WEBVTT NOTE Foundations of Marx's Philosophy and Economics 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.700 I want to talk today, since it's a very broad topic, having to do with both Marx's philosophy 2 00:00:07.700 --> 00:00:14.160 and economics, what I thought I would concentrate on is first to describe certain aspects of 3 00:00:14.160 --> 00:00:21.880 Marx's philosophy, in particular, what he thought the proper method was of studying 4 00:00:21.880 --> 00:00:25.480 and the 5 00:00:25.480 --> 00:00:29.700 proper method of study that he then applied to economic theory. 6 00:00:29.700 --> 00:00:36.920 That's to say, the very distinctive kind of economics that Marx attempted in his works 7 00:00:36.920 --> 00:00:41.920 is to some extent at least conditioned by his philosophy. 8 00:00:41.920 --> 00:00:48.280 So I'll first begin with a brief, some brief comments on the philosophical background. 9 00:00:48.280 --> 00:00:53.760 Now, an unfortunate feature of doing that is that it requires, first, saying something 10 00:00:53.760 --> 00:01:00.320 about Hegel, who, as anyone who's looked at Hegel will know, isn't the easiest philosopher 11 00:01:00.320 --> 00:01:03.600 to understand. 12 00:01:03.600 --> 00:01:09.560 Some of this will be dealt with by Professor Rothbard, particularly on certain parallels 13 00:01:09.560 --> 00:01:17.920 between Hegel and Marx and various religious views, so I'll avoid going into that in any 14 00:01:17.920 --> 00:01:19.920 The Theory of Money and Credit 15 00:01:47.920 --> 00:01:49.920 The Theory of Money and Credit 16 00:02:17.920 --> 00:02:21.480 German philosopher of the time who said well if you think everything is rational 17 00:02:21.480 --> 00:02:27.840 could you deduce the existence of my pen right now and Hegel dismissed that as 18 00:02:27.840 --> 00:02:32.800 really not understanding what he meant. What he meant was first we can get the 19 00:02:32.800 --> 00:02:37.920 preliminary idea if we look say at any scientific theory that it's in any 20 00:02:37.920 --> 00:02:44.720 scientific theory one is unifying things that appear not to be unified at first 21 00:02:44.720 --> 00:02:48.720 The Theory of Money and Credit 22 00:02:48.720 --> 00:02:54.720 The Theory of Money and Credit 23 00:03:14.720 --> 00:03:25.720 In the world as we see it, just as we're looking at it, this is dismissed very early as not giving us a very good idea of what things are really like. 24 00:03:25.720 --> 00:03:36.720 So, so far we have that there's a unification of things in the sense that a scientific theory unifies things below the surface. 25 00:03:36.720 --> 00:03:38.720 The Theory of Money and Credit 26 00:05:06.720 --> 00:05:08.720 The Theory of Money and Credit 27 00:05:36.720 --> 00:06:06.560 Unity of the World. Now, we very often think, say, of a scientific hypothesis or a law as something that people come up with or think about and then try to see whether tests in the actual world and see if it comes true or not, or see if it's false, but Hegel thought that wasn't really what's involved, or that, again, is only true at a very lower level of things. 28 00:06:06.560 --> 00:06:11.600 He thought, and this is the peculiar part of his doctrine, which I think is the most difficult to grasp, 29 00:06:11.600 --> 00:06:21.300 that logic is something that is not an idea in people's minds, but is something actually present, actually out in the world, 30 00:06:21.300 --> 00:06:31.160 that if you look at his greatest work on metaphysics, it's called logic, and it is in this book about thinking, 31 00:06:31.160 --> 00:07:01.160 The Theory of Money and Credit The Theory of Money and Credit 32 00:07:01.160 --> 00:07:05.160 The Theory of Money and Credit 33 00:07:05.160 --> 00:07:09.160 The Theory of Money and Credit 34 00:07:31.160 --> 00:07:33.160 The Theory of Money and Credit 35 00:08:01.160 --> 00:08:31.160 be part of the world operating and as we'll see when I get to Marx's labor theory of value we'll see exactly how this idea comes in but unfortunately we haven't finished with Hegel yet but fortunately that part the notion of the absolute idea or concept working in the world is most difficult part of