Gnostic Marxist
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ALB wrote: “Two more pieces confirming that Marx was a materialist (without scare quotes). The debate about whether or not this is the case must surely be over. Perhaps it is.”
I hope that you are proved correct, ALB. Once everyone agrees that ‘material’ for Marx meant ‘human’ (as opposed to ‘ideal’ meaning ‘divine’), and that all ‘material conditions’ means for Marx is ‘social conditions’, then all socialists can get down to work on how we, collectively, democratically, can change our ‘social conditions’.
ALB wrote: “Materialism is basically a rejection of theological explanations of experience rather than a commitment to a particular theory of the nature of “matter”.”
Yes, but Marx not only rejected the ‘theological’, but replaced it with the ‘human’, which is why he wasn’t simply a ‘materialist who rejects the theological’.
ALB wrote: “Materialists can have all sorts of theories about that or none. They can even be agnostic about it.”
Perhaps ‘materialists’ (of the ‘old’ variety, Pre-Marx) can, but Marxists certainly can’t. Marxists hold to the theory that humans create ‘matter’, and since ‘matter’ (as Engels said (quote above), it’s a human product) is a socio-historical product by humanity, we can change it. In a future democratic socialist society, any changes being made to ‘matter’ would be democratically decided, unlike in the capitalist mode of production, where an elite determines whether ‘matter’, or ‘mass’, or ‘energy’, or whatever comes next, is our social product. They change it undemocratically now, and we can change it democratically in the future.
I think it is fair to say that by “material” in his materialism Marx meant “social conditions” and that, as these are created by human activity they can be changed by human action, at this stage of human social evolution democratically into socialism.
But this “material” is not the same as “matter” as the subject of human experience. As far as I know, the only place Marx discusses this is in detail is in this chapter of The Holy Family, another of his writings of the time (1845) in which he was settling his final accounts with German philosophy. People can make of it what they will.
https://marxists.architexturez.net/archive/marx/works/1845/holy-family/ch06_3_d.htm
Whatever it is that humans experience, it is not like social conditions, i.e., a product of human activity. Humans only describe it. They focus on a part of the world of experience (abstract it) and give it a name. This applies as much to tables and chairs as it does to “matter”. But this is not same as creating (bringing into existence) what is being described. That is there independently of human descriptions of it.
On this view, what scientists are doing is not “discovering” the world “as it really is” but describing it in various ways, ways that have changed over time, especially as technological advances have enabled humans to experience the world in new and different ways.
First of all, ALB, I have to say that we’re not very far apart, with your description of ‘social conditions’ as the meaning ‘material conditions’, which human activity creates and can thus change.
But…
ALB wrote: “Whatever it is that humans experience, it is not like social conditions, i.e., a product of human activity. Humans only describe it. They focus on a part of the world of experience (abstract it) and give it a name. This applies as much to tables and chairs as it does to “matter”. But this is not same as creating (bringing into existence) what is being described. That is there independently of human descriptions of it.”
You’re still separating ‘it’ from ‘product of human activity’. Thus, this ‘it’ can only be passively ‘described’. This denies ‘conscious human activity’ or ‘social production’. For Marx, anything outside of human production is a ‘nothing for us’.
The key point is how can this ‘it’ be ‘independent of human description’?
I suspect that the problem is that often people assume ‘independent’ means “outside of a biological individual’s brain”. Of course, this (unconscious?) assumption is precisely the same one that allows ‘value’ to supposedly be determined, not by social relations, but by ‘individual preference’. That was not Marx’s starting point.
By ‘independent of humanity’ is meant ‘outside of social human conscious activity’. But ‘matter’, ‘material’, ‘it’, etc., are all social products, which change over time, especially between modes of production.
For Marx, there is nothing outside of social production, because anything we know is a social product of our own conscious activity. Thus, we can change ‘it’ (whatever we call it) – whether ‘matter’, ‘hard stuff’, ‘the universe’, ‘the physical’, etc.
Once again, ALB, thanks for your thoughtful post – it provides a good basis for further discussion.
Perhaps a little more explanation…
It’s best to see Marx’s ‘ontology’ as an ontology of production.
In class-based ontologies, ‘Being’ has an independent ‘existence’ outside of any producer. But in a humanity-based ontology, based upon Marx’s ideas, ‘being’ is always ‘being-for’, where the producer of that ‘being’ must be given.
