On 1/13 we recorded a discussion of an early work of Karl Marx, from about 20 years before the publication of his famous Das Capital, The German Ideology
The book is more philosophical than his later work, though its substance is in part an attack on philosophy, in particular that of the Young Hegelians like Bruno Bauer and Max Stirner. As you might recall from our Hegel on history episode, Hegel saw history as progressive, and analyzable in terms of "Spirit," as in the spirit or intellectual climate of the times: you can (maybe) predict what will come next historically (e.g. will this democracy become a tyranny?) by looking at the big ideas driving the times. One idea somehow leads to the next one in a "dialectical" manner, e.g. a reaction against the current state of things, in turn supplanted by a synthesis which is more like the original position but changed to incorporate some of the advances to the second position. To use a musical example, 70s prog rock leads to the punk reaction, which turns into new wave/post-punk, which is artsy like prog but keeps some of the energy and simplicity of punk.
Though Hegel himself was very clear that movements through history take place through concrete individuals, and it's not like some guiding intelligence is molding the progression, post-Hegelians were not always that cautious, and many focused on the theological aspects of it. Politically, Hegel himself got conservative in his old age (thinking that the culmination of history had already happened in the Prussian constitutional monarchy), and the Young Hegelians (or "Left Hegelians") were generally radical, often atheist at at least highly unorthodox, but still concerned with addressing Hegel's philosophy of religion (following Schleiermacher). Marx insisted that while the idea of historical dialectic was still useful, it had to be interpreted in a purely material, scientific manner, so this book is one of his earlier attempts at an Adam Smith-influenced account of how the ways in which people produce the goods they need to survive has evolved, and so (and this part is not in Smith, of course) extrapolate this picture forward to argue that communism is inevitable.
Writing at around the same time as proto-existentialists like Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, Marx also had a picture of the human condition that stressed the danger of an inauthentic, alienated relation to each other and the world. He thought that capitalism, where most workers don't own, and feel no particular connection to, the products that their work contributes to, has led to alienation, where each of us sees our jobs, i.e. what we do pretty much all day and which defines us whether we want it to our not, as nothing but a means to the end of our happiness and not as something worthwhile in itself. We end up by necessity treating each other merely as a means, dehumanized and wretched.
Unlike the existentialists, though, fixing this can't be accomplished just by shifting your attitude. The problem is not with false or unhelpful beliefs, but an economic system that objectively damages us and keeps us from being free. Even though we're not slaves, we don't have any choice but to work, and this "freedom" is a matter of being subject to the whims of chance... What if I get injured and can't work? What if I can't find a job at all? Famously, Marx thought that given that the status quo gets perpetuated by dominant interests, i.e. the capitalists fat cats themselves, and that the government and even the intellectuals (the philosophers he's so contemptuous of, and also the clergy) just serve to parrot these interests, the only way to get to the solution is violent revolution, which is inevitable, given how historical forces will steadily put us into a situation where the vast majority of us are in this alienated, wretched situation. This last, predictive part of the program, is of course highly problematic, but that doesn't lessen the force of his diagnoses of modern ills.
A very short work Marx wrote at the same time that he and Engels were starting on the German Ideology is "Theses on Feuerbach," which is just a few pages of aphorisms that serve as an outline of the themes of the Ideology. His final thesis there (number 11) sums up his overall project praxis:
The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.
looking forward to this, a good step towards the nascent Darwinian turn and perhaps Dewey and Sidney Hook: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sidney-hook/
Very nice background-setting and introduction Mark. I’m looking forward to this one, especially because it deals with the border between philosophy and non-philosophy or action. Marx of course gives some brilliant critiques of philosophical-existentialist inward-turning, but did Marx go too far, toward a kind of scientism, in believing that the alienated character of modern life could be eliminated without a philosophy of the ‘inner / subject’ at all? Marx here foreshadows the eliminative materialism espoused today by folks like the Churchlands. I think you’ll find that Marx does a whole lotta recapitulating (rephrasing, restating, rearticulating) of Hegel’s dialectical critique of Stoicism vis-a-vis its critique by Skepticism from the Phenomenology of Spirit. Essentially Marx sees Hegel as having shown the futility of Stoic inwardness and the consequential necessity of pragmatic action, but then accuses Hegel of failing in the end by returning to a Stoic-philosophical quietism of his own making.
Listened to this episode with mounting disappointment if not despair..
You intoned at respectful length on Marx’s rambling theories and seemed to take as credible the idea that what happened in the USSR was somehow ‘not relevant’ to them.
You glossed over the absurdity of Marx sponging off a wealthy capitalist to rant in favour of the proposition that human ‘consciousness’ is determined by the underlying ‘material conditions.
You opined that in centuries to come maybe Marx will be right as we get liberated by technology from ‘production’. Well, maybe!
Back in real life, here’s a philosophical question. What exactly about Marx’s obsessive collectivist reductionism made him so attractive to fanatics who went on to murder tens of millions of people in his name?
The deep issue here is how decisions get taken in any society, including a theoretically ‘communist’ one where key property is held in common, whether that happens on the small ‘commune’ level or in some sort of global communist utopia.
Reasonable people might (and do) reasonably disagree on straightforward priorities and how risks and change are to be incorporated.
Some people might prefer to invest in repairing the roof as storms are coming. Others might argue for less effort there and more in medical research to save lives far into the future.
So, who decides? A simple majority? A ‘central committee’? Anyone with a direct interest? How long does a decision stand before it can be challenged and a new vote taken?
The USSR’s example is precisely relevant here.
The Soviet Marxists really tried to implement Marx’s ideas over a sprawling land-mass, and soon grasped that BECAUSE their nutty ideas flew in the face of both human nature and logic, they needed to stop anyone except themselves deciding.
They duly turned that territory into a prison camp. They killed hundreds of thousands then millions of people to maintain their own control. See also China and Cambodia.
Alienation blah blah false consciousness blah blah dialectic blah blah.
The sheer bloated violent and above all inhuman insanity of what Marxism all adds up in real life to gets no proper mention let alone discussion? And this is your ‘philosophy’?