I remember, when I was a liberal Dem, reading a little bit of this stuff. I have since tried to understand it. Maybe I am not as smart as my mom said, but I just don’t get it/
My limited understanding of it:
History is characterized by class struggle, and this can all be explained by general historical laws embodied in nature (this is Marx’s break with Hegel); one class embodies a thesis, and another it’s antithesis, or opposite. The struggle ends in the synthesis of the 2 classes that both embodies and transcends them. However, this new thesis will create a new antithesis, and the cycle repeats itself. For example, in Marx’s time, he saw the aristocracy as embodying the thesis of the time, and the bourgeoisie as the antithesis. The bourgeoisie overtook the aristocracy, while retaining many of its characteristics, and created the proletariat, the new antithesis. For reasons that he never adequately explained, he saw the next synthesis, the “dictatarship of the proletariat”, as giving rise to a classless society, rather than continuing the cycle.
wombatron, when you say “general historical laws embodied in nature” are thereby saying that Marx himself was advocating this was a Natural Law?
Not really. I mean laws in the scientific sense of empirical truths. I was being unclear with the whole “nature” thing; I was trying to distinguish Marx’s materialism from Hegel’s view, which is idealist.
I didn’t see a problem if Marx was advocating his position was a natural law. Anybody can do that. The question is, “Is it really a natural law.” And that’s when the true debate and test of an advocation begins. (side note: and I don’t think Marx’s position is a natural law and it’s been debunked numerous times)
It is somewhat related to Rousseau’s conception of the state of nature, in the sense that industrial communism is a kind of return to the “primitive communism” of the past, but it is really more of a historicist theory than a natural law. See Karl Popper’s critique in the wiki.
I understand it is a “historicist theory than a natural law”… just was wondering if Marx thought it was a natural law.
See the first. It is drenched in Hegelian metaphysics.
Thanks for pointing that out Jon. I listened. I would say Marx and Hegel did think they were professing natural laws. Hegel was saying he was looking for the logic of what is actual in nature. Marx was doing the same except on a more strictly materialists terms, meaning, he had no use and didn’t even consider reason/ideas. Therefore Marx though thinking he was discovering some sort of more fundamental nature to humans and society, both him and Hegel, especially Hegel whom emphasized this, is that even to consider this “logic” in nature, as Hegel put it, or to consider the underlying “laws of motion”, as Marx put it, the State is a must and is a law of nature, too. Without the State Hegel even said any of this “logic” of his philosophical argument wouldn’t even exist. Marx was purely focused on statism’s social exchanges and kept leaving out human reason. So Marx simply perverted Natural law cause he perverted human nature. It is human nature to reason, and Marx consistently argued against human’s ability to reason and have ideas in our nature. Our nature includes economic exchanges and Marx by excluding reason in any of these exchanges perverted and therefore corrupted what human nature is.
Marx is Hegel without the supernatural overtones.
You might consider reading the book (collection of essays) Requiem for Marx. I have found it really excellent in helping me understand and intelligently critique Marxian philosophy (etc.).
It’s available to buy from the mises store or download free in pdf form from the mises website.