Marxism-Humanism

[Rawthentic]

I would like to learn more about this trend of revolutionary thought, its history etc.

I know of some people that are or were influenced by it, such as Jean-Paul Satre, Paulo Freire, and Frantz Fanon.

Discuss please.

[More Fire for the People]

“Imagination is not an empirical or super added power of consciousness, it is the whole of consciousness as it realizes its freedom.” — Sartre

“A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality.” — Karl Marx

Marxist Humanists assert that the key point of Marx's view of history and his political observations at large is that there is something fundamentally unique about humans when compared to other animals: we are conscious laborers. We are free to imagine and put our imagination into deed which is unlike the bee that constructs its home out of biological necessity. Marxist Humanists continue this tradition of thought by emphasizing humanity's ability to create and re-create both use-values and themselves.

The Marxist Humanist school of thought is pretty big and very eclectic. It ranges from Trotskyists to Freudo-Marxists to anarchists. But the key figures are Raya Dunayevskaya, CLR James, Jean-Paul Sartre, Frantz Fanon, Paulo Freire, The Frankfurt School, and The Praxis School. I'd definitely check out Dunayevskaya's Chapter 9 of Philosophy & Revolution to get a clear cut view of humanist analysis & praxis.

Personally, I'm fond of Dunayevskaya, James, Fanon, & Freire but I'm not too fond of Sartre's overall philosophy, just bits and pieces.

[Red Heretic]

I'm interested in this discussion. Does anyone know how this concept differs from Avakian's conception of proletarian morality (a morality based upon the proletariat, which holds fighting against all forms of oppression as what is moral)?

[Rawthentic]

HA, I read what you suggested and I like the Humanist philosophy very much.

I especially love the continuing revolution, even after the proletarian one.

I will keep reading.

[Rawthentic]

I especially liked and understood this piece:


Or take China, which certainly during the “Cultural Revolution” never seemed to stop espousing the slogan “It is right to revolt.” Why, then, did it turn to a “cultural” rather than an actual, a proletarian, a social revolution? Hegel and Marx can shed greater illumination on that type of cultural escapism than can the contemporary “China specialists,” who bow to every revolutionary-sounding slogan. It was no “preMarxian” Marx who insisted that Hegel’s philosophic abstractions were in fact the historic movement of mankind through various stages of freedom, that the stages of consciousness in the Phenomenology were in fact a critique of “whole spheres like religion, the state, bourgeois society and so forth.” Hegel himself saw that “pure culture” was “the absolute and universal inversion of reality and thought, their estrangement, one into the other ... each is the opposite of itself” (p. 541). Where Hegel moved from “culture” to “science,” i.e., the unity of history and its philosophic comprehension, Marx stressed that thought can transcend only other thought; but to reconstruct society itself, only actions of men and women, masses in motion, will do the “transcending,” and thereby “realize” philosophy, make freedom and whole men and women a reality.

I also like how it rejects that revolutions can be made from above or by minorities, and favors mass, spontaneous proletarian action, like in the Russian Revolution.

But keep explaining more about this please.

[Rawthentic]

Come on HA, respond.

[More Fire for the People]

I'm not necessarily an expert on humanist texts — and I think to be one doesn't require you to. It's emphasis on the self-creativity and self-movement of the masses show that we, workers & dehumanized of the world, can create our own theories, institutions, & bodies of power through our combined mental and physical efforts — i.e. our relation to the world. Humanist theory serves to clarify and edify the thoughts of the oppressed — they are the accumulated theoretical tools — but one does not need to be well versed in it to be a practical, revolutionary humanist — the the Russian Revolution, May 1968 uprising, the Chiapas, and every workers' action under the sun is physical proof of this.

[which doctor]

Originally posted by Red [email protected] 06, 2007 05:32 pm
I'm interested in this discussion. Does anyone know how this concept differs from Avakian's conception of proletarian morality (a morality based upon the proletariat, which holds fighting against all forms of oppression as what is moral)?
What about fighting the oppression caused by "communist" bureaucrats?

[Rawthentic]

That is a very relevant point to it. Dunaveskaya very well points out how Russia was state-capitalist, and that the "communist bureaucrats" were nothing more than personified capital, as well as how the working class was deprived of the means of production, and thus suffered from the very same alienation than under classical capitalism.

Take this quote from Dunaveskaya in the Nature of the Russian Economy, on the Stalinist Constitution of 1936 :


Moreover, the Constitution raised into a principle the Russian manner of payment of labor. The new slogan read: “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his labor”. This seemingly senseless slogan is in reality only a method of expressing the valid capitalist law of payment of labor according to value. To guarantee the free functioning of this truly economic law, it became necessary to exterminate the remnants of the rule of October, even if it were only in the memory of some men.

Humanism is about really achieving communism, and fighting against oppression under all forms of capitalism.

[cenv]

I've never had much contact with Marxist-Humanism, so bear with me.


Marxist Humanists assert that the key point of Marx's view of history and his political observations at large is that there is something fundamentally unique about humans when compared to other animals: we are conscious laborers. We are free to imagine and put our imagination into deed which is unlike the bee that constructs its home out of biological necessity. Marxist Humanists continue this tradition of thought by emphasizing humanity's ability to create and re-create both use-values and themselves.
Does this have any relevance in revolutionary practice, or is it exclusively a philosophical thing?

That is a very relevant point to it. Dunaveskaya very well points out how Russia was state-capitalist, and that the "communist bureaucrats" were nothing more than personified capital, as well as how the working class was deprived of the means of production, and thus suffered from the very same alienation than under classical capitalism.

Humanism is about really achieving communism, and fighting against oppression under all forms of capitalism.
How does this differ from libertarian socialism in general?

[Rawthentic]

Does this have any relevance in revolutionary practice, or is it exclusively a philosophical thing?
Refer to HA's second post: "Humanist theory serves to clarify and edify the thoughts of the oppressed — they are the accumulated theoretical tools — but one does not need to be well versed in it to be a practical, revolutionary humanist — the the Russian Revolution, May 1968 uprising, the Chiapas, and every workers' action under the sun is physical proof of this."



How does this differ from libertarian socialism in general?
Its "libertarian socialism" to say that Russia was capitalist and that there were class struggles for real freedom under it? This has absolutely nothing to do with it.

[cenv]

Its "libertarian socialism" to say that Russia was capitalist and that there were class struggles for real freedom under it? This has absolutely nothing to do with it.

No, but most schools of libertarian socialism (and socialism in general) are quite critical of Russia and claim that it was a class society. I'm not sure how what you're referring to is specific to Marxist-Humanism.

[Rawthentic]

Russia was a class society, a capitalist one. I've never heard otherwise, except that it was socialist by the Stalinists, or a degenerated worker's state by Trotskyists.

I mean there was wage-labor, the law of value, polarization of wealth, unemployment, capital growth. Its beyond me how it can be considered that it was anything else.

I mean, October was a proletarian revolution, but the counterrevolution was complete around the early to mid 1920s.

Humanism is particular in that it recognizes state-capitalism as the extreme form of capitalism and as organic form of it, mainly to preserve bourgeois rule and capitalist class relations. Take Nazi Germany and Japan for example, or the New Deal era. Actually I think it is incorrect to say that it is a Humanist view, as left-communists hold it as well.