism

It seems that everyone is an expert on human nature, right? Especially politicians, who often make remarks about the general nature of humans. Why, everyone knows that humans are an inherently greedy, selfish, violent, nasty species. I mean, what could be more obvious?

This conventional wisdom is both wrong and unscientific. There has been a lot of debate over the years, for instance the Nature vs Nurture debate, but it seems that the public at large remain ill informed. The public’s judgement is of course affected by the unchallenged remarks of people in positions of power. We not only do ourselves a great injustice by condemning our fellow humans in this bigoted way. we also place ourselves and our collective future in great danger. That such views should be widespread amongst all sections of the population is a striking commentary on the education most people receive.

It is worth noting that when people make the scathing remarks concerning our nature they often conveniently exclude themselves and their friends. Actually, when most people talk about human nature, they are referring to human behaviour—two different concepts.

Human nature implies a built-in, inherent attribute, and we do have these. For instance, the urge to satisfy human needs such as food, clothing, and shelter. Human behaviour, on the other hand, includes learnt or acquired behaviour. The fact is that we are a social animal and that our behaviour is virtually all learned behaviour.

One to two million years ago, human beings emerged as a species from an ape like creature, and for at least the last 100,000 years we have had basically the same bodily form. The thing that ensured our survival was and is co-operation and this has been a constant indispensable feature of human society. Unlike other animals we long ago dispensed with adapting ourselves biologically to the environment, but instead we adapt the environment to ourselves. For hundreds of thousands of years we lived in primitive hunter-gatherer societies of tribal communities. One of the outstanding features of these communities was the ability of their members to co-operate and live in harmony for their own mutual benefit. If they had the behavioural attributes that we now so glibly condemn in ourselves, human beings would have perished forever millions of years ago.

The main things that people are born to do are to eat, drink, keep warm, imitate, copulate and learn. The relations they enter into with each other at a given time to accomplish these ends set the pattern for the social outlook and the social code. In the course of history humanity has moved from relative simplicity in the social arrangements in isolated communities into a world of large interconnected industrial ‘complexes. What people think and how they act is not due to some fundamental instinct, but is the result of customs, regulations and inhibitions that spring from the social environment in which people of past history have had to solve the problem of living. In other words, that people are able to think and act is a fact of biological and social development, but how they think and act is a result of social conditions. Since private property came into existence some 10,000 years ago. the pursuit of property has bred murder, cruelty, fraud, enmity and other anti-social behaviour.

There has been little discernible change in the fundamental make-up of humans, yet there have been considerable changes in social conditions. For example, stealing today is looked on as a criminal act whereas hunter-gatherer societies did not have any concept of stealing because there was no private property.

As to the assumption of selfishness, there are thousands of people who give selfless devotion in all manner of voluntary effort. There is co-operation going on all around us if you care to look, despite the competitive, one-upmanship, law-of-the-jungle philosophy which is rammed down our throats. It comes as a surprise that, despite the enormous inhuman stresses that are placed upon people by the society we live in, there are not more murders, rapes and crimes in general. The selfish, cruel, anti-social conduct that is laid at the door of human nature is really only the outcome of systems based on private property, which compel people to engage in predatory conduct in order to survive.

We cannot afford to let an erroneous view of ourselves as human beings prevail. There is absolutely no reason why we cannot live in peace and harmony. That this will mean that we must make a fundamental change in our system of society is something we will come to when we know about ourselves as humans.

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Karl Marx (1818–1883) is often treated as a revolutionary, an activist rather than a philosopher, whose works inspired the foundation of many communist regimes in the twentieth century. It is certainly hard to find many thinkers who can be said to have had comparable influence in the creation of the modern world. However, Marx was trained as a philosopher, and although often portrayed as moving away from philosophy in his mid-twenties—perhaps towards history and the social sciences—there are many points of contact with modern philosophical debates throughout his writings.

The themes picked out here include Marx’s philosophical anthropology, his theory of history, his economic analysis, his critical engagement with contemporary capitalist society (raising issues about morality, ideology, and politics), and his prediction of a communist future.

Marx’s early writings are dominated by an understanding of alienation, a distinct type of social ill whose diagnosis looks to rest on a controversial account of human nature and its flourishing. He subsequently developed an influential theory of history—often called historical materialism—centred around the idea that forms of society rise and fall as they further and then impede the development of human productive power. Marx increasingly became preoccupied with an attempt to understand the contemporary capitalist mode of production, as driven by a remorseless pursuit of profit, whose origins are found in the extraction of surplus value from the exploited proletariat. The precise role of morality and moral criticism in Marx’s critique of contemporary capitalist society is much discussed, and there is no settled scholarly consensus on these issues. His understanding of morality may be related to his account of ideology, and his reflection on the extent to which certain widely-shared misunderstandings might help explain the stability of class-divided societies. In the context of his radical journalism, Marx also developed his controversial account of the character and role of the modern state, and more generally of the relation between political and economic life. Marx sees the historical process as proceeding through a series of modes of production, characterised by (more or less explicit) class struggle, and driving humankind towards communism. However, Marx is famously reluctant to say much about the detailed arrangements of the communist alternative that he sought to bring into being, arguing that it would arise through historical processes, and was not the realisation of a pre-determined plan or blueprint.

1.1 Early Years

1.3 brussels, 2.1 the basic idea, 2.2 religion and work, 2.3 alienation and capitalism, 2.4 political emancipation, 2.5 remaining questions, 3.1 sources, 3.2 early formulations, 3.3 1859 preface, 3.4 functional explanation, 3.5 rationality, 3.6 alternative interpretations, 4.1 reading capital, 4.2 labour theory of value, 4.3 exploitation, 5.1 unpacking issues, 5.2 the “injustice” of capitalism, 5.3 communism and “justice”, 6.1 a critical account, 6.2 ideology and stability, 6.3 characteristics, 7.1 the state in capitalist society, 7.2. the fate of the state in communist society, 8.1 utopian socialism, 8.2 marx’s utopophobia, 9. marx’s legacy, primary literature, secondary literature, other internet resources, related entries, 1. life and writings.

Karl Marx was born in 1818, one of nine children. The family lived in the Rhineland region of Prussia, previously under French rule. Both of his parents came from Jewish families with distinguished rabbinical lineages. Marx’s father was a lawyer who converted to Christianity when it became necessary for him to do so if he was to continue his legal career.

Following an unexceptional school career, Marx studied law and philosophy at the universities of Bonn and Berlin. His doctoral thesis was in ancient philosophy, comparing the philosophies of nature of Democritus (c.460–370 BCE) and Epicurus (341–270 BCE). From early 1842, he embarked on a career as a radical journalist, contributing to, and then editing, the Rheinische Zeitung , until the paper was closed by the Prussian authorities in April 1843.

Marx married Jenny von Westphalen (1814–1881), his childhood sweetheart, in June 1843. They would spend their lives together and have seven children, of whom just three daughters—Jenny (1844–1883), Laura (1845–1911), and Eleanor (1855–1898)—survived to adulthood. Marx is also widely thought to have fathered a child—Frederick Demuth (1851–1929)—with Helene Demuth (1820–1890), housekeeper and friend of the Marx family.

Marx’s adult life combined independent scholarship, political activity, and financial insecurity, in fluctuating proportions. Political conditions were such, that, in order to associate and write as he wished, he had to live outside of Germany for most of this time. Marx spent three successive periods of exile in the capital cities of France, Belgium, and England.

Between late 1843 and early 1845, Marx lived in Paris, a cosmopolitan city full of émigrés and radical artisans. He was subsequently expelled by the French government following Prussian pressure. In his last months in Germany and during this Paris exile, Marx produced a series of “early writings”, many not intended for publication, which significantly altered interpretations of his thought when they were published collectively in the twentieth century. Papers that actually saw publication during this period include: “On the Jewish Question” (1843) in which Marx defends Jewish Emancipation against Bruno Bauer (1809–1882), but also emphasises the limitations of “political” as against “human” emancipation; and the “Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction” (1844) which contains a critical account of religion, together with some prescient remarks about the emancipatory potential of the proletariat. The most significant works that Marx wrote for self-clarification rather than publication in his Paris years are the so-called “1844 Manuscripts” (1844) which provide a suggestive account of alienation, especially of alienation in work; and the “Theses on Feuerbach” (1845), a set of epigrammatic but rich remarks including reflections on the nature of philosophy.

Between early 1845 and early 1848, Marx lived in Brussels, the capital of a rapidly industrialising Belgium. A condition of his residency was to refrain from publishing on contemporary politics, and he was eventually expelled after political demonstrations involving foreign nationals took place. In Brussels Marx published The Holy Family (1845), which includes contributions from his new friend and close collaborator Friedrich Engels (1820–1895), continuing the attack on Bruno Bauer and his followers. Marx also worked, with Engels, on a series of manuscripts now usually known as The German Ideology (1845–46), a substantial section of which criticises the work of Max Stirner (1806–1856). Marx also wrote and published The Poverty of Philosophy (1847) which disparages the social theory of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865). All these publications characteristically show Marx developing and promoting his own views through fierce critical attacks on contemporaries, often better-known and more established than himself.

Marx was politically active throughout his adult life, although the events of 1848—during which time he returned to Paris and Cologne—inspired the first of two periods of especially intense activity. Two important texts here are The Communist Manifesto (1848) which Marx and Engels published just before the February Revolution, and, following his move to London, The Class Struggles in France (1850) in which Marx examined the subsequent failure of 1848 in France. Between these two dates, Marx commented on, and intervened in, the revolution in Germany through the Neue Rheinische Zeitung (1848–49), the paper he helped to establish and edit in Cologne.

For well over half of his adult life—from late 1849 until his death in 1883—Marx lived in London, a city providing a secure haven for political exiles and a superb vantage point from which to study the world’s most advanced capitalist economy. This third and longest exile was dominated by an intellectual and personal struggle to complete his critique of political economy, but his theoretical output extended far beyond that project.

Marx’s initial attempt to make sense of Napoleon III’s rise to power in contemporary France is contained in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852). Between 1852 and 1862 Marx also wrote well over three hundred articles for the New York Daily Tribune ; sometimes unfairly disparaged as merely income-generating journalism, they frequently contain illuminating attempts to explain contemporary European society and politics (including European interventions in India and China) to an American audience (helpfully) presumed to know little about them.

The second of Marx’s two especially intense periods of political activity—after the revolutions of 1848—centred on his involvement in the International Working Men’s Association between 1864 and 1874, and the events of the Paris Commune (1871), in particular. The character and lessons of the Commune—the short-lived, and violently suppressed, municipal rebellion that controlled Paris for several months in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian war—are discussed in The Civil War in France (1871). Also politically important was Marx’s “Critique of the Gotha Programme” (1875), in which he criticises the theoretical influence of Ferdinand Lassalle (1825–1864) on the German labour movement, and portrays the higher stage of a future communist society as endorsing distribution according to “the needs principle”.

Marx’s critique of political economy remains controversial. He never succeeded in fixing and realising the wider project that he envisaged. Volume One of Capital , published in 1867, was the only significant part of the project published in his own lifetime, and even here he was unable to resist heavily reworking subsequent editions (especially the French version of 1872–75). What we now know as Volume Two and Volume Three of Capital were put together from Marx’s raw materials by Engels and published in 1885 and 1894, respectively, and Marx’s own drafts were written before the publication of Volume One and barely touched by him in the remaining fifteen years of his life. An additional three supplementary volumes planned by Engels, and subsequently called Theories of Surplus Value (or, more colloquially, the “fourth volume of Capital ”) were assembled from remaining notes by Karl Kautsky (1854–1938), and published between 1905 and 1910. (The section of the “new MEGA”—see below—concerned with Capital -related texts contains fifteen thick volumes, and provides some sense of the extent and character of these later editorial interventions.) In addition, the publication in 1953—a previous two-volume edition (1939 and 1941) had only a highly restricted circulation—of the so-called Grundrisse (written in 1857–58) was also important. Whether this text is treated as a freestanding work or as a preparatory step towards Capital, it raises many questions about Marx’s method, his relation to G.W.F. Hegel (1770–1831), and the evolution of Marx’s thought. In contrast, the work of political economy that Marx did publish in this period— A Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy (1859)—was largely ignored by both contemporaries and later commentators, except for the, much reprinted and discussed, summary sketch of his theory of history that Marx offered in the so-called “1859 Preface” to that volume.

Marx’s later years (after the Paris Commune) are the subject of much interpretative disagreement. His inability to deliver the later volumes of Capital is often seen as emblematic of a wider and more systematic intellectual failure (Stedman Jones 2016). However, others have stressed Marx’s continued intellectual creativity in this period, as he variously rethought his views about: the core and periphery of the international economic system; the scope of his theory of history; social anthropology; and the economic and political evolution of Russia (Shanin 1983; K. Anderson 2010).

After the death of his wife, in 1881, Marx’s life was dominated by illness, and travel aimed at improving his health (convalescent destinations including the Isle of Wight, Karlsbad, Jersey, and Algiers). Marx died in March 1883, two months after the death of his eldest daughter. His estate was valued at £250.

Engels’s wider role in the evolution of, and, more especially the reception and interpretation of, Marx’s work is much disputed. The truth here is complex, and Engels is not always well-treated in the literature. Marx and Engels are sometimes portrayed as if they were a single entity, of one mind on all matters, whose individual views on any topic can be found simply by consulting the other. Others present Engels as the distorter and manipulator of Marx’s thought, responsible for any element of Marxian theory with which the relevant commentator might disagree. Despite their familiarity, neither caricature seems plausible or fair. The best-known jointly authored texts are The Holy Family , the “German Ideology” manuscripts, and The Communist Manifesto , but there are nearly two hundred shorter items that they both contributed to (Draper 1985: 2–19).

Many of Marx’s best-known writings remained unpublished before his death. The attempt to establish a reliable collected edition has proved lengthy and fraught. The authoritative Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe , the so-called “new MEGA” (1975–), is still a work in progress, begun under Soviet auspices but since 1990 under the guidance of the “International Marx-Engels Stiftung” (IMES). In its current form—much scaled-down from its original ambitions—the edition will contain some 114 volumes (well over a half of which are published at the time of writing). In addition to his various published and unpublished works, it includes Marx’s journalism, correspondence, drafts, and (some) notebooks. Texts are published in their original language (variously German, English, and French). For those needing to utilise English-language resources, the fifty volume Marx Engels Collected Works (1975–2004) can be recommended. (References to Marx and Engels quotations here are to these MECW volumes.) There are also several useful single volume selections of Marx and Engels writings in English (including Marx 2000).

2. Alienation and Human Flourishing

Alienation is a concept especially, but not uniquely, associated with Marx’s work, and the intellectual tradition that he helped found. It identifies a distinct kind of social ill, involving a separation between a subject and an object that properly belong together. The subject here is typically an individual or a group, while the object is usually an “entity” which variously is not itself a subject, is another subject(s), or is the original subject (that is, the relation here can be reflexive). And the relation between the relevant subject and object is one of problematic separation. Both elements of that characterisation are important. Not all social ills, of course, involve separations; for instance, being overly integrated into some object might be dysfunctional, but it is not characteristic of alienation. Moreover, not all separations are problematic, and accounts of alienation typically appeal to some baseline unity or harmony that is frustrated or violated by the separation in question.

Theories of alienation vary considerably, but frequently: first, identify a subset of these problematic separations as being of particular importance; second, include an account (sometimes implicit) of what makes the relevant separations problematic; and, third, propound some explanatory claims about the extent of, and prognosis for, alienation, so understood.

Marx’s ideas concerning alienation were greatly influenced by the critical writings on religion of Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872), and especially his The Essence of Christianity (1841). One key text in this respect is Marx’s “Contribution of Hegel’s Critique of Right: Introduction” (1843). This work is home to Marx’s notorious remark that religion is the “opium of the people,” a harmful, illusion-generating painkiller ( MECW 3: 175). It is here that Marx sets out his account of religion in most detail.

While traditional Christian theology asserts that God created man in God’s own image, Marx fully accepted Feuerbach’s inversion of this picture, proposing that human beings had invented God in their own image; indeed a view that long pre-dated Feuerbach. Feuerbach’s distinctive contribution was to argue that worshipping God diverted human beings from enjoying their own human powers. In their imagination humans raise their own powers to an infinite level and project them on to an abstract object. Hence religion is a form of alienation, for it separates human beings from their “species essence.” Marx accepted much of Feuerbach’s account but argues that Feuerbach failed to understand why people fall into religious alienation, and so is unable to explain how it can be transcended. Feuerbach’s view appears to be that belief in religion is purely an intellectual error and can be corrected by persuasion. Marx’s explanation is that religion is a response to alienation in material life, and therefore cannot be removed until human material life is emancipated, at which point religion will wither away.

Precisely what it is about material life that creates religion is not set out with complete clarity. However, it seems that at least two aspects of alienation are responsible. One is alienated labour, which will be explored shortly. A second is the need for human beings to assert their communal essence. Whether or not we explicitly recognise it, human beings exist as a community, and what makes human life possible is our mutual dependence on the vast network of social and economic relations which engulf us all, even though this is rarely acknowledged in our day-to-day life. Marx’s view appears to be that we must, somehow or other, acknowledge our communal existence in our institutions. At first it is “deviously acknowledged” by religion, which creates a false idea of a community in which we are all equal in the eyes of God. After the post-Reformation fragmentation of religion, where religion is no longer able to play the role even of a fake community of equals, the modern state fills this need by offering us the illusion of a community of citizens, all equal in the eyes of the law. Interestingly, the political or liberal state, which is needed to manage the politics of religious diversity, takes on the role offered by religion in earlier times of providing a form of illusory community. But the political state and religion will both be transcended when a genuine community of social and economic equals is created.

Although Marx was greatly inspired by thinking about religious alienation, much more of his attention was devoted to exploring alienation in work. In a much-discussed passage from the 1844 Manuscripts , Marx identifies four dimensions of alienated labour in contemporary capitalist society ( MECW 3: 270–282). First, immediate producers are separated from the product of their labour; they create a product that they neither own nor control, indeed, which comes to dominate them. (Note that this idea of “fetishism”—where human creations escape our control, achieve the appearance of independence, and come to oppress us—is not to be equated with alienation as such, but is rather one form that it can take.) Second, immediate producers are separated from their productive activity; in particular, they are forced to work in ways which are mentally and/or physically debilitating. Third, immediate producers are separated from other individuals; contemporary economic relations socialise individuals to view others as merely means to their own particular ends. Fourth, and finally, immediate producers are separated from their own human nature; for instance, the human capacities for community and for free, conscious, and creative, work, are both frustrated by contemporary capitalist relations.

Note that these claims about alienation are distinct from other, perhaps more familiar, complaints about work in capitalist society. For instance, alienated labour, as understood here, could be—even if it is often not—highly remunerated, limited in duration, and relatively secure.

