Originally posted by
[email protected] 3 2005, 03:56 PM
Sartre once stated that Marxism was 'the only philosophy for the twentieth century,' which I think sets up the scene nicely to ask people how the utter free-will of man provided by the subjectivity in which the mind inhabits in existentialist theory can be reconciled with the objective action-reaction of dialectical materialism? It seems incongruous
Indeed it does. Marxism and Existentialism are key philosophical influences in my life and I have often puzzled over this problem. I have come to the conclusion that the two are indeed incongruous. The reasons for this are quite evident in the metaphyical views held by the two thinkers...
In Marx we have a Materialist and a Determinist. There is no such thing as freedom, or if there is then it is nothing more then an illusion. We are determined by our economic circumstances and the society we live in. This is culminates in Dialectical Materialism which leads Marx to the conclusion that Capitalism will necessarily lead to a revolution that will bring about a Communist society. There is no choice about it and it is pointless to try to bring it about any quicker or to try and prevent it. It will happen and it will happen in its own time. No sooner....no later...the economical circumstances alone will decide it, and we have no control over such things (hence determinism).
Sartre's Existentialism on the other hand revolves around Libertarianism and the total freedom of the will. It also involves Dualism (not strictly the Cartesian variety) because Sartre wanted to maintain that the will is free but that the material world is determined (by physical laws). To do this he needed to employ the idea of an immaterial Consciousness. It is this Consciousness that seperates 'Being-in-Itself' from 'Being-for-Itself' as Sartre wrote in Being and Nothingness, and with these ideas also comes the idea of Bad Faith.
Although Sartre believed that Existentialism was a subordinate branch of Marxism, it is my firm belief that he was mistaken here. The Economical Determinism that is central to Marxism and Dialectical Materialism cannot be reconciled with the Libertarianism found in Sartre's Existentialism which he expounded in his works (such as Existentialism and Humanism). If we are determined by economical circumstances then our essence exists before we do, and this is the opposite of Sartre's belief that existence proceeds essence.
It is my humble opinion that modern Marxism needs to reassess itself in light of the durability of Capitalism and attempt to combine itself with the principles Existentialism. Change will only become a realistic prospect when the working classes realise the role they must play and the choices they need to make. Dialectical Materialism merely encourages the decadence and lack of action we find within modern Capitilist societies. This is something I hope to write about myself some day if I ever have the good fortune to become a Philosophy lecturer.
You present Marx as an economic determinist, i.e. someone who denies free will arguing that all our actions are predetermined from economical laws. This distortion of Marxism is dealt with as early as the first chapter of Marx' essential work, the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte:
"Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past." (my emphasis)
If there should be any doubt, here's another quote, from Engels this time:
"According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. More than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. Hence, if someone twists this into saying that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms that position into a meaningless, abstract, senseless phrase. The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure—political forms of the class struggle and its results, to wit: constitutions established by victorious classes after a successful battle, etc., judicial forms, and the reflexes of all these actual struggles in the brains of the participants, political, juristic, philosophical theories, religious views and their further development into systems of dogmas also exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggles, and in many cases predominate in determining their form."
Despite all this, the "economic determinist" distortion is a permanent feature of bourgeois "critiques" of Marxism. It's a strawman. Lose it.
Marx and Engels' philosophy as expressed above is also a good antidote against Sartre's silly anarchist voluntarism. Please try to take real Marxism into account when you next formulate arguments against Marxism and in favor of voluntarism.