Marxism and Private Property

I'm currently studying The Communist Manifesto in my English class and have so far read through the introduction and prefaces. We have an online blog for the class where we post discussion questions, and I thought I'd post mine here just because I find the whole Marxist debate interesting and would like to hear a variety of opinions. I don't frequent The Senate much, so I hope it's ok to post this here and that it doesn't overlap with any current threads -- sorry if that's the case!


In the ?Preface to the German Edition of 1890,? Frederick Engels lists the many translations of The Communist Manifesto from German to Russian, French, Spanish, English, and even Armenian. Engels gives the example of the Armenian translator who refused to attach his name to the work, despite the publisher?s reluctance to publish any text claiming the name Marx as the author. Engels explains that the publisher ?suggested that the translator set down his own name as the author, which the latter however declined." This refusal to take credit for Marx?s work exhibits the notion that the text of The Communist Manifesto does in fact belong to Marx and is his property. Marx?s ownership over his work, however, seems rather paradox to his principle that all private property should be abolished. What then qualifies as private property and what are the exceptions? Does Marx?s work belong solely to himself for himself to claim or does it belong to society as a whole? What implications does his claim over his work have in regards to a worker?s claim over what they produce?

 

Finding an inconsistency within the realm of Marx himself is not difficult; for such an ostensibly immaterialist he was downright bourgeois.

But what are you asking, Espy? If Marx's view on property rights was necessarily sound?

E_S

 

Yeah, pretty much. I mean, if you say that everything that society produces must be equally distributed according to need, then how do you account for creative works? What makes an author's work different from a farmer's grain? Where do you draw the line between what is private property and what isn't? I guess that's my question.

 

Well, in my current sleepy state, I'd say it's pretty obvious that a book (unless it's one of those mass-market, multiple pen name titles about teams of elite mercenaries battling Chinese supersoldiers ) isn't equivalent to a gallon of milk.

Interesting side note: Lenin attempted to create a system of nonmonetary accounting. I wonder how well that worked out.

 

That depends whether you're talking about production (ie. man-hour) value or the actual marketable value that gets attached to an item by way of capitalist fetishism. The difference between the two is central to understanding Marx.

I think I disagree with this bit. The Communist Manifesto didn't belong to Marx - it belonged to Engels. He was the one who popularized all of Marx's dry ramblings about economics and the tragedy of mutual class conflict into a call for WORKERS OF THE WORLD to engage in CLASS WARFARE!!!1! There's such a huge difference between what Marx wrote before Engels came along and what he wrote after their partnership began. Engels was the force that turned Marx into the original cult of personality. Without him, Marx probably would have remained another philosopher of only peripheral importance to political events such as Hobbes or Smith.

 

Yeah, it's also important to note that Marx can be considered guilty of skewing numbers to justify his arguments like all other economists love to do.

 

I'm talking more intangible things. It takes imagination to produce a book. A gallon of milk? Not so much.

Then again, I think attaching value to inanimate objects is a silly concept at best, so yeah.