Marx holds that work has the potential to be something creative and fulfilling. He consequently rejects the view of work as a necessary evil, denying that the negative character of work is part of our fate, a universal fact about the human condition that no amount of social change could remedy. Indeed, productive activity, on Marx’s account, is a central element in what it is to be a human being, and self-realisation through work is a vital component of human flourishing. That he thinks that work—in a different form of society—could be creative and fulfilling, perhaps explains the intensity and scale of Marx’s condemnation of contemporary economic arrangements and their transformation of workers into deformed and “dehumanised” beings ( MECW 3: 284).

It was suggested above that alienation consists of dysfunctional separations—separations between entities that properly belong together—and that theories of alienation typically presuppose some baseline condition whose frustration or violation by the relevant separation identifies the latter as dysfunctional. For Marx, that baseline seems to be provided by an account of human flourishing, which he conceptualises in terms of self-realisation (understood here as the development and deployment of our essential human capacities). Labour in capitalism, we can say, is alienated because it embodies separations preventing the self-realisation of producers; because it is organised in a way that frustrates the human need for free, conscious, and creative work.

So understood, and returning to the four separations said to characterise alienated labour, we can see that it is the implicit claim about human nature (the fourth separation) which identifies the other three separations as dysfunctional. If one subscribed to the same formal model of alienation and self-realisation, but held a different account of the substance of human nature, very different claims about work in capitalist society might result. Imagine a theorist who held that human beings were solitary, egoistic creatures, by nature. That theorist could accept that work in capitalist society encouraged isolation and selfishness, but deny that such results were alienating, because those results would not frustrate their baseline account of what it is to be a human being (indeed, they would rather facilitate those characteristics).

Marx seems to hold various views about the historical location and comparative extent of alienation. These include: that some systematic forms of alienation—presumably including religious alienation—existed in pre-capitalist societies; that systematic forms of alienation—including alienation in work—are only a feature of class divided societies; that systematic forms of alienation are greater in contemporary capitalist societies than in pre-capitalist societies; and that not all human societies are scarred by class division, in particular, that a future classless society (communism) will not contain systematic forms of alienation.

Marx maintains that alienation flows from capitalist social relations, and not from the kind of technological advances that capitalist society contains. His disapproval of capitalism is reserved for its social arrangements and not its material accomplishments. He had little time for what is sometimes called the “romantic critique of capitalism”, which sees industry and technology as the real villains, responsible for devastating the purportedly communitarian idyll of pre-capitalist relations. In contrast, Marx celebrates the bourgeoisie’s destruction of feudal relations, and sees technological growth and human liberation as (at least, in time) progressing hand-in-hand. Industry and technology are understood as part of the solution to, and not the source of, social problems.

There are many opportunities for scepticism here. In the present context, many struggle to see how the kind of large-scale industrial production that would presumably characterise communist society—communism purportedly being more productive than capitalism—would avoid alienation in work. Interesting responses to such concerns have been put forward, but they have typically come from commentators rather than from Marx himself (Kandiyali 2018). This is a point at which Marx’s self-denying ordinance concerning the detailed description of communist society prevents him from engaging directly with significant concerns about the direction of social change.

In the text “On The Jewish Question” (1843) Marx begins to make clear the distance between himself and his radical liberal colleagues among the Young Hegelians; in particular Bruno Bauer. Bauer had recently written against Jewish emancipation, from an atheist perspective, arguing that the religion of both Jews and Christians was a barrier to emancipation. In responding to Bauer, Marx makes one of the most enduring arguments from his early writings, by means of introducing a distinction between political emancipation—essentially the grant of liberal rights and liberties—and human emancipation. Marx’s reply to Bauer is that political emancipation is perfectly compatible with the continued existence of religion, as the contemporary example of the United States demonstrates. However, pushing matters deeper, in an argument reinvented by innumerable critics of liberalism, Marx argues that not only is political emancipation insufficient to bring about human emancipation, it is in some sense also a barrier. Liberal rights and ideas of justice are premised on the idea that each of us needs protection from other human beings who are a threat to our liberty and security. Therefore, liberal rights are rights of separation, designed to protect us from such perceived threats. Freedom on such a view, is freedom from interference. What this view overlooks is the possibility—for Marx, the fact—that real freedom is to be found positively in our relations with other people. It is to be found in human community, not in isolation. Accordingly, insisting on a regime of liberal rights encourages us to view each other in ways that undermine the possibility of the real freedom we may find in human emancipation. Now we should be clear that Marx does not oppose political emancipation, for he sees that liberalism is a great improvement on the systems of feudalism and religious prejudice and discrimination which existed in the Germany of his day. Nevertheless, such politically emancipated liberalism must be transcended on the route to genuine human emancipation. Unfortunately, Marx never tells us what human emancipation is, although it is clear that it is closely related to the ideas of non-alienated labour and meaningful community.

Even with these elaborations, many additional questions remain about Marx’s account. Three concerns are briefly addressed here.

First, one might worry about the place of alienation in the evolution of Marx’s thought. The once-popular suggestion that Marx only wrote about alienation in his early writings—his published and unpublished works from the early 1840s—is not sustained by the textual evidence. However, the theoretical role that the concept of alienation plays in his writings might still be said to evolve. For example, it has been suggested that alienation in the early writings is intended to play an “explanatory role”, whereas in his later work it comes to have a more “descriptive or diagnostic” function (Wood 1981 [2004: 7]).

A second concern is the role of human nature in the interpretation of alienation offered here. In one exegetical variant of this worry, the suggestion is that this account of alienation rests on a model of universal human nature which Marx’s (later) understanding of historical specificity and change prevents him from endorsing. However, there is much evidence against this purported later rejection of human nature (see Geras 1983). Indeed, the “mature” Marx explicitly affirms that human nature has both constant and mutable elements; that human beings are characterised by universal qualities, constant across history and culture, and variable qualities, reflecting historical and cultural diversity (McMurtry 1978: 19–53). One systematic, rather than exegetical, variant of the present worry suggests that we should not endorse accounts of alienation which depend on “thick” and inevitably controversial accounts of human nature (Jaeggi 2016). Whatever view we take of that claim about our endorsement, there seems little doubt about the “thickness” of Marx’s own account of human flourishing. To provide for the latter, a society must satisfy not only basic needs (for sustenance, warmth and shelter, certain climatic conditions, physical exercise, basic hygiene, procreation and sexual activity), but also less basic needs, both those that are not always appreciated to be part of his account (for recreation, culture, intellectual stimulation, artistic expression, emotional satisfaction, and aesthetic pleasure), and those that Marx is more often associated with (for fulfilling work and meaningful community) (Leopold 2007: 227–245).

Third, we may ask about Marx’s attitude towards the distinction sometimes made between subjective and objective alienation. These two forms of alienation can be exemplified separately or conjointly in the lives of particular individuals or societies (Hardimon 1994: 119–122). Alienation is “subjective” when it is characterised in terms of the presence (or absence) of certain beliefs or feelings; for example, when individuals are said to be alienated because they feel estranged from the world. Alienation is “objective” when it is characterised in terms which make no reference to the beliefs or feelings of individuals; for example, when individuals are said to be alienated because they fail to develop and deploy their essential human characteristics, whether or not they experience that lack of self-realisation as a loss. Marx seems to allow that these two forms of alienation are conceptually distinct, but assumes that in capitalist societies they are typically found together. Indeed, he often appears to think of subjective alienation as tracking the objective variant. That said, Marx does allow that they can come apart sociologically. At least, that is one way of reading a passage in The Holy Family where he recognises that capitalists do not get to engage in self-realising activities of the right kind (and hence are objectively alienated), but that—unlike the proletariat—they are content in their estrangement (and hence are lacking subjective alienation), feeling “at ease” in, and even “strengthened” by, it ( MECW 4: 36).

3. Theory of History

Marx did not set out his theory of history in great detail. Accordingly, it has to be constructed from a variety of texts, both those where he attempts to apply a theoretical analysis to past and future historical events, and those of a more purely theoretical nature. Of the latter, the “1859 Preface” to A Critique of Political Economy has achieved canonical status. However, the manuscripts collected together as The German Ideology , co-written with Engels in 1845-46, are also a much used early source. We shall briefly outline both texts, and then look at the reconstruction of Marx’s theory of history in the hands of his philosophically most influential recent exponent, G.A. Cohen (Cohen 1978 [2001], 1988), who builds on the interpretation of the early Russian Marxist Georgi Plekhanov (1856–1918) (Plekhanov 1895 [1947]).

We should, however, be aware that Cohen’s interpretation is far from universally accepted. Cohen provided his reconstruction of Marx partly because he was frustrated with existing Hegelian-inspired “dialectical” interpretations of Marx, and what he considered to be the vagueness of the influential works of Louis Althusser (1918–1990), neither of which, he felt, provided a rigorous account of Marx’s views. However, some scholars believe that the interpretation that we shall focus on is faulty precisely for its insistence on a mechanical model and its lack of attention to the dialectic. One aspect of this criticism is that Cohen’s understanding has a surprisingly small role for the concept of class struggle, which is often felt to be central to Marx’s theory of history. Cohen’s explanation for this is that the “1859 Preface”, on which his interpretation is based, does not give a prominent role to class struggle, and indeed it is not explicitly mentioned. Yet this reasoning is problematic for it is possible that Marx did not want to write in a manner that would engage the concerns of the police censor, and, indeed, a reader aware of the context may be able to detect an implicit reference to class struggle through the inclusion of such phrases as “then begins an era of social revolution,” and “the ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out”. Hence it does not follow that Marx himself thought that the concept of class struggle was relatively unimportant. Furthermore, when A Critique of Political Economy was replaced by Capital , Marx made no attempt to keep the 1859 Preface in print, and its content is reproduced just as a very much abridged footnote in Capital . Nevertheless, we shall concentrate here on Cohen’s interpretation as no other account has been set out with comparable rigour, precision and detail.

In his “ Theses on Feuerbach ” (1845) Marx provides a background to what would become his theory of history by stating his objections to “all hitherto existing” materialism and idealism, understood as types of philosophical theories. Materialism is complimented for understanding the physical reality of the world, but is criticised for ignoring the active role of the human subject in creating the world we perceive. Idealism, at least as developed by Hegel, understands the active nature of the human subject, but confines it to thought or contemplation: the world is created through the categories we impose upon it. Marx combines the insights of both traditions to propose a view in which human beings do indeed create —or at least transform—the world they find themselves in, but this transformation happens not in thought but through actual material activity; not through the imposition of sublime concepts but through the sweat of their brow, with picks and shovels. This historical version of materialism, which, according to Marx, transcends and thus rejects all existing philosophical thought, is the foundation of Marx’s later theory of history. As Marx puts it in the “1844 Manuscripts”, “Industry is the actual historical relationship of nature … to man” ( MECW 3: 303). This thought, derived from reflection on the history of philosophy, together with his experience of social and economic realities, as a journalist, sets the agenda for all Marx’s future work.

In The German Ideology manuscripts, Marx and Engels contrast their new materialist method with the idealism that had characterised previous German thought. Accordingly, they take pains to set out the “premises of the materialist method”. They start, they say, from “real human beings”, emphasising that human beings are essentially productive, in that they must produce their means of subsistence in order to satisfy their material needs. The satisfaction of needs engenders new needs of both a material and social kind, and forms of society arise corresponding to the state of development of human productive forces. Material life determines, or at least “conditions” social life, and so the primary direction of social explanation is from material production to social forms, and thence to forms of consciousness. As the material means of production develop, “modes of co-operation” or economic structures rise and fall, and eventually communism will become a real possibility once the plight of the workers and their awareness of an alternative motivates them sufficiently to become revolutionaries.

In the sketch of The German Ideology , many of the key elements of historical materialism are present, even if the terminology is not yet that of Marx’s more mature writings. Marx’s statement in the “1859 Preface” renders something of the same view in sharper form. Cohen’s reconstruction of Marx’s view in the Preface begins from what Cohen calls the Development Thesis, which is pre-supposed, rather than explicitly stated in the Preface (Cohen 1978 [2001]: 134–174). This is the thesis that the productive forces tend to develop, in the sense of becoming more powerful, over time. The productive forces are the means of production, together with productively applicable knowledge: technology, in other words. The development thesis states not that the productive forces always do develop, but that there is a tendency for them to do so. The next thesis is the primacy thesis, which has two aspects. The first states that the nature of a society’s economic structure is explained by the level of development of its productive forces, and the second that the nature of the superstructure—the political and legal institutions of society—is explained by the nature of the economic structure. The nature of a society’s ideology, which is to say certain religious, artistic, moral and philosophical beliefs contained within society, is also explained in terms of its economic structure, although this receives less emphasis in Cohen’s interpretation. Indeed, many activities may well combine aspects of both the superstructure and ideology: a religion is constituted by both institutions and a set of beliefs.

Revolution and epoch change is understood as the consequence of an economic structure no longer being able to continue to develop the forces of production. At this point the development of the productive forces is said to be fettered, and, according to the theory, once an economic structure fetters development it will be revolutionised—“burst asunder” ( MECW 6: 489)—and eventually replaced with an economic structure better suited to preside over the continued development of the forces of production.

In outline, then, the theory has a pleasing simplicity and power. It seems plausible that human productive power develops over time, and plausible too that economic structures exist for as long as they develop the productive forces, but will be replaced when they are no longer capable of doing this. Yet severe problems emerge when we attempt to put more flesh on these bones.

Prior to Cohen’s work, historical materialism had not been regarded as a coherent view within English-language political philosophy. The antipathy is well summed up with the closing words of H.B. Acton’s The Illusion of the Epoch : “Marxism is a philosophical farrago” (1955: 271). One difficulty taken particularly seriously by Cohen is an alleged inconsistency between the explanatory primacy of the forces of production, and certain claims made elsewhere by Marx which appear to give the economic structure primacy in explaining the development of the productive forces. For example, in The Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels state that: “The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production” ( MECW 6: 487). This appears to give causal and explanatory primacy to the economic structure—capitalism—which brings about the development of the forces of production. Cohen accepts that, on the surface at least, this generates a contradiction. Both the economic structure and the development of the productive forces seem to have explanatory priority over each other. Unsatisfied by such vague resolutions as “determination in the last instance”, or the idea of “dialectical” connections, Cohen self-consciously attempts to apply the standards of clarity and rigour of analytic philosophy to provide a reconstructed version of historical materialism.

The key theoretical innovation is to appeal to the notion of functional explanation, also sometimes called “consequence explanation” (Cohen 1978 [2001]: 249–296). The essential move is cheerfully to admit that the economic structure, such as capitalism, does indeed develop the productive forces, but to add that this, according to the theory, is precisely why we have capitalism (when we do). That is, if capitalism failed to develop the productive forces it would disappear. And, indeed, this fits beautifully with historical materialism. For Marx asserts that when an economic structure fails to develop the productive forces—when it “fetters” the productive forces—it will be revolutionised and the epoch will change. So the idea of “fettering” becomes the counterpart to the theory of functional explanation. Essentially fettering is what happens when the economic structure becomes dysfunctional.

Now it is apparent that this renders historical materialism consistent. Yet there is a question as to whether it is at too high a price. For we must ask whether functional explanation is a coherent methodological device. The problem is that we can ask what it is that makes it the case that an economic structure will only persist for as long as it develops the productive forces. Jon Elster has pressed this criticism against Cohen very hard (Elster 1985: 27–35). If we were to argue that there is an agent guiding history who has the purpose that the productive forces should be developed as much as possible then it would make sense that such an agent would intervene in history to carry out this purpose by selecting the economic structures which do the best job. However, it is clear that Marx makes no such metaphysical assumptions. Elster is very critical—sometimes of Marx, sometimes of Cohen—of the idea of appealing to “purposes” in history without those being the purposes of anyone.

Indeed Elster’s criticism was anticipated in fascinating terms by Simone Weil (1909–1943), who links Marx’s appeal to history’s purposes to the influence of Hegel on his thought:

We must remember the Hegelian origins of Marxist thought. Hegel believed in a hidden mind at work in the universe, and that the history of the world is simply the history of this world mind, which, as in the case of everything spiritual, tends indefinitely towards perfection. Marx claimed to “put back on its feet” the Hegelian dialectic, which he accused of being “upside down”, by substituting matter for mind as the motive power of history; but by an extraordinary paradox, he conceived history, starting from this rectification, as though he attributed to matter what is the very essence of mind—an unceasing aspiration towards the best. (Weil 1955 [1958: 43])

Cohen is well aware of the difficulty of appealing to purposes in history, but defends the use of functional explanation by comparing its use in historical materialism with its use in evolutionary biology. In contemporary biology it is commonplace to explain the existence of the stripes of a tiger, or the hollow bones of a bird, by pointing to the function of these features. Here we have apparent purposes which are not the purposes of anyone. The obvious counter, however, is that in evolutionary biology we can provide a causal story to underpin these functional explanations; a story involving chance variation and survival of the fittest. Therefore these functional explanations are sustained by a complex causal feedback loop in which dysfunctional elements tend to be filtered out in competition with better functioning elements. Cohen calls such background accounts “elaborations” and he concedes that functional explanations are in need of elaborations. But he points out that standard causal explanations are equally in need of elaborations. We might, for example, be satisfied with the explanation that the vase broke because it was dropped on the floor, but a great deal of further information is needed to explain why this explanation works.

Consequently, Cohen claims that we can be justified in offering a functional explanation even when we are in ignorance of its elaboration. Indeed, even in biology detailed causal elaborations of functional explanations have been available only relatively recently. Prior to Charles Darwin (1809–1882), or arguably Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829), the only candidate causal elaboration was to appeal to God’s purposes. Darwin outlined a very plausible mechanism, but having no genetic theory was not able to elaborate it into a detailed account. Our knowledge remains incomplete in some respects to this day. Nevertheless, it seems perfectly reasonable to say that birds have hollow bones in order to facilitate flight. Cohen’s point is that the weight of evidence that organisms are adapted to their environment would permit even a pre-Darwinian atheist to assert this functional explanation with justification. Hence one can be justified in offering a functional explanation even in the absence of a candidate elaboration: if there is sufficient weight of inductive evidence.

At this point the issue, then, divides into a theoretical question and an empirical one. The empirical question is whether or not there is evidence that forms of society exist only for as long as they advance productive power, and are replaced by revolution when they fail. Here, one must admit, the empirical record is patchy at best, and there appear to have been long periods of stagnation, even regression, when dysfunctional economic structures were not revolutionised.

The theoretical issue is whether a plausible elaborating explanation is available to underpin Marxist functional explanations. Here there is something of a dilemma. In the first instance it is tempting to try to mimic the elaboration given in the Darwinian story, and appeal to chance variations and survival of the fittest. In this case “fittest” would mean “most able to preside over the development of the productive forces”. Chance variation would be a matter of people trying out new types of economic relations. On this account new economic structures begin through experiment, but thrive and persist through their success in developing the productive forces. However the problem is that such an account would seem to introduce a larger element of contingency than Marx seeks, for it is essential to Marx’s thought that one should be able to predict the eventual arrival of communism. Within Darwinian theory there is no warrant for long-term predictions, for everything depends on the contingencies of particular situations. A similar heavy element of contingency would be inherited by a form of historical materialism developed by analogy with evolutionary biology. The dilemma, then, is that the best model for developing the theory makes predictions based on the theory unsound, yet the whole point of the theory is predictive. Hence one must either look for an alternative means of producing elaborating explanation, or give up the predictive ambitions of the theory.