the part of Hegel I'll be 36 00:08:31.160 --> 00:08:33.160 The Theory of Money and Credit 37 00:09:01.160 --> 00:09:03.160 The Theory of Money and Credit 38 00:09:31.160 --> 00:09:44.700 not observe these rules, and then the connection between the rules and the facts would be accidental whether people followed the ethical prescriptions or not. 39 00:09:44.700 --> 00:09:53.800 So, Hegel's ethics, such as they are in fact found in his work, The Philosophy of Right, which could also be translated Philosophy of Law, 40 00:09:53.800 --> 00:09:58.960 He thought that ethics wasn't a matter of universal prescriptions, 41 00:09:58.960 --> 00:10:03.160 or to the extent it was, that was just of relatively minor significance, 42 00:10:03.160 --> 00:10:08.400 but that ethics could only be viewed as part of political life, 43 00:10:08.400 --> 00:10:13.520 just as Aristotle had his ethics connected with his politics. 44 00:10:13.520 --> 00:10:17.200 Hegel thought that one could only talk about ethics 45 00:10:17.200 --> 00:10:23.120 within a certain social system that was constituted by a state, 46 00:10:23.120 --> 00:10:34.880 So that unless you have a sort of a concrete society, you're not talking about what the really highest basis of law. 47 00:10:34.880 --> 00:10:42.920 It's a mistake, and he particularly criticized Immanuel Kant for this, to try to view ethics as a part from politics. 48 00:10:42.920 --> 00:10:52.200 And Marx, as we'll see, took up this idea very much that he tended to dismiss rights in his own thought, 49 00:10:52.200 --> 00:11:22.200 The Theory of Money and Credit 50 00:11:22.200 --> 00:11:42.200 General Statement that doesn't lead anywhere, we can only understand this if it's viewed and it's how it's applied in a particular setting, in a particular social system, so we can see this Hegelian point that ethics doesn't come in unless it's viewed in this concrete way. 51 00:11:42.200 --> 00:11:48.720 Now, that is the second part of Hegel's views that I think I wanted to mention. 52 00:11:48.720 --> 00:11:58.760 There's one other point, and this one Marx both was influenced by and reacted to some extent against. 53 00:11:58.760 --> 00:12:07.520 Hegel thought that although the function of the philosopher was to show that the rationality of things, 54 00:12:07.520 --> 00:12:11.680 to show, as I put it, the development of the absolute idea. 55 00:12:11.680 --> 00:12:14.480 This could only be attempted 56 00:12:14.480 --> 00:12:18.920 for what had already been shown to exist. 57 00:12:18.920 --> 00:12:22.880 One couldn't deduce what was going to happen in the future, 58 00:12:22.880 --> 00:12:25.280 because that, again, would be a separation 59 00:12:25.280 --> 00:12:27.720 of abstract ideas from events, 60 00:12:27.720 --> 00:12:30.600 and the events aren't around yet. 61 00:12:30.600 --> 00:12:31.720 If we tried to deduce them, 62 00:12:31.720 --> 00:12:33.920 we'd just have certain abstract premises. 63 00:12:33.920 --> 00:12:35.200 We wouldn't have the full, 64 00:12:35.200 --> 00:12:37.280 what he calls a concrete universal, 65 00:12:37.280 --> 00:12:41.920 the Perfect Unification of Concepts and Facts 66 00:12:41.920 --> 00:12:51.920 So, remember in the famous preface in the philosophy of right, he describes sort of philosophy painting, what he calls its gray and gray, 67 00:12:51.920 --> 00:12:59.400 and then he concludes with the beautiful line, the owl of Minerva takes wing only with the coming of dusk. 68 00:12:59.400 --> 00:13:05.720 The Album Nervous, the sort of a symbol of philosophy and he's saying you can only have 69 00:13:05.720 --> 00:13:13.320 philosophical explanations of the course of the world after they've taken place. 70 00:13:13.320 --> 00:13:15.520 He's denying that one can predict the future. 71 00:13:15.520 --> 00:13:19.280 He occasionally did speculate himself on future developments. 72 00:13:19.280 --> 00:13:24.360 For example, he thought the United States would be very important in future, but this 73 00:13:24.360 --> 00:13:26.480 is not really part of his system. 