Karl Marx

Karl Marx is an outcome of Philosophical Radicals continuing rationalism and opposing the Romantics, he revived materialism for the ‘modern’ philosophers. As a successor of Hegel, he was the last of great system-builders these philosophers believed in a rational formula summing up processes of evolution.

Marx’s philosophy was useful for Western Europe, he had no bias towards them unlike Hegel’s German nationalism however the same could not be said for the East; he despised the Slavs. Marx was stimulated by the constant hope of social revolution, for him this was always going to be the eventual end. He was separated from other philosophers at the time as he held a scientific stance, appealing towards the significance of evidence.

Karl Marx’s economics represent the interests of the wage earner; their fire and passion are appropriate to a new revolutionary movement. This led him to write the Communist Manifesto of 1848.

The dialectical, for Marx, was a form of instrumentalism where all sensation or perception is the interaction between object and subject. Objects are the raw materials transformed when they are known. Marx sees knowledge as passive contemplation, unreal abstraction and the process that takes place is one of handling things i.e evidence. The truth – reality and power of thought- must be demonstrated but reality or non-reality is isolated from practice: scholastic philosophy.

Philosophers interpreted the world; the real task is to alter it.

Subject and object are in a continuous process of mutual adaptation which is never fully complete in a circular cycle. Marx denies the reality of sensation by British empiricists; he believed that ‘noticing’ implies activity of the object which is not possible. We only notice things as part of the process of acting with reference to them therefore any theory that leaves out action is a misleading abstraction.

Like Hegel, Marx believes that the world develops through the dialectical formula but disagrees on the motive force behind its development – this being Matter. The most important relation to matter for man is mode of production; this is when materialism becomes economics. Marx has a materialist conception of history in his politics, religion, philosophy and economics it expresses the mentality appropriate for the State. Technical considerations once again highlight the problem of universals.

One triad concerned Marx, this was: feudalism, capitalism, Socialism. Classes are the vehicles of the dialectic movement but the issue in this theory is it is too practical, confined purely to this world and man only. Marx is teleological in that history should progress into a better reality, a form of cosmic optimism.

Man is naturally a productive animal, according to Marx, and not a figure but a shaper of the landscape making tools and co-operating with raw facts and data. Capitalism is chaotic and will ensure revolution it advocates the drudgery of repetitive work. People begin to value things over each other; work is the loss of self it belongs to another and prevents development of the mind and body.

Communism was seen as a solution to capitalism – in the dialectic the bourgeoisie would be the thesis, the proletariat the antithesis and socialism would become the synthesis. Goods in a socialist society would be produced for use and not for profit with wealth being evenly distributed across the State. Socialism would then evaporate into the final stage of communism.

‘The theory of communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property’