The driving force of history, in Cohen’s reconstruction of Marx, is the development of the productive forces, the most important of which is technology. But what is it that drives such development? Ultimately, in Cohen’s account, it is human rationality. Human beings have the ingenuity to apply themselves to develop means to address the scarcity they find. This on the face of it seems very reasonable. Yet there are difficulties. As Cohen himself acknowledges, societies do not always do what would be rational for an individual to do. Co-ordination problems may stand in our way, and there may be structural barriers. Furthermore, it is relatively rare for those who introduce new technologies to be motivated by the need to address scarcity. Rather, under capitalism, the profit motive is the key. Of course it might be argued that this is the social form that the material need to address scarcity takes under capitalism. But still one may raise the question whether the need to address scarcity always has the influence that it appears to have taken on in modern times. For example, a ruling class’s absolute determination to hold on to power may have led to economically stagnant societies. Alternatively, it might be thought that a society may put religion or the protection of traditional ways of life ahead of economic needs. This goes to the heart of Marx’s theory that man is an essentially productive being and that the locus of interaction with the world is industry. As Cohen himself later argued in essays such as “Reconsidering Historical Materialism” (1988), the emphasis on production may appear one-sided, and ignore other powerful elements in human nature. Such a criticism chimes with a criticism from the previous section; that the historical record may not, in fact, display the tendency to growth in the productive forces assumed by the theory.

Many defenders of Marx will argue that the problems stated are problems for Cohen’s interpretation of Marx, rather than for Marx himself. It is possible to argue, for example, that Marx did not have a general theory of history, but rather was a social scientist observing and encouraging the transformation of capitalism into communism as a singular event. And it is certainly true that when Marx analyses a particular historical episode, as he does in the 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (1852), any idea of fitting events into a fixed pattern of history seems very far from Marx’s mind. On other views Marx did have a general theory of history but it is far more flexible and less determinate than Cohen insists (Miller 1984). And finally, as noted, there are critics who believe that Cohen’s interpretation is entirely wrong-headed owing to its dismissive attitude to dialectical reasoning (Sayers 1984 [1990]).

4. Economics

How to read Marx’s economic writings, and especially his masterpiece Capital Volume 1, remains a matter of controversy. An orthodox reading is that Marx’s essential task is to contribute to economic theory, based on a modified form of the labour theory of value. Others warn against such a narrow interpretation, pointing out that the character of Marx’s writing and presentation is very far from what one would expect in a standard economic text. Hence William Clare Roberts (2017), for example, argues that Capital Volume 1 is fundamentally a work of political theory, rather than economics. Be that as it may, nevertheless, the work does contain substantial presentation of an economic analysis of capitalism, and it is on this that we will focus here.

Capital Volume 1 begins with an analysis of the idea of commodity production. A commodity is defined as a useful external object, produced for exchange on a market. Thus, two necessary conditions for commodity production are: the existence of a market, in which exchange can take place; and a social division of labour, in which different people produce different products, without which there would be no motivation for exchange. Marx suggests that commodities have both use-value—a use, in other words—and an exchange-value—initially to be understood as their price. Use value can easily be understood, so Marx says, but he insists that exchange value is a puzzling phenomenon, and relative exchange values need to be explained. Why does a quantity of one commodity exchange for a given quantity of another commodity? His explanation is in terms of the labour input required to produce the commodity, or rather, the socially necessary labour, which is labour exerted at the average level of intensity and productivity for that branch of activity within the economy. Thus the labour theory of value asserts that the value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of socially necessary labour time required to produce it.

Marx provides a two-stage argument for the labour theory of value. The first stage is to argue that if two objects can be compared in the sense of being put on either side of an equals sign, then there must be a “third thing of identical magnitude in both of them” to which they are both reducible. As commodities can be exchanged against each other, there must, Marx argues, be a third thing that they have in common. This then motivates the second stage, which is a search for the appropriate “third thing”, which is labour in Marx’s view, as the only plausible common element. Both steps of the argument are, of course, highly contestable.

Capitalism can be distinguished from other forms of commodity exchange, Marx argues, in that it involves not merely the exchange of commodities, but the advancement of capital, in the form of money, with the purpose of generating profit through the purchase of commodities and their transformation into other commodities which can command a higher price, and thus yield a profit. Marx claims that no previous theorist has been able adequately to explain how capitalism as a whole can make a profit. Marx’s own solution relies on the idea of exploitation of the worker. In setting up conditions of production the capitalist purchases the worker’s labour power—his or her ability to labour—for the day. The cost of this commodity is determined in the same way as the cost of every other; that is, in terms of the amount of socially necessary labour power required to produce it. In this case the value of a day’s labour power is the value of the commodities necessary to keep the worker alive for a day. Suppose that such commodities take four hours to produce. Accordingly the first four hours of the working day is spent on producing value equivalent to the value of the wages the worker will be paid. This is known as necessary labour. Any work the worker does above this is known as surplus labour, producing surplus value for the capitalist. Surplus value, according to Marx, is the source of all profit. In Marx’s analysis labour power is the only commodity which can produce more value than it is worth, and for this reason it is known as variable capital. Other commodities simply pass their value on to the finished commodities, but do not create any extra value. They are known as constant capital. Profit, then, is the result of the labour performed by the worker beyond that necessary to create the value of his or her wages. This is the surplus value theory of profit.

It appears to follow from this analysis that as industry becomes more mechanised, using more constant capital and less variable capital, the rate of profit ought to fall. For as a proportion less capital will be advanced on labour, and only labour can create value. In Capital Volume 3 Marx does indeed make the prediction that the rate of profit will fall over time, and this is one of the factors which leads to the downfall of capitalism. (However, as pointed out by Paul Sweezy in The Theory of Capitalist Development (1942), the analysis is problematic.) A further consequence of this analysis is a difficulty for the theory that Marx did recognise, and tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to meet also in the manuscripts that make up Capital Volume 3. It follows from the analysis so far that labour-intensive industries ought to have a higher rate of profit than those which use less labour. Not only is this empirically false, it is theoretically unacceptable. Accordingly, Marx argued that in real economic life prices vary in a systematic way from values. Providing the mathematics to explain this is known as the transformation problem, and Marx’s own attempt suffers from technical difficulties. Although there are sophisticated known techniques for solving this problem now there is a question about the degree to which they do rescue Marx’s project. If it is thought that the labour theory of value was initially motivated as an intuitively plausible theory of price then when the connection between price and value is rendered as indirect as it is in the final theory, the intuitive motivation of the theory drains away. Others consider this to be a superficial reading of Marx, and that his general approach allows us to see through the appearances of capitalism to understand its underlying basis, which need not coincide with appearances. How Marx’s theory of capitalism should be read remains an active area of scholarly debate (Heinrich 2012).

A further objection is that Marx’s assertion that only labour can create surplus value is unsupported by any argument or analysis, and can be argued to be merely an artefact of the nature of his presentation. Any commodity can be picked to play a similar role. Consequently, with equal justification one could set out a corn theory of value, arguing that corn has the unique power of creating more value than it costs. Formally this would be identical to the labour theory of value (Roemer 1982). Nevertheless, the claims that somehow labour is responsible for the creation of value, and that profit is the consequence of exploitation, remain intuitively powerful, even if they are difficult to establish in detail.

However, even if the labour theory of value is considered discredited, there are elements of his theory that remain of worth. The Cambridge economist Joan Robinson, in An Essay on Marxian Economics (1942), picked out two aspects of particular note. First, Marx’s refusal to accept that capitalism involves a harmony of interests between worker and capitalist, replacing this with a class-based analysis of the worker’s struggle for better wages and conditions of work, versus the capitalist’s drive for ever greater profits. Second, Marx’s denial that there is any long-run tendency to equilibrium in the market, and his descriptions of mechanisms which underlie the trade-cycle of boom and bust. Both provide a salutary corrective to aspects of orthodox economic theory.

As noted, traditionally Marx’s definition of exploitation is given in terms of the theory of surplus value, which in turn is taken to depend on the labour theory of value: the theory that the value of any commodity is proportional to the amount of “socially necessary” labour embodied in it. However, the question arises of whether the basic idea of exploitation should be so dependent on a particular theory of value. For if it is, the notion of exploitation becomes vulnerable to Robert Nozick’s objection: that if the labour theory of value can be shown to be faulty, the Marxist theory of exploitation collapses too (Nozick 1974).

Others have felt that it is possible to restore the intuitive core of a Marxist theory of exploitation independent of the labour theory of value (cf. Cohen 1979, Wolff 1999, Vrousalis 2013). John Roemer, to take one leading case, states:

Marxian exploitation is defined as the unequal exchange of labor for goods: the exchange is unequal when the amount of labor embodied in the goods which the worker can purchase with his income … is less than the amount of labor he expended to earn that income.(Roemer 1985: 30)

Suppose I work eight hours to earn my wages. With this perhaps the best thing I can buy is a coat. But imagine that the coat took only a total of four hours to make. Therefore I have exchanged my eight hours work for only four hours of other people’s work, and thereby, on this view, I am exploited.

The definition requires some refinement. For example, if I am taxed for the benefit of those unable to work, I will be exploited by the above definition, but this is not what the definition of exploitation was intended to capture. Worse still, if there is one person exploited much more gravely than anyone else in the economy, then it may turn out that no-one else is exploited. Nevertheless, it should not be difficult to adjust the definition to take account of these difficulties, and as noted several other accounts of Marx-inspired accounts of exploitation have been offered that are independent of the labour theory of value.

Many of these alternative definitions add a notion of unfreedom or domination to unequal exchange of labour and goods (Vrousalis 2013). The exploited person is forced to accept a situation in which he or she just never gets back what they put into the labour process. Now there may be, in particular cases, a great deal to be said about why this is perfectly acceptable from a moral point of view. However, on the face of it such exploitation appears to be unjust. Nevertheless, we will see in the next section why attributing such a position to Marx himself is fraught with difficulty.

5. Morality

The issue of Marx and morality poses a conundrum. On reading Marx’s works at all periods of his life, there appears to be the strongest possible distaste towards bourgeois capitalist society, and an undoubted endorsement of future communist society. Yet the terms of this antipathy and endorsement are far from clear. Despite expectations, Marx never directly says that capitalism is unjust. Neither does he directly say that communism would be a just form of society. In fact he frequently takes pains to distance himself from those who engage in a discourse of justice, and makes a conscious attempt to exclude direct moral commentary in his own works. The puzzle is why this should be, given the weight of indirect moral commentary one also finds in his writings.

There are, initially, separate questions concerning Marx’s attitude to capitalism and to communism. There are also separate questions concerning his attitude to ideas of justice, and to ideas of morality more broadly concerned. This, then, generates four questions: (a) Did Marx think capitalism unjust?; (b) did he think that capitalism could be morally criticised on other grounds?; (c) did he think that communism would be just? (d) did he think it could be morally approved of on other grounds? These are some of the questions we consider in this section.

The initial argument that Marx must have thought that capitalism is unjust is based on the observation that Marx argued that all capitalist profit is ultimately derived from the exploitation of the worker. Capitalism’s dirty secret is that it is not a realm of harmony and mutual benefit but a system in which one class systematically extracts profit from another. How could this fail to be unjust? Yet it is notable that Marx never explicitly draws such a conclusion, and in Capital he goes as far as to say that such exchange is “by no means an injury to the seller” (MECW 35: 204), which some commentators have taken as evidence that Marx did not think that capitalism was unjust, although other readings are possible.

Allen Wood (1972) is perhaps the leading advocate of the view that Marx did not believe that capitalism is unjust. Wood argues that Marx takes this approach because his general theoretical approach excludes any trans-epochal standpoint from which one can comment on the justice of an economic system. Even though it is acceptable to criticise particular behaviour from within an economic structure as unjust (and theft under capitalism would be an example) it is not possible to criticise capitalism as a whole. This is a consequence of Marx’s analysis of the role of ideas of justice from within historical materialism. Marx claims that juridical institutions are part of the superstructure, and that ideas of justice are ideological. Accordingly, the role of both the superstructure and ideology, in the functionalist reading of historical materialism adopted here, is to stabilise the economic structure. Consequently, to state that something is just under capitalism is simply a judgement that it will tend to have the effect of advancing capitalism. According to Marx, in any society the ruling ideas are those of the ruling class; the core of the theory of ideology.

Ziyad Husami (1978) however, argues that Wood is mistaken, ignoring the fact that for Marx ideas undergo a double determination. We need to differentiate not just by economic system, but also by economic class within the system. Therefore the ideas of the non-ruling class may be very different from those of the ruling class. Of course, it is the ideas of the ruling class that receive attention and implementation, but this does not mean that other ideas do not exist. Husami goes as far as to argue that members of the proletariat under capitalism have an account of justice that matches communism. From this privileged standpoint of the proletariat, which is also Marx’s standpoint, capitalism is unjust, and so it follows that Marx thought capitalism unjust.

Plausible though it may sound, Husami’s argument fails to account for two related points. First, it cannot explain why Marx never explicitly described capitalism as unjust, and second, it overlooks the distance Marx wanted to place between his own scientific socialism, and that of other socialists who argued for the injustice of capitalism. Hence one cannot avoid the conclusion that the “official” view of Marx is that capitalism is not unjust.

Nevertheless, this leaves us with a puzzle. Much of Marx’s description of capitalism—his use of the words “embezzlement”, “robbery” and “exploitation”—belie the official account. Arguably, the only satisfactory way of understanding this issue is, once more, from G.A. Cohen, who proposes that Marx believed that capitalism was unjust, but did not believe that he believed it was unjust (Cohen 1983). In other words, Marx, like so many of us, did not have perfect knowledge of his own mind. In his explicit reflections on the justice of capitalism he was able to maintain his official view. But in less guarded moments his real view slips out, even if never in explicit language. Such an interpretation is bound to be controversial, but it makes good sense of the texts.

Whatever one concludes on the question of whether Marx thought capitalism unjust, it is, nevertheless, obvious that Marx thought that capitalism was not the best way for human beings to live. Points made in his early writings remain present throughout his writings, if no longer connected to an explicit theory of alienation. The worker finds work a torment, suffers poverty, overwork and lack of fulfilment and freedom. People do not relate to each other as humans should. Does this amount to a moral criticism of capitalism or not? In the absence of any special reason to argue otherwise, it simply seems obvious that Marx’s critique is a moral one. Capitalism impedes human flourishing. It is hard to disagree with the judgement that Marx

thinks that the capitalist exploitation of labor power is a wrong that has horrendous consequences for the laborers. (Roberts 2017: 129)

Marx, though, once more refrained from making this explicit; he seemed to show no interest in locating his criticism of capitalism in any of the traditions of moral philosophy, or explaining how he was generating a new tradition. There may have been two reasons for his caution. The first was that while there were bad things about capitalism, there is, from a world historical point of view, much good about it too. For without capitalism, communism would not be possible. Capitalism is to be transcended, not abolished, and this may be difficult to convey in the terms of moral philosophy.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, we need to return to the contrast between Marxian and other forms of socialism. Many non-Marxian socialists appealed to universal ideas of truth and justice to defend their proposed schemes, and their theory of transition was based on the idea that appealing to moral sensibilities would be the best, perhaps only, way of bringing about the new chosen society. Marx wanted to distance himself from these other socialist traditions, and a key point of distinction was to argue that the route to understanding the possibilities of human emancipation lay in the analysis of historical and social forces, not in morality. Hence, for Marx, any appeal to morality was theoretically a backward step.

This leads us now to Marx’s assessment of communism. Would communism be a just society? In considering Marx’s attitude to communism and justice there are really only two viable possibilities: either he thought that communism would be a just society or he thought that the concept of justice would not apply: that communism would transcend justice.

Communism is described by Marx, in the Critique of the Gotha Programme , as a society in which each person should contribute according to their ability and receive according to their need. This certainly sounds like a theory of justice, and could be adopted as such (Gilabert 2015). However, many will hold that it is truer to Marx’s thought to say that this is part of an account in which communism transcends justice, as Lukes has argued (Lukes 1987).

If we start with the idea that the point of ideas of justice is to resolve disputes, then a society without disputes would have no need or place for justice. We can see this by reflecting upon the idea of the circumstances of justice in the work of David Hume (1711–1776). Hume argued that if there was enormous material abundance—if everyone could have whatever they wanted without invading another’s share—we would never have devised rules of justice. And, of course, there are suggestions in Marx’s writings that communism would be a society of such abundance. But Hume also suggested that justice would not be needed in other circumstances; if there were complete fellow-feeling between all human beings, there would be no conflict and no need for justice. Of course, one can argue whether either material abundance or human fellow-feeling to this degree would be possible, but the point is that both arguments give a clear sense in which communism transcends justice.

Nevertheless, we remain with the question of whether Marx thought that communism could be commended on other moral grounds. On a broad understanding, in which morality, or perhaps better to say ethics, is concerned with the idea of living well, it seems that communism can be assessed favourably in this light. One compelling argument is that Marx’s career simply makes no sense unless we can attribute such a belief to him. But beyond this we can be brief in that the considerations adduced in Section 2 above apply again. Communism clearly advances human flourishing, in Marx’s view. The only reason for denying that, in Marx’s vision, it would amount to a good society is a theoretical antipathy to the word “good”. And here the main point is that, in Marx’s view, communism would not be brought about by high-minded benefactors of humanity. Quite possibly his determination to retain this point of difference between himself and other socialists led him to disparage the importance of morality to a degree that goes beyond the call of theoretical necessity.

6. Ideology

The account of ideology contained in Marx’s writings is regularly portrayed as a crucial element of his intellectual legacy. It has been identified as among his “most influential” ideas (Elster 1986: 168), and acclaimed as “the most fertile” part of his social and political theory (Leiter 2004: 84). Not least, these views on ideology are said to constitute Marx’s claim to a place—alongside Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) and Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)—as one of the “masters of suspicion”; that is, as an author whose work casts doubt on the transparency of our everyday understandings of both our own identity and the social world we inhabit (Ricouer 1970: 32–33).

Given this enthusiastic reception, it can come as something of a surprise to turn to Marx’s writings and discover how little they contain about ideology, and how inchoate and opaque those infrequent and passing observations on that topic are. There are, of course, some famous quotations, not least from The German Ideology manuscripts. The references there to ideology as involving an “inversion” of the relation between individuals and their circumstances, perhaps analogous to the workings of a “camera obscura”—an optical device which projected an image of its surroundings, upside down but preserving perspective, onto a screen inside—have often mesmerised commentators but not always generated much genuine illumination ( MECW 5: 36). The point should not be exaggerated, but these striking images notwithstanding, there is no clear and sustained discussion of ideology in the Marxian corpus.