74 00:13:26.480 --> 00:13:36.080 So where this both influenced Marx and got him into trouble is that Marx wanted very 75 00:13:36.080 --> 00:13:43.580 explicitly to advocate a certain type of system, socialism or communism, but he was very much 76 00:13:43.580 --> 00:13:48.840 influenced by the Hegelian views that you can't say what's going to happen in the future. 77 00:13:48.840 --> 00:13:56.640 So we can see here one reason that he didn't specify in any detail what communist society 78 00:13:56.640 --> 00:13:58.060 would be like. 79 00:13:58.060 --> 00:14:03.380 This would be going against the method of what Hegel thought was a proper method of 80 00:14:03.380 --> 00:14:05.120 studying logic. 81 00:14:05.120 --> 00:14:11.440 I should say I'm by no means pretending that Marx was a disciple of Hegel, but he did study 82 00:14:11.440 --> 00:14:18.440 The Theory of Money and Credit 83 00:14:41.440 --> 00:14:49.440 The method that I've been talking about, it sounds rather obscure, but it's a very essential part of what influenced Marx. 84 00:14:49.440 --> 00:15:02.440 But when I talked about Marx's philosophical background, it's a mistake to think of Marx as just influenced by Hegel and no one else. 85 00:15:02.440 --> 00:15:26.440 We also have to recall that Marx was a materialist, and here most people mention just Ludwig Feuerbach, who criticized religion or viewed religion as sort of just projections of peoples, of sort of ideal human beings onto the world. 86 00:15:26.440 --> 00:15:41.080 He accordingly dismissed some of Hegel's theological speculations as mystification, but the real, I think, more important influence on Marx was more from the Greek materialists. 87 00:15:41.080 --> 00:15:47.800 You know, if you look at Marx's doctoral dissertation, it's in Paris in the Systems, Democritus Epicurus. 88 00:15:47.800 --> 00:15:54.080 The significance there is not in particular points on their particular points of doctrine, 89 00:15:54.080 --> 00:16:24.080 but sort of a basic idea of materialism that as the Greeks practice it which is again similar in one way to Hegel that you're in their view you were looking for an underlying level of things saying the system of democracies what really goes on is in the world is not what we see on the surface just various physical objects but movements of very material particles of various kinds so 90 00:16:24.080 --> 00:16:39.080 Just like with Hegel thought was saying that there's sort of a real level that is different from a level of sense certainty, the Greek materialists were also looking for an underlying level. 91 00:16:39.080 --> 00:16:46.080 And here what was important to Marx was that the underlying level has to be material. 92 00:16:46.080 --> 00:16:48.080 The Theory of Money and Credit 93 00:17:16.080 --> 00:17:18.080 The Theory of Money and Credit 94 00:17:46.080 --> 00:17:57.560 approach there. So, so far we have, then, this, we'll now shortly see how Marx concretely 95 00:17:57.560 --> 00:18:03.360 applied this in his economic social theory, but there's one further fact that I think 96 00:18:03.360 --> 00:18:11.120 one has to take account in looking at Marx's philosophy, and this has put him in some difficulties 97 00:18:11.120 --> 00:18:13.120 with the Hegelian System. 98 00:18:13.120 --> 00:18:20.360 I've referred to it very briefly before, and this is namely that Marx was, during a great 99 00:18:20.360 --> 00:18:23.640 part of his life, a professional revolutionary. 100 00:18:23.640 --> 00:18:30.400 He was interested in changing the world in a certain direction, not just in studying 101 00:18:30.400 --> 00:18:31.400 it. 102 00:18:31.400 --> 00:18:38.880 As he says in one of his famous theses on Feuerbach, this disciple of Hegel, criticized 103 00:18:38.880 --> 00:18:46.880 The Philosophers of Hitherto only interpreted the world, the point, however, is to change it. 104 00:18:46.880 --> 00:18:59.880 Marx wrote this when he was quite young, but these theses were published in appendix to Engel's work, Ludwig Vorbach, The End of Classical German Philosophy. 