THEME VII : ALIENATION OF MARXIST THOUGHT. MARX.

HISTORICAL ORIGIN OF MARXISM.

The two most important Marxists are Marx (1818 - 1883) and Hegel (1820 - 1845).

Their most important works are :

- The Holy Family

- The German ideology.

- The Manifesto of the Communist Party.

- The Capital.

In Philosophy they try to collect and reflect the concerns and fixations of the proletariat.

Historically the following origins have been pointed out in Marxism :

1.- Hegel's idealism.

2.- Feuerbach's theories.

3.- The industrial society as it was beginning to take shape in the English political economy
at that time.

The critique of French socialism, which was considered by Marx as utopian and unrealistic.

* MARXIST CONCEPT OF PHILOSOPHY.

Considering the origins, there is a close connection of Marxism with real life. On the one
hand, it reduces the idealistic theories and utopian aspirations of socialism to the real and
concrete limits imposed by the analysis of the new industrial society.

Marx renounces pure (theoretical) philosophy in order to study the economic situation
philosophically, with the aim of transforming it through political action.

On these bases, Marxism establishes the concept of pure philosophy, it does not consider it
neither as a pure theoretical speculation, nor as a moral practice, but it considers it as a
philosophy of praxis (philosophy of action that proposes to transform the socioeconomic
world).

All the conceptions of Marxism are defined in Feuerbach's thesis: "Philosophers have done
nothing more than observe the world, it is a question of transforming it".
For Marx, philosophy will not consist in dealing with philosophical issues, but to
philosophically confront reality to adapt it to the demands and needs of man, in particular,
Marx addresses the economic reality.

Marxist philosophy is a form of materialism, which is called dialectical materialism.

* DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM

To define what materialism is, he resorts to the theological theorem of creation, posed in the
following terms :Whether the world has been created by God, or whether it is eternal. The
solution of this problem divides philosophers into two main groups:

- Idealists : Those who affirm that God is the creator of the world.

- Materialists : They maintain that matter is eternal.

According to the concept of matter, we have two types of materialism:

- Metaphysical : Believes that matter is like an inert mass, fixed and immobile.

- Dialectical : it is Marxism. It says that matter has in itself the principle of movement.

* DIALECTICS AND ITS LAWS.

Engels defines dialectics as "the belief in the general laws of motion and development of
nature, human society and thought".

The laws can be summarized in 4 :

- Law of dialectical change : There is nothing absolute, everything is becoming and

transitory.

- Law of reciprocal action: dialectical movement is the result of a chain of processes or

phases that arise one from the other. The world, nature, and society have a historical
development, and this development is self-dynamism.

- Law of contradiction : Things change because they contain a contradiction in themselves.

- Law of the transformation of quantity into quality: Once certain degrees of quantitative
change are reached, a qualitative conversion takes place.

In conclusion, Marxists summarize the dialectical process corresponding to the Hegelian

method.

The dialectic consists of 3 elements :

- Thesis : affirmation.
- Antithesis : negation.

- Synthesis : negation of negation (we must distinguish between verbal negation and
dialectical negation, which means "destruction").

* HISTORICAL MATERIALISM.

The explanation of history by means of the principles and methods of dialectical materialism
is called historical materialism.

The dialectical movement is possible thanks to the "driving forces of history", which are three
:

- Ideas.

- The class struggle.

- Economic contradictions.

Ideas appear in the life of peoples on a political plane. The class struggle is behind the
struggle of ideas and is translated on the social plane. There are also the economic
contradictions, which are determined by the plane of technique and which are translated on
the economic plane.

These driving forces of history are related to each other in the following way:

- History is the work of men.

- Ideas are a reflection of the social conditions in which men live.

- These social conditions are the product of classes and their struggles.

- Classes are determined by economic conditions.

Taking into account this linkage, Engels concludes that the class struggle is the fundamental
motor of history ; in turn, he says that " the economy determines the class " and with this
statement he formulates what is called the " Theory of class consciousness ", which consists
of :

It is not the belief of men that determines their conditions, but the other way around, the
conditions of each person that determines his beliefs.

