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63-636: The MG emerged from the so-called "Red Cells" (Ger.: Roten Zellen ), which arose in the German student movement in 1968. The MG was properly formed in the early 1970s. The MG published among other things the magazine MSZ - Gegen die Kosten der Freiheit ( Marxistische Streit- und Zeitschrift ; Marxist Argument and Magazine - Opposing the Costs of Liberty), the Marxistische Arbeiterzeitung (Marxist Workers’ Newspaper), various university newspapers, as well as

126-478: A brutal dictator that should not have been welcome in West Germany. The protest was repressed by police and Iranian agents who beat protesters and resulted in the fatal shooting of Benno Ohnesorg . The police officer involved, Karl-Heinz Kurras , was acquitted on the grounds of self-defense. Protests against police brutality erupted across the country and led the mayor of Berlin and the police chief to resign. In

189-403: A progressive force (e.g. against feudalism). In the final stages , capitalism as a mode of production achieves complete domination on a planetary basis and has nothing to overcome but itself, the final (for it, capitalism, viewed as a Hegelian process , not for historical development per se) negating of the negation posited by orthodox Marxism . In this context, Marx refers to a transition from

252-570: A rebuke of Dutschke and his associates in the West Berlin SDS chapter. Unsurprisingly, Marcuse did the opposite in a speech emphasizing "solidarity of sentiment". The event was followed by street demonstrations which led to the arrests of Dutschke, his wife, and 84 others. In June 1967, during a state visit by the Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi , the SDS organized a protest of his visit, criticizing him as

315-411: A sit-in to demand involvement in the reform process of universities, included democratic management of colleges. Echoing Marcuse, Rudi Dutschke considered the politically complacent working classes to be a lost cause when it came to revolutionary agitation. Instead, he hoped to build a coalition between Western intelligentsia and third world communist revolutionaries. To that end, Dutschke organized

378-504: A whole series of new conditions, namely specific technologies of mass production, the ability to independently and privately own and trade in means of production, a class of workers compelled to sell their labor power for a living, a legal framework promoting commerce, a physical infrastructure making the circulation of goods on a large scale possible, security for private accumulation and so on. In many Third World countries, many of these conditions do not exist even today even though there

441-404: Is dominant in that society. Marx never provided a complete definition of the capitalist mode of production as a short summary, although in his manuscripts he sometimes attempted one. In a sense, it is Marx's three-volume work Capital (1867–1894; sometimes known by its German title, Das Kapital ), as a whole that provides his "definition" of the capitalist mode of production. Nevertheless, it

504-425: Is epitomized by the so-called circuit of commodity production, M-C-M' and by renting money for that purpose where the aggregate of market actors determine the money price M, of the input labor and commodities and M' the struck price of C, the produced market commodity . It is centered on the process M → M', "making money" and the exchange of value that occurs at that point. M' > M is the condition of rationality in

567-494: Is expressed in price relationships between inputs and outputs (wages, non-labor factor costs, sales, profits) rather than the larger rational context faced by society overall. That is, the whole process is organized and reshaped in order to conform to "commercial logic". Another way of saying this is that capital accumulation defines economic rationality in capitalist production. In the flourishing period of capitalism, these are not operating at cross purposes and thus capitalism acts as

630-493: Is in this mode. For example, in flourishing feudalism most or all of the factors of production including labor are owned by the feudal ruling class outright and the products may also be consumed without a market of any kind, it is production for use within the feudal social unit and for limited trade. This has the important consequence that the whole organization of the production process is reshaped and reorganized to conform with economic rationality as bounded by capitalism, which

693-400: Is plenty of capital and labour available—the obstacles for the development of capitalist markets are less a technical matter and more a social, cultural and political problem. A society, a region or nation is “capitalist” if the predominant source of incomes and products being distributed is capitalist activity—even so, this does not yet mean necessarily that the capitalist mode of production

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756-629: Is possible to summarise the essential defining characteristics of the capitalist mode of production as follows: In examining particular manifestations of the capitalist mode of production in particular regions and epochs, it is possible to find exceptions to these main defining criteria, but the exceptions prove the rule in the sense that over time the exceptional circumstances tend to disappear. As mentioned, Marx never explicitly summarised his definition of capitalism, beyond some suggestive comments in manuscripts which he did not publish himself. This has led to controversies among Marxists about how to evaluate

