Tuesday, April 19, 2016

KARL MARX: THEORY OF SELF-MANAGEMENT

KARL MARX: THEORY OF SELF-MANAGEMENT

BRIEF BIOGRAPHY
Karl Marx (1818-1883) was born in Treves, town south of Rhenish Prussia, on the border of France, on 5 May 1818. The son of Herschel Marx, attorney and counselor of justice, Jewish descent, was persecuted by the government absolutist of Frederick William III. In 1835 he completed the junior high school at the Lyceum Friedrich Wilhelm. In the same year and much of 1836, Karl studied law, history, philosophy, art and literature at the University of Bonn.
At the end of 1836 goes to Berlin, where he spread the ideas of Hegel, German philosopher and idealist highlighted. Marx aligns with the "Left Hegelian" which seek to analyze social issues, based on the need for changes in the German bourgeoisie. Between 1838 and 1840, is dedicated to the preparation of his thesis, "The difference between the Philosophy of Nature in Democritus and Epicurus" (1841).
Marx is not accepted in universities and began to work as a journalist writing articles for publication excited for him and Arnold Ruge, the German Annals, but censorship prevents publication. In October 1842, he moved to Cologne, and became the director of the newspaper Gazeta Rhenish, but shortly after the publication of the article on the Russian absolutism, the government closed the newspaper. Is expelled from Germany and goes to France, with his wife Jenny and as Ruge founded the magazine "Annals Franco German", which publishes the Friedrich Engels articles. Marx published "Introduction to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right" and "On the Jewish Question." Logo is expelled from France, and later in Belgium, ending up living in London, England. Participates in the foundation and organization of the IWA - International Workers Association. Passes a period of his life in poverty and survives of the few resources of their articles in newspapers and the help of friends and colleagues. In England, he published part of his great work, Capital.
Karl Heinrich Marx died in London on March 14, 1883, as a result of bronchitis and respiratory problems.

MAJOR WORKS self-managed
Marx had a critical perspective against the utopianism. Critical of utopian socialism, he preached a new company, but did not observe the ways and agents to its constitution concretely, calling for imaginative solutions such as "education", "reason", etc., he wrote little about the society future. Another reason to be cautious when it comes to discussing the future society, is due to its thesis that human emancipation occurs via proletarian revolution and it is the proletariat show concrete way of its realization. In this sense, he devoted most of his work to understand the history of mankind and especially modern society and class struggles that tend to engender communism. In this sense, it produced fundamental works as The German Ideology, Communist Manifesto, The Poverty of Philosophy, The Eighteenth Brumaire of, among others.
His greatest work was The Capital, which was incomplete. He, in life, just published volume 01 and the volumes 2 and 3 were published by Friedrich Engels and Karl Kautsky by 4. In this work, perhaps the most important of modern society, he deepened the analysis of the capitalist mode of production, showing the essence of exploitation of production employed by capital through the surplus value extraction, as well as the process of capitalist accumulation and trends .
So he wrote little about the future society, with excerpts and observations scattered several works, such as The German Ideology, Paris Manuscripts, Critique of the Gotha Program, The Capital, the Communist Manifesto, among several others, including letters and short texts. The two works in which more develops his analysis of communist society are The Civil War in France and Critique of the Gotha Program. At first it looks at first self-managed experience of history, the Paris Commune, showing their self-managed character and its universal historical importance; the second criticizes the party nascent German social democratic program and observations about communism.
Marx did not use the term "self-management", which will only emerge in May 1968 in France, but used terms have the same meaning: communism, self-government of the producers, free association of producers.
The deformation of Marx's thought by pseudomarxismo and pseudocríticas and misguided criticism from political opponents served to create a dominant interpretation of his thought that links with its deformers (Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Mao Tse-tung, etc.), producers the pseudomarxismo with the state capitalism of the former USSR and the like (Cuba, China, Eastern Europe, Albania, etc.) and the "authoritarianism". This false and dominant interpretation only dims their struggle and contribution to the theory of social self-management, the deeper because by unless you have written about the future society, all made a deep analysis of capitalism and its trends, among others, that are fundamental to a theory of social self-management. The writings that makes references to communism, though few, are fundamental because they break with utopianism, such as pre-manufactured by ideologists and Utopians models, and highlight key elements, such as the need to think the agent of the revolution, the proletariat and their historical experiences, and be careful with the process of counterrevolution and its dangers and mechanisms to try to weaken this trend.

LINKS FOR BOOKS AND ARTICLES self-managed

MARX, KARL. The Civil War in France. Several editions.
MARX, KARL. Critique of the Gotha Program. Several editions.

See also: Recommended Reading and Texts for more bibliographical information from / on Marx and self-management.

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