This unites the subject-object into a necessary relationship, so we have ‘object-for’, ‘exists-for’, ‘matter-for’, ‘real-for’, ‘nature-for’, ‘universe-for’, etc. None of these concepts can be adopted without the ‘-for’ suffix, because that would be to pretend that someone has a position outside of these concepts, but yet can know them. This would be a ‘god-like’ reference point.
This then makes sense of Marx’s concept of ‘Entausserung’ (‘externalisation’), whereby the subject produces its own object, thereby knowing it. Any ‘nature’ that we know, is a ‘nature-for-us’, which we’ve produced, and can thus, as Marx argued for, change. We externalise our nature to produce ‘nature-for-us’.
This also allows us to have a ‘unified science’, where the concepts, theories, practices, results, etc., are socially produced in the same way. That is, there would be no separation (introduced by bourgeois science) between ‘hard’ and ‘soft science’, science and art, ideas and reality, truth and opinion, politics and physics, etc.
Of course, a key feature of this ‘unified science’ would be that it would be democratic, because there wouldn’t be an academic elite who could pretend to know ‘being’ by passive observation and merely ‘describe’. Their conscious, active role in socially producing their ‘being-for-them’ would be exposed to all. Thus, Marx’s ‘revolutionary science’ would be established.
The interests and needs of all humanity, democratically determined, would be the basis of this ‘new science’.
The claim that Marx held that there is nothing outside of human conscious activity is groundless
The view that a tree doesn’t exist unless it is being observed has a long tradition in philosophy. It was expressed by the Irish philosopher, Bishop Berkeley, who got round the problem of this being contrary to common sense by saying that the tree existed because god was observing it, i.e the world external to an inividual existed in the mind of god. The view being groundlessly claimed as Marx’s gets round it by saying that it exists in the collective mind of humanity. The “empiriocriticism” that so enraged Lenin was also in this tradition.
There is no justification whatsoever for attributing it to Marx. Marx had once been interested (very interested) in philosopy but after 1845 left it aside to concentrate on economic and historical matters in accordance with his new “historical” materialism. He doesn’t seem to have been intererested in higher-order philosophical questions such as “ontology” (the nature of existence) or “epistemology” (the nature of knowledge), leaving Engels to deal with this when it arose.
Engels explicitly held that the external world existed independently of human perception of it. If Marx had indeed taken the “intersubjetivist” view that it only exists in the collective mind of humanity he would surely have criticised what Engels published in Anti-Dühring (1878). But he didn’t, from which I think it is fair to conclude that he accepted that the external world existed independently of the whole of humanity and its activity as well as of the individual.
So there is no justiication for attributing to Marx a theory that it doesn’t and for describing this as “Marxist” or as “Marx’s onotology”, especially not for the admittedly innovative addition to it that what the collective, intersubjective human mind decided existed should be taken by a democratic vote.
Basically, Marx didn’t have a view on the nature of existence and didn’t need to for his purposes (analysing how the capitalist economic system worked and helping workers organise for socialism). Like most people, he accepted that the external world existed without feeling the need to go into any philosophical justification for this.
I hasten to add that this means that the view I expressed cannot be called “Marxist” either since it wasn’t expressed by Marx himself. The most I would claim is that it was developed by two other revolutionay socialists, Joseph Dietzgen and Anton Pannekoek (who, as an astronomer, was a scientist himself) who noted that Marx hadn’t any particular theory of knowledge and set out to develop one that was compatble with Marx’s historical materialism.
Actually, the view that scientists are describing rather than discovering the external world is fairly mainstream. The view that the mind simply reflects the outside world is old hat these days.
ALB wrote: “The claim that Marx held that there is nothing outside of human conscious activity is groundless”
Marx, CW 3, p. 305, wrote: “…for the socialist man the entire so-called history of the world is nothing but the creation of man through human labour, nothing but the emergence of nature for man…” [Marx’s italics, my bold]
There are pages of similar claims by Marx surrounding this extract.
ALB wrote: “The view that a tree doesn’t exist…”
Once more, ALB, as I explained in my previous post, you (like the idealist Berkeley and his god) are employing the bourgeois ideology of the subject being an individual (active divine creator for Berkeley, passive biological clockwork for bourgeoisie), where ‘exist’ supposedly has no human subject.
For Marx, to ‘exist’ is to ‘exist-for’ a human social creator; so, as in quote, ‘nature for [hu]man[ity]’.
