Painting The Town red

Get out the red flags and throw away all your stuff! Because it’s time to talk about Karl Marx, and communism.

He's got something you don't. A great big bushy beard!

Marx started his academic life brilliantly, initially studying law, he was held up as a model pupil. Until, to the shock of his tutors, he changed to philosophy. And from that, no doubt to the utter horror of his parents, he took up journalism. He’d have caused quite a stir in any press conference no doubt, what with the crazy-rabbi look going on. Indeed, his radical thinking got him kicked out of pretty much any country he tried to live in, until he came to London, the home of free thought.

Marx’s basic principle was that man was a productive animal. He is master of the world because of his use of tools (In a sense, you could say that man has out-evolved evolution).

Marx took a Darwin-like approach to his research, studying every aspect of society in order to try and understand it. He believed that other philosophers made no attempt at real change, they just spent their time sitting in darkened rooms, pontificating all the worthy questions of life.




Indeed his tombstone is inscribed with the words:

“Workers of the world unite”

“Philosophers have only interpreted the world - the point however is to change it.”

Very eloquently written, and ever the pragmatist.

Engles, an associate of Marx who also had a fantastic beard, and helped publish the Communist Manifesto. Said that Marx achieved in his philosophy, a fusion of Hegelian philosophy (dialectics), British empiricism (As of Adam Smith), and French revolutionary politics, especially the socialist side (remember from our romanticism discussion, “Man is born free but everywhere he is in chains”).

Though he was a self-proclaimed disciple of Hegel, he attacked the mysticism and idealism which clouded much of the man's work. He did not approve of wishy-washy ideas like the Geist, or the spirit of the world. But he did approve of the Dialectic, that opposing points of view could come together and form new (supposedly better) points of view. The dialectic that Marx favoured was based on materialism. No he didn’t spend his time angsting over the latest PlayStation console, or a particular polo shirt that is exactly the same as the one from Peacock’s only this one has a special label which makes it fly or something. No, his materialism was that which is based in the real world. Not the ethereal haze of other philosophers.

In this respect, the main focus of the dialectic was the conflict between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The proletariat are the plebeians, the workers, they were the people who had no means of production save for themselves. They are the lowest rung on the ladder, and as such, they have nothing to lose. As Marx said: “they have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.”

On the other side of the scale, the Bourgeoisie are the people who have property, whether they’re rich aristocrats, or the meanest landlord, they own some form of subsistence.  Marx predicted that at some point in the future. There would be a clash between the two parties, resulting in the victory of the proletariat, and the introduction of a socialist system in which production is used for the benefit of society as opposed to the benefit of the market (for an outline of the market system referred to, look at my earlier post on Adam Smith’s Opulence of Nations). This would show all the people that this is to the common good (hello hello, traces of Rousseau’s General Will idea) and the state would be able to disappear. Leaving a society not alienated by the division of labour (another Smith idea) as all activities are considered equal. The rocket scientist is not above the farmer, they are both as important as each other.

“From each according to their ability, to each according to his need”

Of course all of this is brilliant in theory, the USSR took up their own version of it, as did several other countries (everyone knows about the Berlin Wall for example, not to mention Cuba) though none of them got it quite right. It’s probably worth remembering that whilst Marx was dying, he said to his best pupil something along the lines of:

 “You were my best pupil, and not even you got what I’d meant.”

Damn Commies.

Here Come the Germans.

Seminar time certainly comes about quickly. This time we were discussing Kant and Hegel. And these are my higgledy-piggledy notes.

Immanuel Kant was of the ideological school of thought that believed in (to paraphrase) mind over matter. Many of his writings have an air of romanticism about them, and indeed I got a feeling that there was a definite link to Rousseau’s General Will idea (as mentioned in a previous blog).

Kant is a great believer in a priori knowledge (knowledge that is known without experience), and is vehemently anti-empiricist.

We also discussed perception of the world. This tends to annoy me as I can’t see the point of thinking about it. For anyone who doesn’t know what I mean (probably most of you), a good example is that if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around, does it make a sound? The usual argument being that sound is a human concept, and if there are no humans there to hear it then no sounds exists. This kind of talk irritates me because I can’t see the relevance to my life. As far as I’m concerned, when trees fall over, they make noise. It’s wouldn’t matter if there was noone around to hear it because it doesn’t affect people. At least, not until they find their car blocked by a tree lying across the road.

We also touched upon Numenal objects, which are things around us that cannot be seen , but we know they are there. This got George very excited because it meant he could talk about dark matter and other physicsy gobbledegook, but most of it went sailing over my head. Something about string theories…

But I digress. Kant would say that if something is not being perceived, it is still there. But it is constantly changing. At a molecular level he is right, but once again, I don’t see the practicality of thinking like that. It just gets in the way of the important things in life. Like crossword puzzles.

As far as his morals go, he might as well live on a chessboard, they are just black and white. Lies are bad, even for a good cause, because the good cause is in relation to you. Doing your duty is very important (this part got very Nurembergy at this point).

It is interesting to note that in their respective ways, both the Nazis, and the Christians, are followers of Kant’s train of thought. Though obviously, not necessarily with the same results. We’ll see.

Hegel was essentially the same start as Kant. He was a Romantic and he was anti-empiricist. He was not a fan of logic (in the traditional sense), considering it to be metaphysical and therefore of no real use. His theories centred around the idea of absolutes. There is no truth without the whole, and since it is virtually impossible to know everything as it is irredeemably complex, nothing could be considered wholly true. A simplified example of this would be to say: A is the father of B, Kant would reply that we do not  sufficiently know A enough to make such a statement. We would need to know all his relations to everything in the universe before we could assess his relationship to B. Not particularly practical in my opinion. Maybe we’ll just give him the benefit of the doubt (I tried to be ironic there, I’m not sure if it worked…).

Something that both Kant and Hegel share is a love of change. And the best way for change to happen (in their opinions) is war. Generally, in war, you have two opposing sides, and whichever side wins, spreads their values to the other side. This allows for greater improvement of said values as there are more people to work on them. War is change, only accelerated.

This also leads to the Geist. It’s not easy to pin down what this means, but Spirit will do. It is the essence of thought at a time. Zeitgeist, for example, meaning in this context the ‘wind of change’ blows across the world carrying ideas (for want of a better word). You could say that the Zeitgeist of the current epoch is revolution. From the student protests in London, to the demonstrations in Libya, Egypt, and Bahrain. They are all linked, with this ‘spirit’ regardless of boundaries. How very deep, I think I fell down a philosophy well. Oh dear.

Thanks for reading my terrible attempt to explain German ideology. Go get yourself something nice.