 All right. Hi. Welcome back to 19th and 20th century philosophy. I'm Matt Brown and today we're talking about Karl Marx Now Karl Marx was a philosopher a journalist a historian a sociologist He's had an impact on many fields. He's obviously known as a revolutionary thinker And he was an activist. He was participating in various various political groups Marx is most well-known as an advocate of communism though That's one of the things he wrote probably the least about And the least specifically the least detailed things about Like John Stuart Mill Marx was a well-known political economist in his time wrote in German and in English and published in both Unlike Mill Marx received a university education At the universities of Bonn Berlin and Jena he wrote a dissertation on ancient Greek philosophies of nature and Democritus and Epicurus so Definitely steeped in philosophy early in his career Marx was a devotee of Hegel a member of a group of radical philosophers known as the young Hegelians who took from Hegel his dialectical method And his commitments to freedom and reason And his tendency to see the the triumph of freedom and reason as unfolding through history but they took Hegel's thought in a more radical and Utopian direction intended to reject the more metaphysical aspects of his thinking now Marx moved away from the young Hegelians as he came to see the technological Forces and social relations of economic productivity as the real drivers of politics and history and the real sort of backing of power and that shift in his thinking is what eventually led him to Pen his master work, which is known as capital or dust capital The first volume of this work was published in 1867 the work as a whole remained unpublished in his lifetime and unfinished So the first volume was published The second and third volumes in the state that they existed were published by his collaborator Frederick Ingalls You know capital is perhaps the last great work of classical political economy after Marx's death Economics went in a very different direction Capital is also a major literary achievement and philosophical achievement in many respects Some of which we'll talk about today What I had you read for today are these two pieces Estranged labor from 1844 sort of early-ish work by Marx penned when he was living in Paris This is also sometimes translated as alienated labor and you also read the fetishism of the commodity and its secret From from capital from 1867 So so one relatively early work one from this master work both touch on economic issues, but also political philosophical issues and ethical issues related to economic exchange Okay, so let's talk about the essay a strange labor now according to this essay. There are four Senses in which labor is alienated or the worker is alienated And if you think about it estrangement or in alienation There's there's there's the one who is estranged and there's the thing they are estranged from Right or alienated from so the in each case. It's the worker is estranged from something, right? the worker is estranged from the product of their labor right or alienated from the product of their labor because You know, they produce it in the factor factory and then The owner takes control of it and they no longer they no longer have it. They no longer have a relationship to it Right. The worker is alienated from their productive activities They're not in control of of how they labor or what labor they do, right? They're their labor is directed by someone else and is often You know done under harsh and unwelcome conditions The worker is alienated from their fellow workers they're not seeing each other as part of some sort of collective or or brotherhood or or Social group with a kind of cohesion. They see each other as competitors for for jobs as sort of individuals separate from one another Who have no shared interests? And the worker is alienated from their own human nature. What marks in this essay? The term is translated as species being Basically the workers alienated from the kind of activities of life that make them distinctly human Including their own freedom. So these are the four senses That marks argues under capitalism the the worker is it is estranged or alienated, right? So let's look at the second text the fetishism of the commodity And it's secret from capital. This is a very difficult text But it's also I think philosophically crucial to understand Marx's theory of capitalism how capitalism works and The ways in which we tend to systematically misunderstand the the situation that we're in in capitalism so When we buy things and sell things in the marketplace, right we're we're focused on these physical objects the commodities, right? coats and shoes and and Apples and oranges and so on, right? and we come to associate the economic value That these things have with the objects, right as if the value is somehow a property of the object or at least a kind of relationship between two objects, right? So we might say this coat is worth two pairs of boots, right or If we're a little bit more sophisticated and we're using money we might say this this code is worth ten pieces of silver or It's worth twenty dollars or what have you, right? In this case, I'm I'm sort of comparing two objects, right? And thinking about their value as a relationship between the objects and I'm participating in commodity fetishism, right? Fetishism here, you know the reference to fetish is not sexual. It's a it's a reference to certain kinds of religious superstition according to which objects are said to embody certain divine Powers, right? So this is a term that Marx picks up from religious anthropology or anthropology religion And and sort of brings into economic theory, right? So If you think about what economic values are they're not Relationships between objects or properties of objects. They're relations between people, right? There there's so economic values are social relationships between people between the activities of various producers between producers and consumers between capitalists and workers all of those things are You know the are what determine economic value, right? so we tend to like You know, we tend to fetishize we tend to think of of the things as being valuable, but it's the it's their It's only sort of indirectly by by the fact that they participate as mediators of these social relations That they have economic value, right? So social relations in facts determine Economic value not the sort of inherent feature of objects or the relations between them and you can think about this I mean one of the things that's most valuable in the world, right is Air right that if without it a few for a few seconds Maybe a minute You're gonna be in a bad way, right air is super valuable to you. It's use value as Marx would say is very high But Air is not something that participates at least not yet in a system of economic exchange, right? It has no economic value Now, you know, you might say well if I if I live somewhere with really clean air Maybe the housing prices go up although not necessarily depends on where you are But for the most part air has has no economic value. It's free free to breathe, right? It's only by virtue of participating in the system of social relations that something has an exchange value And so Marx tends to prefer that notion of exchange value As a way of thinking about economic value because it it for fronts economic exchange as Part of the set of social relationships that the commodity participates in In virtue of which it has value, right? So those are some of the key ideas from the readings so which we'll talk about in class I just wanted to give you a sense of of Marx who he is and and where this work is coming from And I look forward to discussing with it discussing it with you in class if you have any questions feel free to send a note on the discord or Even leave a comment on the video. Otherwise, I will see you in class or next week. Bye