I was undertaking the daunting challenge of musing over what the world is all about when, through my musings I was presented with a far more arduous task of trying to figure out what Marx is all about
I must once again stress my disclaimer – I have little to no knowledge of philosophy so my wonders are inaccurate and incomplete. I’m looking for you lot (which I think consists of Euny) to help me out.
Apparently there are two broad approaches that hastily present themselves when trying to garble about what constitutes the world and everything else: materialism and idealism.
Materialism would state that ‘matter in motion’ is the fundamental constituent of the universe. It is wholly objective, acting according to its own natural laws. Materialism would hold that thought/emotion is simply a chemical function – to the brain, as urine is to the kidneys
Idealism would approach the universe as being a series of concepts. Matter, as realised through sensory perception is a construct of one of many purely subjective concepts.
Marx is generally described as a materialist. In its strictest sense, outlined above, I have found that to be an inaccurate depiction. It appears that Marx believes that human conceptual reflexes are relevant but are shaped by the objective conditions in which they are experienced. The conditions in which a women (or man) is forced to subside and reproduce her species shape her universe. Her natural depends on how she produces. This half-way house unification between idealism and materialism could be called ‘humanism’. Marx took from the Hegelian dialect that the objective (material) world is experienced entirely subjectively, to assert that the objective reality of the socio-economic nature directs and shapes the subjective experience of it, and vies versa.
In his conception of history, Marx thought it best, therefore to look at the modes of subsistence, and see how that shaped the moods, motivations the subjective realities which led to humanity taking the course it history it did – instead of looking at idealist conceptions such as God, or materialist concepts such as genetics, he approached from this humanist stance to try to understand what compelled history to pan out the way it did, and what compels it to follow the path it currently does. Economic gain, as a key motivation for a woman’s action is what he called a ‘relative drive’, originating from the mode of subsistence she found herself in, and is not, like hunger, a ‘fixed drive’. So he was wary about trying to understand human nature as an overly objective, ahistorical and acontextual force, instead suggesting it is perhaps more of a social consciousness or force.
Marx stated that changes in these ‘relative drives’ caused historical changes. He argued that such epoch changes would occur when the mode of social organization began to hamper the productive forces hat allows humanity to subsist. Thus evolution (as opposed to revolution, which implies ending up in the same place) could not be imposed on society, it is caused by a challenge to woman’s ability to subsist, due to the social organisation in which she finds herself in. Such challenges lead to a change in the social consciousness which re-shapes the social organisation to one that allows subsistence.
Maybe I’m being optimistic, but faced with the forces of climate change, peak oil, and gross alienation and inequality; the social organization we find ourselves in seems to be hampering our ability to subside. Time for a change, perhaps?
“I’m all for social justice but there’s nothing wrong with economic prosperity, nothing wrong at all”
I found this quote strangely fascinating, it seemed to contain just about everything. I reckon the two key terms, ’social justice’ juxtapositioned against ‘economic prosperity’ hold the roots of the hazy labels left and right.
Starting with social justice. The word ’social’ puts us into the collective, public realm. The public realm, as I’ve suggested before, consists of public goods – environment, law and order, schools, hospitals and the like. Justice, in this context, I’d suggest implies an equality of access and treatment within this public realm.
Economic prosperity, when positioned as it is here against social justice has the key difference of belonging to the individual realm. It implies an individual accumulation of economic assets to a level of abundance.
Broadly, and this does involve a bit of a jump, these two terms can be polarised into ‘left’ and ‘right’. The left would stress the importance of social justice as the foundations and primary aim of society, with economic prosperity as a bi-product. Whereas the right would argue the need for individual economic prosperity as the primary motivation for society, which will result in the most socially just outcome.
The two are of course irredeemably linked, and the debate will rest upon where we should lie in between these dichotomies.
I’d suggest that now, perhaps we’ve gone too far: to the point where economic prosperity is inhibiting social justice. These are only a few examples: a key public good, clean environment is being threatened by the pursuit for further economic prosperity of certain businesses and industries. The affordability of houses, in the UK, is being pushed beyond the reach of much of the public because conditions lie in favour of those few emassing great prosperity. Perhaps most alarming, equality under the law is being challenged. A fraud investigation envolving BAE systems arms dealings with Saudi Arabia (a dictatorship with an appalling human rights record) was blocked by the British government, and so to ensure the economic prospetity of a company, the law was not upheld.
Its all a matter of opinion of course, but I think its vital that our political debates remain here rather then getting clouded by issues such as immigration, religion, so-called morality and the celebrity status of politicians.