105 00:18:59.880 --> 00:19:04.660 and so they became known after that but you see how this gets marks into some 106 00:19:04.660 --> 00:19:12.800 difficulties with his Hegelian method he's both saying he wants to both apply 107 00:19:12.800 --> 00:19:18.520 Hegel's method which is you have to study the world as it actually has come to 108 00:19:18.520 --> 00:19:22.800 pass and show the rationality of it again taken in this materialist way 109 00:19:22.800 --> 00:19:28.880 showing material forces as having done this but he also wants to change things 110 00:19:58.880 --> 00:20:09.600 Value. Here, this is the notion that commodities exchange according to the socially necessary 111 00:20:09.600 --> 00:20:16.240 labor time contained in each required to produce each one. There's some dispute as to whether 112 00:20:16.240 --> 00:20:22.880 he meant the socially necessary labor that has produced each one or the socially necessary 113 00:20:22.880 --> 00:20:24.880 The Theory of Money and Credit 114 00:20:52.880 --> 00:20:58.880 in which they did. Well, we can see here just this notion I've been talking about 115 00:20:58.880 --> 00:21:04.000 of an underlying structure of things or an underlying explanation of things. 116 00:21:04.000 --> 00:21:10.720 Marx thought that just to describe the world as it, say the world economic 117 00:21:10.720 --> 00:21:15.800 exchange as it actually appeared wouldn't be penetrating to the essence of 118 00:21:15.800 --> 00:21:22.600 things. To really understand things one had to go beneath the surface in the way 119 00:21:22.600 --> 00:21:52.520 I've tried to describe both the Hegel and, in a different way, the Greek materialist did, so that he thought the labor type, the exchange of labor, in the way I've just described, was what was really taking place beneath the surface of the economy, explaining it, and it was modified in certain ways in the world as we see it. 120 00:21:52.520 --> 00:21:58.720 in the Economic World as we see it, but this was actually going on, explaining and accounting for the world. 121 00:21:58.720 --> 00:22:04.000 I think it's important here to see that the argument is sometimes given, say, by— 122 00:22:04.000 --> 00:22:10.680 Aseul has this in his 1985 book on Marx, and he said, well, the various refutations of labor theory 123 00:22:10.680 --> 00:22:15.160 aren't really that important because Marx was just giving this as the model of what happened. 124 00:22:15.160 --> 00:22:22.000 Well, this is just taking—wrongly taking a theory in the way it's taken by certain scientists 125 00:22:22.000 --> 00:22:42.000 This is sort of just an idea that the theorist has, it's tested against the world, it ignores Marx's method where the theory is not just an idea he had, but it's supposed to actually be there, underlying things, unless one can argue for it, one doesn't have a correct account of things according to Marx. 126 00:22:42.000 --> 00:23:06.000 Now, just briefly describing what he had in mind in the labor theory. When he said that things exchange according to the socially necessary labor time in each one, we have to understand that he's meaning an equality here in a very strict sense. 127 00:23:06.000 --> 00:23:27.760 As you know, there's a standard Austrian refutation of his view, which is that when people exchange, they'll trade only if each person values what he's giving up less than what he's getting, so that you have a double inequality rather than equality. 128 00:23:27.760 --> 00:23:41.000 Now Marx would have, he didn't explicitly consider that account of things since, of course, utility theory hadn't been developed when he was writing. 129 00:23:41.000 --> 00:23:46.640 But one can be sure he would have said that's just an explanation at the surface level. 130 00:23:46.640 --> 00:23:51.560 This is just what people appear to be doing in the world as we know it. 131 00:23:51.560 --> 00:23:56.360 isn't penetrating below the surface to get what he calls a laws of motion or 132 00:23:56.360 --> 00:24:02.440 the law of motion of capitalism, which he thought that this materialist method 133 00:24:02.440 --> 00:24:07.560 and Hegelian method was really what underlies science as well. He thought that 134 00:24:07.560 --> 00:24:13.760 Galileo and Newton had applied just the style of method he had gotten from 135 00:24:13.760 --> 00:24:19.960 Hegel as modified a materialist way. So he would have no doubt replied that this 136 00:24:19.960 --> 00:24:26.020 This is, to really understand what's going beneath the surface, you have to have his 137 00:24:26.020 --> 00:24:32.920 account of things, and as I was suggesting, he takes this equality in a very strict way. 138 00:24:32.920 --> 00:24:40.040 He takes it as an equation where the two things that are exchanged are identical in some way, 139 00:24:40.040 --> 00:24:45.760 that say they contain a certain common substance, namely socially necessary labor, that has 140 00:24:45.760 --> 00:24:49.300 to be the same in both commodities. 