819-410: Is simple ignorance and or purposeful obfuscation of works such as Jean-Paul Sartre 's Critique of Dialectical Reason and a broader literature which does in fact supply such specifications. The latter are partly superficial complaints which can easily be refuted as they are diametrically opposite of well known statements by Marx, Lenin, Trotsky and others, part pettifogging and redundant restatement of

882-582: The 1968 movement in West Germany ( German : 1968 Bewegung in Westdeutschland ), was a social movement that consisted of mass student protests in West Germany in 1968. Participants in the movement later came to be known as 68ers . The movement was characterized by the protesting students' rejection of traditionalism and of German political authority which included many former Nazi officials . Student unrest had started in 1967 when student Benno Ohnesorg

945-702: The Außerparlamentarische Opposition . The more leftist wing of the SDP in the Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (Socialist German Students Union - SDS) split from the party line and joined the Außerparlamentarische Opposition. In 1965, Rudi Dutschke was elected to the political council of the West Berlin SDS. With Michael Vester, SDS vice-president and international secretary, Dutschke imported ideas from

1008-586: The German Autumn of 1977, Habermas said the charge of fascism had been an overreaction. At a conference in September 1967, Dutschke and Hans-Jürgen Krahl called for the creation of "action centers" at universities to organize "urban guerrillas ". The International Vietnam Congress ( German : Internationaler Vietnamkongress ) was an event that took place in West Berlin on 17 and 18 February 1968 to oppose

1071-593: The Nazi Party during the Nazi regime. Social movements grew as younger people became disillusioned with the political establishment, worrying it was reminiscent of Germany's Nazi past. West Berlin became a center for these movements since many left leaning people would take residence in West Berlin to avoid the military draft that was in effect in the rest of West Germany. These social movements were also becoming popular among

1134-492: The Red Army Faction , which continued to engage in arson and other terrorist acts for more than a decade. Dutschke, Enzenberger, and Nirumand wrote an apologia for terrorism based on Walter Benjamin 's Critique of Violence and Herbert Marcuse's Repressive Tolerance . Despite the failure of the student movement a change in political consciousness lasted throughout the country. Criticisms of West German officials' ties to

1197-545: The Vietnam War . It was organized by Rudi Dutschke and Karl Dietrich Wolff, with an estimated 3,000–4,000 people attending the conference and a total of 12,000–15,000 people involved in the following demonstration. At the congress, Dutschke and his Chilean friend Gaston Salvatore presented their translation of Che Guevara 's letter to the Tricontinental Conference , which called for bloody guerrilla warfare against

1260-471: The caste system , an agrarian-based peasant society , urban industrial society and post-industrialism . Although capitalism has existed in the form of merchant activity, banking, renting land and small-scale manufactures in previous stages of history, it was usually a relatively minor activity and secondary to the dominant forms of social organization and production with the prevailing property system keeping commerce within clear limits. Capitalist society

1323-466: The "capitalist" nature of society in particular countries. Supporters of theories of state capitalism such as the International Socialists reject the definition of the capitalist mode of production given above. In their view, claimed to be more revolutionary (in that true liberation from capitalism must be the self-emancipation of the working class—"socialism from below"), what really defines

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1386-639: The American SDS ( Students for a Democratic Society ) and New Left , such as direct action and civil disobedience . Drawing inspiration from Herbert Marcuse , Dutschke sought to build a coalition of marginalized identity groups to be a vanguard for socialism in Europe. Finding that Germany had no population group with revolutionary potential comparable to America's Black Power movement, Dutschke sought to mold Germany's student movements into seeing themselves as an oppressed minority . His plan for accomplishing this

1449-466: The Außerparlamentarische Opposition. Capitalist mode of production (Marxist theory) NML: In Karl Marx 's critique of political economy and subsequent Marxian analyses, the capitalist mode of production (German: Produktionsweise ) refers to the systems of organizing production and distribution within capitalist societies . Private money-making in various forms (renting, banking, merchant trade, production for profit and so on) preceded

1512-463: The MG rejected such criticisms as "idealistic", because according to its analysis, a bourgeois state is fundamentally nothing other than an "ideal collective capitalist" ( Friedrich Engels ), quite independent of the actions of individual capitals, and exists for no other purpose than to safeguard the private ownership of the means of production and to guarantee the basic conditions for capital accumulation with

1575-626: The SDS looked to Hans-Jürgen Krahl for leadership. Krahl however favored theory to direct action. In May the West German government considered using the Emergency Acts in response, allowing the Cabinet to suspend parliamentary rule and enact laws in times of crisis. On May 11 protesters gathered in the West German capital Bonn to demand that the laws not be used. The government agreed with protesting labor unions to only use limited concessions, passing

