Marx and Materialism: a Study in Marxist Theory of Knowledge - Essay Example

Marx and Materialism Marx‘s critique on materialism begins with the ideology that materialism itself is the of only recognizing those things which are tangible and physical. This basic understanding of materialism does not have a place for the unseen existence of consciousness or the workings of the human mind. Materialism was such that mental states of being simply did not exist in reality because they were not able to be experienced first hand by another individual, only the individual from whom the mental state first originated from. Marx and Engel developed their own version of materialism such that a broader array of existence could be explained instead of just the immediate physical and tangible. Marx and Engle would integral in changing how many thought and comprehended the world and society around them, in the Communist Manifesto. The purpose of this discussion is to explore the ideology behind this work as it relates to materialism specifically and what this means to the individual. Marx used materialism, the idea that all knowledge can be gained through science, as a foundation to explore his philosophy and the idea of class struggles. In the conceptual theories of materialism that Marx and Engel developed, the one dimensional perception of reality stemming from materialism was developed into a multidimensional idea of existence. Materialism itself may dictate that a human being is simply a manifestation of physical matter and thus scientifically explained. Marxism took this ideology a step further into dialectical materialism which allowed for certain laws to govern such a concept. The law of opposites for example, dictates that all things in nature have an opposite such as male and female; day and night. Marxism fundamentally teaches that everything there is to know or understand can be explained scientifically, and thus his theories on dialectical materialism arose. Marx and Hegel also formulated the law of negation which basically stated that all things in nature acted at some point to negate itself. For example, if a plant grows from a seed, experiences a life cycle and then dies; it will have left its seed allowing for the birth of a new plant and so on. This is also true of humans. The law of transformation then states very much the same thing that Darwin’s law of evolution states. Things change as a result of time and quantity. In other words, as a large quantity of something develops, it then develops qualitatively as well. Humans for example have evolved over time not only in number but in intelligence and efficiency. We have developed into a more functional and intelligent species just as all things which develop in number must also increase qualitatively as well, according to Marxism. Beyond even these basic laws of dialectical materialism, Marx and Engel are known for their communist theory which is not only a relatively common term today, but just as it is common it is equally misunderstood or stigmatized. Marxism aimed at explaining existence of all things from a multifaceted perspective and in such a way that the whole could be examined as opposed to the individual. In the Communist Manifesto, an ideology for social evolution began with a concept of looking at what was best for the whole which is the rudimentary basics of communism. In critiquing materialism, Marx attempted to explain the place of the individual within the overall picture of society: "It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom - Free Trade" (Marx et al, p222). As such, the supposed personal freedom that capitalism offered only accomplished the dehumanizing of people. Since everything was now a commodity, this included people’s labor and, when applied further, eventually meant that people’s lives were basically up for buying and selling. As this was the case, the supposed freedom offered by free trade stripped people of their freedom as the were commodities themselves. Obviously if people were merely commodities, they could not claim to have any freedoms on their own. Under capitalism, the function of objects served as an explanation of their entire worth. Accordingly, women were viewed as merely a means of furthering the human race, thus stripping them of any value beyond being an instrument of production. As Marxism states that everything is explained through an object’s physicality, this states that all people are instruments of production: “He has not even a suspicion that the real point is aimed at is to do away with the status of women as mere instruments of production” (240). Under socialism, as a materialist theory, there is no reason to view women, or anyone else according to their age or sex, differently: “Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity for the working class. All are instruments of labour, more or less expensive to use, according to their age and sex” (228). The attempt to give value to people beyond their means of production is to state that there is more to people than their physical states. The only aspects of people that can be viewed as anything beyond their physical states, which be viewed synonymously as their means of production, would be their mental states, which would include intelligence, personality types, and various other aspects of a person’s psychological make-up. Of course, all of these various aspects are not given any weight under Marxism as a materialist philosophy. Without any of these aspects to consider, there is no way to build arguments beyond people as their means of production. Beyond mental states, Marxism attempts to abolish ideas such as religion and absolute truths, such as notions of justice. These are all to be considered results of collective mental states, and as such cannot be considered to have any real anchor in the realm of materialism: “There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience” (242). The abolition of religion and eternal truths has a very specific reason behind it. With these aspects in place, human history could be considered to be the story of religion and people’s attempts to find and implement these eternal truths, such as justice. With aspects of human society, there is a void that must be filled, that void being the driving force behind human history. Beyond the abolishment of barriers that keep people separated, which is one way to view the violence between different religions throughout history, the abolishment of religion and other philosophies serves to act as a means of explaining all of the history of society: “What does this accusation reduce itself to? The history of all past society has consisted in the development of class antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different forms at different epochs” (242). With materialistic means being the only driving course behind society, history is reduced to what is the physicality of human beings. As human beings can be viewed as means of production, the history of humans can be viewed as the struggle between different classes, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. These class antagonisms were the basis for all conflicts throughout history as there are no ideological conflicts possible under Marxism. As the proletariat, who were forced into a virtual slavery by the bourgeoisie, would eventually tire of this power relationship and after realizing that the values that the bourgeoisie had instilled within them through religion and various philosophical and ideological means had no real place in society, would, considering their outnumbering and ability to deprive the bourgeoisie of their production considering that the proletariat were entirely responsible for this production, this overthrow was entirely inevitable. As we can see, if we follow step by step, the end result of using materialism as the basis for their philosophy was to show that the proletariat would eventually overthrow the bourgeoisie. Materialism as a philosophy was inadequately developed on its own previously to really amount to anything. What Marx and Engels did was to develop the theory to an extent a to be able to show real world ramifications of such a philosophy. Work Cited: Mark, Karl. Engel, Frederick. The Communist Manifesto, New York, Penguin Publishing - Penguin Books, 2002. Read More