Applying this theory to the historical process, it is said that in ancient Greece there was a
difference of classes : masters and slaves ; in the Middle Ages : lords and serfs ; in the
modern world : bourgeoisie and proletariat.

INFRASTRUCTURE : It is the economic base or also called factors of production. They are :
- Productive forces : They relate man to Nature.

- Relations of production: Those that are established around work.

The infrastructure conditions all social life, determining its legal and political organizations,
its philosophical formulations, its artistic or cultural expressions and its religious beliefs.

SUPERSTRUCTURE : The form of legal and political organization of a society (institutions).

The "theoretical products" are : Law, Philosophy, Religion and morals. The Superstructure is
determined by the economic infrastructure.

* THE PROCESS OF INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION.

The division between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat is a product of the industrial
production process.

Before this appeared, work was carried out by a series of individual acts, now, however, it is
carried out by a series of social acts, since the machines used in the process do not require
individual labor, but collective labor. Paradoxically, the property regime of these machines is
either individual or private.

Collective labor is based on the division of labor, and labor injures the individuality of the
worker in itself.

Applying the laws of dialectics, Marxism considers that in industrial society, the thesis is the
capitalist bourgeoisie, which through the exploitation of the worker has given rise to a social
class which is the proletariat, which confronts the previous class through revolutionary action
or what is the same, the class struggle. The proletariat is the antithesis. This struggle will
have to be resolved in a higher synthesis, which is the communist ideal.

MARXIST HUMANISM.

Marxism only recognizes the class as the protagonist of history.

In opposition to this interpretation, the Marxist Lukacs tries to humanize Marxism from its
very sources and turns to the works of Marx.

In the early writings, called "Economic Manuscripts", he found sufficient basis for a humanist
interpretation of Marxism.

These writings are said to date from before 1845 and are called "the young Marx".

On the other hand, there is another interpretation, that of Althusser, who maintains that
between the writings of the young Marx and the later ones, there is a rupture that invalidates
the former for a definitive interpretation of Marxism.

Althusser considers that he has replaced concrete man by universal concepts

(superstructure, infrastructure).
This diversity of interpretations, together with the need for Marxists to return to the original
sources, justifies the claim that no thinker has been as influential or as misunderstood as
Marx, that unknown philosopher.

In conclusion, the return to the young Marx has provided Marxism with two theories that
have had great diffusion and great influence on current thought:

1.- The exaltation of the concrete man has made possible the interpretation of Marxism as
one of the forms of humanism.

2.- The notion of alienation incorporated by Marxists to the present culture although it had
already been used with less success by Rosseau and Hegel.

ALIENATION AND TYPES.

The word comes from alienus, which means: something foreign or strange. It is the act by
which the ownership of a thing is transferred. In German idealist philosophy, the word
acquires a new meaning, something like: alienation of man from himself, losing his
authenticity.

In Marxism, alienation means the loss of man's being in his products or intuitions; it is also
said to be the historical situation in which man finds himself in the sphere of the process of
capitalist labor by not realizing the dependence that all human work has on the material
conditions of production.

Types :

1.- Economic alienation : Or alienation of labor : for Marxism it is the fundamental one, it is
from where all the others start. Economic alienation has a double aspect in turn:

- With respect to the product : because the worker is dispossessed of the result of his labor.

- In the very act of production: Because the worker loses his individuality; the work is not his,
it is a frustrated and frustrating work. In capitalism, the worker gets only what is fair and
necessary to subsist.

Economic alienation is the radical cause of all human evils.

Philosophical alienation: It consists in the illusion of pretending to interpret or contemplate

reality outside of praxis, that is, of the real or material conditions of human existence.

Political alienation: Consists in supposing that the state represents the conciliation of
particular interests when in reality it is a repressive instrument of the dominant class.

Religious alienation: Consists in the projection of an imaginary God with attributes that only
belong to man. Man loses himself in the illusion of a transcendent world. This alienation is
motivated by the state of misery in which man finds himself. It is like a consolation, a relief, it
is the sigh of the oppressed creature and is the opium of the people.

Social alienation: It consists in projecting the class conflict on the illusory plane of a
harmonious society, hiding the reality of the class struggle, since the class struggle is not
something accidental but something constitutive.

