Scientific socialism

The term Scientific socialism is

Emergence of the concept

Pierre- Joseph Proudhon used in his book "Qu'est- ce que la propriété? Ou recherches sur le principe du droit du gouvernement " the first time the term" Socialisme scientifique ".

Karl Marx used the term scientific socialism, in order to disassociate oneself from approaches of early socialists. Later, Friedrich Engels in the debate against Dühring the concept of Marx in a manner associated with ( creator of the WS), the use of a " Marxist teaching building " feed made ​​.. For Engels presented the derivation of the exploitation of the working class under capitalism and the materialist conception of history those two great discoveries of Marx represents who brought socialism to a science. However, Marx himself referred to this debate by Engels as an introduction to scientific socialism.

Here is the following especially on the approach of Marx and Engels in the early Scripture taken The German Ideology respect, the formulation as a common position on the basis for further cooperation between the two dating back to 1845, but was not published until 1933.

Definition

For the purposes of a non- dogmatic concept of the Scientific Socialism - in relation to Marx and Engels:

The Scientific socialism, as Marx and Engels saw it, is generally a theory of evolution, even if the revolutionary development was stressed by themselves with the instructions on the class struggle and the stages of historical development. This had to do with the current revolutionary situation in the mid -19th century. The motivation of development still is not the revolution, but the work (base), which can lead to revolutionary adaptations in politics and culture ( superstructure ) - or not: " Socialism or Barbarism " Marx seemed the alternative.

Role of labor

How did the primitive society ( primitive communism )? About the evolutionary development of toolmaking animals, the tool -making animal.

How did the slave society? Through development of the work and the division of labor, whereby an added value could be created! And the slaves were not, they overcame.

How did feudalism? By further division of labor, according to Marx, with the property relations, unequal, is identical ( see below). Not only the main classes (nobility and peasants in ) were in contradiction, but the middle class emerging overcame this system (not least through the generation of capital from money by means of wage labor ).

How did capitalism? Through a qualitative further change of ownership ( Do - Have Not ). Only here is the antithesis of the capitalists, the proletariat, as a class directly the antipode ( main antagonistic classes). The abolition of a class due to the other, the self- emancipation of the proletariat overcomes both capitalism and ownership of the new company form of socialism and lead to the repeal of the division of labor between mental and physical labor.

Real announced today the (mental ) acquisition of production by the workers in modern capitalist societies, which took place on educational processes, which therefore were already required to operate the increasingly complex instruments of production, greater freedoms brought than in the revolutionary justified real - socialist systems.

The German Ideology

The volumes Capital Karl Marx was the author of the central analysis of the laws of motion of the capitalist system in the 19th century (mainly in England). He was inspired - what is often forgotten - through a sketchy economic analysis of Friedrich Engels' Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy (1844; Marx called " ingenious plan ").

Through a common font of 1845, which was its own self-understanding between Marx and Engels, The German Ideology, today both are equally as the founder of scientific socialism.

The Scriptures The German Ideology was published only in the 30s of the 20th century ( for example, Lenin and Luxembourg it remained unknown). It contains a brief outline of the history, the basic idea of both to social development. The critique of political economy, as the subtitle of the volumes of capital, then analyzed the specific laws of motion arising from money and wage labor capital.

Scientific socialism is contrasted currents such as the utopian socialism. In addition to the dialectical method of Hegel, Marx, put back on its feet ', it went methodically about not to demand what is not "real " to implement what had not matured in the womb of the old. "Communism is not a condition that is to be produced, an ideal to which reality must be in line [ is ] for us. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state, "it says in The German Ideology. "It is not enough that the idea suggests to the realization that reality itself must push for thought. " And society as a driver development will be understood the work that social work.

In the antagonistic ( irreconcilable ) Comparison of capital and labor, represented by the character masks capitalist and worker, ( not the only ) question the mutually conditional main classes in capitalist society, the capital ( machinery overstepping itself the development of the productive forces to towards the know-how, including the spiritual part in it ) but at the same time sprinkle the conditions of capitalist economy; through rationalization ( tendential fall of the rate of profit ) they pick up the work, so also undermines its own foundation, the exploitation of workers and nature. In the capital, among others, the function of money, the value-added production and appropriation, the impoverishment of the working classes is analyzed.

