On May 1, thousands of people in Germany are again on the road to demonstrate for more justice and improved working conditions. As a 'Labor Day', the national holiday continues the legacy of the workers' movement, which since the second half of the nineteenth century has struggled in many places against the oppression and exploitation of the working classes newly created by industrialization. For the socialist-communist camp within the workers' movement, Karl Marx once provided the theoretical background, and even today the social theorist is gladly quoted. But what does Karl Marx actually say? Christoph Henning, Junior Fellow for Philosophy at the Max Weber College of the University of Erfurt, asked: 'What do we still have in common with Karl Marx's contemporary workers today, and what can we do for our work? Can capitalist societies still learn from Marx today?'
The writings of Marx still address us in many ways. So we can find a number of answers. I would first distinguish between crisis diagnosis and therapy. If one follows the Marxian theory, then the disruption of the present is mainly due to economic mechanisms: the capitalist mode of production in which everything is based on the profit-making of capital is a process, subject to a destructive growth strategy. If the prospects for profit become uncertain, as in the past decades, the capital goes hunting for other profitable investment opportunities, 'robbery' - public goods, natural goods, intellectual property, or hitherto collectively managed regions are incorporated into capitalist forms by use of violence. This is called 'privatization, globalization, or financing', or less soothingly, for example, 'takeover'.
According to Marx, profit is achieved on the one hand through the exploitation of labor, but on the other hand also by the appropriately questionable appropriation of seeming, miserable goods (accumulation by expropriation). And as in the time of Marx, most people today still need to find a 'buyer' for their workforce, and to make themselves as marketless as possible, at the risk of impoverishment and exclusion. In the present, therefore, not only are processes such as the rising social inequality or the spread of crisis-prone financialised capitalism us well explained with Marx, but also the increasing phenomena of an 'exhaustion' or a burnout which I would call with Marx 'alienation'.
As to the possible answers to this smoldering crises, one can learn from Marx that 'national' answers lead to a dead end. Of course, one can try to get rid of these dangers and build walls (in the minds or at the supposed borders). But since capital, goods and money (and, in many cases, labor too) are mobile on a global scale, the problems may be exacerbated in this way - and they also see xenophobia and exclusion. It is therefore still a matter of transforming the destructive tendencies of the capitalist mode of production either into socially and more environmentally compatible ways of dealing, or, if this does not succeed, at least to curb them, but without falling back into repressive and exclusive patterns of a central administration. To strive for this in international co-operation is a challenge that has grown even more since the time of Marx. Since the next year marks the 200th anniversary of Marx, I therefore expect a small revival. We will also organize events in Erfurt.
The writings of Marx still address us in many ways. So we can find a number of answers. I would first distinguish between crisis diagnosis and therapy. If one follows the Marxian theory, then the disruption of the present is mainly due to economic mechanisms: the capitalist mode of production in which everything is based on the profit-making of capital is a process, subject to a destructive growth strategy. If the prospects for profit become uncertain, as in the past decades, the capital goes hunting for other profitable investment opportunities, 'robbery' - public goods, natural goods, intellectual property, or hitherto collectively managed regions are incorporated into capitalist forms by use of violence. This is called 'privatization, globalization, or financing', or less soothingly, for example, 'takeover'.
According to Marx, profit is achieved on the one hand through the exploitation of labor, but on the other hand also by the appropriately questionable appropriation of seeming, miserable goods (accumulation by expropriation). And as in the time of Marx, most people today still need to find a 'buyer' for their workforce, and to make themselves as marketless as possible, at the risk of impoverishment and exclusion. In the present, therefore, not only are processes such as the rising social inequality or the spread of crisis-prone financialised capitalism us well explained with Marx, but also the increasing phenomena of an 'exhaustion' or a burnout which I would call with Marx 'alienation'.
As to the possible answers to this smoldering crises, one can learn from Marx that 'national' answers lead to a dead end. Of course, one can try to get rid of these dangers and build walls (in the minds or at the supposed borders). But since capital, goods and money (and, in many cases, labor too) are mobile on a global scale, the problems may be exacerbated in this way - and they also see xenophobia and exclusion. It is therefore still a matter of transforming the destructive tendencies of the capitalist mode of production either into socially and more environmentally compatible ways of dealing, or, if this does not succeed, at least to curb them, but without falling back into repressive and exclusive patterns of a central administration. To strive for this in international co-operation is a challenge that has grown even more since the time of Marx. Since the next year marks the 200th anniversary of Marx, I therefore expect a small revival. We will also organize events in Erfurt.
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