ALB wrote: “Engels explicitly held that the external world existed independently of human perception of it.”
Engels also held that it didn’t – I’ve already given his quote about ‘matter’ being a human product. Engels contradicted himself often, and Engels isn’t Marx. We’ve had long discussions about the invalidity of quoting Engels to represent (as did Lenin) Marx. There is not a unified being called ‘Marx-Engels’.
ALB wrote: “Actually, the view that scientists are describing rather than discovering the external world is fairly mainstream. ”
Yes, ALB, it’s a ruling class idea, so it would be ‘mainstream’.
According to Marx, ‘scientists’ (being human social producers) are, not ‘discovering’, not ‘describing’, but creating a ‘world-for-them’. ‘Them’ being the ruling class, the bourgeoisie.
As socialists, we have to help build a ‘world-for-humanity’, our social product, a ‘world’ which suits our needs and interests (expressed democratically), and not those of any ruling class. This is a unified world, not bifurcated into ‘hard’ and ‘soft’, or ‘material’ and ‘ideal’, or ‘nature’ and ‘society’, which is a creation of the bourgeoisie. Our ‘nature’ is a socio-historical ‘nature for us’. Which we can change.
Please address the points that Marx and I make, ALB, rather than suggest that he is, or I am, a follower of Divine Creation, like Berkeley.
“…for the socialist man the entire so-called history of the world is nothing but the creation of man through human labour, nothing but the emergence of nature for man…”
Surely Marx is describing the history of the world not the nature of that world.
You also fail to mention that your quote continues….
, nothing but the emergence of nature for man, so he has the visible, irrefutable proof of his birth through himself, of his genesis. Since the real existence of man and nature has become evident in practice, through sense experience,
My bolds not L Bird’s
I entirely agree with you and Marx, BD!
Everything revolves around humanity – not ‘god’ (as idealists like Berkeley allege), not ‘matter’ (as materialists like Lenin allege) but humanity. [Marx and my italics and bold!]
It’s all there – visible, birth, himself, genesis, ‘real existence of man and nature’ ‘evident in practice’, ‘through [human] sense experience’.
No mention whatsoever of ‘gods’ or ‘matter’. No passive humanity, no clockwork humanity.Whatever you think is ‘outside of human social production’, BD, you should name ‘it’ – and tell us why the rest of humanity can’t make the same decision as you apparently can, about its ‘existence’ or not.
As Marx pointed out, materialists simply have to split society into two – one part, the mass, who can’t be allowed to determine ‘it’, and another part, an elite, who can be allowed to determine ‘it’.
No doubt, you’ve saved yourself a place amongst The Elect, The Conscious Party Members, who will tell those supposedly unable to participate, what ‘it’ is.
Lenin argued quite the same, of course! The proletarians salute your selflessness, Oh Clever One! Show us the light, holy redeemer!
And ‘self-determination of the proletariat’ be damned, eh?
What is this ‘nature’ that is not ‘historical’, that you know? And how do you know it?
Marx (CW3, p. 305) wrote:
“Now it is certainly easy to say to the single individual what Aristotle has already said: You have been begotten by your father and your mother; therefore in you the mating of two human beings – a species-act of human beings – has produced the human being. You see, therefore, that even physically man owes his existence to man. Therefore you must not only keep sight of the one aspect – the infinite progression which leads you further to inquire: Who begot my father? Who his grandfather? etc. You must also hold on to the circular movement sensuously perceptible in that progress by which man repeats himself in procreation, man thus always remaining the subject. You will reply, however: I grant you this circular movement; now grant me the progress which drives me ever further until I ask: Who begot the first man, and nature as a whole? I can only answer you: Your question is itself a product of abstraction. Ask yourself how you arrived at that question. Ask yourself whether your question is not posed from a standpoint to which I cannot reply, because it is wrongly put. Ask yourself whether that progress as such exists for a reasonable mind. When you ask about the creation of nature and man, you are abstracting, in so doing, from man and nature. You postulate them as non-existent, and yet you want me to prove them to you as existing. Now I say to you: Give up your abstraction and you will also give up your question. Or if you want to hold on to your abstraction, then be consistent, and if you think of man and nature as non-existent, ||XI| then think of yourself as non-existent, for you too are surely nature and man. Don’t think, don’t ask me, for as soon as you think and ask, your abstraction from the existence of nature and man has no meaning. Or are you such an egotist that you conceive everything as nothing, and yet want yourself to exist?” [my bold]
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm
Any notion of a ‘Nature’, supposedly apart from, and preceding, humanity’s creation of a ‘Nature-for-Us’, is meaningless for Marx.
