Marxist philosophy orMarxist theory are works inphilosophy that are strongly influenced byKarl Marx'smaterialist approach totheory, or works written byMarxists. Marxist philosophy may be broadly divided intoWestern Marxism, which drew from various sources, and the officialphilosophy in the Soviet Union, which enforced a rigid reading of what Marx calleddialectical materialism, in particular during the 1930s. Marxist philosophy is not a strictly defined sub-field of philosophy, because the diverse influence of Marxist theory has extended into fields as varied asaesthetics,ethics,ontology,epistemology,social philosophy,political philosophy, thephilosophy of science, and thephilosophy of history. The key characteristics of Marxism in philosophy are its materialism and its commitment to political practice as the end goal of all thought.The theory is also about the struggles of theproletariat and their reprimand of thebourgeoisie.
Marxist theoristLouis Althusser, for example, defined the philosophy as "class struggle in theory", thus radically separating himself from those who claimed philosophers could adopt a "God's eye view" as a purely neutral judge.
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There are endless interpretations of the "philosophy of Marx", from the interior of the Marxist movement as well as in its exterior. Although some have separated Marx's works between a "young Marx" (in particular theEconomic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844) and a "mature Marx" or also by separating it into purely philosophical works, economics works and political and historical interventions, Étienne Balibar has pointed out that Marx's works can be divided into "economic works" (Das Kapital, 1867), "philosophical works" and "historical works" (The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, the 1871Civil War in France which concerned theParis Commune and acclaimed it as the first "dictatorship of the proletariat", etc.)[1]
Étienne Balibar claimed that if one philosopher could be called a "Marxist philosopher", that one would doubtlessly beLouis Althusser:
Althusser proposed a 'new definition' of philosophy as "class struggle in theory"... Marxism had proper signification (and original "problematic")only insofar as it was the theory ofthe tendency towards communism, andin view of its realization. The criteria of acceptance or rejection of a 'marxist' proposition was always the same, whether it was presented as 'epistemological' or as 'philosophical': it was in the act of rendering intelligible acommunist policy, or not." (Ecrits pour Althusser, 1991, p.98).
In 1938, Trotsky had written"Their Morals and Ours" which consisted ofethical polemics in response to criticisms around his actions concerning the Kronstadt rebellion and wider questions posed around the perceived, "amoral" methods of the Bolsheviks. Critics believed these methods seemed to emulate the Jesuit maxim that the "ends justifies the means". Trotsky argued that Marxism situated the foundation of morality as a product of society toserve social interests rather than "eternal moral truths" proclaimed by institutional religions.[2] On the other hand, he regarded it as farcical to assert that an end could justify any criminal means and viewed this to be a distorted representation of theJesuit maxim. Instead, Trotsky believed that the means and ends frequently "exchanged places" as whendemocracy is sought by the working class as an instrument to actualize socialism. He also viewed revolution to be deducible from the laws of the development and primarily the class struggle but this did not mean all means are permissible.[3]
Marx's critique of the ideology of the human rights thus departs from thecounterrevolutionary critique byEdmund Burke, who dismissed the "rights of Man" in favour of the "rights of the individual": it is not grounded on an opposition to theEnlightenment'suniversalism andhumanist project on behalf of the right oftradition, as in Burke's case, but rather on the claim that the ideology of economism and the ideology of the human rights are the reverse sides of the same coin. However, as Étienne Balibar puts it, "the accent put on those contradictions can not not ring out on the signification of 'human rights', since these therefore appearsboth as the language in whichexploitation masks itself and as the one in which the exploited class struggle express itself: more than a truth or an illusion, it is therefore astake".[4]Das Kapital ironizes on the "pompous catalogue of the human rights" in comparison to the "modestMagna Charta of a day work limited by law":
The creation of a normal working-day is, therefore, the product of a protracted civil war, more or less dissembled, between the capitalist class and the working-class... It must be acknowledged that our labourer comes out of the process of production other than he entered. In the market he stood as owner of the commodity "labour-power" face to face with other owners of commodities, dealer against dealer. The contract by which he sold to the capitalist his labour-power proved, so to say, in black and white that he disposed of himself freely. The bargain concluded, it is discovered that he was no "free agent," that the time for which he is free to sell his labour-power is the time for which he is forced to sell it, that in fact the vampire will not lose its hold on him "so long as there is a muscle, a nerve, a drop of blood to be exploited." For "protection" against "the serpent of their agonies," the labourers must put their heads together, and, as a class, compel the passing of a law, an all-powerful social barrier that shall prevent the very workers from selling, by voluntary contract with capital, themselves and their families into slavery and death. In place of the pompous catalogue of the "inalienable rights of man" comes the modest Magna Charta of a legally limited working-day, which shall make clear "when the time which the worker sells is ended, and when his own begins. Quantum mutatus ab illo![How changed from what he/it was!]"[5]