Many commentators maintain that the search for a single model of ideology in his work has to be given up. Indeed, there is something of an “arms race” in the literature, as commentators discover two, three, even five, competing models of ideology in Marx’s writings (Mepham 1979; Wood 1981 [2004]; Rosen 1996). Most surprisingly, it seems that some licence can be found in Marx’s corpus for three very different ways of thinking about what ideology is. There is textual evidence of his variously utilising: a “descriptive” account of ideology involving a broadly anthropological study of the beliefs and rituals characteristic of certain groups; a “positive” account of ideology as a “worldview” providing the members of a group with a sense of meaning and identity; and a “critical” account seeking to liberate individuals from certain false and misleading forms of understanding (Geuss 1981: 4–26).

It is the last of these—the critical account rather than either of the two “non-critical” accounts—which is central to his wider social and political theory, but this account is itself subject to some considerable interpretative disagreement. Marx’s theory of ideology is usually portrayed as an element in what might be called Marx’s sociology, as distinct from his philosophical anthropology say, or his theory of history (although complexly related to the latter).

Marx does not view ideology as a feature of all societies, and, in particular, suggests that it will not be a feature of a future communist society. However, ideology is portrayed as a feature of all class-divided societies, and not only of capitalist society—although many of Marx’s comments on ideology are concerned with the latter. The theory of ideology appears to play a role in explaining a feature of class-divided societies which might otherwise appear puzzling, namely what might be called their “stability”; that is, the absence of overt and serious conflict between social classes. This stability is not permanent, but it can last for extended historical periods. This stability appears puzzling to Marx because class-divided societies are flawed in ways which not only frustrate human flourishing, but also work to the material advantage of the ruling minority. Why do the subordinate classes, who form a majority, tolerate these flaws, when resistance and rebellion of various kinds might be in their objective interests?

Marx’s account of the sources of social stability in class-divided societies appeals to both repressive and non-repressive mechanisms. Such societies might often involve the direct repression (or the threat of it) of one group by another, but Marx does not think that this is the whole story. There are also non-repressive sources of social stability, and ideology is usually, and plausibly, considered one of these. Very roughly, Marx’s account of ideology claims that the dominant social ideas in such societies are typically false or misleading in a fashion that works to the advantage of the economically dominant class.

We should note that ideology would seem to be a part and not the whole of Marx’s account of the non-repressive sources of stability in class divided societies. Other factors might include: dull economic pressure, including the daily grind of having to earn a living; doubts—justified or otherwise—about the feasibility of alternatives; sensitivity to the possible costs of radical social change; and collective action problems of various kinds which face those who do want to rebel and resist. Marx does not think individuals are permanently trapped within ideological modes of thinking. Ideology may have an initial hold, but it is not portrayed as impervious to reason and evidence, especially in circumstances in which the objective conditions for social change obtain.

For Marx ideological beliefs are social in that they are widely shared, indeed so widely-shared that for long periods they constitute the “ruling” or “dominant” ideas in a given class-divided society ( MECW 5: 59). And they are social in that they directly concern, or indirectly impact upon, the action-guiding understandings of self and society that individuals have. These action-guiding understandings include the dominant legal, political, religious, and philosophical views within particular class-divided societies in periods of stability (MECW 29: 263).

Not all false or misleading beliefs count for Marx as ideological. Honest scientific error, for example can be non-ideological. And ideological belief can be misleading without being strictly false. For example, defenders of the capitalist economy portray what Marx calls the “wage form”, with its exchange of equivalents, as the whole (rather than a part) of the story about the relation between capital and labour, thereby ignoring the exploitation which occurs in the sphere of production. Indeed, the notion of the “falsity” of ideology needs to be expanded beyond the content of the “ideas” in question, to include cases where their origins are in some way contaminated (Geuss 1981: 19–22). Perhaps the only reason I believe something to be the case is that the belief in question has a consoling effect on me. Arguably such a belief is held ideologically, even if it happens to be true. Nevertheless paradigmatic examples of ideology have a false content. For example, ideology often portrays institutions, policies, and decisions which are in the interests of the economically dominant class, as being in the interests of the society as a whole ( MECW 5: 60); and ideology often portrays social and political arrangements which are contingent, or historical, or artificial, as being necessary, or universal, or natural ( MECW 35: 605).

In addition to false or misleading content, ideological beliefs typically have at least two additional characteristics, relating to their social origin and their class function. By the “social origin” of ideology is meant that Marx thinks of these ideas as often originating with, and being reinforced by, the complex structure of class-divided societies—a complex structure in which a deceptive surface appearance is governed by underlying essential relations (Geras 1986: 63–84). Capitalism is seen as especially deceptive in appearance; for example, Marx often contrasts the relative transparency of “exploitation” under feudalism, with the way in which the “wage form” obscures the ratio of necessary and surplus labour in capitalist societies. Ideology stems, in part, from this deceptive surface appearance which makes it difficult to grasp the underlying social flaws that benefit the economically dominant class. Marx portrays the striving to uncover essences concealed by misleading appearances as characteristic of scientific endeavour ( MECW 37, 804). And, in this context, he distinguishes between classical political economy, which strove—albeit not always successfully—to uncover the essential relations often concealed behind misleading appearances, and what he calls vulgar economy, which happily restricts itself to the misleading appearances themselves ( MECW 37, 804).

By the “class function” of ideology is meant that Marx holds that the pervasiveness of ideology is explained by the fact it helps stabilise the economic structure of societies. All sorts of ideas might get generated for all sorts of reasons, but the ones that tend to “stick” (become widely accepted) in class-divided societies do so, not because of their truth, but because they conceal or misrepresent or justify flaws in that society in ways which redound to the benefit of the economically dominant class (Rosen & Wolff 1996: 235–236).

In response critics often see this as just another example of sloppy functional reasoning—purportedly widespread in the Marxist tradition—whereby a general pattern is asserted without the identification of any of the mechanisms which might generate that pattern. In the present case, it is said that Marx never properly explains why the ruling ideas should be those of the ruling class (Elster 1985: 473). Yet there are obvious possible mechanisms here. To give two examples. First, there is the control of the ruling class over the means of mental production, and in particular the print and broadcast media which in capitalist societies are typically owned and controlled by the very wealthy ( MECW 5, 59). A second possible mechanism appeals to the psychological need of individuals for invented narratives that legitimise or justify their social position; for instance, Marx identifies a widespread need, in flawed societies, for the consolatory effects of religion ( MECW 3, 175).

7. State and Politics

This broad heading—the state and politics—could cover very many different issues. To make the present account manageable, only two are addressed here: Marx’s account of the state in capitalist society; and Marx’s account of the fate of the state in communist society. (Consequently, many other important political issues—the nature of pre-capitalist states, relations between states, the political transition to communism, and so on—are not dealt with.)

Marx offers no unified theoretical account of the state in capitalist society. Instead his remarks on this topic are scattered across the course of his activist life, and deeply embedded in discussions of contemporary events, events which most modern readers will know very little about. Providing some initial order to that complexity, Jon Elster helpfully identifies three different models in Marx’s writings of the relationship, in capitalist society, between the political state, on the one hand, and the economically dominant class, on the other. (The next three paragraphs draw heavily on Elster 1985: 409–437.)

First, the “instrumental” model portrays the state as simply a tool, directly controlled by the economically dominant class, in its own interests, at the expense of the interests both of other classes and of the community as a whole. Marx is usually said to endorse the instrumental account in the Communist Manifesto , where he and Engels insist that “the executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie” ( MECW 6: 486). On this account, the state might also act against the short term, or the factional, interests of particular capitalists. The picture here is of the state as an instrument directed—presumably by a subset of capitalists or their representatives—in ways which promote the long term interests of the bourgeoisie as a whole. The precise mechanisms which might facilitate that result are not clear in Marx’s writings.

Second, the “class balance” model portrays the state as having interests of its own, with capitalist interests as merely one of the strategic limits on its pursuit of these. This model gets its name from the exceptional social circumstances said to explain the independence of the state in this case. In situations where the social power of the two warring classes of contemporary society—capitalists and workers—are very nearly balanced, the political state (and especially the executive) can gain independence from both, exploiting that conflict in order to promote its own interests (the interests of the political caste). Something like this picture appears in Marx’s discussions of the continued existence of certain absolutist states after the revolutions of 1848, and of the Bonapartist state established in France by the coup of Napoleon III in December 1851. The state now competes with capitalists and proletarians (and is not merely the tool of the former), and by “promising each of the major classes to protect it against the other, the government can rule autonomously” (Elster 1985: 425). On this account, the state has interests of its own, but presumably only gets to pursue them if those promises to others are plausible, finding some reflection in its policies and behaviour. Capitalist interests accordingly remain a political constraint, but they are now only one of the factors constraining the state’s actions rather than constituting its primary goal.

Third, the “abdication” model presents the bourgeoisie as staying away from the direct exercise of political power, but doing this because it is in their economic interests to do so. As Elster notes, strictly speaking, “abdication” here covers two slightly different cases—first, where the bourgeoisie abdicate from the political power that they initially controlled (relevant to France); and, second, where the bourgeoisie abstain from taking political power in the first place (relevant to Britain and Germany)—but they can be treated together. In both cases, Marx identifies a situation where “in order to save its purse, [the bourgeoisie] must forfeit the crown” ( MECW 11: 143). Where the instrumental picture claims that the state acts in the interests of the capitalist class because it is directly controlled by the latter, the abdication picture advances an explanatory connection between the promotion of bourgeois interests and the retreat from the direct exercise of power. Circumstances obtain where “the political rule of the bourgeoisie” turns out to be “incompatible” with its continued economic flourishing, and the bourgeoisie seeks “to get rid of its own political rule in order to get rid of the troubles and dangers of ruling” ( MECW 11: 173). There are several possible explanations of why the bourgeoisie might remain outside of politics in order to promote their own interests. To give three examples: the bourgeoisie might recognise that their own characteristic short-termism could be fatal to their own interests if they exercised direct political as well as economic power; the bourgeoisie might find political rule sufficiently time and effort consuming to withdraw from it, discovering that the economic benefits kept on coming regardless; or the bourgeoisie might appreciate that abdication weakened their class opponents, forcing the proletariat to fight on two fronts (against capital and government) and thereby making it less able to win those struggles.

There are many questions one might have about these three models.

First, one might wonder which of these three models best embodies Marx’s considered view? The instrumental account is the earliest account, which he largely abandons from the early 1850s, presumably noticing how poorly it captured contemporary political realities—in particular, the stable existence of states which were not directly run by the capitalist class, but which still in some way served their interests. That outcome is possible under either of the two other accounts. However, Marx seems to have thought of the class balance model as a temporary solution in exceptional circumstances, and perhaps held that it failed to allow the stable explanatory connection that he sought between the extant political arrangements and the promotion of dominant economic interests. In short, for better or worse, Marx’s considered view looks closer to the abdication account, reflecting his conviction that the central features of political life are explained by the existing economic structure.

Second, one might wonder which model allows greatest “autonomy” to the political state? A weak definition of state autonomy might portray the state as autonomous when it is independent of direct control by the economically dominant class. On this definition, both the class balance and abdication models—but not the instrumental account—seem to provide for autonomy. A stronger definition of state autonomy might require what Elster calls “explanatory autonomy”, which exists

when (and to the extent that) its structure and policies cannot be explained by the interest of an economically dominant class. (Elster 1985: 405)

Only the class balance view seems to allow significant explanatory autonomy. In his preferred abdication account, Marx allows that the state in capitalist society is independent of direct capitalist control, but goes on to claim that its main structures (including that very independence) and policies are ultimately explained by the interests of the capitalist class.

For reasons discussed below (see Section 8 ), Marx declines to say much about the basic structure of a future communist society. However, in the case of the fate of the state, that reluctance is partially mitigated by his view that the institutional arrangements of the Paris Commune prefigured the political dimensions of communist society.

Marx’s views on the nature and fate of the state in communist society are to be distinguished from his infrequent, and subsequently notorious, use of the term “the dictatorship of the proletariat”. (On the infrequency, context, and content, of these uses see Draper 1986 and Hunt 1974.) The idea of “dictatorship” in this historical context has the (ancient) connotation of emergency rule rather than the (modern) connotation of totalitarianism. Marx’s use makes it clear that any such temporary government should be democratic; for instance, in having majority support, and in preserving democratic rights (of speech, association, and so on). However, it is by definition “extra-legal” in that it seeks to establish a new regime and not to preserve an old one. So understood, the dictatorship of the proletariat forms part of the political transition to communist society (a topic not covered here), rather than part of the institutional structure of communist society itself. The “dictatorial”—that is, the temporary and extra-legal—character of this regime ends with establishment of a new and stable polity, and it is the latter which is discussed here (Hunt 1974: 297).

The character of the state in communist society consists, in part, of its form (its institutional arrangements) and its function (the tasks that it undertakes).

Some sense of the form of the state in communist society can be gained from Marx’s engagement with the Paris Commune. His preferred future political arrangements involve a high degree of participation, and the radical “de-professionalisation” of certain public offices. First, Marx is enthusiastic about regular elections, universal suffrage, mandat impératif , recall, open executive proceedings, decentralisation, and so on. Second, he objects to public offices (in the legislature, executive, and judiciary) being the spoils of a political caste, and sought to make them working positions, remunerated at the average worker’s wage, and regularly circulating (through election). This combination of arrangements has been characterised as “democracy without professionals” (Hunt 1974: 365). Marx saw it as reflecting his view that:

Freedom consists in converting the state from an organ superimposed upon society into one completely subordinate to it. ( MECW 24: 94)

Some sense of the function of the state in communist society can be gained from Marx’s distinction between “necessary” tasks that a state would need to undertake in all societies (at least, economically developed societies), and “unnecessary” tasks that a state would only need to undertake in class-divided societies. The difficulty here is less in allowing this distinction, than in deciding what might fall into each category. On the necessary side, Marx appears to require that the state in communist society provide both: democratic solutions to coordination problems (deciding which side of the road traffic should drive on, for instance); and the supply of public goods (health, welfare, education, and so on). On the unnecessary side, Marx seems to think that a communist society might hugely reduce, or even eliminate, the element of organised coercion found in most states (in the form of standing armies, police forces, and so on). At least, this reduction might be feasible once communist society had reached its higher stage (where distribution is based on “the needs principle”), and there is no longer a threat from non-communist societies.

Again, there are many reservations that one might have about this account.

First, many will be sceptical about its feasibility, and perhaps especially of the purported reduction, still less elimination, of state coercion. That scepticism might be motivated by the thought that this would only be possible if communist society were characterised by widespread social and political consensus, and that such consensus is, both unlikely (at least, in modern societies), and undesirable (diversity and disagreement having a value). However, the reduction, or even elimination, of state coercion might be compatible with certain forms of continuing disagreement about the ends and means of communist society. Imagine that a democratic communist polity introduces a new law prohibiting smoking in public places, and that a representative smoker (call her Anne) obeys that law despite being among the minority who wanted this practice permitted. Anne’s motivation for obedience, we can stipulate, is grounded, not in fear of the likely response of bodies of armed persons enforcing the law, but rather in respect for the democratic majority of the community of which she is a part. In short, reasonably strong assumptions about the democratic commitments of individuals might allow the scaling down of organised coercion without having to presume universal agreement amongst citizens on all issues.

Second, some might object to the reference, throughout this section, to the “state” in communist society. It might be said that a polity whose form and functions are so radically transformed—the form by democratic participation and de-professionalisation, the function by eliminating historically unnecessary tasks—is insufficiently “state-like” to be called a state. That is certainly possible, but the terminological claim would appear to assume that there is greater clarity and agreement about just what a state is, either than is presupposed here or than exists in the world. Given that lack of consensus, “state” seems a suitably prudent choice. As well as being consistent with some of Marx’s usage, it avoids prejudging this very issue. However, anyone unmoved by those considerations can simply replace “state”, in this context, with their own preferred alternative.

8. Utopianism

It is well-known that Marx never provided a detailed account of the basic structure of the future communist society that he predicted. This was not simply an omission on his part, but rather reflects his deliberate commitment, as he colloquially has it, to refrain from writing “recipes” for the “restaurants” of the future ( MECW 35: 17, translation amended).

The reasoning that underpins this commitment can be reconstructed from Marx’s engagement with the radical political tradition that he called “utopian socialism”, and whose founding triumvirate were Charles Fourier (1772–1837), Henri Saint-Simon (1760–1825), and Robert Owen (1771–1858). Note that the distinction between Marxian socialism and utopian socialism is not an exhaustive one. Marx happily allows that there are socialists who are neither Marxian nor Utopian; for example, the “feudal socialists” discussed in the Communist Manifesto .

What distinguishes utopian from other socialists is, in large part, their view that providing persuasive constructive plans and blueprints of future socialist arrangements is a legitimate and necessary activity. (The expression “plans and blueprints” is used here to capture the necessary detail of these descriptions, and not to suggest that these designs have to be thought of as “stipulative”, as having to be followed to the letter.) On the utopian account, the socialist future needs to be designed before it can be delivered; the plans and blueprints being intended to guide and motivate socialists in their transformative ambitions. Of course, that Marx is not in this sense utopian does not rule out the possibility of additional (here unspecified) senses in which he might accurately be so described.

Marx’s account of utopian socialism might appear contradictory. It is certainly easy to find not only passages fiercely criticising utopian authors and texts, but also passages generously praising them. However, that criticism and that praise turn out to attach to slightly different targets, revealing an underlying and consistent structure to his account.

That underlying structure rests on two main distinctions. The first distinction is a chronological one running between the founding triumvirate, on the one hand, and second and subsequent generations of utopian socialists, on the other. (These later generations including both loyal followers of the founding triumvirate, and independent later figures such as Étienne Cabet (1788–1856)). The second distinction is a substantive one running between the critical part of utopian writings (the portrayal of faults within contemporary capitalist society), on the one hand, and the constructive part of utopian writings (the detailed description of the ideal socialist future), on the other.

Note that these distinctions underpin the asymmetry of Marx’s assessment of utopian socialism. Simply put: he is more enthusiastic and positive about the achievements of the first generation of utopians, by comparison with those of second and subsequent generations; and he is more enthusiastic and positive about the utopians’ criticism of contemporary society, by comparison with the utopians’ constructive endeavours.

The remainder of this section will focus on Marx’s disapproval of the constructive endeavours of the utopians.

In trying to organise and understand Marx’s various criticisms of utopianism, it is helpful to distinguish between foundational and non-foundational variants. (This distinction is intended to be exhaustive, in that all of his criticisms of utopianism will fall into one of these two categories.) Non-foundational criticisms of utopian socialism are those which, if sound, would provide us with a reason to reject views which might be held by, or even be characteristic of, utopian socialists, but which are not constitutive of their utopianism. That is, they would give us a reason to abandon the relevant beliefs, or to criticise those (including utopians) who held them, but they would not give us cause to reject utopianism as such. In contrast, foundational criticisms of utopian socialism are those which, if sound, would provide us with a reason to reject utopianism as such; that is, a reason to refrain from engaging in socialist design, a reason not to describe in relevant detail the socialist society of the future. (Of course, that reason might not be decisive, all things considered, but it would still count against utopianism per se.)

