Friday, March 1, 2013

The last Marxist concepts and the Communist Manifesto

These are some resources to understand the last Marxist ideas we´ve studied today: the surplus value and workers´alienation.

- This is a cartoon about the surplus value:


The following resources can be useful to understand the concept of workers´alienation: Marx and Engels thought that industrial work killed workers´ creativity and initiative, because they were obliged to follow the rythm of machines and worked for such a long time that when they arrived home, they were so tired that they  couldn´t  develop their human features and fulfill their expectations. 

- This is a poster designed imitating a Public Service Anouncement (as the ones you could find from the Ministry of Health), warning about alienation symptoms:



And these are some funny videos I´ve found on Youtube. They belong to a Mexican artist called Pedro Reyes. He recorded a series of  videos with puppets called Baby Marx. The beginning of his idea was "resucitating" some important figures of the history of Economics and making them discuss about some concepts. The main characters of these videos are Karl Marx and Adam Smith, the main theorist of economic liberalism and defense of private property. 

- The first video is the teaser of the series:



- In the second one Marx and Adam Smith have an argument about cookies and the alienation of the workers who have done them:



And finally, here you have a scheme which summarizes Marx´s critique to capitalism:







And this is video with the complete text and audio of the Communist Manifesto, the pamphlet where Marx and Engels started explaining their ideas. It´s starts with these words: "A spectre is haunting Europe-the spectre of Communism"


Here you have the translation in Spanish. It´s not a long text. If you´re interested, you can follow the reading in English and read the translation in Spanish: 

http://www.abogadonotariopr.com/images/SP/el_manifiesto.pdf

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