141 00:24:49.300 --> 00:24:54.700 So then when he later, probably I think another lecturer is going to deal with this, he gets 142 00:24:54.700 --> 00:24:59.740 into difficulties, he tries to come up with some elaborate explanation of how real world 143 00:24:59.740 --> 00:25:06.580 prices are derived from this that most economists since the time of Boehm-Bawerk have said doesn't 144 00:25:06.580 --> 00:25:07.580 work. 145 00:25:07.580 --> 00:25:14.300 But you see, even if he were able to show that it did work, it would only be acceptable 146 00:25:14.300 --> 00:25:19.900 If you first agreed with him that there was this underlying level of things that's actually 147 00:25:19.900 --> 00:25:26.580 present in the world, it seemed like even if he had succeeded in showing how prices 148 00:25:26.580 --> 00:25:33.400 could be derived from labor exchange in a certain way, that would have only been to 149 00:25:33.400 --> 00:25:36.900 extricate himself from the difficulty of his own devising. 150 00:25:36.900 --> 00:25:41.900 It's because he was looking at things from the point of view of this particular view 151 00:25:41.900 --> 00:25:45.900 The Theory of Money and Credit 152 00:25:45.900 --> 00:25:49.900 The Theory of Money and Credit 153 00:26:11.900 --> 00:26:21.820 of Capitalism by Socialism, one has to, to follow his method, explain things by material forces. 154 00:26:21.820 --> 00:26:27.100 Here what was important to him was the so-called forces of production, which is pretty much, 155 00:26:27.100 --> 00:26:32.860 were very roughly equivalent to the technology that existed at a particular time. 156 00:26:32.860 --> 00:26:39.900 And he saw this as constantly increasing throughout history and bringing about in its weight 157 00:26:39.900 --> 00:26:41.820 Changes of the Social System. 158 00:26:41.820 --> 00:26:45.740 It wasn't people's ideas that change things. 159 00:26:45.740 --> 00:26:48.940 This would be violating proper materialist method, 160 00:26:48.940 --> 00:26:53.940 but it was more the development of the material forces 161 00:26:54.420 --> 00:26:56.940 in itself that explain things, as he says 162 00:26:56.940 --> 00:27:00.700 in his 1858 critique of political economy. 163 00:27:00.700 --> 00:27:05.700 It is not the consciousness of people 164 00:27:06.460 --> 00:27:09.260 that determines their being, their social being, 165 00:27:09.260 --> 00:27:12.060 but their being that determines their consciousness. 166 00:27:12.060 --> 00:27:15.580 So what was going on in the world, 167 00:27:15.580 --> 00:27:17.480 the development of forces of production 168 00:27:17.480 --> 00:27:21.900 really explained the whole of history. 169 00:27:21.900 --> 00:27:24.180 You see, again, he thought, 170 00:27:25.180 --> 00:27:28.180 when particularly this was applied to capitalism 171 00:27:28.180 --> 00:27:30.300 from his labor theory, 172 00:27:30.300 --> 00:27:35.220 he applied this to get an explanation of profit 173 00:27:35.220 --> 00:27:38.980 which he thought he could show necessarily arose 174 00:27:38.980 --> 00:27:44.420 from the sort of a way in which labor was purchased. 175 00:27:44.420 --> 00:27:50.620 I won't go into the technical details of the thing, because I think they don't work even 176 00:27:50.620 --> 00:27:52.780 accepting Marx's theory as correct. 