Led Zeppelin
17th November 2006, 10:14
The "Mediating Role" of the individual
If Sartre is Marxist in his adherence to the Marxist formula of History, he is nevertheless existentialist in his reading of that formula. To him, the errors of modern Marxism become more and more apparent. They stem from a blind devotion to an "a priori" stand, as we have already seen in the case of the Hungarian rebellion. Traditional Marxism has provided a framework into which its followers think they must force History, instead of letting the events speak for themselves. In short, the modern Marxists have ceased to live with History, but try to force History to live with them.
The work of Georg Lukacs provides, in Sartre's opinion, a typical example of this rigidity. His claim that German existentialism became "activist" under the influence of the Nazis or that French existentialism is a wartime reaction of the petit bourgeois against the occupation forces is naive and grossly oversimplified. As for the first, Heidegger was never "activist," at least not in his philosophical writings - furthermore, "activism" is itself nothing but "an empty concept which permits opponents to liquidate a certain number of unrelated ideologies" that they haven't taken the trouble to read and comprehend. Concerning the second, Sartre can himself attest that he started the research on L'Etre et le Neant in 1930, which makes the assertion that it was an "echo of war" absurd.
The blunt truth is that the Marxist theoreticians are incapable of understanding the complexity of the existential situation, whether philosophical or otherwise. They do not bother to read the Other, but merely impose a preconceived theory - theirs! In doing so, the modern Marxist loses sight of the fact that there is no real totality but merely a totalization (a never-ending succession of events kept together by human intervention), hence that as commentator he cannot and should not draw conclusions concerning that which is as yet unfinished.
Indeed, his greatest limitation perhaps is that he cannot resist the temptation of constructing universals: from a concrete event he built a universal, under which subsequent concrete events are to be classified. Thus the literary work of Paul Valery is regarded simply as "an expression of bourgeois idealism." The Marxists, in their eagerness to assimilate and to universalize, do not bother to differentiate. There is no attempt to understand "the originality of a bourgeois thought," only a hastiness to classify it under "idealism." What they are doing, actually, is to reduce the concrete - this man, this book - to an abstraction - example of capitalist imperialism or of idealism - is the concrete reality. They are only taking out of their work what they themselves put into it, and in the meantime, Valery has completely disappeared.
In actuality, Valery must be considered in his particular and concrete mileu to "explain" what produced him, for while "Valery is an intellectual petit bourgeois, not every petit bourgeois is a Valery." This sentence is pivotal. It points to the correction which Sartre wishes to introduce into modern Marxist interpretations, namely, to bring Valery (and other men, other events) back into History. One must search out his unique qualities by attempting to discover the "mediations" which link him to others and to his historical surroundings. His relation to idealism is only a part of the whole story; Marxism, contenting itself with the part, misses the whole and thus does not enable us "to grasp the process which produces the person and his product inside a class and inside a given society at a given moment of history."
This kind of thought leads to such bizarre statements as that of Engels according to which the appearance of such a man as Napoleon at a certain moment in history was pure chance; if there had been no Napoleon, there would have been some other Napoleon to fill his place. Existentialism wants to bring into relief the individual concrete, the particular, against its general background of productive forces. Similarly, it is not enough to say simply that Flaubert's Madame Bovary is a potent weapon against a class and a regime, the expression of an epoch, determined solely by the economic forces of the day. Other shaping influences were at work, influences which the modern Marxist ignores, as for example those of childhood and growth.
Psychoanalysis must be used for a better understanding of the genesis of a person, and subsequently, of the value of his work. It is only in this way that the mediation between the particular individual and the universal class can be discovered, since it establishes the way the child "lives his family relations inside a given society." It is only in this way that one discovers the difference between, say, a Flaubert and a Baudelaire, where such details as the paternal "fixation" of Flaubert and the oedipal complex of Baudelaire enter into the picture. These details reflect both the objective structure of society - Flaubert's father was of the new bourgeoisie and invested his money in land and his mother was of the faded nobility, while Baudelaire's family was urban and invested in stocks and bonds, characteristic of the new nobility - and the childhood of the two men - Flaubert's in the company of a father who felt socially below the industrial families in his care and carried his resentment into violent personal relationships, Baudelaire's under the influence of a mother who could afford to be independent, and was. Psychoanalysis used in this framework of a dialectical totalization takes all of this into account.
The Marxist, on the other hand, will consider the individual only as the recipient of an income or salary, forgetting that before "reifying" himself in his work, he was discovering "reification" and the "alienation" of labor in the work and life of his parents. Sartre has no wish to deny the relation between culture and economics, but he simply wishes to deepen the meaning of that relationship through showing that both are "mediated" through the individual, whose work is the concrete accomplishment of many contributing elements.