Many of Marx’s best-known criticisms of utopian socialism are non-foundational. For instance, in the Communist Manifesto , he complains that utopian socialists hold a mistaken “ahistorical” view of social change. The utopians purportedly fail to understand that the achievement of socialism depends on conditions which can only emerge at a certain stage of historical development. They might, for instance, recognise that there are strategic preconditions for socialism (for instance, the right blueprint and sufficient will to put it into practice), but (mistakenly on Marx’s account) imagine that those preconditions could have appeared at any point in time. This complaint is non-foundational in that one can accept that there are historical conditions for establishing a socialist society, and that the utopian socialists fail to understand this, without thereby having a reason to abandon utopianism as such. A commitment to the necessity and desirability of socialist design does not require one to hold an “ahistorical” view of social change.

Assessing the soundness of non-foundational criticisms, and their relevance to the utopian socialist tradition, is a complicated task (see Leopold 2018). However, even if sound and relevant, these criticisms would provide no reason to abandon utopianism as such . Consequently, they are pursued no further here. Instead, the focus is on the three main foundational arguments against utopianism that can be located in Marx’s writings; namely, that utopian plans and blueprints are necessarily undemocratic, impossible, and redundant (see Leopold 2016).

Marx’s first argument involves a normative claim that utopian plans and blueprints are undemocratic . (“Democracy” here connoting individual and collective self-determination, rather than political forms of governance.) The basic argument runs: that it is undemocratic to limit the self-determination of individuals; that providing a plan or blueprint for a socialist society limits the self-determination of individuals; and that therefore the provision of plans and blueprints for a socialist society is undemocratic. If we add in the assumption that undemocratic means are undesirable; then we can conclude that it is undesirable to provide plans or blueprints of a future socialist society. One central reason for resisting this argument is that it is hard to identify a plausible account of the conditions for self-determination, according to which it is necessarily true that merely providing a socialist plan or blueprint restricts self-determination. Indeed, one might heretically think that detailed plans and blueprints often tend to promote self-determination, helping individuals think about where it is they want to go, and how they want to get there.

Marx’s second argument rests on an epistemological claim that that utopian plans and blueprints are impossible , because they require accurate knowledge of the future of a kind which cannot be had. The basic argument starts from the assumption that to be of any use a blueprint must facilitate the construction of a future socialist society. Moreover, to facilitate the construction of a future socialist society a blueprint must be completely accurate; and to be completely accurate a blueprint must predict all the relevant circumstances of that future society. However, since it is not possible—given the complexity of the social world and the limitations of human nature—to predict all the relevant circumstances of that future society, we can conclude that socialist blueprints are of no use. One central reason for resisting this argument is that, whilst it is hard to deny that completely accurate plans are impossible (given the complexity of the world and the limitations of human understanding), the claim that only completely accurate plans are useful seems doubtful. Plans are not simply predictions, and providing less than wholly accurate plans for ourselves often forms part of the process whereby we help determine the future for ourselves (insofar as that is possible).

Marx’s third argument depends on an empirical claim that utopian plans and blueprints are unnecessary , because satisfactory solutions to social problems emerge automatically from the unfolding of the historical process without themselves needing to be designed. The basic argument runs as follows: that utopian blueprints describe the basic structure of the socialist society of the future; and that such blueprints are necessary if and only if the basic structure of future socialist society needs to be designed. However, given that the basic structure of the future socialist society develops automatically (without design assistance) within capitalist society; and that the role of human agency in this unfolding historical process is to deliver (not design) that basic structure, Marx concludes that utopian blueprints are redundant. Reasons for resisting this argument include scepticism about both Marx’s reasoning and the empirical record. Marx is certain that humankind does not need to design the basic structure of the future socialist society, but it is not really made clear who or what does that designing in its place. Moreover, the path of historical development since Marx’s day does not obviously confirm the complex empirical claim that the basic structure of socialist society is developing automatically within existing capitalism, needing only to be delivered (and not designed) by human agency.

This brief discussion suggests that there are cogent grounds for doubting Marx’s claim that utopian plans and blueprints are necessarily undemocratic, impossible, and redundant.

Finally, recall that Marx is less enthusiastic about the second and subsequent generations of utopians, than he is about the original triumvirate. We might reasonably wonder about the rationale for greater criticism of later utopians. It is important to recognise that it is not that second and subsequent generations make more or grosser errors than the original triumvirate. (Indeed, Marx appears to think that all these different generations largely held the same views, and made the same mistakes). The relevant difference is rather that, by comparison with their successors, this first generation were not to blame for those errors. In short, the rationale behind Marx’s preference for the first over the second and subsequent generations of utopian socialists is based on an understanding of historical development and an associated notion of culpability .

Marx held that the intellectual formation of this first generation took place in a historical context (the cusp of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) which was sufficiently developed to provoke socialist criticism, but not sufficiently developed for that socialist criticism to escape serious misunderstandings (Cohen 2000: 51). Since neither the material conditions of modern society, nor the historical agent capable of bringing socialism about, were sufficiently developed, this first generation were bound to develop faulty accounts of the nature of, and transition to, socialism. However, that defence—the historical unavoidability of error—is not available to subsequent generations who, despite significantly changed circumstances, hold fast to the original views of their intellectual forerunners. Marx maintains that more recent utopians, unlike the original triumvirate, really ought to know better.

At this point, we might be expected briefly to survey Marx’s legacy.

That legacy is often elaborated in terms of movements and thinkers. However, so understood, the controversy and scale of that legacy make brevity impossible, and this entry is already long enough. All we can do here is gesture at the history and mention some further reading.

The chronology here might provisionally be divided into three historical periods: from Marx’s death until the Russia Revolution (1917); from the Russian Revolution to the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989); and since 1989. It seems hard to say much that is certain about the last of these periods, but some generalisations about the first two might be hazarded.

That first period of “Classical Marxism” can be thought of in two generational waves. The first smaller group of theorists was associated with the Second International, and includes Karl Kautsky (1854–1938) and Plekhanov. The succeeding more activist generation includes Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919), V.I. Lenin (1870–1924) and Leon Trotsky (1879–1940).

The second period is perhaps dominated by “Soviet Marxism” and the critical reaction from other Marxists that it provoked. The repressive bureaucratic regimes which solidified in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe repressed independent theoretical work, including scholarly editorial work on the writings of Marx and Engels. However, they also provoked a critical reaction in the form of a body of thought often called “Western Marxism”, usually said to include the work of Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937), Theodor Adorno (1903–1969), and Althusser. The later parts of this period saw the continuing development of “Critical Theory”, as well as the birth of currents such as “Analytical Marxism” whose longer term impact is uncertain.

These first two periods are both partly covered by the Polish philosopher and historian of ideas, Leszek Kołakowski, in the final two volumes of his encyclopaedic three volume Main Currents of Marxism (1976 [1978]). A succinct critical account of the emergence and distinctive character of Western Marxism is provided by Perry Anderson in his Considerations on Western Marxism (1976). And some of the more philosophically interesting authors in this latter tradition are also covered elsewhere in this Encyclopaedia (see the Related Entries section below). Finally, and edging a little into the third of these historical periods, Christoph Henning offers an account of the (mis) readings of Marx—especially those replacing social theory with moral philosophy—in German philosophy from Heidegger to Habermas and beyond, in his Philosophy After Marx (2014).

However, we might also think of Marx’s legacy, less in terms of thinkers and movements, and more in terms of reasons for wanting to study Marx’s ideas. In that context, we would stress that this is not simply a question of the truth of his various substantive claims. The work of philosophers is, of course, also valued for the originality, insight, potential, and so on, that it may also contain. And, so judged, Marx’s writings have much to offer.

The various strands of Marx’s thought surveyed here include his philosophical anthropology, his theory of history, his critical engagement with the economic and political dimensions of capitalism, and a frustratingly vague outline of what might replace it. Whatever the connections between these threads, it seems implausible to suggest that Marx’s ideas form a system which has to be swallowed or rejected in its entirety. It might, for instance, be that Marx’s diagnosis looks more persuasive than his remedies. Readers may have little confidence in his solutions, but that does not mean that the problems he identifies are not acute.

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• Leopold, David, 2007, The Young Karl Marx , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 2016, “On Marxian Utopophobia”, Journal of the History of Philosophy , 54(1): 111–134. doi:10.1353/hph.2016.0004
• –––, 2018, “Marx, Engels, and Some (Non-Foundational) Arguments Against Utopian Socialism”, in Kandiyali 2018: 60–79.
• Lukes, Stephen, 1987, Marxism and Morality , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Maguire, John, 1972, Marx’s Paris Writings , Dublin: Gill and Macmillan.
• McLellan, David, 1970, Marx Before Marxism , London: Macmillan.
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• McMurtry, John, 1978, The Structure of Marx’s World-View , Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
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Adorno, Theodor W. | alienation | Althusser, Louis | critical theory | exploitation | Feuerbach, Ludwig Andreas | Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich | Lukács, Georg [György] | revolution | socialism

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Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054

The Politics Shed- A Free Text Book for all students of Politics.

Main ideas of Socialism

The term 'socialist' originates from the Latin word sociare, meaning to combine or share. It was first utilized in 1827 in the UK in the Co-operative Magazine. By the early 1830s, followers of Robert Owen in the UK and Henri de Saint-Simon in France began identifying their beliefs as 'socialism'. By the 1840s, the concept had gained recognition in various industrialized countries such as France, Belgium, and the German states. Socialism is characterized by its opposition to capitalism and its objective to provide a more humane and socially beneficial alternative. Central to socialism is the belief in humans as social beings interconnected by their shared humanity. Socialists prioritize cooperation over competition and value equality, particularly social equality, as the fundamental principle of socialism. They assert that social equality plays a vital role in societal stability, cohesion, and freedom by addressing material needs and forming the basis for personal growth. However, socialism encompasses various divisions and conflicting traditions revolving around differing perspectives on the 'means' (how socialism should be achieved) and 'ends' (the vision of the future socialist society). For instance, communists or Marxists typically promote revolution to eliminate capitalism and establish a classless society with communal ownership of resources. Conversely, democratic socialists or social democrats advocate for a gradual approach, aiming to reform or humanize the capitalist system by reducing material disparities and eliminating poverty.

Human nature

Liberalism and socialism both have an optimistic view of human nature, making them 'progressive' ideologies. However, they differ in their reasons for this optimism. Liberals believe individuals are naturally self-reliant, while socialists see people as naturally cooperative and altruistic. Socialists argue that humans seek solidarity and comradeship, in contrast to liberals who emphasize autonomy and independence. Socialism acknowledges that external factors have diluted mankind's true nature, believing that human nature is malleable and can be improved. The key question is: what influences human nature and how can it be enhanced to unlock humanity's full potential?

Collectivism

Collectivism is the belief that emphasizes the importance of cooperative human efforts over individual pursuits, suggesting that human nature is fundamentally social. It highlights the significance of social groups, such as classes or nations, as political entities. However, the term is used inconsistently. For example, Mikhail Bakunin and other anarchists defined 'collectivism' as self-governing associations of individuals. On the other hand, some see collectivism as the opposite of individualism, giving priority to collective interests over individual ones. Moreover, collectivism is at times linked to the state as the mechanism for safeguarding collective interests, suggesting that an increase in state responsibilities signals the promotion of collectivist principles.

Socialists endorse collectivism for two fundamental reasons .

From a moral perspective, the interests of the group - such as a society or a community - should take priority over individual self-interest. Collective effort encourages social unity and a sense of social responsibility towards others.

In practical economic terms, collectivism utilises the capabilities of the whole of society efficiently, avoiding the wastefulness and limited impact of competitive individual effort inherent in the capitalist economy.

Labour Broadcast: For the many not the few

Collectivism, therefore, reflects the socialist view that it is more important to pursue the interests of a society or a community rather than individual self-interest.

The focus on collectivism is based on the socialist belief about human nature, which states that humans are social beings who prefer living in groups rather than alone. This perspective suggests that humans have the ability to work together towards common goals through collective action, forming bonds of fraternity. Socialists also contend that human nature is shaped by social circumstances and experiences. According to socialism, individuals can only be understood in relation to the social groups they are part of. This argument leads socialists to assert that true freedom and fulfillment come from being part of a community or society. Many socialists advocate for state intervention and planning to advance collectivist objectives and ensure that the distribution of goods and services is not solely determined by market forces. The promotion of collectivism often involves an increase in state size, expansion of state services, and higher state expenditure. In addition to its primary goal of redistributing wealth and resources, socialism argues that economic collectivism offers two other advantages. Firstly, measures such as progressive taxation, elevated public spending, extensive public services, and public ownership are viewed as manifestations of a society that is more fraternal, cooperative, and socially just. Secondly, such collectivist strategies are believed to enhance economic efficiency. Advocates, like Marx and Engels, argue that capitalism and market dynamics are inherently volatile and unpredictable, leading to periods of significant unemployment. A more collectivist economy, they contend, would be more stable and manageable, thus better equipped to meet society's material needs.

However, in practice, different strands of socialism vary in their commitment to collectivism.

Socialism seeks to rectify the problems caused by capitalism by championing an economy that provides for greater workers’ control in employment, and a significant redistribution of wealth and resources within the economy generally. Indeed, socialism is routinely described by its proponents as a ‘redistributionist’ doctrine, practising what Tony Benn (1925–2014) wryly described as ‘the politics of Robin Hood — taking from the rich and then giving to the poor’. For socialists, the ‘redistributionist’ economy will usually involve two broad principles.

First, there will be an emphatic rejection of the laissez-faire capitalism advocated by classical and neo-liberalism, whereby market forces are given free rein by a state that is disengaged and minimalist in relation to a society’s economy. According to socialism, an economy where there is low taxation and little state interference will be one where unfairness and social injustice become exacerbated.

Marxists and state socialists advocate collective action through a centralised state that organises all (or nearly all) production and distribution. For example, in the USSR after 1929, most industries were nationalised and all agricultural land was collectivised in order to transform a backward state into a modern industrial society, using complete state control of the economy to bring about change. After the Second World War, communist regimes in China and eastern Europe pursued similar policies of state-controlled collectivism.

Moderate socialists who accept some degree of free-market capitalism in the economy have pursued collectivism in a more limited way. For instance, the 1945-51 Labour government in the UK nationalised key industries - such as coal, electricity, and iron and steel - but left much of the economy in private hands.

All socialists believe that a robust state is necessary to achieve a more just and equal society. In the short to medium term, creating a fairer distribution of wealth and enhancing social justice would be quite challenging without an active and directive state. While some socialists, like Marxists and orthodox communists, anticipate the eventual fading of the state - what Marx termed 'the end of history' - they concur that a strong state is indispensable for the foreseeable future. This state must be of a specific nature, distinct from pre-Enlightenment models. Collectivism is a complex concept with various interpretations. It encompasses small self-governing communities inspired by 19th-century socialists like Robert Owen and Charles Fourier, opposition to individualism, and a centralized system of state control that guides both the economy and society.

There are two basic criticisms of collectivism.

· Because collectivism emphasises group action and common interests, it suppresses human individuality and diversity.

· As collectivist objectives can only really be advanced through the agency of the state, it leads to the growth of arbitrary state power and the erosion of individual freedoms

Since the 1970s, socialists generally have attached less importance to collectivism. This is due to a growing perception that collectivism in developed countries such as the UK (mainly in the form of state welfare, trade union power, and government intervention in the economy) was producing a dependency culture and a sluggish, uncompetitive economic sector. The end of the Cold War in 1989 and the collapse of the USSR in 1991 reinforced this view as collectivism suffered a significant ideological defeat.

Socialism and Human Nature

Socialists believe in the inherent social nature of humans, emphasizing cooperation over competition. They see individuals as naturally inclined to work together for the greater good, viewing cooperative efforts as the most effective way to benefit society. Cooperation not only aligns with socialist principles but also strengthens the bonds within a community, fostering understanding, respect, and mutual support. By prioritizing cooperation over competition, groups can harness the collective abilities of all members, rather than relying solely on the potential of an individual.

By contrast, according to the socialist view, competition (particularly within a capitalist economy) is wasteful, promotes social divisions and generates conflict, hostility, and resentment. Socialists maintain that capitalist economic competition sets one person against another, a process that encourages people to reject or disregard their common humanity (and social nature) rather than accept it. It encourages humans to be self-centered and belligerent. 

This emphasis on a common humanity has led socialists to conclude that human motivation can be driven not just by material considerations but also by a moral view of people's role in society. 

People should work hard in order to improve their society or community because they have a sense of responsibility for other humans, particularly the least fortunate. The moral incentive to improve society rests on the acceptance of a common humanity. 

For the economy to function properly, most contemporary socialists accept the need for at least some material rewards to motivate people, but they also stress that these should be linked to moral incentives. For example, co-operative effort to boost economic growth not only increases living standards for the working population but also provides the funds (through taxation) to finance welfare measures to help the vulnerable and the poor.

Finally the belief in a common humanity has led socialists to support an interventionist role for the state. Marxists and state socialists argue that the agency of the state can be used to control production and distribution for the benefit of everyone. Social democrats also advocate state intervention in a more limited form of welfare and redistribution programmes, to help those in the greatest need.

The socialist perspective on human nature emphasizes equality, not the belief that everyone is born with identical capabilities. Socialist egalitarianism is based on the idea that societal treatment, not natural abilities, is the main cause of human inequality. Social justice, therefore, requires equal or more equal treatment in terms of rewards and material circumstances. Socialists prioritize social equality over equality of opportunity, as the latter can perpetuate existing inequalities. There is disagreement among socialists on how to achieve social equality, with Marxists advocating for absolute equality through collective ownership, while social democrats prefer relative equality through wealth redistribution and progressive taxation. Social democrats aim to regulate capitalism rather than abolish it, focusing on eradicating poverty while still allowing for material incentives. This approach sometimes blurs the line between social equality and equality of opportunity.

Social equality ensures fairness

Economic inequality (differences in wealth), according to the socialist view, is due to the structura inequalities in a capitalist society, rather than innate differences of ability among people. For this reason, some socialists tend to reject equality of opportunity because, in their view, such a concel justifies the unequal treatment of people on the grounds of innate ability. This argument reflects view of human nature that emphasises people are born with the potential to be equal.

Other socialists maintain that, since it is part of human nature to have different abilities and attributes, inequality in the form of differential rewards is inevitable to some extent. These socialists tend to endorse an egalitarian approach to ensure that people are treated less unequally, in terms of material rewards and living conditions. Without this commitment to sociali5, egalitarianism, formal political and legal equality is compromised because, on its own, the latter does nothing to tackle the structural inequalities (such as social class) inherent in capitalism.

