---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Orsan <[email protected]> Date: Sun, May 17, 2015 at 9:14 PM Subject: [NetworkedLabour] What is Karl Marx? (1913) by Alexander Bogdanov To: "<[email protected]>" < [email protected]> .... What did Marx do? *He changed the point of view*. He looked at society from the point of view of those who produce, from the point of view of the working class, and everything turned out to be very different. It turned out that the center of life and development of the society was found there, that this was the Sun on which depended the ways and the movement of human beings, groups and classes. Marx was not a worker; but through the power of his mind he was able to fully understand the position of the worker. And he found out that with this transition everything immediately changed its contours and forms. The powers of things and causes of events were revealed to the human eyes in a way that was not possible from the old point of view. Reality, truth, even the everyday appearance of things changed and became something different, often something opposite to what it was before. Yes, even the way things appear to us! What can be more obvious for a capitalist than the fact that he feeds the worker? Does he not provide the worker with the work and the salary? But for the worker it is no less obvious that they are the ones who feed the capitalists with their labor. And in his discussion of surplus value Marx demonstrated that the first view was an illusion, an appearance that was similar to our everyday perception that Sun moved around Earth, but the second view was the truth. Marx discovered that all human thought and feeling received different direction and were formed differently depending on the class to which these human beings belonged, that is, depending on their position in relation to production. Different interests, habits and experiences lead to different conclusions. What is reasonable for one class is ridiculous for another, and conversely what is just, lawful and normal for one class is injustice and misuse of power for another. What appears as freedom to one class, looks like slavery to another. The ideal of one class causes horror and disgust of another class. Marx summed it up thus: “it is their social existence that determines their consciousness.” Or, in other words, thoughts, aspirations and ideals are determined by the economic situation. It is with the help of this idea that he transformed social science and philosophy. It is on this idea that he founded his great doctrine of the class struggle and its role in the development of society. He studied the path of this development and showed where it leads and which class would create the new organization of production, what this organization would look like and how it would end the division of classes and their long struggle. Marx was not a worker. But it was in the working class that the great teacher found the foothold for his thought, the point of view that allowed him to penetrate the depth of reality and to help him discover his idea. The essence of this idea is the self-consciousness of the working proletariat. That is why Marx more than any other thinker belongs to the proletariat. .... Full text: http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/1951-what-is-karl-marx _______________________________________________ NetworkedLabour mailing list [email protected] http://lists.contrast.org/mailman/listinfo/networkedlabour -- Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://commonstransition.org P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net <http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation>Updates: http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens #82 on the (En)Rich list: http://enrichlist.org/the-complete-list/