The political economy theory of Karl Marx

London, United Kingdom – while travelling around London I saw some posters promoting Karl Marx walking tour as part of “ A Journey Through London’s Revolutionary History”.

Karl Marx (May 5, 1818 – March 14, 1883) was a German philosopher, social and political theorist, economist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist.

He developed the theory of historical materialism, analyzing class struggle under capitalism and predicting the system’s overthrow by the proletariat in favour of communism.

Marx co-authored The Communist Manifesto (1848) with his lifelong friend Friedrich Engels, and undertook a critique of classical political economy in his magnum opus, Das Kapital (1867–1894).

Marx’s ideas and their subsequent development, collectively known as Marxism, have had enormous influence and have influenced revolutions and uprisings in many countries.

Marx’s work inspired protests and strikes, rebellions and revolutions, terrorism and war, struggles for freedom, democracy and liberty, as well as regimes of tyrannical repression.

The walking tour aim to offer perspectives on both Marx the man and his ideas.

For Karl Marx fans, the tour  was described as “ a kind of pilgrimage-a chance to engage with London’s rich Marx-related history and to meet people with similar interests from around the world.”

It added “Karl Marx was the most influential thinker of modern times. His epic life story combines comedy and tragedy, love and hate, hope and despair. This set the backdrop to an intellectual expedition that sought to unravel the mysteries of history, politics, economics and philosophy.”

The tour was an offshoot of  “Marx as a Migrant” project created for Marx’s 200th anniversary in 2018 on Marx and Engels’ political and personal lives in London.

I read some of the books of Marx when I was still a student of the School of Economics in the University of the Philippines (UP) .

Marxist economic theory, developed by  Marx and Engels, analyzes capitalism as a system based on class struggle, where the bourgeoisie (owners) exploit the proletariat (workers) by extracting surplus value.

Key pillars include the labour theory of value, historical materialism, and the prediction that inherent contradictions will lead to capitalism’s collapse and replacement by socialism.

Under the labour theory of value,  Marx argued that the value of any commodity is determined by the “socially necessary labour time” required for its production. Labour is the sole source of new value, as described in works like Capital.

Capitalists pay workers less than the value their labor creates and keep the difference, known as “surplus value,” as profit. This mechanism is viewed as the fundamental form of exploitation in capitalist society.

The theory  argues that these contradictions would lead to a revolution by the proletariat, ending private ownership of the means of production.

In the Philippines, “red-tagging”  somewhat is based on the misplaced understanding of the works of Marx and Engels.

“Belief in communism has historically been used as a bogey to create non-existent exigencies for purposes of national security,” said Supreme Associate Justice Marcvic Leonen in his separate opinion in the case of Zarate v. Aquino  (G.R. No. 220028 November 10, 2015) .

Leonen added “History records the many human rights violations that may have been caused by this unsophisticated view of some in the echelons of military power. History, too  teaches that toleration and the creation of wider deliberative spaces are the more lasting and peaceful ways to debunk worn-out ideologies.”

Justice Leonen has noted that ideological beliefs—whether Marxism, communism, or others—are not punishable, as they are protected by the constitutional guarantee of free speech and thought.

In Deduro  Vs. Vinoya (G.R. No. 254753, July 04, 2023),  Leonen stressed that  “our own history is an example of when the premise of suppressing the alleged terrors of Communism led to decades of exploiting power for oppression and death.”

Leonen added in the Deduro case that “a person seeking the protective ambit of a writ of amparo need not await the inimical outcomes of being red-tagged to come to pass to be entitled to the writ. The heightened risk of danger or death brought about being labelled as a Communist, a Communist sympathizer, or even merely being adjacent to a Communist cause should be seriously considered by judges in amparo proceedings.”

“Let us join  the fight to stop any form of baseless red-tagging and to protect the enabling environment for a academic freedom of thought and expression, that has nurtured critical minds, social consciousness and a sense of service and nation-building that have become the hallmarks of our University’s tradition of education, ”  former UP Diliman chancellor  Fidel R. Nemenzo said in a 2021 statement.