My thoughts on this are still developing, but to what degree are absurdism and socialism reconcilable? There's a lot of beauty in Camus's words and in some sense the struggle for socialism can feel like Sisyphus' eternal struggle, I suppose, for us in our time. That said, he still quite explicitly rejects the historical dialectic from the same old mistaken notion of its being a pseudo-"religious" teleology, and instead seems to favour metaphysics and metaphysical notions of so-called "human nature". Thoughts?
I think that socialism, and even Marxism to a certain degree, can work with Absurdism. Marx's early works, such as the Manuscripts of 1844, show a sort of Humanistic Marxian look upon history and society, and Marx does talk a lot about human nature (or as he calls it, Species-Being). So, although Camus rejected Marxism, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't. However, as absurdists, we should try to avoid any fatalistic interpretations of the March of History. Plus, Camus was a Syndicalist, so I guess it works.
Yeah I've revised my views on their compatibility since I finished (hence my sig.). Still, as I said, it's a mistake to reject the historical dialectic based on that notion. I wouldn't equate a materialist species-being with an idealistic 'human nature', either, as I reject that concept in the sense most people use it, but I won't get into that here. It's late as I'm posting this. Marxism, far from dismissing the usefulness of the variety of philosophical schools of thought, sees a place for each of them in history, so in at least that sense absurdism can reflect something of use to the most hardened dialectical materialist.
okay, fair point.
