SY203 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Labour Power, Bourgeoisie, Natural Capital
Document Summary
Marx is saying that we can understand certain important things -- for example, the development of ideas or religion -- by examining the material circumstances of life in which they emerge. They are circumstances of material need and human labor: the fact that human beings satisfy their material needs on the basis of the transformation of nature through labor. So what is material in this setting is two characteristics: the material needs that human beings have (food, shelter, warmth) and the material-physical properties of the world in which human beings find themselves. Human beings as producers -- intelligent transformers of nature through individual and social labor -- this is the fundamental material fact in this passage. Class is a key determinant of material interests. It is principally a theory of history according to which the material conditions of a society"s mode of production (its way of producing and reproducing the means of human existence.
