Chapter One: Introduction to Marxism

Before we start reading the theory that Marx has given, we need to understand the methods that
Marx employs because at this moment you must be thinking that we are here to read some history
or politics, which is partially true, but the another partial reality is that here we also read science.
Now you must wonder what science has to do with all of this, isn’t science supposed to be
something about chemicals, formulas, or laboratories? Well, if we see in the literal sense, science
means a systematic study of something that exists in reality. What we are here to do is to study
society using a systematic analysis and employing such scientific methods that would answer us why
the society is today the way we see it. The answer to how the society is going to be further lies in the
question of how society was before and how it came to this today. Through Marxism, by the end of
this reading, we will understand society in its past, present and future.

The foundations of Marxism stem from philosophy, it traces contours of history, it delves into
economics and it answers the sociology. But since, you are just beginning to understand Marxism, I
shall be trying to leave out or lighten certain topics that could be a little tough to understand for
now. I will try in this series to give you overviews, make use of the philosophy, economics, and
history in only as much amount as it might be required for you to get an understanding of socialism
and communism. And I would further expect that once you have understood little basics of it here,
you would explore these topics in detail.

Note: At any point in this reading you are facing any difficulty and you feel like leaving it in the
middle, kindly go and read the endnote and then continue with the reading.

The method that is of prime importance for us here is the Historical Materialism.

 Historical Materialism
Historical materialism, as you can see, is formed by two words- historical and materialism. In order
to understand Marxism, it is imperative to understand this method, and to understand it, we must
understand the meaning of these two words.

 Materialism:

Let’s start with understanding what materialism is first. There are two major philosophical school of
thoughts- a) materialism b) idealism. Marx belonged to the materialist school of philosophical
thought; that is, he held that being, matter and nature were primary, while thinking, mind and spirit
were secondary, derivative. The philosophical idealists held the opposite view. Thus, the great
idealist thinker Georg Hegel asserted that society was ruled by divine will.

Marx says,

"My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, ...
the process of thinking which, under the name of 'the Idea,' he even transforms into an independent
subject, is the demiurgos (creator) of the real world, and the real world is only the external,
phenomenal form of 'the Idea.' With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material
world reflected by the human mind and translated into forms of thought." (Marx, Afterword to the
Second German Edition of Volume I of Capital.)

It is okay if it did not make a lot of sense to you right now, it will as you read further.
Before Marx, the most able materialist thinkers (the French materialists of the 18th century) were
only able to reach the view that ‘ideas ruled history’. That is, people in some way or other got an
idea that something should take place and then did it, thus bringing about an historical event. Not
only was it impossible for this view to explain how an idea came into existence, it was also
impossible for it to explain why this or that idea or event should emerge at the particular time it did.

Marx was of a belief that it is the material realities that determines physiognomy of society, the
character of the social system, the development of society from one system to another. His
materialism is based on the idea that ‘Mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing
before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion etc.

As Engels puts it in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific

"The materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the production of the means
to support human life and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all
social structure; that in every society that has appeared in history, the manner in which wealth is
distributed and society divided into classes or orders is dependent upon what is produced, how it is
produced, and how the products are exchanged. From this point of view, the final causes of all social
changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men's brains, not in men's better insights
into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange.

The dialectics:

Marx believed in the primacy of material over ideas. His concept of dialectical materialism asserts
how things that happen in nature, and if I am to narrow it down, the things that happen in the
society around you, are connected to each other and are not happening in isolation. This means that
things are interconnected, if something happens in a society, it happens with relation to and
because of the conditions of that society.

“The dialectical method therefore holds that no phenomenon in nature can be understood if taken by
itself, isolated from surrounding phenomena, inasmuch as any phenomenon in any realm of nature
may become meaningless to us if it is not considered in connection with the surrounding conditions,
but divorced from them; and that, vice versa, any phenomenon can be understood and explained if
considered in its inseparable connection with surrounding phenomena, as one conditioned by
surrounding phenomena.”

Marx then of course puts up this question- what are the conditions in a society that always
necessarily affect the society. To which the answer that Marx gives is the material. As it should be
clear, what a human needs the most is material because that is how it, as an organism, can survive.

As Stalin puts it “The chief force towards change in any society is the method of procuring the means
of life necessary for human existence, the mode of production of material values – food, clothing,
footwear, houses, fuel, instruments of production, etc. – which are indispensable for the life and
development of society.”

Production:

Now the question is where this material does comes from? It comes from the production. Now here
production does not necessarily mean a factory production- production can have different meanings
in different eras.

“The instruments of production wherewith material values are produced, the people who operate the
instruments of production and carry on the production of material values thanks to a certain
production experience and labour skill – all these elements jointly constitute the productive forces of
society.”