Social equality reinforces collectivism

A second argument is that social equality reinforces collectivism, co-operation and solidarity with' society and the economy. Put simply, human beings are more likely to co-exist harmoniously

in society and work together for the common economic good if they share the same social and economic conditions. For example, modern Sweden has high levels of social equality based on extensive wealth redistribution and social welfare. Socialists argue that such measures have mad€ a major contribution to the stability, cohesion and economic output of Swedish society.

Social inequality, on the other hand, encourages conflict and instability. Societies with great econom and social inequalities are unstable because they are sharply divided into the 'haves' and 'have-not Eventually, if the situation is not addressed, the disadvantaged sections of society will revolt in protest against their conditions, as happened in Russia in 1917 and Mexico in 1910-20. In a similar way socialists also condemn equality of opportunity for fostering a competitive 'dog-eat-dog' outlook.

Social equality is a means of satisfying basic human needs

A third view is that social equality is a means of satisfying basic human needs that are part of human nature and essential to a sense of human fulfilment. Given that all people's basic needs are the same (such as food, friendship and shelter), socialists call for the equal, or more equal, distribution of wealth and resources to promote human fulfilment and realise human potential. In terms of the economy, most socialists agree that the free market, driven by the profit motive, cannot allocate wealth and resources fairly to all members of society. In their view, only the redistributive mechanism of the state can provide for everyone, irrespective of social position, and combat the divisive effects of the free market.

Common ownership

Socialists endorse common ownership because, in their view, private property (productive wealth or capital, rather than personal belongings) has several important drawbacks.

. As wealth is created by the communal endeavour of humans, it should be owned collectively, not by individuals.

Private ty encourages materialism and fosters the false belief that the achievement of personal wealth will bring fulfilment.

· Private property generates social conflict between 'have' and 'have-not' groups, such as owners and workers.

Broadly speaking, socialists-have argued either that private property should be abolished entirely and replaced with common ownership or that the latter should be applied in a more limited way. In the USSR from the 1930s, the Stalinist regime implemented an all-encompassing form of common ownership by bringing the entire economy under state control. More moderate socialists, including the Attlee Labour government in the UK (1945-51), have opted for limited common ownership by nationalising only key strategic industries, including the coal mines, the railways and steel-making, leaving much of the economy in private hands. However, in recent decades, western socialist parties have placed less emphasis on common ownership in favour of other objectives.

The Members list the 5 steps to start a workers' co-operative, and explain how their co-operative was designed to fill several needs in their community. They discuss the benefits of starting a workers' co-operative and encourage aspiring entrepreneurs to consider a workers' co-operative instead of traditional options such as sole-proprietorship and business partnership.  

Socialists are concerned about the negative impact of private property on society and individuals, believing it leads to inequality and exploitation. Some propose abolishing capitalism and having workers manage their workplaces and share profits, in contrast to state central planning and nationalization seen in communist states like the USSR and China. Syndicalists advocate for workers' control through trade unions, aiming to overthrow governments with general strikes and radical union action. The cooperative movement, originating in the nineteenth century with the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers, offers a non-Marxist approach to workers' control and a different economic model. Cooperatives are democratic organizations where members control and share profits, with examples like the Co-operative Group in the UK .

The term 'workers' control' refers to the complete or partial ownership of an economic enterprise (such as a business or factory) by those employed there. It can also be used in a wider and more political sense to mean workers` control of the state. The concept has influenced different strands of socialist thought, including Marxism and syndicalism. Workers' control covers a range of schemes that aim to provide workers with full democratic control over their places of employment.

These schemes go beyond the right to be consulted and participate by seeking to establish real decision-making powers for workers in their particular industries or occupations.

This system is often justified based on core socialist principles. Firstly, workers' control aligns with socialist beliefs about human nature, as it promotes collective effort and the pursuit of group interests over individual ones. Additionally, some socialists argue that workers' control, by fully involving employees in the production process, can maximize human potential by addressing alienation at work and challenging the capitalist perspective of labor as a commodity. 

Secondly, workers' control has significant economic implications. Some socialists argue that since workers are crucial in production, they should have the right to control the means of production. Workers' control aims to diminish or replace capitalist influence on the economy. For instance, French Syndicalists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries advocated for removing capitalism and implementing workers' control through trade unions and proletarian political institutions. 

Thirdly, supporters of workers' control have differing views on the state's role in the socialist transformation. Syndicalists view the state as a tool of capitalist oppression and an ineffective bureaucratic system incapable of meaningful reform. They propose replacing the state with a form of workers' control based on a federation of trade union bodies. British guild socialism, a pro-workers' control movement from the early 20th century, had internal disagreements regarding the state's role. While all guild socialists advocated for state ownership of industry for workers' control, some wanted the state to remain unchanged, while others suggested transforming it into a federal body comprising workers' guilds, consumers' organizations, and local government bodies. Lastly, workers' control is considered a crucial step towards a socialist society. On one end, 'moderate' workers' control in a capitalist setting, like increased trade union influence on managerial decisions, can introduce limited reforms to the social and economic structure. On the other end, industrial self-management by workers under state socialism, such as the workers' councils in Yugoslavia in the 1950s and 1960s, reinforces the idea that a socialist society should elevate the condition and status of the working class.

Anarcho-syndicalism

Critics reject such schemes on the grounds that they are utopian and fail to acknowledge that business needs risk-takers and investors as well as workers. According to this view, workers often lack the entrepreneurial attributes necessary for success. In taking over the management functions of appointments, promotions and dismissals, manual employees may adversely affect the economic viability of their workplace.

Socialist Thinkers: Marx & Engels

Karl marx (1818-1883) & friedrich engels (1820-1895).

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were well known revolutionary socialists. Two of their key academic works are ‘The Communist Manifesto’ (1848) and ‘Capital’ (1867, 1885, 1894).

Centrality of social class

• Marx and Engels’ viewed social class as essential to socialism.
• Social class is key to three ideas of Marx and Engels’ form of socialism, which is named Marxism. The ideas are historical materialism, dialectical change and class consciousness.

Historical materialism

• Historical materialism states that the development of a society can be explained by economic and class factors.

Dialectical change

• Marx and Engels argued that humans pass through a number of stages of development, with a class structure existing at each stage.
• Marx and Engels outlined that at each stage there is a class conflict which brings about historical change and a new stage of development, which will only end when a communist society is created that will not have classes or class conflict.

Class consciousness

• Marx and Engels argued that class consciousness is needed for a socialist revolution to take place because it means that individuals become aware of the interests of their social class and determined to pursue them.
• Marx and Engels argued that a revolution will happen as class conflict intensifies between the exploited workers and the ruling class.

Humans as social beings

• Marx and Engels argue that humans are active beings who are able to lead satisfying lives where the conditions for free creative production exist. The conditions for this only exist in a communist society.

Free from capitalism

• Marx and Engels state that each individual society will reach their potential in a communist society by working in cooperation with one another and creatively.