Nature is not ‘discovered’ or ‘described’ (by a specialist elite), but socially produced by humanity. No ‘nature’, no part of nature, is eternal, unchanging, fixed, unhistorical, asocial.
And since we produce ‘nature’, we can change it.
The only political question for Marxists, and those interested in building a future social society, is ‘Who will have the power to determine our nature?’ Is it to be an elite, a conscious minority, as Lenin argued? Or is it to be the whole of humanity, basing its social product upon the interests and needs of the whole of humanity, which are all determined democratically?
In fact, democratic socialism. A new mode of production for humanity, created by humanity itself. Self-emancipation.
BD, I think your interpretation of the passages from Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 is correct. In the passage he is arguing against that view God created humans and the rest of nature, not for the view that humans created nature. His argument was that humans created themselves by their labour in the rest of nature, which showed that both they and the rest of nature didn’t require something outside of them — “an alien being above nature and man” — to have come into existence.
In a preceding passage in the same section Marx had written “Generatio aequivoca is the only practical refutation of the theory of creation”, a term which means self-generation or spontaneous generation. Marx was applying this concept to the creation of humans and the rest of nature. This was a philosophical rather than an empirical refutation of creationism. It was not until some fifteen years later, in 1859, that Darwin provided the evidence of how one species spontaneously developed out of another, though even he didn’t know precisely how.
In 1844 Marx was still largely a Feuerbachian materialist but by 1845 had come to see its inadequancies, as he and Engels wrote in 1845 in The German Ideology:
“Of course, in all this the priority of external nature remains unassailed, and all this has no application to the original men produced by generatio aequivoca [spontaneous generation]; but this differentiation has meaning only insofar as man is considered to be distinct from nature. For that matter, nature, the nature that preceded human history, is not by any means the nature in which Feuerbach lives, it is nature which today no longer exists anywhere (except perhaps on a few Australian coral-islands of recent origin) and which, therefore, does not exist for Feuerbach.”
Nor for someone else, it seems.
Bijou, ALB, you’re entitled to draw whatever political and philosophical conclusions that you wish, from Marx.
But… drawing the ones that you seem to want to draw, it’s going to be up to ‘Nature’, ‘Matter’, and ‘Material Conditions’ (excluding ideas, or they would be also ‘ideal conditions’, to your way of thinking) to bring about a change in consciousness amongst the proletariat. Thus, the new mode of production of communism will have been brought about, not by the thinking, conscious, proletariat, but by ‘material conditions’.
It’s never going to happen, comrades. All the ‘materialist’ parties, Leninists, Trotskyists, Maoists, seemingly even the SPGB, will die out. Basically because they argue to workers that workers themselves are not needed to build science. Materialist parties don’t require democracy to learn, because they already know. Marx’s conclusion, too.
Well, workers will leave it to ‘material science’. Good luck organising the Specialists that you really want to appeal to.
The fundamental problem that you’ve got, is that ‘science’ no longer looks to ‘material’, and hasn’t done since the 19th century.
Basically because they argue to workers that workers themselves are not needed to build science. Materialist parties don’t require democracy to learn, because they already know. Marx’s conclusion, too.
This is utter crap. Workers are scientists. Scientists are workers.
Matthew, you seem to have a handle on things.
I presume, since you argue that ‘workers are scientists’, then you’d agree that ‘workers’ should determine ‘science’?I’m never sure quite what the SPGB is defending in these discussions about ‘science’.
Its members/sympathisers never seem to mention humanity, social production, proletariat, or democracy.
Who do you think your ideas will appeal to? Those ideas about ‘matter’ and a non-democratic science?
They won’t appeal to anyone who’s read Marx, who wants the self-emancipation of workers, who wants democratic production.
Don’t you ever give any thought to the certain demise of your party, and the whole ‘materialist’ ideology?
You seem to put ‘science’ before ‘democratic socialism’. And your notion of ‘science’ is outdated, and was by Marx’s time (as proved by Einstein).
I must admit, I’m baffled by what inspires you. If ‘material conditions’ (TM) will produce ‘socialism’, why would a worker bother to participate? The ideology of materialism cuts its own throat.
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