If Sartre is Marxist in his adherence to the Marxist formula of History, he is nevertheless existentialist in his reading of that formula. To him, the errors of modern Marxism become more and more apparent. They stem from a blind devotion to an "a priori" stand, as we have already seen in the case of the Hungarian rebellion. Traditional Marxism has provided a framework into which its followers think they must force History, instead of letting the events speak for themselves. In short, the modern Marxists have ceased to live with History, but try to force History to live with them.
The work of Georg Lukacs provides, in Sartre's opinion, a typical example of this rigidity. His claim that German existentialism became "activist" under the influence of the Nazis or that French existentialism is a wartime reaction of the petit bourgeois against the occupation forces is naive and grossly oversimplified. As for the first, Heidegger was never "activist," at least not in his philosophical writings - furthermore, "activism" is itself nothing but "an empty concept which permits opponents to liquidate a certain number of unrelated ideologies" that they haven't taken the trouble to read and comprehend. Concerning the second, Sartre can himself attest that he started the research on L'Etre et le Neant in 1930, which makes the assertion that it was an "echo of war" absurd.
The blunt truth is that the Marxist theoreticians are incapable of understanding the complexity of the existential situation, whether philosophical or otherwise. They do not bother to read the Other, but merely impose a preconceived theory - theirs! In doing so, the modern Marxist loses sight of the fact that there is no real totality but merely a totalization (a never-ending succession of events kept together by human intervention), hence that as commentator he cannot and should not draw conclusions concerning that which is as yet unfinished.
Indeed, his greatest limitation perhaps is that he cannot resist the temptation of constructing universals: from a concrete event he built a universal, under which subsequent concrete events are to be classified. Thus the literary work of Paul Valery is regarded simply as "an expression of bourgeois idealism." The Marxists, in their eagerness to assimilate and to universalize, do not bother to differentiate. There is no attempt to understand "the originality of a bourgeois thought," only a hastiness to classify it under "idealism." What they are doing, actually, is to reduce the concrete - this man, this book - to an abstraction - example of capitalist imperialism or of idealism - is the concrete reality. They are only taking out of their work what they themselves put into it, and in the meantime, Valery has completely disappeared.
In actuality, Valery must be considered in his particular and concrete mileu to "explain" what produced him, for while "Valery is an intellectual petit bourgeois, not every petit bourgeois is a Valery." This sentence is pivotal. It points to the correction which Sartre wishes to introduce into modern Marxist interpretations, namely, to bring Valery (and other men, other events) back into History. One must search out his unique qualities by attempting to discover the "mediations" which link him to others and to his historical surroundings. His relation to idealism is only a part of the whole story; Marxism, contenting itself with the part, misses the whole and thus does not enable us "to grasp the process which produces the person and his product inside a class and inside a given society at a given moment of history."
This kind of thought leads to such bizarre statements as that of Engels according to which the appearance of such a man as Napoleon at a certain moment in history was pure chance; if there had been no Napoleon, there would have been some other Napoleon to fill his place. Existentialism wants to bring into relief the individual concrete, the particular, against its general background of productive forces. Similarly, it is not enough to say simply that Flaubert's Madame Bovary is a potent weapon against a class and a regime, the expression of an epoch, determined solely by the economic forces of the day. Other shaping influences were at work, influences which the modern Marxist ignores, as for example those of childhood and growth.
Psychoanalysis must be used for a better understanding of the genesis of a person, and subsequently, of the value of his work. It is only in this way that the mediation between the particular individual and the universal class can be discovered, since it establishes the way the child "lives his family relations inside a given society." It is only in this way that one discovers the difference between, say, a Flaubert and a Baudelaire, where such details as the paternal "fixation" of Flaubert and the oedipal complex of Baudelaire enter into the picture. These details reflect both the objective structure of society - Flaubert's father was of the new bourgeoisie and invested his money in land and his mother was of the faded nobility, while Baudelaire's family was urban and invested in stocks and bonds, characteristic of the new nobility - and the childhood of the two men - Flaubert's in the company of a father who felt socially below the industrial families in his care and carried his resentment into violent personal relationships, Baudelaire's under the influence of a mother who could afford to be independent, and was. Psychoanalysis used in this framework of a dialectical totalization takes all of this into account.
The Marxist, on the other hand, will consider the individual only as the recipient of an income or salary, forgetting that before "reifying" himself in his work, he was discovering "reification" and the "alienation" of labor in the work and life of his parents. Sartre has no wish to deny the relation between culture and economics, but he simply wishes to deepen the meaning of that relationship through showing that both are "mediated" through the individual, whose work is the concrete accomplishment of many contributing elements.