Relations of Production:

“the productive forces are only one aspect of production, only one aspect of the mode of
production, an aspect that expresses the relation of men to the objects and forces of nature which
they make use of for the production of material values. Another aspect of production, another aspect
of the mode of production, is the relation of men to each other in the process of production,
men's relations of production. Men carry on a struggle against nature and utilize nature for the
production of material values not in isolation from each other, not as separate individuals, but in
common, in groups, in societies. Production, therefore, is at all times and under all conditions social
production.

“In the production of material values men enter into mutual relations of one kind or another within
production, into relations of production of one kind or another. These may be relations of co-
operation and mutual help between people who are free from exploitation; they may be relations of
domination and subordination; and, lastly, they may be transitional from one form of relations of
production to another.”

"In production," Marx says, "men not only act on nature but also on one another. They produce only
by co-operating in a certain way and mutually exchanging their activities. In order to produce, they
enter into definite connections and relations with one another and only within these social
connections and relations does their action on nature, does production, take place." (Marx and
Engels, Vol. V, p. 429.)

Let me repeat again, to survive, human needs material. To have material, humans need to produce.
To produce, humans need to develop some sort of relations. This relation is again different in
different times but this relation in overall determines how society produces, distributes and
consumes. So how the production happens and what are the relations which have been constructed
for such production explains to us how a society is functioning.

Why material over the idea:

This method gains primacy over other methods of the study of a society- a method that studies what
people believe in a society. Reason being, first of all, why people are believing in a particular idea, is
a question that is not answered ever in such method. And when you actually start looking for the
answer, you end up reaching the material. Moreover, ideas not only always have a driving force but
also they are not necessarily existing in a society but material will always exist i.e. it is possible a
human might not hold some ideas but it is not possible that that human would not eat or drink.

But does that mean that ideas have no relevance in the society? No, it does not say so.

This brings us to a very important concept that I must clear under materialism- base and
superstructure.
As you can see, in the base, we have added the components of material- it has production,
productive forces, and relations of production. While in the superstructure we have components of
idea- art, family, culture, religion, education, law, media etc. Now, from a common point of view,
you must have always thought that whatever is happening in society is because of the ideas. Like,
especially when you are living under a fascist regime, you must necessarily think that people are
blinded by the religion, they are moving towards a direction that is shown by religion and so on.
While all of this is completely true, it is an incomplete conclusion. Ideas direct the society, they
direct people towards something, but question is always why? Why would it direct people in such a
way that it does? The answer, if we employ the method we are reading, always leads us to material.
We are necessarily shown how while the idea might seem to be the dominant force, it is a material
reason behind the origin of that very idea, but these are so interlinked that we cannot differentiate
so easily.

As the above chart shows us, base, say the economic relations of capitalism where a few control the
mass, necessarily shapes how the law is, how the media works, what kind of and intensity of
religious ideas people follow, what education they receive so and so forth. Then those very laws that
very media, those very religious ideas help to maintain this relation where one party rules the other.
Now, the relations maintain such ideas as long as it helps the dominant party of that relation, while
the ideas have becomes so strong and fixed that they too start shaping how the relations are
working the society, their intensity to their hold. In this, the base is generally the dominant one, as
material needs, most of the times, are overpowering and way more necessary for survival of a
human being. Thus, while we are saying that material has primacy over ideas, it is not that ideas do
not have any role in the society but at the same time, the ideas are not operating in the isolation.
They operate for a reason.

Here, we can see the application of what we read above in the concept of dialectics. Because of
material settings, some conditions are produced in the society, these conditions take place and get
deeply embedded in the society over time and thus form a really strong superstructure. So, it largely
depends on how base is or say how the material conditions are in a society (production and its
relations) which form the ideas in a society over centuries. To uproot these ideas completely, there
requires a totally different (even opposed) base, which then does the same process and through
years it starts building a new superstructure. This is how Marxism contends that ideas are formed in
a society and how ideas can be changed.

 Historical:
I think I have already made it clear about what the word historical means here but let me explain
again for the sake of clarity. As I mentioned above, “production can have different meanings in
different eras” and “relation is again different in different times”. Thus, what historical means here is
conducting a study of society through its history in the different eras keeping in mind its material
state. That is, studying a society in a way that we move in a chronology, we study different systems,
which had different production owing to the presence of different kind of productive forces (tools
and machines etc.) of that time and consequently the different kind of production relations each era
had. We study, most necessarily, the conflict in a society throughout the history, as we will read in
the next chapter. This study based on a historical progression only helps us understand how society
was, is and will be.

End Note: If you could not understand some of these concepts, it is totally natural. In this text, you
have been told these in very general but the discussion that we will follow after you have read these
would include the application of these concepts using some examples. Moreover, the reason you
have been told these concepts right at the beginning is so you can keep applying these as you read
further in this series or when you read about any social concept. So, kindly hold patience and things
will start clearing out real soon!