ULUSLARARASI İLİŞKİLER TEORİLERİ I

There are three sub-theories of Marxism:

I. The theory of alienation,

II. The labor theory of value, and

III. The materialist conception of history.

Marxism has its main intellectual origins in German philosophy, English political economy, and French utopianism.

It is from the German philosopher Georg W. F. Hegel that Marx learned a way of thinking about the world, called “dialectics”.

By using the theory of alienation, Marx argues that workers in the capitalist society do not own the means of production, such as machines, raw materials, or factories.

Regarding the labor theory of value, given the fact that everything produced in the capitalist society has a price, Marx emphasizes the separation of the worker from the means of production. To survive, workers, who lack the means to produce, must sell their labor force. In selling their labor force, they give up all claims with respect to the products of their labor. Hence, these products become available for exchange in the market. Workers can consume only a small portion of the product in the market with the wages they are paid for their labor force.

The difference between the amount of exchange and value created by workers is called "surplus value." The capitalist buys the worker’s labor force, as any other commodity. The capitalists’ control over this surplus value is the basis of their power and wealth over the workers (Marx, 2004: chs. 1, 24).

False consciousness, in Marxist philosophy, refers to the notion that members of the proletariat unwittingly misperceive their real position in society and systematically misunderstand their true interests within the social relations of production under capitalism. False consciousness, to Marx, denotes people’s inability to recognize inequality, oppression, and exploitation in a capitalist society.