1638-458: The United States. Holger Meins presented an instructional film on making Molotov cocktails . On 11 April 1968, Rudi Dutschke was shot by the far-right Josef Bachmann . Dutschke was injured but survived the shooting. The attempted assassination of Dutschke would be later regarded as the formal beginning of the West German student movement. Dutschke had previously been labeled an " enemy of

1701-515: The aid of the state monopoly on the use of force. When the DKP and similar groups appealed to "democratic forces" to form alliances against right-wing and fascist tendencies, the MG accordingly rejected this as assuming democracy has nothing but humane purposes that miss the point of its supposed reason for being. After all, it claimed, it was completely normal democratic business both to "sort human material into useful and useless" and to wage war to assert

1764-468: The appearance of an intelligence office brochure about the group. The party's newspapers were discontinued, but corresponding journalistic work was continued by the publishing house GegenStandpunkt-Verlag and the journal GegenStandpunkt (Opposing Viewpoint). The MG never based itself on " Marxism-Leninism ," and sharply criticized the interpretation of Karl Marx ’ theory that was forged by Lenin and handed down by communist parties. It started out from

1827-565: The book series Resultate (Results), Abweichende Meinungen (Dissenting Views) and Kritik der bürgerlichen Wissenschaft (Critique of Bourgeois Science). It is thought to have had up to 10,000 members. Local associations of the MG also existed in Austria . The organization was monitored by the intelligence office (Ger.: Verfassungsschutz ; Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution) and

1890-529: The capitalist mode of production is: This idea is based on passages from Marx, where Marx emphasized that capital cannot exist except within a power-relationship between social classes which governs the extraction of surplus-labour . Orthodox Marxist debate after 1917 has often been in Russian, other East European languages, Vietnamese, Korean or Chinese and dissidents seeking to analyze their own country independently were typically silenced in one way or another by

1953-434: The capitalist mode of production to emerge as a distinctive mode of production dominating the whole production process of society, many different social, economic, cultural, technical and legal-political conditions had to come together. For most of human history, these did not come together. Capital existed and commercial trade existed, but it did not lead to industrialisation and large-scale capitalist industry. That required

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2016-431: The capitalist system and a necessary condition for the next cycle of accumulation/production. For this reason, Capitalism is "production for exchange" driven by the desire for personal accumulation of money receipts in such exchanges, mediated by free markets. The markets themselves are driven by the needs and wants of consumers and those of society as a whole in the form of the bourgeois state. These wants and needs would (in

2079-524: The commodity character of labor power. While, for example, the German Communist Party with its theory of " state monopoly capitalism " criticized the bourgeois state in Germany primarily for letting "monopoly capital" directly influence politics in all kinds of ways and thereby thwart and corrode the at least partly "progressive-democratic" character of the political order formulated in the constitution,

2142-500: The demand that all resources be transformed into objects of capital accumulation, while fascism was especially consistent in realizing the democratic ideal of a national community willing to make sacrifices for the success of the state purpose. Further, democratic pluralism institutionalized the citizens’ abstracting from their needs and interests; instead of disputing their antagonistic interests, citizens acknowledged their legitimacy and argued about alternative state policy as reflected in

2205-403: The desirable kind of socialism. Behind this problem, it is argued the following: None of these stratagems, it is argued, are either warranted by the facts or scientifically sound and the result is that many socialists have abandoned the rigid constraints of Marxist orthodoxy in order to analyse capitalist and non-capitalist societies in a new way. From an orthodox Marxist perspective, the former

2268-577: The development of the capitalist mode of production as such. The capitalist mode of production proper, based on wage-labour and private ownership of the means of production and on industrial technology, began to grow rapidly in Western Europe from the Industrial Revolution , later extending to most of the world. The capitalist mode of production is characterized by private ownership of the means of production , extraction of surplus value by

2331-509: The event "Vietnam – Analysis of an Example" ( German : Vietnam – Analyse eines Exempels ) at the University of Frankfurt Institute for Social Research with Marcuse as the headline speaker. SDS president Walmot Falkenburg privately requested that Marcuse emphasize solidarity with the Vietnamese on the basis of traditional Marxist concerns with labor and material interests, which would have been