177 00:27:52.780 --> 00:27:58.300 I don't think his argument works there, but I think that would probably be... 178 00:27:58.300 --> 00:28:03.740 I don't have the argument clearly enough in my mind to be able to present it in a simple 179 00:28:03.740 --> 00:28:05.740 The Theory of Money and Credit 180 00:28:33.740 --> 00:29:03.740 Capitalists exploiting the workers through this kind of trick and there would be a constant struggle to increase the forces of production each one would be trying to increase his profit even though Marx thought this would lead to constant crises in the eventual replacement of capitalism by socialism now when you can see how this generates a problem for something I'd earlier mentioned namely 181 00:29:03.740 --> 00:29:11.260 According to this Hegelian method, you can only describe things as they've actually taken place. 182 00:29:11.260 --> 00:29:18.380 So how could Marx talk about what was going to happen in the future, namely the rise of socialism? 183 00:29:18.380 --> 00:29:22.340 Well, Marx had a way of attempting to get around this. 184 00:29:22.340 --> 00:29:29.500 He thought that when he was describing the onset of socialism, this was not something that was coming really in the future, 185 00:29:29.500 --> 00:29:33.340 but it was just a description or a brief extension of the present. 186 00:29:33.340 --> 00:30:03.340 He has in Das Kapital, the famous statement, the integument of the old order burst, that's to say, all the forces of production developed to the fullest extent possible under capitalism, and then socialism would then automatically come about since it's the development of the forces of production based on this materialist way of understanding things that explains history, taking again this materialist explanation. 187 00:30:03.340 --> 00:30:12.340 in combination with Hegel's view of dynamics of the concept operating by its dynamically. 188 00:30:12.340 --> 00:30:24.340 So, in looking at this just briefly, we can see some problems in it other than, of course, resting on the Hegelian method, which isn't very well argued for. 189 00:30:24.340 --> 00:30:35.740 When Marx has to assume that each system that develops throughout history is the most productive system possible at that time, 190 00:30:35.740 --> 00:30:46.640 but one wonders why is that the case, say, wouldn't it have been more productive had capitalism come about at the time of feudalism? 191 00:30:46.640 --> 00:30:53.640 Marx has to think that at the time the feudal system arose, that was the most productive system possible. 192 00:30:53.640 --> 00:30:59.800 and he certainly it certainly doesn't seem to be the case why should one think 193 00:30:59.800 --> 00:31:03.800 that even if it was more productive than whatever the previous system was how 194 00:31:03.800 --> 00:31:07.920 does that show it was the most productive system possible which his 195 00:31:07.920 --> 00:31:15.080 theory requires then if one brings in the famous calculation argument of Mises 196 00:31:15.080 --> 00:31:21.440 socialism isn't a possible system at all it would lead it could produce attempts 197 00:31:21.440 --> 00:31:32.440 to realize it would only if taken in a full-scale way where the economy wouldn't be dependent on capitalist pricing would simply produce economic chaos. 198 00:31:32.440 --> 00:31:46.940 So if Marx is right that the forces of production, development of force of production determines history, that would seem like be an argument in favor of capitalism or the permanence of capitalism rather than socialism. 199 00:31:46.940 --> 00:32:13.740 Now, the final point on Marx's account, which is one that was raised with great effect by Mises in his work Theory and History, which I think is the best account of Marx's views of history, the best analysis of Marxism for the aspects of that system that aren't strictly to do with economics. 200 00:32:13.740 --> 00:32:21.900 Marx, I mean, Mises pointed out that Marx just assumes these forces are developing themselves. 201 00:32:21.900 --> 00:32:29.500 Again, he's relying on this Hegelian method of just things developing by themselves. 202 00:32:29.500 --> 00:32:36.780 It isn't that people are thinking of new methods and kind of always trying to increase things. 