Existentionalism and Marxism

[TheBigREDOne]

Are they compatible?

[TheBigREDOne]

Bump

[Redistribute the Rep]

Well the mods here frown upon bumping, although Im not going to lie, I made this post in part to help you out. But also to inform you. It serves a dual purpose.

[RedMaterialist]

Sarte was a Marxist.

[CyM]

You need to provide more to chew on if you want to start a discussion. What aspect of existentialism specifically?

[Palmares]

There was a thread along these lines not that long ago:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/can-you-socialist-t190936/index.html?t=190936&highlight=existentialism

We need to advertise the search function more, perhaps...

[TheBigREDOne]

There was a thread along these lines not that long ago:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/can-you-socialist-t190936/index.html?t=190936&highlight=existentialism

We need to advertise the search function more, perhaps...

Oops, didn't know :unsure:

[Dodo]

Sartre did try to bring Marxism more in line with continental philosophy of his time but then came a whole new wave of people which imo made Sartre's position irrelevant.

jk, I actually haven't read Sartre's Marxism work much but I mean it probably acted as a basis for structuralist and post-structuralists the "new french theory". I am guessing at this point.

[keine_zukunft]

might need to define what you mean by marxism more. it's a broad church.

[Hit The North]

jk, I actually haven't read Sartre's Marxism work much but I mean it probably acted as a basis for structuralist and post-structuralists the "new french theory". I am guessing at this point.

Your guess is off the mark. Sartre's Marxism was more focused on agency and stressed voluntarism. Sartre's work was part of the humanist wave of French Marxism, whereas the Structural and post-Structural turns maintained a "theoretical anti-humanism".

[Dodo]

I see, sorry about that. Did his existentialist influence expand much beyond him btw?

[Hit The North]

It certainly extended into popular culture as he became very much a pop-culture icon. As a public intellectual, he had an influence on French student radicalism in the 1960s. But I'm not sure how important he is philosophically, compared to figures like Merleau-Ponty or Heidegger. I don't think his phenomenological twist on Marxism has been particularly influential.

[Tim Redd]

Sarte was a Marxist.

More accurately I think he evolved from existentialism to Maoist Marxism. However there are aspects of existentialism that are good and seem fit to be incorporated into one's ideology even if it's overall Marxist. And Sartre probably did the same.

Two of the major good aspects of existentialism from a Marxist perspective are:
1) striving to develop a viewpoint in the face of one's existence and ultimately taking personal responsibility for the development of one's viewpoint.
2) fully accepting the viewpoint you sculpt and consistently living up to the tenets and obligations of that viewpoint.

[The Communard]

Existentialism and Marxism cannot be compatible because the former rejects materialism and pursues a "third way" beyond idealism and materialism instead. Sartre was highly influenced by Edmund Husserl and especially Martin Heidegger whose writings would reflect the general mood among bourgeois intellectuals of the interwar period. But they all go back to Nietzsche of course. It's funny how, whenever there's decline, crisis and confusion, you find Nietzsche. Despite its claim to look for a way beyond idealism and materialism, it remains an offshoot of idealism but without a new revolutionary method or seminal insights. Existentialism was a scam full of fashionable phrases like its successor postmodernism, though not as anti-reason, anti-enlightenment and anti-science like the latter. A philosophy influenced by reactionary writers like Heidegger and Nietzsche cannot be compatible with Marxism, no matter how modified or "updated". Fancy philosophy for snobs.

[Hit The North]

Existentialism and Marxism cannot be compatible because the former rejects materialism and pursues a "third way" beyond idealism and materialism instead.

In what sense does it reject materialism? It concedes that man lives in an objective universe but that this objective realm has no inherent meaning nor is it developing to any end point. So it may reject particularly metaphysical or teleological accounts of materialism but not materialism per se.

Meanwhile, isn't Marxism also an attempt to find a "third way" beyond idealism and materialism or, at least, an attempt to reconcile the best insights of each one-sided approach?

I think a more accurate and trenchant criticism of existentialism is that it accords too much weight to freedom and individual choice, such as when Sartre remarks that, "Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world he is responsible for everything he does." Arguably, he tries to correct this one-sidedness in his attempt to develop a phenomenological version of historical materialism in his Critique of Dialectical Reason.

[Tim Redd]

Sarte was a Marxist.

Specifically a Maoist Marxist. I love that such a great thinker adopted the position of the best Marxist ideology and best Marxist political position for his time.

(In addition it was adopted by his paramour, Simone de Beauvoir, who had a documented history of Maoist agitation and propaganda in her own right - especially regarding the struggle for gender equality.)

[Tim Redd]

It certainly extended into popular culture as he became very much a pop-culture icon. As a public intellectual, he had an influence on French student radicalism in the 1960s. But I'm not sure how important he is philosophically, compared to figures like Merleau-Ponty or Heidegger. I don't think his phenomenological twist on Marxism has been particularly influential.

It certainly affected me as a student of Existentialism that Sartre became an active Marxist-Maoist. Of course that's not an empirical poll, or study.