2394-466: The fall of 1967 students established "Critical Universities"; students occupied classrooms and gave critiques of university structure as well as educating other students in New Left thought. It was revealed in 2009 that Kurras had been a Stasi informant. Prosecutors revisiting the evidence concluded Ohnesorg had been murdered as a premeditated act, but not enough evidence survived to evaluate whether Kurras

2457-462: The laws on May 30. This agreement dealt a blow to the growing student movement and signaled its demise. The SDS formally dissolved on March 21, 1970. On 22 May 1967, a fire at the L'Innovation department store in Brussels killed hundreds of people. Kommune 1 issued a leaflet celebrating the fire and calling for more such occurrences to bring parity between Western countries and Vietnam. The leaflet

2520-435: The new discussion about Marx' Capital that arose in the 1960s. On this basis, the MG did not regard the phenomena of bourgeois society as the result of the doings of individual capitalists or factions of capital, but saw capitalists and wageworkers only as " character masks " of a relationship of exploitation between capital and wage labor that is inherent in bourgeois society, i.e., based on general commodity production and

2583-493: The old Nazi Party brought the concept of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with the past) to the forefront of political discussion. Other various left-wing causes also gained popularity and helped solidify a protest culture in Germany. Those who were involved in the protests of 1968 in West Germany would come to be known as the "1968 generation". Some would develop unique political paths, with some finding roles in government, while others embraced terrorist activities of

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2646-666: The owning class for the purpose of capital accumulation , wage-based labour and—at least as far as commodities are concerned—being market-based . A " mode of production " (German: Produktionsweise ) means simply "the distinctive way of producing", which could be defined in terms of how it is socially organized and what kinds of technologies and tools are used. Under the capitalist mode of production: The capitalist mode of production may exist within societies with differing political systems (e.g. liberal democracy , social democracy , fascism , Communist state and Czarism ) and alongside different social structures such as tribalism ,

2709-503: The people " in the Axel Springer -owned tabloid newspaper Bild-Zeitung . Student activists believed the shooting was inspired by critics of the student movement such as Springer's tabloids . Demonstrations and clashes later occurred outside Springer offices in reaction to the shooting. In the aftermath of the shooting, student leaders became more willing to embrace violent tactics in their movements. With Dutschke incapacitated, many in

2772-416: The period after 1917, have on the contrary been especially mindful of the so-called unequal and uneven development and its importance in the struggle to achieve socialism. Finally, in the wake of the disasters of socialism in the previous century most modern Marxists are at great pains to stipulate that only the independently acting working class can determine the nature of the society it creates for itself so

2835-400: The regime, therefore the political debate has been mainly from a Western point of view and based on secondary sources, rather than being based directly on the experiences of people living in "actually existing socialist countries". That debate has typically counterposed a socialist ideal to a poorly understood reality, i.e. using analysis which due to such party stultification and shortcomings of

2898-425: The same thing and partly true observations of inferior and simplistic presentations of Marxist thought (by those espousing some brand of Marxism). Neither historical or dialectical materialism assert or imply a "uni-linear" view of human development, although Marxism does claim a general and indeed accelerating secular trend of advancement, driven in the modern period by capitalism. Similarly, Marxists, especially in

2961-434: The shape of merchants and money-lenders who acted as intermediaries between consumers and producers engaging in simple commodity production (hence the reference to " merchant capitalism ") since the beginnings of civilization. What is specific about the “capitalist mode of production” is that most of the inputs and outputs of production are supplied through the market (i.e. they are commodities) and essentially all production

3024-435: The socialist or communist society envisioned by Marx, Engels and others) be the driving force; this would be " production for use ". Contemporary mainstream (bourgeois) economics, particularly that associated with the right, holds that an " invisible hand ", through little more than the freedom of the market, is able to match social production to these needs and desires. "Capitalism" as this money-making activity has existed in

3087-452: The states promoting " real socialism ." The MG accused these states of not having consistently overcome commodity production and money in favor of a planned production of use-values, but instead invented the nonsense of planning with the help of commodity-money "levers" (a term popular in Soviet economics textbooks); the contradiction between planning and the acceptance of commodity-money relations

3150-516: The strength of the West German military, worried some in West Germany that there was a return of authoritarian government. In the fallout of the affair, the suddenly-unpopular Christian Democratic Union formed a political coalition with the Social Democratic Party (SPD), known as the grand coalition . Critics were disappointed with the parliament's appointment of Kurt Georg Kiesinger as chancellor of West Germany, as he had participated in