203 00:32:36.780 --> 00:32:44.100 They have an independent force. Unless you take the Hegelian idea seriously of some 204 00:32:44.100 --> 00:32:52.660 sort of logic in the world, this doesn't seem to make much sense. So we can see 205 00:32:52.660 --> 00:32:57.960 there are a lot of problems in Marx's account of things that he's been in some 206 00:32:57.960 --> 00:33:04.700 sense the prisoner of his method. Now to conclude, I'd like to say a few words on 207 00:33:04.700 --> 00:33:11.020 On the topic some of the previous speakers were commenting on this morning, on what type 208 00:33:11.020 --> 00:33:18.980 of system Marx wanted in the future, and particularly, as one might expect by now, how the philosophical 209 00:33:18.980 --> 00:33:24.780 method he had absorbed from Hegel and the materialists influenced what he thought. 210 00:33:24.780 --> 00:33:30.460 I mean, here, controversy that many people have—that has been discussed by many people 211 00:33:30.460 --> 00:33:46.960 is to what extent did, if any, did Marx want a so-called democratic socialism or one consistent with people having liberty? Didn't he seem to portray communism or socialism as a liberation of people? 212 00:33:46.960 --> 00:33:59.620 Well, here I think one has to focus on what he called the dictatorship of the proletariat, which would be the initial rule after the overthrow of capitalism. 213 00:33:59.620 --> 00:34:09.620 This sounds like, when you first look at it, a rather contradictory phrase in that a dictatorship is taken to be a one-man rule. 214 00:34:09.620 --> 00:34:13.300 So how could you have a whole class being a dictator? 215 00:34:13.300 --> 00:34:29.100 But to understand this, one has to see that, as used in the 19th century, dictatorship didn't mean one-man rule, something, say, the way we'd say Stalin or Hitler was a dictator. 216 00:34:29.100 --> 00:34:38.500 What it meant was something derived from Roman law, which, of course, Marx had studied when he was in college, 217 00:34:38.500 --> 00:34:48.500 which is a temporary delegation of power to someone on an emergency base in which the laws that exist are suspended 218 00:34:48.500 --> 00:34:53.900 while whoever is given the delegation can deal with things on an emergency basis. 219 00:34:53.900 --> 00:35:04.360 So, by dictatorship of the proletariat, it really means a system in which the proletariat class is crushing all the opposition. 220 00:35:04.360 --> 00:35:17.500 It's dealing with things in emergency basis that Marx, I think, correctly thought there'd be a lot of opposition from capitalists if socialism were ever put into power. 221 00:35:17.500 --> 00:35:21.600 And he thought this was the period in which they crushed the opposition. 222 00:35:21.600 --> 00:35:27.920 He is quite explicit about that in many places, talking about revolutionary terrorism. 223 00:35:27.920 --> 00:35:36.000 So that we can see just from the use of that phrase that it's hardly a system of civil liberties that he has in mind. 224 00:35:36.000 --> 00:35:45.600 But to turn more directly to the theme of my lecture, one can see that given his views on the way history worked, 225 00:35:45.600 --> 00:35:57.960 He wasn't one to stress liberties at all, not necessarily because he favored a system of arbitrary rule, 226 00:35:57.960 --> 00:36:06.000 but because he didn't think abstract ideas such as statements of universal rights were of any importance. 227 00:36:06.000 --> 00:36:10.400 What's important to remember is the underlying material level of things. 228 00:36:10.400 --> 00:36:16.000 These are just verbal formulas that don't account for things that really are unimportant. 229 00:36:16.000 --> 00:36:24.480 So it's hardly likely he was going to put much stress on them in the actual development of his social ideas. 230 00:36:24.480 --> 00:36:27.680 And in fact, he didn't. 231 00:36:27.680 --> 00:36:34.920 So that I think one can see just from his method in itself, 232 00:36:34.920 --> 00:36:36.920 The Theory of Money and Credit 233 00:37:04.920 --> 00:37:27.480 The important thing is not how socialism would come in, but what happens once it is in. 234 00:37:57.480 --> 00:38:19.080 the Greek materialist and tried to give a few topics in which this how this method is used in his economics and account of history and how it to a large extent constricted his views and led him into error and often dangerous error. Thank you.