Being determines consciousness

The humanistic aspect is already outlined in The German Ideology. "It is " - it says - ". Assumed the real working people and shown from their real life process and the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of " It is not the ideas of the people given the history, but the material conditions they vorfänden, certain ideas, the mind, the consciousness, thus: " the social being determines social consciousness. "

When this statement is first to remember that it was made in the 19th century, at a time when, for example, Charles Darwin 's theory of evolution in disagreement with the church restrained formulated which recognized only the divine creation of the world and not any sort of development of people ( perhaps even from the monkeys) accepted (literature: Ernst Mayr, Darwin ... and quite, Munich 1994). 2 it was for Marx and Engels in their dialectical method (not dialectical materialism ). That is, they went from a mutual dependence and determination of being and consciousness of. Consciousness (the idea ) is part of Being, which is thus also dependent on consciousness and not become mechanical (which again would be tantamount to a divine idea), as represented mainly by Social Democrats and Communists in the early 20th century ( socialism would almost like of itself).

Division of labor and private property in the means of production

The decisive factor of the dialectic is in this idea of the being of human work. The human being develops according to its environment, in accomplishment of a creative exploration of his being and changed by this work, the world and its environment and so themselves - from the groups of hunter-gatherers on the slave society and the peasant ( feudal ) for capitalist society. And it's changing in this process, the work itself

The result is the division of labor. The first primitive division of labor - it is said in The German Ideology - whether the man and woman, first, the social division of labor between town and country. With the division of labor arises the property; Division of labor and private property - meant is not personal property, but the means of production, can be exploited with the others - are " identical expressions - in a is said in relation to the activity of the same thing in the other in relation to the product activity is predicated. "

Division of labor and ownership lead to alienation. The concrete work was alienated because they cease to be a part of the nature of the worker to be ( as yet tend to be at the craft ). In the family while the woman creates the basis for the production of man, yet this title to both their own production itself. Clearly this would be only if surpluses would be produced, which are sold as a commodity. At the same time the man but also alienated from his product, the goods.

" The division of labor is only really pitch of the at moments when spiritual and material division of labor " occurs, with her was " at the same time also the distribution, namely the unequal, both quantitative and qualitative distribution of labor and its products given, ie the property that in the family ... has its first form. "

From the property, and later primarily from ownership of the means of production, arises rule. And in its most perfect form in ( constructive) extensive socialization of production and at the same time private appropriation by a few capitalists. Extensive socialization means that the workers are by knowledge of the work processes, the actual "masters " of production. The main social classes, wage laborers and capitalists by the division of labor ( among other cosets ), formed the face irreconcilably - To have - according to Marx and Engels. The history of man is therefore a history of class struggle, the workers turn through against the exploitation of his work through the appropriation of the surplus value created by him ( compared to the case of only earned him low wages ).

Requirements for a new society

Only in capitalism 's productive forces were but so far developed that the existence of struggles for food stop. Only here the contradiction between labor and capital will thus clear that the working class recognize this and put it into political action could ( as a " class for itself" - over the " class in itself " above ). Only now ( mid 19th century ) was the working class also numerically strong enough to enforce the social revolution. Only here the productive forces are developed enough for the socialist society.

This new company - according to the authors of scientific socialism ' - was developing as a seed in the womb of the old. The previous revolutions of the civil societies have changed the balance of power among the classes, but the socialist revolution change the nature of the activity of the people and lifting so that the new combination of manual and mental labor, the alienation ( by the work and themselves). Then begin the true history of man. ( Reread the preface to the " Critique of Political Economy " by Karl Marx)

The goal of socialism is the emancipation of the people, the development of the individual personality through self-realization within the process of a productive relationship between man and nature. It was Marx and Engels - compared with a crude communism of egalitarianism - a new era in which should apply: " From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. "

As a precondition them so was given a certain amount of wealth of society and an already advanced socialization particularly the means of production " in the bosom of the Old ", as with the already developed industrial already abzeichne in England (but not in Russia in 1917 ). The revolution that they imagined in the early writings to be relatively bloody event should then represent the real trend in political power, for the time being by the rule of the working class in the state which was to replace the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The state would wither away in the further process of socialization, Engels formulated later political rule would find such an end. In the preface to the second volume of Capital he says that Karl Marx in England a revolutionary transformation over the Parliament had imagined.

Others

In contrast to the above declarations was for Marx the central weight of the question of human development not only in the technical and economic progress, but especially in their universality. From this point of view, Marx criticized utopian its predecessors such as Fourier and Proudhon, who had indeed also designed socialist society models, but did not know how they could practically implement their socialist models. Only with Marx, it was clear that people ( at least in Europe and in the U.S.) the existing state, religious, etc. borders with the bourgeois revolutions drove back so far that now finally flourish for many centuries dreamed of socialism in the bosom of the liberal world could. The support of the new company would be called the proletarians who would proceed much more radical in their demands for freedom and universality than their liberal champion. The socialist revolution had finally abolish namely the obligation to work ( at least in the civilized world). Purpose was and is necessary especially an international labor organization on the model of the First International.

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