Karl Marx’s Critique of Political Economy and Capitalism
A-HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXT
In the late eighteenth century, as a result of the application and the science to production d machines, came the industrial revolution.
This process begins in the middle of the century in England and spread during the nineteenth to continental Europe. The population increase is significant compared to the past, due to the regularity of the crops and the invention of vaccines, which favored industrial production needs to increase demográficas.Marx live along this nineteenth century, dominated by society Bourgeois, who holds the economic power, with the triumph of capitalism and the industrial and political revolution, after the various bourgeois revolutions (eg. The 1830 and 1848) that are happening throughout the century. The bourgeoisie acquired political power at the expense of the aristocracy and economic power at the expense of the working class. With the industrial revolution the social map has Camber: disappears estate society and class society emerges, it is the bourgeoisie and capitalist industrial triumphs and his side is the proletariat, the working class. The bourgeoisie has through the process of industrial revolution in terms of exploitation of workers, paying wages that allow them to survive in appalling conditions and, for the bourgeoisie have large benefits. Cities grow in the shade of the industry and creates a new urban planning: bourgeois districts and neighborhoods where overcrowding is the proletariat, whose only property was his strength of ork, living in subhuman conditions. Century revolutionary impulses came from the liberal, democratic movements and socialist movements, the attempts come from conservative traditionalism, the Church and the conservative bourgeoisie. Politically, liberalism, the heir of Locke and Adam Smith is defended by the bourgeoisie as it maintains political and economic freedom of the bourgeoisie. In front, the working classes will follow the socialist or anarchist political ideas of, among others, Marx and Bakunin. S.La bourgeoisie, enriched by the industrial revolution demand for raw materials industries and new markets, driving the colonization of Asia and Africa and makes the European nations, especially France and Britain in large empires. Is the era of imperialism, under the mandates, for example of Queen Victoria (1837-1901) in England or Napoleon III (1851-1871) in France (Second Empire). The nationalist ideas also will be important throughout the century , influenced by the rights proclaimed by the French Revolution and the romantic ideas that exalt the traditions. The South American republics achieved independence early in the century, Greece in 1829 and will end nationalism crystallized in 1870 with the unification of Italy and Alemania.Cultura: dominant literature in the first half of the century, romanticism, realism and naturalism, then, painting, realism happen Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism of Monet, Manet, Degas, etc …, Romanticism in music predominates (Wagner influence the first stage of Nietzsche), historicist architecture positions with Neogoticismo.
2. SECTION B). Theme of the text. The text is the preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, where Marx develops a critique of classical political economy and the capitalist society that later mature in his seminal work, Das Kapital. Classical political economy emerged in the eighteenth century at the hands of the work The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith.David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill also representantes.El core ideas of these early economists constitute the defense of political liberalism and limited government actions to maintain justice, security and order, leaving the economy in the hands private free enterprise (laissez faire). The economy must be subject to free competition and market, under the law of supply and demand regulate the economía.El text opens and closes with a series of autobiographical notes about his intellectual journey and the central part, the we are interested, pick up the overview of materialism históricoAquí referred to as the set of production relations through which men perform the social production of their existence, constitute the economic structure is based on a political superstructure and certain forms of consciousness (ideology). The social relations of production determine the superstructure and ideology of a society, ie as a way to produce and generates a coverage ideological superstructure (legal forms, philosophical …) that legitimize a system of domination, so So in summary, the economic reality determines consciousness. The degree of development of productive forces is in contradiction with the relations of production that keep them locked, thus generating a time of social revolution (as the class struggle is the motor of history) that has to change the relations of production , thus upsetting the whole superestructura.El capitalism or bourgeois relations of production have to be the last antagonistic form of social production process, after overcoming the previous modes of production (Asian, feudal …) ending the human prehistory and generating communist society.