1 Democracy & Participation

1.1 Representative & Direct Democracy

1.1.1 Direct Democracy

1.1.2 Pros & Cons of Direct Democracy

1.1.3 Representative Democracy

1.1.4 Pros & Cons of Representative Democracy

1.1.5 Comparing Types of Democracy

1.1.6 Case for Democratic Reform

1.1.7 End of Topic Test - Types of Democracy

1.1.8 Top Grade AO3/4 - Types of Democracy

1.2 Wider Franchise & Suffrage

1.2.1 History of the UK Franchise

1.2.2 Campaigns for Suffrage

1.2.3 End of Topic Test - Franchise & Suffrage

1.3 Pressure Groups & Other Influences

1.3.1 Types of Pressure Group

1.3.2 Functions of Pressure Groups

1.3.3 How Pressure Groups Influence

1.3.4 Case-Study Examples

1.3.5 Other Collective Orgs & Groups

1.3.6 End of Topic Test - Pressure Groups & Influences

1.3.7 Application Questions - Pressure Groups

1.4 Rights in Context

1.4.1 Development of Rights in the UK

1.4.2 The UK's Rights-Based Culture

1.4.3 End of Topic Test - Rights in Context

2 Political Parties

2.1 How Political Parties Work

2.1.1 Functions & Features of UK Political Parties

2.1.2 Funding of UK Political Parties

2.1.3 UK Funding Reform

2.1.4 End of Topic Test - Political Parties

2.1.5 Top Grade AO3/4 - Political Parties

2.2 Established Political Parties

2.2.1 The Conservative Party: History

2.2.2 The Conservative Party: Recent Leaders

2.2.3 The Labour Party

2.2.4 The Liberal Democrat Party

2.2.5 Ideas & Policies of UK Parties

2.2.6 End of Topic Test - Established Parties

2.2.7 Application Questions - Established Parties

2.3 Emerging & Minor Political Parties

2.3.1 Minority Parties

2.3.2 Minority Parties Case Studies

2.3.3 End of Topic Test - Minor Parties

2.4 UK Political Parties in Context

2.4.1 Different Party Systems

2.4.2 Political Spectrum

2.4.3 Factors Affecting Party Success

2.4.4 End of Topic Test - Parties in Context

2.4.5 Application Questions - Parties in Context

3 Electoral Systems

3.1 Different Electoral Systems

3.1.1 FPTP & STV

3.1.2 AMS & SV

3.1.3 End of Topic Test - Electoral Systems

3.1.4 Top Grade AO3/4 - Electoral Systems

3.2 Referendums & How They Are Used

3.2.1 Case For & Against Referendums

3.2.2 End of Topic Test - Referendums

3.2.3 A-A* (AO3/4) - Referendums

3.3 Electoral System Analysis

3.3.1 Electoral System Analysis

3.3.2 End of Topic Test - System Analysis

3.3.3 A-A* (AO3/4) - Electoral System Analysis

4 Voting Behaviour & the Media

4.1 General Election Case Studies

4.1.1 Case Studies of Elections

4.1.2 Factors Influencing Voting in Elections

4.1.3 End of Topic Test - Case Studies & Factors

4.1.4 A-A* (AO3/4) - Case Studies & Voting

4.2 Media Influence

4.2.1 Media Influence

4.2.2 End of Topic Test - Media Influence

5 Conservatism

5.1 Conservatism: Core Ideas & Principles

5.1.1 Pragmatism & Tradition

5.1.2 Human Imperfection & Organic Society/State

5.1.3 Authority & Hierarchy

5.1.4 Paternalism

5.1.5 Empiricism

5.1.6 Anti-Permissiveness

5.1.7 Radical Conservative Ideas

5.1.8 End of Topic Test - Core Conservatism

5.2 Conservatism: Differing Views & Tensions

5.2.1 Traditional Conservatism

5.2.2 One-Nation Conservatism

5.2.3 New Right Conservatism

5.2.4 End of Topic Test - Different Views

5.3 Conservative Thinkers & Ideas

5.3.1 Thomas Hobbes & Edmund Burke

5.3.2 Michael Oakeshott & Ayn Rand

5.3.3 Robert Nozick

5.3.4 End of Topic Test - Conservative Thinkers

5.3.5 A-A* (AO3/4) - Conservatism

6 Liberalism

6.1 Liberalism: Core Ideas & Principles

6.1.1 Individualism & Freedom/Liberty

6.1.2 The State & Rationalism

6.1.3 Equality & Social Justice

6.1.4 Liberal Democracy

6.1.5 Other Important Liberal Ideas

6.1.6 End of Topic Test - Liberalism

6.2 Differing Views And Tensions Within Liberalism

6.2.1 Classical Liberalism

6.2.2 Modern Liberalism

6.2.3 End of Topic Test - Tensions & Views

6.3 Liberal Thinkers & Ideas

6.3.1 John Locke & Mary Wollstonecraft

6.3.2 John Stuart Mill & John Rawls

6.3.3 Betty Friedan

6.3.4 End of Topic Test - Thinkers & Ideas

6.3.5 A-A* - Liberalism

7 Socialism

7.1 Socialism: Core Ideas & Principles

7.1.1 Fraternity & Co-operation

7.1.2 Capitalism & Common Ownership

7.1.3 Communism

7.1.4 Collectivism

7.1.5 Common Humanity

7.1.6 Equality

7.1.7 Social Class & Workers' Control

7.1.8 End of Topic Test - Socialism

7.2 Differing Views And Tensions Within Socialism

7.2.1 Differing Views And Tensions

7.2.2 End of Topic Test - Views & Tensions

7.3 Socialist Thinkers and Their Ideas

7.3.1 Socialist Thinkers: Marx & Engels

7.3.2 Socialist Thinkers: Webb & Luxemburg

7.3.3 Socialist Thinkers: Crosland and Giddens

7.3.4 End of Topic Test - Thinkers & Ideas

7.3.5 A-A* (AO3/4) - Socialism

8 The UK Constitution

8.1 Nature & Sources of UK Constitution

8.1.1 Development of the UK Constitution

8.1.2 Nature of the UK Constitution

8.1.3 Sources of the UK Constitution

8.1.4 End of Topic Test - Nature & Sources

8.2 Constitutional Change since 1997

8.2.1 Constitutional Reform 1997-2010 1

8.2.2 Constitutional Reform 1997-2010 2

8.2.3 Constitutional Reform 2010-15 & Reforms Since 2015

8.2.4 End of Topic Test - Reform

8.2.5 Application Questions - Reform

8.3 Role & Powers of Devolved UK Bodies

8.3.1 Devolution in England & Scotland

8.3.2 Devolution in Wales & Northern Ireland

8.3.3 End of Topic Test - Devolution

8.4 Debates on Constitutional Reform

8.4.1 Constitutional Reform & Devolution

8.4.2 Should the Constitution Be Codified?

8.4.3 End of Topic Test - Reform Debates

8.4.4 Application Questions - Codification & Devolution

9 The UK Parliament

9.1 Houses of Parliament

9.1.1 Houses of Parliament

9.1.2 Functions of the House of Commons

9.1.3 Functions of the House of Lords

9.1.4 End of Topic Test - Parliament

9.1.5 Top Grade AO3/4 - Parliament

9.2 Comparative Powers

9.2.1 Comparative Powers of the Houses

9.2.2 End of Topic Test - Comparative Powers

9.3 Legislative Process

9.3.1 Legislative Stages

9.3.2 Law-Making in the two Houses

9.3.3 End of Topic Test - Legislative Process

9.4 Parliament & Executive Interactions

9.4.1 Backbenchers

9.4.2 Select Committees

9.4.3 The Opposition

9.4.4 Ministerial Question Time

9.4.5 End of Topic Test - Parliament & Executive

9.4.6 Application Questions - Parliament & Executive

10 The Prime Minister & the Executive

10.1 The Executive

10.1.1 Structure of the Executive

10.1.2 Roles of the Executive

10.1.3 Powers of the Executive

10.1.4 End of Topic Test - PM & Executive

10.2 Ministerial Responsibility

10.2.1 Individual Ministerial Responsibility

10.2.2 Collective Ministerial Responsibility

10.2.3 End of Topic Test - Ministerial Responsibility

10.3 Prime Minister & the Cabinet

10.3.1 Role of the Prime Minister

10.3.2 Prime Minister's Powers

10.3.3 Limits on the Prime Minister's Powers

10.3.4 Role of the Cabinet

10.3.5 Prime Minister & Cabinet: Relations

10.3.6 Prime Minister & Cabinet: Balance of Power

10.3.7 Prime Minister & Cabinet: Case Studies

10.3.8 End of Topic Test - PM & Cabinet

10.3.9 Top Grade AO3/4 - PM & Cabinet

11 Relationships Between Government Branches

11.1 The Supreme Court

11.1.1 Role & Composition

11.1.2 Principles & Influence of the Supreme Court

11.1.3 End of Topic Test - Supreme Court

11.2 Parliament & Executive Relations

11.2.1 Parliament & Executive: Questions

11.2.2 Parliament & Executive: Committees

11.2.3 Parliament & Executive: Voting

11.2.4 Executive Dominance Over Parliament

11.2.5 Balance of Power

11.2.6 End of Topic Test - Parliament & Executive

11.2.7 A-A* (AO3/4) - Relationships Between Government

11.3 The European Union & the UK

11.3.1 Aims & Policy Making of the European Union

11.3.2 End of Topic Test - EU & UK

11.4 Sovereignty in the UK Political System

11.4.1 Sovereignty in the UK Political System

11.4.2 End of Topic Test - Sovereignty

12 US Constitution & Federalism

12.1 Nature of the US Constitution

12.1.1 Nature of the US Constitution

12.1.2 Nature: Positives & Negatives

12.1.3 Constitutional Framework

12.1.4 The Amendment Process

12.1.5 End of Topic Test - Nature US Constitution

12.2 Principles of the US Constitution

12.2.1 Federalism

12.2.2 Separation of Powers/Checks & Balances

12.2.3 Bipartisanship

12.2.4 Limited Government

12.2.5 End of Topic Test - Constitutional Principles

12.3 Federalism

12.3.1 Main Characteristics

12.3.2 Federal Government and the States

12.3.3 End of Topic Test - Federalism

12.4 Interpretations & Debates

12.4.1 Democracy in the Constitution

12.4.2 Federalism

12.4.3 End of Topic Test - Debates

12.4.4 A-A* (AO3/4) - US Constitution

13 US Congress

13.1 Structure of Congress

13.1.1 Structure of Congress

13.1.2 Distribution of Powers

13.1.3 End of Topic Test - Congress Structure

13.2 Functions of Congress

13.2.1 Representation

13.2.2 Legislative

13.2.3 Oversight

13.2.4 End of Topic Test - Functions of Congress

13.3 Interpretations & Debates

13.3.1 Changing Roles & Powers

13.3.2 Changing Significance of Parties & of Powers

13.3.3 End of Topic Test - Debates

13.3.4 Application Questions - US Congress

14 US Presidency

14.1 Presidential Power

14.1.1 Formal Sources of Presidential Power

14.1.2 Informal Sources of Presidential Power

14.1.3 Powers of Persuasion

14.1.4 End of Topic Test - Presidential Power

14.2 The Presidency

14.2.1 President Relationship with Other Institutions

14.2.2 Limitations on Presidential Power

14.2.3 US Presidents Achieving Their Aims

14.2.4 End of Topic Test - Presidency

14.3 Interpretations & Debates of the US Presidency

14.3.1 The Imperial Presidency

14.3.2 The President in Foreign Policy

14.3.3 End of Topic Test - Debates

14.3.4 A-A* (AO3/4) - US Presidency

15 US Supreme Court & Civil Rights

15.1 Nature & Role of Supreme Court

15.1.1 Nature & Role of the Supreme Court

15.1.2 End of Topic Test - Nature & Role

15.2 Supreme Court Appointment Process

15.2.1 Appointment Process

15.2.2 Supreme Court Membership

15.2.3 End of Topic Test - Appointments

15.3 The Supreme Court & Public Policy

15.3.1 Supreme Court & Public Policy

15.3.2 End of Topic Test - Public Policy

15.4 Protection of Civil Liberties & Rights

15.4.1 Protection of Civil Liberties & Rights

15.4.2 Race & Rights in Contemporary US Politics

15.4.3 End of Topic Test - Rights & Liberties

15.5 Debates & Interpretations of the Supreme Court

15.5.1 Political Nature of the Supreme Court

15.5.2 Judicial Interpretation

15.5.3 Supreme Court Checks & Balances

15.5.4 End of Topic Test - Debates

15.5.5 Application Questions - The Supreme Court

16 US Democracy & Participation

16.1 Presidential Elections

16.1.1 Presidential Elections

16.1.2 Primaries

16.1.3 National Party Conventions

16.1.4 End of Topic Test - Presidential Elections

16.2 Electoral College

16.2.1 Electoral College System

16.2.2 Reforms

16.2.3 End of Topic Test - Electoral College

16.3 Electoral Campaigns

16.3.1 Issues in Elections

16.3.2 End of Topic Test - Campaigns

16.4 Incumbency

16.4.1 Elections & Incumbency

16.4.2 End of Topic Test - Incumbency

16.4.3 A-A* (AO3/4) - Elections & Electoral College

16.5 Democrats & Republicans

16.5.1 National & State Level Organisation

16.5.2 Democratic & Republican Policies

16.5.3 Changing Party Significance

16.5.4 End of Topic Test - Democrats & Republicans

16.6 Internal Conflict & Ideology

16.6.1 Types of Democrats

16.6.2 Types of Republicans

16.6.3 End of Topic Test - Internal Conflict

16.7 Support & Demographics

16.7.1 Coalition of Supporters

16.7.2 End of Topic Test - Party Support

16.8 Interest Groups

16.8.1 Political Significance of Interest Groups

16.8.2 Interest Group Influence & Impact on Democracy

16.8.3 End of Topic Test - Interest Groups

16.8.4 Application Questions - Parties, Ideology & Groups

17 Comparing Democracies

17.1 Theoretical Approaches

17.1.1 Theoretical Approaches

17.1.2 End of Topic Test - Approaches

17.2 UK & USA Similarities & Differences

17.2.1 Constitution: Nature

17.2.2 Constitution: Provisions & Principles

17.2.3 Federal System & Devolution

17.2.4 Legislative: Lower Houses of Government

17.2.5 Legislative: Upper Houses of Government

17.2.6 Legislative: Powers & Functions

17.2.7 Executive

17.2.8 Supreme Court

17.2.9 Supreme Court: Judicial Independence

17.2.10 Civil Rights

17.2.11 Civil Rights: Interest Groups

17.2.12 Party Systems & Parties

17.2.13 Campaign Finance & Pressure Groups

17.2.14 End of Topic Test - Comparing UK & US

17.2.15 Application Questions - UK & USA

18 Feminism

18.1 Feminism: Core Ideas & Principles

18.1.1 Context of Feminism

18.1.2 Sex & Gender

18.1.3 Patriarchy & The Personal is the Political

18.1.4 Difference, Egalitarian & Intersectionality

18.1.5 Key Themes

18.1.6 End of Topic Test - Core Ideas & Principles

18.2 Different Types of Feminism

18.2.1 The Waves of Feminism

18.2.2 Socialist & Radical Feminism

18.2.3 Post-Modern Feminism

18.2.4 End of Topic Test - Different Types of Feminism

18.3 Feminist Thinkers & Their Ideas

18.3.1 Charlotte Gilman & Simone de Beauvoir

18.3.2 Kate Millett

18.3.3 Sheila Rowbotham & bell hooks

18.3.4 End of Topic Test - Feminist Thinkers & Ideas

18.3.5 A-A* (AO3/4) - Feminism

19 Nationalism

19.1 Nationalism: Core Ideas & Principles

19.1.1 Nations & Self-Determination

19.1.2 Nation-States & Culturalism

19.1.3 Racialism & Internationalism

19.1.4 Civic & Ethnic Nationalism

19.1.5 Liberal & Socialist Internationalism

19.1.6 Key Themes

19.1.7 End of Topic Test - Core Ideas & Principles

19.2 Different Types of Nationalism

19.2.1 Liberal & Conservative Nationalism

19.2.2 Post-Colonial & Expansionist Nationalism

19.2.3 Progressive & Regressive Nationalism

19.2.4 Inclusive & Exclusive Nationalism

19.2.5 End of Topic Test -Different Types of Nationalism

19.3 Nationalist Thinkers & Their Ideas

19.3.1 Jean-Jacques Rousseau & Gottfried von Herder

19.3.2 Giuseppe Mazzini & Charles Maurras

19.3.3 Marcus Garvey

19.3.4 End of Topic Test - Nationalist Thinkers & Ideas

19.3.5 A-A* (AO3/4) - Nationalism

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End of Topic Test - Views & Tensions

Socialist Thinkers: Webb & Luxemburg

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Human Nature in Marxism-Leninism and African Socialism

2010, Thought and Practice: A Journal of the Philosophical Association of Kenya

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Oseni Taiwo Afisi

Understanding the true nature of the human being is no doubt a sine qua non for developing an ideology for a desirable praxis. This paper examines the pitfalls of Marxist-Leninist scientific socialism and African socialism. It argues that a critical analysis of both ideologies reveals a lack of clear understanding of the nature of man by their proponents. An exhaustive account of the nature of man must explain self-consciousness, the urge to avoid pain, the desire for a purposeful life and for freedom from external interference, the passion for distinction, and, most importantly, the desire to acquire personal property. The paper further contends that socialism (whether scientific or African), does not allow room for the pursuit of personal ambition. This accounts for the failure in the implementation of both Marxist-Leninist socialism and African socialism. The paper avers that there is need to understand that the human being cannot simply be seen as a socio-economic or historical ...

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The base premise behind Adam Smith's idea of Capitalism was man's self-interest. That behind modern political philosophy of was also, similarly, the notion of Thomas Hobbes that, by nature, life (hence, human nature) was 'brutish,nasty and short'. Hobbes thought, to set the society in order,a power-state was the only remedy. This paper attempts to seek evidences to show that, human nature is NOT rooted on 'self-interest',but it is basically 'self-rooted'.

The subject of human nature has been explored by philosophers of all ages. Unlike other philosophers, Marx combined practice to inspect human nature and scientifically drew a conclusion that human nature whose core is life activity from one's own initiative is the sum of all social relations; and the final purpose as well as the fundamental driving force to study it is to meet the omini‐directional needs of human.The human characteristics are summarized as the totality, hierarchy, practicalness. Marxʹs theory of human nature plays an important role in learning the history of the primary stage of socialism in the right way, understanding the market economy in China and bringing inspiration to the construction of harmonious society.

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This paper examines the relation between the problematic of human nature and political theory; it is claimed that every such theory is founded on some anthropological preconditions. The paper studies the political conceptions of four modern philosophers: Thomas Hobbes, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Karl Marx, Pyotr Kropotkin. It reveals that two opposing tendencies form the imaginary of the modern era: the authoritative one that identifies an egoistic/ unsociable human nature that needs control, and the libertarian one that recognizes a human being capable of more advanced types of social fabric. The problem that is also investigated is how anthropological dualism can be transcended to permit the conception of a new anthropological type as well as the type of society that will help human potentiality of consciousness and coexistence to unfold. Keywords: human nature, political theory, modernity, society, social contract, civilization, sovereignty, freedom, needs, happiness, constitution, subject, consciousness, coexistence.

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Abstract. The postmodernist turn in theory left the status of humanism in some doubt. This chapter argues that a recuperation of a specifically socialist humanism is both possible and desirable, but only by overcoming the anthropocentrism of radical humanism. Renaissance and Enlightenment conceptions of the subject were rooted in an untenable dichotomy between the human and the animal, in ways that vitiated the idea and ideal of universal freedom. By conflating subjectivity as such with human subjectivity, humanism created a diremption in the world that placed the knower (human consciousness) on one side, and the merely known (objectified Nature) on the other. Marxism and socialist humanism reproduced this error in ways that have undermined the socialist vision of universal emancipation, misconstrued the nature of the subject, and overlooked the significance of human domination of other animals. The author advocates a new approach, what he calls metahumanism, to affirm a “two-sided” freedom in which the liberation of other animals from human oppression, and the emancipation of ourselves as animals—that is, the restoration of the sensual dimension of existence, free sexual expression, and valorization of the labor and love of the body—would become central features of a new movement for civil and cultural reform.

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People line up as they wait to enter a soup kitchen in Athens, Greece, 15 February 2017. Photo by Alkis Konstantinidis/Reuters

Liberal socialism now

As the crisis of democracy deepens, we must return to liberalism’s revolutionary and egalitarian roots.

by Matthew McManus   + BIO

Very few of us expected liberalism to have such a rocky 21st century. At the turn of the 20th, liberal ideology and liberal democratic political institutions seemed more legitimate and secure than ever before. Liberals had defeated their great geopolitical rivals on the fascist Right and the communist Left. How things change.

Over the past few decades, discontent and disdain for liberalism have spread across huge swathes of the globe, led by a resurgent Right-wing populism that denounced its materialism, universalism and libertine decadence. Wannabe strongmen like Victor Orban declared they were constructing new kinds of ‘illiberal democracy’ – a half truth, since the regimes would be illiberal, but not particularly democratic. Books flooded the market with alarmist or triumphalist titles such as Why Liberalism Failed (2018) or A World After Liberalism (2021), all of which diagnosed its failures with relish or fear. Theories about what had gone wrong multiplied. Liberalism was too atomistic, too alienating, too antidemocratic, too democratic for its own good, too beholden to the ignorant masses, too elitist, even too boring and politically correct for its own good.

What was often lost in the discourse around liberalism in the 21st century was whether it could simultaneously be worth saving while also having deserved the ignominy into which it was falling. From the 1970s onwards, many liberal politicians and theorists had backed away from the more progressive and transformative propensities of the tradition. The era of big liberal dreams about establishing a ‘great’ or ‘just’ society was over.

Internalising a host of conservative arguments, liberals like Isaiah Berlin or Friedrich Hayek argued that big dreams were dangerous and contrary to liberalism, its revolutionary past aside. The best one could hope for was a competitive and highly inequitable neoliberal society defined by ordered liberty and at most a minimal welfare state. That such a consciously deflated vision became associated with technocratic aloofness, a lack of principled conviction and a wariness of democratic accountability came as a surprise only to neoliberals c 2016. More thoughtful commentators followed Samuel Moyn’s claim in Liberalism Against Itself (2023) that if liberals couldn’t rediscover how to not just fearmonger, but inspire, they were unlikely to see their doctrine survive much longer and, ‘anyway, survival is not good enough.’

Moyn is right that, if liberals trade off presenting an inspiring vision of the future for mere survival, they are unlikely to get either. The existential woes of 21st-century liberalism require we do more than return to the forms of neoliberal governance that generated discontent in the first place. It requires retrieving the revolutionary emancipatory and egalitarian ethos that defined liberalism at its revolutionary best to offer a new deal to citizens of liberal states. The strand of liberal political theory that offers the richest guidance on what form this new deal should take is liberal socialism.

T he idea of ‘liberal socialism’ might appear odd and even oxymoronic. This is especially true for those on the Right and the Left who regard liberalism as the philosophy of market capitalism. Of course, there are many classical and neoliberal thinkers for whom that is true. From John Locke ’s emphatic defence of life, liberty and property to Hayek’s declaration that state planning in the economy was the road to serfdom, liberal defences of the ethics of capitalism are easy to find. The economist Ludwig von Mises no doubt spoke for many (including plenty on the Left) when, in his polemical tract Liberalism (1927), he proudly declared that:

[The] programme of liberalism … if condensed into a single word, would have to read: property , that is, private ownership of the means of production … All the other demands of liberalism result from this fundamental demand.

Adam Smith , artist unknown, painted posthumously c 1795. Courtesy the National Gallery of Scotland

But this would be to ignore the reality that many great liberal thinkers have historically been wary (to downright critical) of capitalism. This goes far back. Adam Smith may have been an enthusiast for free trade and market liberties, but in The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) he also decried how:

This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.

This was reiterated in Smith’s polemics against monopolisation and the alienating effects of the division of labour in The Wealth of Nations (1776) . By the industrial era, some of the greatest liberal thinkers expressed sympathy and even came to align themselves with socialism. John Stuart Mill , the greatest liberal philosopher of the 19th century, openly declared himself a socialist in his Autobiography (1873) and stressed in Socialism (1879) how ‘great poverty, and that poverty very little connected with desert – are the first grand failure of the existing arrangements of society.’

Mill was hardly alone in sympathising with such a fusion of liberalism and socialism. In his essay collection Democratic Theory: Essays in Retrieval (1973), the political theorist C B Macpherson coined the term ‘retrieval’ to refer to getting ‘clear of the disabling central defect of current liberal-democratic theory, while holding on to, or recovering, the humanistic values which liberal democracy has always claimed.’ We must now make an effort to retrieve the political theory of liberal socialism and make the case for its salience in the 21st century (a project I continue in my forthcoming book The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism ).

L iberal socialism is a political ideology that combines support for many liberal political institutions and rights with a socialist desire to establish far more equitable and democratic economic arrangements. The latter point is put plainly by Michael Walzer in his book The Struggle for a Decent Politics (2023), in which he writes that, while ‘liberal socialists are not “egalitarianist”, they are serious about equality – more so, generally, than liberal democrats.’ This deeper concern for equality relative to classical liberals becomes apparent when we look at when liberal socialism emerged and how its major figures defended its core arguments.

There is extensive debate over periodising classical liberal theory. Many date its origins to the 17th century and the writings of Locke, Baruch Spinoza and Hugo Grotius among others. Whether or not these thinkers can be correctly labelled ‘liberals’ full stop, they undoubtedly developed or systematised a lot of the theoretical architecture that later liberals would rely on. By contrast, in Liberalism (2nd ed, 2014) Edmund Fawcett insists that mature liberal political philosophy only really appeared on the scene in the 19th century, when the term itself became popularised, and self-described ‘liberal’ parties and movements began to appear.

Whoever you agree with, there’s no doubt that liberal socialism emerged later than classical liberalism, extending the latter’s antipathy to the hierarchical ancien régimes of Europe to demand more radical changes still. While mature forms of liberal socialist political theory didn’t appear until the mid-19th century, there were important precursor figures. Two of the most influential predecessors to liberal socialism were Thomas Paine and Mary Wollstonecraft .

Thomas Paine insists that property is an eminently social phenomenon

Paine remains most famous for his stirring rhetorical defences of the American and French revolutions and his acidic polemics against Edmund Burke and conservatism in the Rights of Man (1791) . Until recently, Paine was largely viewed as an extraordinary pamphleteer for the classical liberal and republican viewpoint, while not being an especially original thinker or theorist. That appraisal has since undergone a major shift, with Robert Lamb in 2015 stressing Paine’s importance as a theorist whose ‘every instinct’ was egalitarian.

Thomas Paine ( c 1806-07) by John Wesley Jarvis. Courtesy the NGA, Washington

Paine is an important precursor to liberal socialism because he embraced the importance of individual flourishing and rights, while becoming increasingly sceptical that this could be achieved without a major redistribution of wealth and privilege. In the pamphlet ‘Agrarian Justice’ (1797), he rejects the methodological individualism of classical liberal approaches to property rights, and insists that property is an eminently social phenomenon:

Personal property is the effect of society; and it is as impossible for an individual to acquire personal property without the aid of society, as it is for him to make land originally. Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property.

He goes on to suggest that, since many wealthy people monopolise productive land and capital without giving anything back, they owe a major debt to the poor as a matter of right. In the second part of the Rights of Man and in ‘Agrarian Justice’, Paine develops these arguments into a call for redistribution, sketching out an early scheme for the welfare state. This includes providing money for education, guaranteed employment for those who want it, a stipend for every child born, and a prototype of an old-age pension.

Mary Wollstonecraft ( c 1797) by John Opie. Courtesy the National Portrait Gallery, London

Wollstonecraft was less policy-minded than her contemporary Paine, but even more scathing in her contempt for the corrosive effect of the inequities of property that defined aristocratic and early capitalist societies. In her classic A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Wollstonecraft insisted that:

From the respect paid to property flow, as from a poisoned fountain, most of the evils and vices which render this world such a dreary scene to the contemplative mind. For it is in the most polished society that noisome reptiles and venomous serpents lurk under the rank herbage; and there is voluptuousness pampered by the still sultry air, which relaxes every good disposition before it ripens into virtue. One class presses on another; for all are aiming to procure respect on account of their property: and property, once gained, will procure the respect due only to talents and virtue.

In her later Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796), she lambasts the nouveaux riches as a ‘fungus’ with the criticism that:

An ostentatious display of wealth without elegance, and a greedy enjoyment of pleasure without sentiment, embrutes them till they term all virtue of a heroic cast, romantic attempts at something above our nature, and anxiety about the welfare of others, a search after misery in which we have no concern.

Wollstonecraft believed in private property, arguing it was a just reward for labour. But even this had a radical connotation, as she was critical of those who lived in luxury or defended privilege while ignoring the ‘women who gained a livelihood by selling vegetables or fish, who never had had any advantages of education…’ Her critique of the idle or undeserving rich both echoes Locke’s condemnation of aristocracy and anticipates later Ricardian socialist and Marxist condemnations of the parasitic wealthy.

Much like Paine, Wollstonecraft had an unfailingly egalitarian instinct (including, of course, on gender relations) insisting there ‘must be more equality established in society, or morality will never gain ground…’ In her ideal society there would be neither rich nor poor, and the competitive race to accumulate private property would be a far less significant social priority than the relatively equal development of human intellectual, artistic and moral powers. It’s this solidaristic emphasis on the development of human powers in a society of equals that makes Wollstonecraft such an important figure in the movement towards liberal socialism.

L iberal socialism reached its maturity in the 19th century with John Stuart Mill, its most articulate and well-known spokesman. Early in his career, Mill had been a more conventional supporter of the free market. But, later in life, mostly under the influence of the utopian socialist St Simonians, he shifted his views markedly. In his Autobiography , Mill declared that his ‘ideal of ultimate improvement went far beyond Democracy, and would class us decidedly under the general designation of Socialists.’ While being critical of statist forms of socialism and expressing a wariness of the threat they posed to liberty, he claimed to look ‘forward to a time when society will no longer be divided into the idle and the industrious; when the rule that they who do not work shall not eat, will be applied not to paupers only, but impartially to all.’

This shift towards socialism was reflected in later editions of the Principles of Political Economy (1848) . Mill defended extensive experiments with workplace democracy and cooperatives, arguing that they would potentially be less domineering, more economically efficient, and more conducive to the flourishing of workers. As Helen McCabe traces in her excellent book John Stuart Mill: Socialist (2021), he also came to advocate for wealth redistribution through:

state ownership of railways and roads, and municipal ownership (and provision) of utilities such as gas and water. He also at least suggested it would be permissible for the government to provide public hospitals; national banks; a postal service; ‘manufactories’; and a corps of civil engineers, so long as the government did not maintain a monopoly on these professions or services.

Mill’s flavour of liberal socialism based around cooperatives and a generous welfare state anticipated many contemporary forms of market socialism, as well as being a direct inspiration to important ethical and Christian socialists such as R H Tawney.

