”Philosophers have only interpreted the worid in various ways; the point,
however, is to change it.”
-Marx
If the perspectives we are considering in this part of the book seek to address actual, practical, social, and political life, then Marxism takes the prize. Perhaps no philosophy has had more of a direct impact on the social and political existence of untold numbers of people than that introduced by the German thinker and social theorist Karl Marx (1818 – 1883). By its nature, the Marxist program presses for change – radical and revolutionary change.
What can this superspeculative and abstract conception have to do with the superpractical and down-to-earth concerns of Marxism? How does Hegel’s process of the historical dialectic bear on Marx’s political theory7 Marx took over the idea of the historical dialectic, but under the influence of another German philosopher, Feuerbach, gave it a materialistic twist. Result: dialectical materialism.
This phrase was never used by Marx himself. Nevertheless, it serves well enough to suggest the character of the philosophical principles underlying his whole social and political program: Reality is matter, and its concrete expression and development are governed by the dialectic of history. But this is given a further twist when Marx focuses more specifically on matter as it reveals itself in economics, which, as you know, concerns money, but more accurately concerns the principles of production, distribution, and use of wealth and products.
And now we are in a position to say what Marx’s real concern was. It was to aid and abet the class warfare which is the social and economic expression of the historical dialectic: to achieve – even through revolutionary tactics – a classless society in which private ownership of the means of production (tools, factories, and so forth) would be abolished and wealth would be equitably distributed. This, of course, is communism, the social and economic and political expression of dialectical materialism.
What really propelled Marx were two facts which stood in stark and dismal contradiction. First, Marx was a humanist, His exalted view of humanity included a belief in the innate goodness of persons, their perfectability, and their powers of self-realization. But, second, this is overpowered and thwarted by their actual social and economic condition. It must be remembered that Marx lived when the industrial revolution was playing right into the hands of capitalism. It was a time when increased and frantic production meant the enslavement of the working class (Marx called it the proletariat) to the owning class (the bourgeoisie); and it meant the degradation of the working class through, for instance, squalid working conditions, child labor, and a wage wholly determined by the owners. In a word – and this is a most important word in Marxism – it meant alienation. ”Alienation” means separation or estrangement. By alienation Marx intended considerably more than just the bitter estrangement of the workers from their capitalist superiors. In Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, Marx explains the different kinds of alienation spawned by capitalist controlled labour. Workers become alienated (1) from themselves, (2) from themselves (3) from their human nature and (4) from their fellows.
Marxism has undergone many changes, most notably through Marx’s contemporary and compatriot Friedrich Engels and, later, the Russian revolutionary Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. But Marxism in any form begins with the contradiction which Marx saw between a high estimation of the human being and the actual repressive and alienating conditions inflicted on the working classes, and it seeks, through varying levels of revolutionary force, to transcend the contradiction by means of communism. Its battle cry has been: WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE! YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR CHAINS!
Out of this there eventually arose the communist revolution (led by Lenin) in Russia in 1917; the revolutions since then in China (Mao Tse-Tung) and
Cuba (Castro); the Marxist agitations today in the Third World, such as Latin America; and labor unions and socialist programs everywhere.
Some possible and obvious criticisms of Marxism fall into three groups. The first concerns metaphysics. We have seen that Marxism and/or communism has its roots, at least historically, in a specific theory of reality and history: dialectical materialism. In order to agree with Marxism, we one would have to agree with dialectical materialism. This is far from agreed upon.
Speaking more to the socioeconomic point, some believe that Marxists are too harsh in their rejection of all other social systems as incapable of introducing important social change. Certainly the situation now is different from what it was in Marx’s own time. Has not even capitalism proved in some ways (never dreamed of by the early Marxists) to be self-correcting? to be capable of being governed by its own (though unending) dialectic of improvement? It is hardly necessary to be a Marxist to have a social conscience, to believe in and strive for the general welfare, to improve working conditions or to introduce child-labor laws, and to change things. Of course, it may be answered: ”But your program of social change is too slow. We need radical change, and we need it now. Revolution is the only way!” But the idea of literal revolution, with its upheavals and probable bloodshed, is itself not unproblematic – unless you believe that the end justifies the means. The rise of a large, contented middle class in capitalistic societies seems to have been unpredicted by Marx and serves to pacify the urge for revolution.
Finally, a moral issue: It is frequently heard that Marxism is naive and over-optimistic in its own estimate of human nature: ”Marxism is a wonderful theory. Too bad that it can’t possibly work due to human nature.” Is there any truth to the charge that the very repression of human values that Marxists so deplore in other forms of government reveals itself even more vividly in communist societies? Not to excuse other forms of government for their own failures, but what of the Stalin purges of the 1930s and 1950s? And where is the Gulag Archipelago? In a word, as it is sometimes observed, the communist ideal was pursued in the U.S.S.R. for over sixty years. Where did it succeed in healing the alienation it so strongly denounces in other political systems?
From: Questions That Matter
Miller, L (ed.), 1996
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