To find out that a major principal of post-WWII Continental philosophy decisively turned to Maoism is an incredibly positive event to have occurred in the history philosophy. Added to that, Sartre was in his 60's when he adopted Maoism over Existentialism.

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

It certainly affected me as a student of Existentialism that Sartre became an active Marxist-Maoist. Of course that's not an empirical poll, or study.

To find out that a major principal of post-WWII Continental philosophy decisively turned to Maoism is an incredibly positive event to have occurred in the history philosophy. Added to that, Sartre was in his 60's when he adopted Maoism over Existentialism.

His Marxism actually ran pretty deep, even surpassing many of the mainstream communist and socialist movements of his time. He never joined a Party, and he was extremely critical of the USSR in his time. He was one of the first people in France to expose the gulags and the horrible conditions within. He also vehemently opposed the invasion of Hungary and the supression of dissidents. And although he's known for his praise for Che Guevara, he also made no secret about his loathing for the persecution of LGBT peoples in Cuba, saying "Homosexuals are Cuba's Jews".

By the end of his life, he declared himself more of an Anarchist than an orthodox Marxist.

[Tim Redd]

By the end of his life, he declared himself more of an Anarchist than an orthodox Marxist.

As I recall, one of the last photos of him in relative real time, showed him selling a Maoist newspaper.

Many Maoists are said to uphold certain militant (non-Chomsky) anarchist positions.

[Qbill harris]

First, we all know that Marxism is a theory of historical materialism , with or without the dialectic. Real relations of productions cause both events and ideas.

In this sense, the theory is obviously 'deterministic'. Humans therefore possess free will only within the bounds of the material forces which impel them to act and think.

OTH, Existentialism seems a bit complicated because for 80 years or so it ran on a parallel track until its collision with Marx in the 50's, during the debates between Althusser and Sartre.

Said parallel track was that of Husserl's Phenomenology which was, in so many books and ways, an investigation into the universalities of mind that might exist within all humans.
This would serve as an essential ('ontological') basis not only for psychology, but also linguistics, as well.

Skipping over Heidegger--which greatly qualified this search-- you have Sartre's 'Being and Nothingness' which, if accepted, drives a stake into the phenomenological heart. There are no universalities, therefore, no essences to frame selfhood.

We're therefore condemned to absolute free will because nothing is determined. Or as it was written, in all cases, lived existence precedes essence. Hence the Sartrain moniker 'existentialism' to stand in stark contrast to the entire phenomenological project.

What this means is that all forms of judgment are 'contingent'. There are no absolute rules of reason or logic, as these are seen as a posteriori reflections as to how we arrived at a solution to a real problem.

Suffice to say that internal states are not real; Quine, btw,would write the same a decade later, in 1952.

So in their pure forms as stated, the two ontologies are clearly opposites. Absolute free will and historical determinism cannot live in the same house.

Sartre's second opus, Critique of Dialectical Reason, purported to show that one can remain a 'Marxist' while rejecting the book of Engels that placed dialectics squarely within nature itself. Rather, for Sartre, dialectics was a mode of thought.

Now as the transcripts of the debates demonstrate, Althusser 'won' by trapping Sartre against the dialectical wall: "So what you're saying M Sartre, is that given the dialectical nature of class struggle, it's all in the head?!"

Well, yes, in a way", replied JP. "Ah ha!" replied Louis, "that means that you are not a 'Marxist!'"

Fair enough. If Marxism is a science that, by definition, makes causal statements of the natural world, it is no more amenable to personal will-power than, say, elementary particles zipping through quantumworld.

The end of the 'conversation' came several years later when Althusser grudgingly altered his naturalism to an admittedly 'aleatory' stance: in 'the last' analysis, the causality we attach to ideas has a material substrate.

In other words, Sartre seemed to have had the last word, thereby moving on to a Gallic form of Maoism which featured spontaneity, situationalism, and imagination. Read 'Cause du Peuple and see for yourself!

[blake 3:17]

His Marxism actually ran pretty deep, even surpassing many of the mainstream communist and socialist movements of his time. He never joined a Party, and he was extremely critical of the USSR in his time. He was one of the first people in France to expose the gulags and the horrible conditions within. He also vehemently opposed the invasion of Hungary and the supression of dissidents. And although he's known for his praise for Che Guevara, he also made no secret about his loathing for the persecution of LGBT peoples in Cuba, saying "Homosexuals are Cuba's Jews".

By the end of his life, he declared himself more of an Anarchist than an orthodox Marxist.

It ran so deep he never did anything but criticize Communism and was a keen supporter of Israel. What a wind bag.

[Бай Ганьо]

[...] [Sartre] was extremely critical of the USSR in his time. He was one of the first people in France to expose the gulags and the horrible conditions within.

David Rousset was one of the very first in France to expose the existence of gulags (in the Figaro littéraire in 1949), and the reaction of the French intelligentsia was to call him a CIA agent, servant of American imperialism, etc. Merleau-Ponty and Sartre coauthored a text in the same hostile vein against Rousset (and pro-USSR) in Les Temps Modernes (1950), which was later republished under Merleau-Ponty's sole name in Signes (1960).