‘Socialism … is liberalism in action; it means that liberty comes into the life of poor people’

In the early to mid-20th century, an impressive array of authors came to endorse liberal socialism. In a 1939 interview with The New Statesman and Nation , John Maynard Keynes proposed:

[A move out of the] 19th-century laissez-faire state into an era of liberal socialism … where we can act as an organised community for common purposes and to promote economic and social justice, whilst respecting and protecting the individual – his freedom of choice, his faith, his mind and its expression, his enterprise and his property.

A variety of European democratic socialists such as Eduard Bernstein and Carlo Rosselli worked to theorise closer connections between liberalism and socialism, echoing Mill’s claim that socialists were the more ‘far-sighted successors’ of liberalism. Bernstein’s classic The Preconditions of Socialism (1899) offered a sustained critique of orthodox Marxist revolutionary theory and proposed a conciliation with liberalism. He insisted that ‘with respect to liberalism as a historical movement, socialism is its legitimate heir, not only chronologically, but also intellectually’, and stressed that there is ‘no liberal thought that is not also part of the intellectual equipment of socialism.’ Rosselli made similar claims in his book Liberal Socialism (1930), holding that:

Socialism is nothing more than the logical development, taken to its extreme consequences, of the principle of liberty. Socialism, when understood in its fundamental sense and judged by its results – as the concrete movement for the emancipation of the proletariat – is liberalism in action; it means that liberty comes into the life of poor people.

While he never identified with the label, I’d argue that Macpherson can also be correctly characterised as a liberal socialist, given his lifelong effort to ‘retrieve’ a radical democratic and egalitarian core to the liberal tradition.

Finally, in the United States John Dewey worked hard to extend American conceptions of democracy beyond the horizon of the state. His most famous contributions were of course in education, where Dewey insisted on the pedagogical superiority a more egalitarian classroom where students actively participated in their learning, rather than being regarded as passive recipients of knowledge delivered by an intellectual superior. But Dewey was also keen to extend democratic principles to the workplace, becoming president of the League for Industrial Democracy in 1939 and advocating for the labour movement.

I n the postwar era, there have been several prominent figures aligned with liberal socialism, including Irving Howe, Michael Walzer and Chantal Mouffe. But by far the most significant figure to express sympathy for liberal socialism was John Rawls . For a long time, Rawls’s brick-like Theory of Justice (1971) was taken as an apologia for the welfare state system that, tragically, began to decline right about when the book was published. But this understates Rawls’s radicalism. In his Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy (2000), Rawls described Karl Marx as ‘heroic’ and praised his ‘marvellous’ intellectual gifts. By the time of his swan song Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (2001), Rawls insisted that welfarism did not do a good enough job of realising liberal principles of justice. Only a property-owning democracy or ‘liberal socialism’ would be sufficient. While Rawls himself wrote more about property-owning democracy, Edmundson’s book John Rawls: Reticent Socialist (2017) makes a powerful case for why the most rigorous interpretation of justice as fairness would require liberal socialism instead.

As history shows, liberal socialists are not a monolith. They disagree on many core points. Some of these are theoretical: is the strongest basis for liberal socialism some kind of utilitarianism, deontology or pragmatism? Other divides are over practical questions such as the relationship between statist welfarism and bottom-up democratisation of the economy; Mill famously vested his hopes in worker co-ops where many modern liberal socialists focus on social programmes. Nevertheless, all liberal socialists are committed to three central principles, which I’ve arranged from the more abstract to the more concrete.

First, liberal socialists are committed to methodological collectivism and normative individualism. They believe that the wellbeing and free development of individual persons (and, for a growing number, nonhuman animals) is the highest moral priority. However, they disagree with many classical liberals’ insular and competitive conception of human nature and their individualist approach to conceiving social relations. Liberal socialists hold that, to properly think through how individuals will best thrive, one must recognise their embeddedness in society, and how it can improve or disrupt their capacity to lead a good life.

Taking seriously commitments to liberty, equality and solidarity requires going beyond the social hierarchies established under capitalism

Secondly, liberal socialists are committed to each person having as equal an opportunity to lead as good a life as possible through the provision of shared resources for the development and expression of their human powers. To put it another way, liberal socialists focus on the free development of human powers or capabilities along a wide array of metrics. What Macpherson calls this developmental ethic can be contrasted with the extractive and possessive ethic characteristic of classical liberalism and hedonistic forms of utilitarianism. Where the extractive/possessive ethic holds that the good life comes from production and consumption, the developmental ethic of liberal socialism emphasises the equal development and application of each individual’s powers as a condition for their flourishing.

Thirdly, liberal socialists are committed to instituting a basic social structure characterised by highly participatory liberal-democratic political institutions and protections for liberal rights concurrent with the extension of liberal democratic principles into the economy and family to establish more egalitarian economic arrangements free of domination and exploitation. This also means that liberal socialists do not ascribe the same weight of private property rights to the means of production that many classical liberals do. While all liberal socialists believe in rights to personal property, this doesn’t extend to rights to acquire forms of property that would enable forms of workplace domination or political plutocracy to develop. In these instances, what impacts all should, in part, be decided upon by all.

Liberal socialist authors will defend and articulate these principles in various idioms, and emphasise one or another to various degrees. This testifies to the internal diversity of the tradition, if nothing else. Macpherson was very critical of atomistic ‘possessive individualism’ but supported a liberal humanist ethic of developing people’s capacities or powers. Nevertheless, he had comparatively little to say about what kind of social structure could realise this ethic. In The Socialist Decision (1933), Paul Tillich offers a theological defence of liberal democratic socialism, which obviously runs counter to the secular approaches of Mill and Rawls. Mouffe’s agonistic liberal socialism foregrounds the importance of political contestation far more than Rawls’s temperate insistence that a pluralistic society needs to unite around an ‘overlapping consensus’. Charles Mill’s ‘black radical liberalism’ rightly takes many Left-liberals to task for ignoring, or even supporting, imperialism and racism. But behind this variety is a core conviction that taking seriously commitments to liberty, equality and solidarity requires going beyond the social hierarchies established under capitalism.

Given the eminence of many of the figures attracted to liberal socialism, it is somewhat perplexing that the term can seem oxymoronic. The explanation probably has more to do with politics than philosophy, especially in the US. As Moyn points out in Liberalism Against Itself , throughout the mid-20th century, many prominent ‘Cold War’ liberals turned against the more progressive and egalitarian elements in the tradition. This led to the banishing of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, G W F Hegel and Marx to the fringes, and the dilution of the more radical arguments of prominent liberals like Mill. By the time liberal egalitarians began to marshal formidable theoretical arguments for welfarism and social democracy in the 1970s, the time to realise such an agenda had passed. Neoliberalism had taken hold across much of the world, further squeezing out progressive forms of liberalism and liberal socialism.

Nevertheless, the future for liberal socialist political theory is bright. While not everyone listed below would identify with the label (and some might reject it), a considerable number of prominent and up-and-coming theorists have been working to bring out the affinities between the two traditions and canonise (or re-canonise) the major figures. These include Helen McCabe, Michael Walzer, James Crotty, Chantal Mouffe, Igor Shoikhedbrod, Lillian Cicerchia, Samuel Moyn, Daniel Chandler, William Edmundson, Elizabeth Anderson, Tony Smith, Rodney Peffer and many more.

It isn’t hard to see why the prospect of liberal socialism would be appealing today. Liberalism remains in or near crisis, and vast numbers express discontent with the neoliberal status quo. At the same time, there are very good reasons to reject revisiting forms of authoritarian ‘real existing socialism’ and communism. Liberal socialism offers the prospect of combining respect for liberal rights, checks and balances on state power, and participatory democracy with socialist concerns for the equal flourishing of all in a sustainable environment, the extension of democratic concerns into the workplace and ‘private government’, and pushing back on plutocratic rule. It also philosophically aligns well with concrete democratic socialist and radical movements appearing in the US, Chile, Brazil and elsewhere that want radical economic change but align with liberal values. Whether liberal socialism can transition from being a theoretical tradition and become a popular political ideology is a hard question. But, in a world defined by growing anger at inequality and plutocracy, liberal socialism is worthy of our loyalty.

Stories and literature

Her blazing world

Margaret Cavendish’s boldness and bravery set 17th-century society alight, but is she a feminist poster-girl for our times?

Francesca Peacock

Ecology and environmental sciences

To take care of the Earth, humans must recognise that we are both a part of the animal kingdom and its dominant power

Hugh Desmond

Mental health

The last great stigma

Workers with mental illness experience discrimination that would be unthinkable for other health issues. Can this change?

Pernille Yilmam

Quantum theory

Quantum dialectics

When quantum mechanics posed a threat to the Marxist doctrine of materialism, communist physicists sought to reconcile the two

Jim Baggott

Folk music was never green

Don’t be swayed by the sound of environmental protest: these songs were first sung in the voice of the cutter, not the tree

Richard Smyth

Nations and empires

A United States of Europe

A free and unified Europe was first imagined by Italian radicals in the 19th century. Could we yet see their dream made real?

Fernanda Gallo

The Dichotomy of Self: Exploring the Concept of Dual Consciousness

This essay about the concept of double consciousness, originally introduced by W.E.B. Du Bois, explores the intricate interplay between individual identity and societal expectations. It discusses how individuals grapple with the duality of self-perception and external perceptions imposed by society, leading to a perpetual tension between authenticity and assimilation. Through examples spanning cultural heritage, social status, and intersecting axes of identity, the essay underscores the profound implications of double consciousness on marginalized communities. Ultimately, it advocates for empathy, understanding, and collective action to dismantle oppressive structures and foster a more inclusive and equitable society for all.

How it works

In the realm of social discourse, the notion of double consciousness stands as a beacon, illuminating the multifaceted nature of human identity. Initially articulated by W.E.B. Du Bois, a luminary in the realms of sociology and civil rights advocacy, this concept serves as a poignant reminder of the complexities inherent in navigating societal expectations and personal authenticity.

At its essence, double consciousness encapsulates the perpetual tension experienced by individuals as they straddle the divide between their inherent self and the external perceptions thrust upon them by society.

Du Bois poignantly described this phenomenon as “a peculiar sensation…this sense of always looking at oneself through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.” Here, the internal struggle to reconcile one’s true essence with the expectations of the dominant culture emerges as a central theme.

One facet of double consciousness manifests in the arduous journey to reconcile cultural heritage with the prevailing norms of the broader society. This struggle often necessitates a delicate balancing act, as individuals endeavor to honor their roots while grappling with the pressure to assimilate. Across diverse cultural landscapes, this dichotomy plays out in myriad ways, from linguistic code-switching to behavioral adaptations aimed at aligning with dominant cultural paradigms.

Moreover, double consciousness encompasses the profound awareness of being both a part of and apart from mainstream society. This dual perspective underscores the nuanced experience of individuals who exist on the margins of societal privilege, keenly attuned to their status as second-class citizens in a purportedly egalitarian world. Within this framework, feelings of alienation, resentment, and disillusionment often serve as catalysts for social activism and movements for systemic change.

Furthermore, the concept of double consciousness transcends narrow boundaries of race, intersecting with other dimensions of identity such as gender, sexuality, and class. This intersectional lens, championed by scholars like Kimberlé Crenshaw, acknowledges the intertwined nature of various forms of oppression and marginalization. By recognizing the intersecting axes of privilege and disadvantage, we gain deeper insights into the complexities of human experience and the imperative for inclusive social justice advocacy.

In sum, double consciousness emerges as a profound exploration of the intricate dance between self-perception and societal construction of identity. Through the lens of this concept, we confront the pervasive impact of systemic inequalities and the imperative for collective action to dismantle oppressive structures. By fostering empathy, understanding, and solidarity across diverse axes of identity, we pave the way toward a more just and equitable future for all.

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The Wages Question: A Treatise on Wages and the Wages Class

• Francis Amasa Walker (author)

Francis A. Walker’s The Wages Question is generally credited as having demolished the prior, antiquated “wages fund” theory of wages. Walker laid the groundwork for John Bates Clark’s definitive descriptions of the marginal products of labor and capital. His interest in the nature of the firm contributed to Frank H. Knight’s work by describing the factors of production and how to categorize their rewards into wages, rent, and profits.

• EBook PDF This text-based PDF or EBook was created from the HTML version of this book and is part of the Portable Library of Liberty.
• ePub ePub standard file for your iPad or any e-reader compatible with that format
• Facsimile PDF This is a facsimile or image-based PDF made from scans of the original book.
• Facsimile PDF small This is a compressed facsimile or image-based PDF made from scans of the original book.
• Kindle This is an E-book formatted for Amazon Kindle devices.

The Wages Question: A Treatise on Wages and the Wages Class (London: Macmillan, 1888).

The text is in the public domain.

• Economic theory. Demography

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Differing Views and Tensions Within Socialism

Revolutionary socialism.

Many early socialists were worried that they were far away from power and that they would be prevented achieving their aims by a capitalist conservative establishment.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels discussed a ‘proletarian revolution’ whereby the class-conscious working class would rise up against capitalism and overthrow it.

The first actual example of this was in Russia in 1917 , although this was more of a coup (overthrow of the government) by an armed group- Lenin and the Bolsheviks- rather than a mass class revolt. It was, however, an example to other revolutionary socialists of what could be achieved.

Revolutionary tactics were attractive to socialists for two reasons. Firstly, industrialism and capitalism in the 19th century were producing mass poverty and social inequality, so the working classes wanted a chance to change their circumstances. Secondly, the working classes had very few alternatives to revolution- there was no real representation or way of engaging in political life. In monarchies, the country was dominated by royalty and privilege. In constitutional democracies, the vote was restricted. A revolution was the only viable way of achieving socialist goals.

Revolutionary socialists also believe that the state is a device of class oppression, acting for ‘capital’ against ‘labour’.This means that the political state will always reflect and preach the interests of the property-owning classes. Therefore, in order to build socialism, the ‘bourgeois’ state must be overthrown, resulting in a total transformation of society. This would be the only way of ensuring the revolution would succeed.

Revolutionary socialism has been seen through the establishment of the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. In each case, the existing order was overthrown and replaced with a one-party state which controlled the economy. Opposition was removed and totalitarian methods were used to remove dissent. The credibility of revolutionary socialism was damaged by the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s/early 1990s .

Social democracy

Social democracy developed during the early twentieth century and really began to become accepted in the years after 1945 .It uses socialist principles but has different aims and methods to that of revolutionary socialism. After Britain and other Western nations recovered from the traumas of World War Two the poorer parts of society, supported by many who were better off, demanded more from their state. Many people felt that not only should they be better supported by the nation for the work and services they provided but also that society as a whole would benefit from a raise in living standards created by the state.

The foundations for social democracy are based upon moral thinking- the idea that socialism is the ethically right thing to do in a civilised world. Social democracy theorists claim that as humans want to be good then a socialist way of acting is the only moral solution in how society should be developed. People such as William Morris used humanist ideas to support social democracy (humanism is an idea that says that the satisfaction of all peoples needs should be a priority of society).

Christians have also supported social democracy because they claim that all people are created by God equal and should therefore be supported by each other and society. People such as Tawney supported social democracy because he claimed that it supported people against the problems of unregulated capitalism.

Social democrats supported their ideas with the principle of social justice ; the idea that people should have a greater equality of wealth and therefore opportunity as this is the only fair way to run a society.

The goals of revolutionary socialism were seen by social democrats as too extreme because they wanted to completely reorder society and remove capitalism, which was viewed as irredeemable (cannot be made good).However, by the twentieth century some socialists had come to believe that these views were inaccurate. People such as Eduard Bernstein advocated evolutionary socialism which argued that Marxism needed revising or adapting ( revisionism ).

Revisionists argued several main ideas. They claimed that capitalism had not been shown to be collapsing and was not necessarily doomed (as predicted by Marx), but it needed to be used for the whole of society.

They also argued that the divisions between class outlined by Marx (bourgeoisie and proletariat) were too simplistic, as business ownership was widening as a result of the ability to buy and sell stocks and shares and a growing class of technical and professionally skilled workers. Therefore, the divide and the need for revolution was not so straightforward.

Bernstein argued that capitalism could be reformed and made to work for the good of society through state intervention such as the nationalisation of industry and the creation of legal protections for people, welfare and pensions.This process would create wealth and create a happy and more equal society. The theories of Keynesian economics developed as a result (regulating the economy and attempting to achieve full employment). A more equal society could they believed be created though using the state to redistribute wealth so that the creation of profit benefitted all involved.

As a result, socialists such as Crosland in The Future of Socialism argued that socialism should focus on several values. It should be achieved through a democratic process because it did not need to overthrow capitalism. He claimed that the state should follow ‘managerial socialism’. This meant that private property was permissible, but the state would manage the economy to ensure fairness for all using powers of economic intervention such as progressive taxation and nationalisation.

After __1945 __social democracy seemed to have triumphed because it combined the economic drive of capitalism with fairness and equality without extremism. However, this success did not last. Many thought that the compromise between socialism and capitalism was always unstable and unworkable and therefore would quickly fall apart.

When capitalist economies were doing well it was possible to use redistribution to create a more equal society. However, when economies started to do badly in the 1970s __there was a direct link between the principle of wealth redistribution was criticised. If the state struggled for money the argument over who should get what caused a problem for social democrats. Another problem was that as economies began to deindustrialise many people did not see themselves as working class. This causes socialist political parties such as the UK Labour Party to have to move away from socialism to get elected in the __mid-1990s .

In addition, in the early __1990s __the main communist nations of Europe collapsed and despite the social democrats having moved away from Marxism this meant that the ideas of socialism were discredited (seem as unrealistic).

In response to the crisis faced by social democracy in the 1980s __and __90s , socialist parties began to move towards ‘neo-revisionism’, also known as the ‘third way’.

The third way attempted to navigate a path between traditional social democracy and free-market neoliberalism.

Key ideas of the third way include:

• Primacy of the market : neo-revisionists reject top-down state intervention and support a dynamic market economy as the best way of generating wealth. A globalised, capitalist economy is therefore accepted
• Value of community and moral responsibility: emphasising that people have moral links and responsibilities to their community, attempting to balance rights with responsibilities
• Society bases on consensus and harmony: to move away from traditional class divisions. Values such as fairness and self-reliance should be promoted
• Social inclusion: emphasis on equality of opportunity to create a meritocracy. Tony Blair, a key figure associated with the third way, suggested that welfare should be a ‘hand up, not a handout’. Welfare should therefore be more specifically targeted at getting people into work, for instance
• Competition/market state: the state should focus on social investment, for instance in education, employment and training, in order to boost economic growth and improve a nation’s standing in the world economy

The third way was electorally successful during the New Labour years and has influences many left-of-centre parties. In the UK however it has been criticised as not containing many socialist ideas, and just being an attempt to win more votes from ‘centre-ground’ voters. The UK Labour Party has since moved away from the third way and back towards more social democratic thinking.

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1.1 Augustine human nature essay plan

READ ADVANTAGES AS AGREE AND DISADVANTAGES AS DISAGREE 

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