So when I say the word Marxism, what, what comes to mind? >> Three things basically. revolution, socialism and communism. >> Revolution, socialism and communism. Okay, socialism and communism, what's the difference there? >> It's, it's difficult in, in the way I think, there is no money, but I would say that socialism can work between democratic system and communism is just monotheistic basic ideology. >> Okay, so that's certainly one way which people commonly distinguish them. We'll see Marx had a very different idea of the differences between socialism and communism and we'll come back to that. What about you? When, when I say Marxism what, what's the first thing that leaps to your mind? >> Who cares? >> [LAUGH]. >> I, I mean the USSR's collapsed. China's capitalist. What else do you have, Cuba and North Korea? Who cares? >> Okay, that's certainly a very reasonable response as well. One might say, who cares. This is a defunct 19th century ideology. It maybe had some influence in the 20th century. Although, as we will see, that the communist revolution so-called of the 20th century had very little to do with Marx's actual ideas. None that as you might say, as you indicated, the largest communist country in the world now has gone capitalist. In China and since 1989 and 1991 with the collapse of communism in eastern Europe, and then the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Why do we need to bother with that, with communism and Marxism, and all of these ideas at all? And I think that that's a very real question to ask, and that there are going to be two answers to that linked to our distinction between internal and external analysis. Our internal analysis of different ideas is going to show that Marx's ideas have nonetheless had an important effect on various other ideas that we're going to be discussing in the course. And in that sense it continues, Marxism continues to live in the political thinking of the modern West. But then also thinking of Marxism as an ideology, it's by far the single most powerful historical alternative to the liberal tradition. And so we need to understand why that is. We need to understand why if these ideas turn out to have been, in many respects, bankrupt, how they could move so many millions of people for so long to change their societies fundamentally. So, it's a good question to ask and I think by the end of it you'll see that we have had an answer. But what else comes to mind when I say Marxism? >> equality. >> An egalitarian society. So certainly people think that that's a very important part of Marxism that it's, it's about equality. yeah? >> Yeah, but there is a puzzle there because enlightenment is all about freedom and we are talking equality here. >> Okay, so that is also a good question to ask, in that I have said to you that one of the core enlightenment commitments is to the notion of freedom as the highest good, the summum bonum. And here we are talking about Marxism which mo, most people think is an egalitarian ideology. I'm going to suggest that that's ill-conceived actually, and that the core notion, the core moral notion, the core normative commitment to Marxism is actually to the idea of freedom. And so, that makes Marx much more of a mainstream enlightenment thinker than people generally imagine. >> Then science? >> What about science? >> How we put together the idea of science in Marxism and revolution. >> Okay so, science is also a whole mark of the enlightenment, as I said. And you might say, well, now Bentham had his scientific theories but, but Marx and science? It doesn't seem to compute. Well, I think there too, you're going to see that, that Marx differentiates himself and his enterprise from those of his predecessors by appealing to the conception of science. Your intuition that it's a very different conception of science is right. But it nonetheless committed to the idea of scientific socialism as opposed to what he referred to as the utopian socialist for whom he had withering contempt. We'll get into that as well. Okay so, let's just say a little bit about Karl Marx and his friend Friedrich Engels who, who made Marxism the most famous ideology perhaps other than Christianity in the history of the modern West. Marx's Das Kapital is the only work that has ever rivaled the Bible for sales. So who were these people? Engels was a, basically a businessman who spent much of his time as a, amplifier and purveyor of Marx's ideas. Although he also wrote himself but on Marxist themes. And some of Marx's most famous works were co-authored with Engels such as the Communist Manifesto. Which is perhaps the most widely read of Marx's works today. But we, it's I think important to notice two things about Marx going into this. Is that there really are two Marx's in, in some important respects. There's the younger German Marx who was a critic of idealistic theories of his day, and trying to sort of turn them upside down. And he was a, he lived in Germany. He spent a lot of his time trying to foment revolution in Europe. When the revolutions of 1830 happened throughout the continent, Marx thought it was the beginning of the end. And he was very dispirited when the monarchies were recreated in, in 1831, 1832. Then in 1848 again, revolution swept Europe and Marx became optimistic that the end of capitalism was soon to be coming. Of course, by 1851 the monarchies again had been restored throughout Europe. And after that Marx became much chastened. He was also chased, he was chased out of Europe. And spent much of the last part of his life living in London. And working on, in a much more sober and long-term way on his critique of capitalism. And that's what I'm going to call the English Marx. The Marx who spent many years sitting in the basement of the British Museum reassessing classical political economy. He realized by then that socialist and communist revolutions were not around the corner. And that a much more serious engagement with the dynamics of capitalism was going to be required if he was going to understand the, the possibility of a communist revolution. And so the, the other thing to say about him, well just to underscore, is that even though he deployed the term scientific socialism to differentiate him from other idealists in the 19th century such as Feuerbach and, and others. His early views were really quite utopian and we'll see this when we get into the definition of communism. But subsequently he became much more disillusioned and much more connected to the real political currents of his day and hopeful that they might be pushed in a progressive direction.