IDEOLOGY

It is the false explanation of reality. It is an intellectual product that depends on the relations
of production. Ideology hides reality and serves to justify and maintain the conditions of
exploitation of one class by another.

Linked to the concept of ideology is the concept of superstructure.

MARXIST CONCEPTION OF MAN.

It is a doctrine made by action, and its philosophy is a philosophy of praxis, and is opposed
to the philosophy of interpretation. Action becomes the key to thought, and man must
demonstrate the truth in practice, if it is not God who creates man, it can only be man who
creates himself. He does it by means of material or productive work.

Man masters that which is external to him, but not by means of thought but by means of
effort, by struggle against Nature, and Nature is hostile.

For the socialist man, the whole of world history is only a creation of man by means of
human labor.

By man we must understand the species, because life belongs to the species. Man is man
only in the totality of the species and in society.

THE THESES ON FEUERBACH.

These are the points on which Marx will not agree with Feuerbach.

It is the result of Marx's philosophical theses during the year 1845.

The main defect of all previous forms of materialism is for Marx its connection with
passivism.

Feuerbach places himself in a merely explanatory point of view of reality, without thinking
that this same reality could be modified. He does not understand the revolutionary meaning
because he remains anchored in the distinction between theoretical philosophy and practical
philosophy. On the other hand, Marx attempts the unification between philosophy and praxis,
and this unification is only realized in revolutionary thought.

2.- It deals with the question of whether human thought has an objective truth. According to
Marx, it is in praxis where man must demonstrate the truth.
The problem of whether human thought has an objective truth is not theoretical but practical.

He criticizes the materialism of the eighteenth century, according to this materialism, man is
the fruit of certain circumstances and historical conditions. For Marx this materialism is also
passivist and the practical consequence of this materialism is the division of society into two
parts. This materialism by its confidence in education, is linked to reformism, to this
reformism Marx opposes the so-called revolutionary materialism (or revolutionary praxis).

Here he overcomes Feuerbach's reasoning on religious alienation.

Feuerbach's conception is a psychological interpretation of religion. Feuerbach said that man

projects in a world beyond all his desires, all his needs. According to Marx, Feuerbach lacks
a true and authentic critique, he lacks the passage from philosophy to praxis.

For Marx, only through the revolutionary process can the historical conditions that make the
religious illusion necessary in a given period be changed. If we change the religious
conditions, the thesis would disappear.

5.- Return to the first. For Marx atheism understood as the disappearance of the problem of
the idea of God follows from the disappearance of that economic reality which makes the
economic superstructure possible.

It is the key to all Marxist thought. It speaks of the theme of the human essence.

For Marx the human essence is not something abstract that resides in the individual in
singular.

Man is the whole of social relations. The critique of the essence of man is the foundation of
historical materialism. This materialism speaks of the primacy of the economy, for if these
ideals are abolished, only economic man remains.

In conclusion, history is explained by two factors:

- The economy which constitutes the infrastructure.

- The other expressions of life which are: art, law, morality and religion. All this is
superstructure.

It is not ideas that move history, but economic forces.

Marx's historicism is affirmed.

Feuerbach's man is still an abstract man, and against this, Marx contrasts the social man.

In conclusion, it is believed that Feuerbach's theory is still reformist, because he believes

that reforming the culture or the heads, social change is produced.
Marx thinks that only the political-social revolution can bring about change.

He reaffirms his ideas on the historical and social character of man, since history is reduced
to economic history. Political economy is constituted in the science of man and everything
else is superstructure.

9.- The materialism of the 18th century is inadequate because after unmasking it limits itself
to looking at society but without really revolutionizing it.

10.- He speaks of naturalistic materialism, which is the old one; it is a materialism that is
situated from the point of view of the one who observes reality. From this speculative point of
view, the world appears to be composed of selfish individuals with a competitive attitude
among themselves. This materialism expresses the reality of bourgeois society as a reality
of singular individuals animated by selfish interests.

In conclusion, the new materialism must lead individualistic humanity to social humanity.

11.- Philosophers have done nothing more than contemplate the world; it is a question of
transforming it.

Philosophy must be replaced by revolution.