But the communist revolution does not end with the negation of individual liberty and equality ("collectivism"[6]), but with the "negation of the negation": "individual property" in the capitalist regime is in fact the "expropriation of the immediate producers." "Self-earned private property, that is based, so to say, on the fusing together of the isolated, independent laboring-individual with the conditions of his labor, is supplanted by capitalistic private property, which rests on exploitation of the nominally free labor of others, i.e., on wage-labor... The capitalist mode of appropriation, the result of thecapitalist mode of production, produces capitalist private property. This is the first negation of individual private property, as founded on the labor of the proprietor. But capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a law of Nature, its own negation. It is the negation of negation. This does not re-establish private property for the producer, but gives him individual property based on the acquisition of the capitalist era: i.e., on co-operation and the possession in common of the land and of the means of production.[7]
What distinguished Marx from Feuerbach was his view of Feuerbach'shumanism as excessively abstract, and so no less ahistorical and idealist than what it purported to replace, namely the reified notion of God found in institutional Christianity that legitimized the repressive power of the Prussian state. Instead, Marx aspired to giveontological priority to what he called the "real life process" of real human beings, as he and Engels said inThe German Ideology (1846):
In direct contrast to German philosophy, which descends from heaven to earth, here we ascend from earth to heaven. That is to say, we do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive, nor from men as narrated, thought of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive at men in the flesh. We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life process. The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises. Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development; but men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this, their real existence, their thinking, and the products of their thinking. Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life.[8]
Marx summarized the materialistic aspect of his theory of history, otherwise known ashistorical materialism (this term was coined by Engels and popularised byKarl Kautsky andGeorgi Plekhanov), in the 1859 preface toA Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy:
In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namelyrelations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their materialforces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. Themode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.
In Marxist philosophy, "revisionism", otherwise known as "Marxist reformism", represents various ideas, principles, and theories that are based on areform or revision ofMarxism. According to their critics, this involves a significant revision offundamental Marxist theories and premises, and usually involves making an alliance with thebourgeois class.[9] Some academic economists have usedrevisionism to describepost-Stalinist, Eastern European writers who criticizedone-party rule and argued in favour offreedom of the press andof the arts, intra- and sometimes inter-party democracy, independentlabour unions, the abolition of bureaucratic privileges, and the subordination of police forces to the judiciary power.[10]
In Marxist discourse,revisionism often carriespejorative connotations and the term has been used by many different factions. It is typically applied to others and rarely as a self-description. By extension, Marxists who view themselves as fighting against revisionism have often self-identified as Marxist–Leninistanti-revisionists.Revisionism is most often used as an epithet by those Marxists who believe that such revisions are unwarranted and represent a watering down or abandonment of Marxism—one such common example is the negation ofclass struggle.[11]
Revisionism has been used in a number of contexts to refer to different or claimed revisions ofMarxist theory. Those who opposedKarl Marx's revolution through his lens ofclass struggle and sought out non-revolutionary or more conciliatory means for a change are known as revisionists.Eduard Bernstein, a close acquaintance of Marx andFriedrich Engels, was one of the first major revisionists, and was prominent in theSocial Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).[12]
In the late 19th century, the termrevisionism was used to describereformist socialist writers, such as Bernstein, who sought to revise Marx's ideas about the transition to socialism and claimed that a revolution was not necessary to achieve a socialist society.[13] The views of Bernstein gave rise toevolutionary socialism, which asserts that socialism can be achieved through gradual peaceful reforms from within a capitalist system.[14]
The status ofhumanism in Marxist thought has been quite contentious. A number of Marxists, especially Hegelian Marxists and also those committed to political programs (such as someCommunist Parties), have been strongly humanist. These humanist Marxists believe that Marxism describes the true potential of human beings, and that this potential can be fulfilled in collective freedom after the Communist revolution has removed capitalism's constraints and subjugations of humanity. A particular version of the humanism within the Marxism is represented by the school ofLev Vygotsky and his school intheoretical psychology (Alexei Leontiev,Laszlo Garai[15]).
... the revisionist Khrushchov clique base themselves mainly on the argument that ... class struggle no longer exists.
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