There are two essential components to Marx's theoretical work. On the one hand there is his theory of history which is referred to as Historical Materialism. Secondly there is his theory of society which is referred to as Dialectical Materialism.

In due course and for the bulk of these notes I will examine each of these two components in turn. Before doing so however I want to highlight the fact that the names of both these components contain the word materialism. This is indeed significant because it demonstrates the extent to which all of Marx's ideas are framed within what we can call a 'philosophical materialism'.

Marx took and retained some of Hegel's ideas. These included the notion of history as process; the idea of the dialectic and humankind as alienated. Marx however rejected some of Hegel's ideas. These included the notion that the Idea was the principal cause or motor of history as well as Hegel's idea that it had been the philosophers and their ideas which had been the basis of this process.

In short Marx was rejecting Hegel's more obvious idealism. Marx wanted to replace this idealism with a materialistic view of the world.

HISTORICAL MATERIALISM

Marx's theory of history is well known for the proposition that it is the economic aspect of any given society, which is the most fundamental aspect of that society. The social, cultural and political sectors of a society are driven by the economic relations within society.

But already we have gone too far, too fast. For the real nub of the argument rests on a much more fundamental proposition. Marx is in fact interested in what is fundamental and necessary to ALL societies whether they be capitalistic or whether they are non-capitalist earlier societies. His basic proposition is that all societies must organize themselves with regard to the environment around them. In short all societies must have a relationship with nature by way of the activities of production. All societies must produce their means of subsistence and to do so they must have a materialistic relationship with the environment ('Nature') around them.

Hence Marx concentrates on the production process as the most fundamental (the most irreducible) of all social relationships. Thus it is not the economy as such which interests Marx, it is the set of relationships within any society's production process.

When you read accounts of Marx's work or indeed Marx's own writings you will therefore come across the concept of the relations of production. These are the key to the production process says Marx. It is these relations of production which Marx defines as classes. Thus a class is a group of individuals who share the same type of relationship to the means of production. There are two essential types of relationship to the production process. An individual can either possess the means of production or not possess them. In short the discussion boils down to the question of whether an individual either owns or is in a relationship of non-ownership to the means of production. These relations of production are twinned with what Marx calls the 'forces of production' to complete production process. The forces of production may be understood as the (various) tools and technologies involved in the production processes. Graphically Marx's idea on the production process and it's components might look thus:

THE BASE- SUPERSTRUCTURE MODEL

We can now begin to fill in Marx's model of society. We can do so by adopting what is called the base-superstructure metaphor. Society may be likened to a building. All buildings have a base- the foundations - and the superstructure - the walls, the roof etc.. Society's base is the economy upon which the superstructure of society is built - culture, politics and military.

The base/superstructure model suggests that the cultural, political and social aspects of a society rest upon the economic base. So if the economy is capitalist, then, according to Marx, so too are the state, culture and social institutions. All of these are capitalist too. What Marx means by this is that those who own and control the economy will control the other aspects of that society: the state; culture and social institutions. In this sense Marx suggests that modern society is a capitalist society.

For Marx, it was not industrialisation per se that had brought about modern society. Industrialisation had itself come about as a result of a particular type of relationships of production. Marx named these new relations of production as capitalist. He gave them this name because these new relations of production were dominated by a specific relationship to the production process.

According to Marx, Capitalism is a very distinctive form of economic production and it differs from other forms of production in a fundamental way. Capitalism is so called because of the dominant use of capital in this type of society. Now capital is money but it is much more too. Capital is a type of social relationship involving investment. Investment in goods, services and people. But this investment has social and political implications far beyond economic life.

Consider the following:

C - - M - - C

This piece of notation does, according to Marx, suggest the type of economic relationships which existed in all types of production prior to capitalism. Quite simply, a 'good' or commodity (C) is sold for money (M) in order to purchase another commodity. Typically a peasant household would, after having produced for its own needs, sell any of a surplus in order to buy those 'goods' it could not produce itself.

Capitalism, on the other hand, works according to the following notation:

M - -  C - - M+

Here the capitalist begins with money (M), then purchases a commodity (C) in order to get some more money (M+). The money (M) is in fact capital because it is invested in order to make more money. In short a profit. So, the capitalist is to be literally understood as the person who uses money as capital to invest in 'goods' or commodities in order to realise (gain) a profit on his investment.

Marx points to the dual aspect of any commodity. Every commodity is said to have: on the one hand a use-value and on the other hand an exchange-value. The use-value of a commodity indicates the value of the commodity in use. A house has an extremely important use-value for the members of the household. The exchange-value of a commodity is its value on the market. Thus the exchange-value of the house will be the price it will realise on the (housing) market. Within modern capitalist societies it is the exchange-value of commodities which tends to predominate, whereas it is the use-value in pre-capitalist societies. This applies equally to the commodity of human labour-power.

For the implications of this form of capitalist investment are not simply economic. The capitalist can and does typically invest in commodities such as buildings (a factory), tools (machines) and workers. All of these are commodities as far as the capitalist is concerned, for now the capitalist’s workers are commodities which he or she invests in order to make a profit.

These commodities - factories, machines/technology and workers - are the capitalist's MEANS OF PRODUCTION (hereafter MOP). The MOP are owned by the capitalist - this includes ownership of human beings' labour power, at least during those workers working hours.

The workers do not own the MOP nor in most cases the tools/technology of their labour.

According to Marx the workers are ALIENATED because they are simply 'cogs' in the MOP. They are just another investment on the part of the capitalist.

This group of wage-earners are exploited. This is an economic exploitation which, according to Marx, means the wage-earner is exploited out of his/her full wage for the work done. This is what Marx means when he talks of surplus value being taken from the worker and used to maintain profits.

Hence we can see that this `economic' set of relations have far reaching social and cultural implications: Profit and not need determines the things that are produced as well as who and many are employed. Profit also determines the question of the manner in which people will be employed.

Now given the nature of this capitalist production process it is immediately clear that we have two groups of people with differing interests. In short the issue boils down to the fact that the group of wage earners will want to maintain/increase their wages and perhaps too will want to make their work environment somewhat less alienating. Equally, the group of capitalists will want to increase profits and in doing so may well make the production process yet more alienating by increasing controls into the production process.

According to Marx within capitalism there are two fundamental classes: Capitalists and workers. He named the former the Bourgeoisie and the latter the Proletariat. The interests of the two classes differ and thus there is class-conflict or class-struggle.

However these two classes although antagonistic to one another in an important sense are also MUTUALLY DEPENDENT upon one another. They interact through the MOP. They both need each other if they are to survive in their present environment. To the extent that this mutual dependency is dominant in their relationships then this will generate SOCIAL CONTINUITY. However to the extent that their differing interests come to the fore so conflict will occur, making for SOCIAL CHANGE. Marx stresses the dynamic nature of this relational theory and therefore stresses the conflict and social change.