3213-504: The then new industrialism. Some historians, such as Jairus Banaji and Nicholas Vrousalis have argued that capitalist relations of production predate the capitalist mode of production. In general, capitalism as an economic system and mode of production can be summarized by the following: Marx argued that capital existed incipiently on a small scale for centuries in the form of merchant, renting and lending activities and occasionally also as small-scale industry with some wage labour (Marx

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3276-449: The various parties fails to apply the full rigor of the dialectical method to a well informed understanding of such actual conditions in situ and falls back on trite party approved formulae. In turn, this has led to the accusation that Marxists cannot satisfactorily specify what capitalism and socialism really are, nor how to get from one to the other—quite apart from failing to explain satisfactorily why socialist revolutions failed to produce

3339-472: The various political parties. The MG was also sharply polemical about the trade unions , since by fighting for higher wages, they expressed nothing other than the workers’ fundamental agreement with the capitalistic use of their labor power. The MG denied the Leninist theory of imperialism as "the highest stage of capitalism," in which capitalism had passed into a state of "rot" and decline — since capitalism

3402-426: The youth of West Germany. The movements included the opposition to the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War , opposition to consumer culture , liberation for the third world , and criticisms of middle class moral values. Some were embracing communal lifestyles and sexual liberation . All these various social movements and the non-parliamentary organizations that hoped to spearhead them, grouped together as

3465-498: The “formal subsumption”, the formal turning of workers into wage-laborers , to the “real subsumption” of production under the power of capital. In what he calls the "specifically capitalist mode of production", both the technology worked with and the social organization of labour have been completely refashioned and reshaped in a commercial ( profit and market -oriented) way—the "old ways of producing" (for example, crafts and cottage industries ) had been completely displaced by

3528-559: Was acting under official orders. On the occasion of Ohnesorg's funeral , a conference was held which is most remembered for a debate between Rudi Dutschke and Jürgen Habermas . Dutschke argued that the time was ripe for students to engage in direct action. Habermas, although generally sympathetic to the student movements, criticized Dutschke's plan as action for its own sake without regard for consequences. When Dutschke would not clarify his stance on employing violence, Habermas accused him of Linksfaschismus ("Left fascism"). Later, during

3591-440: Was also well aware that wage labour existed for centuries on a modest scale before the advent of capitalist industry). Simple commodity exchange and consequently simple commodity production, which form the initial basis for the growth of capital from trade, have a very long history. The "capitalistic era" according to Marx dates from the 16th century, i.e. it began with merchant capitalism and relatively small urban workshops. For

3654-488: Was not to be criticized for working badly, but for working far too well. The MG's understanding of Marx focusing on " Capital ," the Critique of Political Economy , disregarded the elements in the thinking of Marx and Engels involving the philosophy of history, which "Marxism-Leninism" developed into a "world view" (" dialectical and historical materialism "). The aims of the MG could be inferred indirectly from its critique of

3717-453: Was rated " left-wing extremist ". According to data collected by the office, numerous members of the MG — particularly in Bavaria — were dismissed from civil service , and some private employers were informed about MG members and asked to dismiss them. In May 1991, the MG announced its dissolution. The reason it stated was that it was expecting intensified reprisals against its members following

3780-531: Was shot by a policeman during a protest against the visit of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi , the Shah of Iran . The movement is considered to have formally started after the attempted assassination of student activist leader Rudi Dutschke , which sparked various protests across West Germany and gave rise to public opposition . The movement created lasting changes in German culture. The Spiegel affair of 1962, in which journalists were arrested and detained for reporting on

3843-483: Was the cause of the inconsistencies and malfunctions in the economies of state socialism . It can be concluded that the MG assumed that after a revolution based on a correct understanding of Marxist theory and the abolishment of money, supplying the population with use-values could be managed simply through a division of labor. German student movement Incidents The West German student movement ( German : Westdeutsche Studentebewegung ), sometimes called

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3906-532: Was to provoke violent confrontations with government authorities. He wrote in 1965, "Authorized demonstrations must be guided into illegality. Confrontation with state power is essential and must be sought out." The West German parliament had proposed to expand government powers in the Emergency Laws , as well as to reform universities. On 22 June 1966, 3,000 students from the Free University of Berlin staged

3969-511: Was widely condemened and caused a split between Kommune 1 and the SDS. On 2 April 1968, members of the Außerparlamentarische Opposition, Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin committed arson at a department store in Frankfurt to protest the Vietnam war. Although convicted, they were released while pursuing an appeal and went underground when it was denied. They were joined by Ulrike Meinhof in forming

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