Marxist humanism

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Rodolfo Mondolfo

The Marxist humanism (also humanistic Marxism called) as a special case of the philosophical humanism is a branch of humanism which greatly to the early works of Karl Marx focused. Its advocates try to regain the humanistic aspect, which they interpret as the essence of Marxism.

Origin, history and representatives

Marxist humanism developed mainly in the years after the Second World War . Important theorists were the German Ernst Bloch , Adam Schaff and Leszek Kołakowski from Poland, in France Roger Garaudy , the Italian Rodolfo Mondolfo and Erich Fromm , who also tried to incorporate aspects of Sigmund Freud's theories in his humanism ( see also Freudomarxism ), and Herbert Marcuse from the United States. These authors have tried to regain and develop the humanistic aspect, which, according to their interpretation, is the essence of Marxism. They distanced themselves both from the Stalinist regime of the Soviet Union and Mao's violent redistribution policy, as well as from the state bureaucracies in Central and Eastern Europe that followed the time of Stalin.

In 1890 Friedrich Engels had emphasized in a letter to Joseph Bloch that Marxism had been misunderstood and that it was a mistake to see an absolute and one-sided determinism of the productive forces on consciousness and the superstructure. Consciousness, in turn, has an impact on structure and is necessary for the revolutionary understanding of changes in structure and of the contradiction between the forces of production and social relations.

An important opponent of Marxist humanism was the philosopher and representative of so-called "antihumanism", Louis Althusser , who described Marxist humanism as "revisionist". He criticizes the fact that the representatives of the current do not take into account the contrast between the young and older Marx - he himself describes the change in Marx's thinking that took place in the German ideology as an "epistemological break". For Althusser, the humanism of the early writings Marx, which was mainly influenced by Ludwig Feuerbach , is 'incompatible with the later theories of Marx', as characterized above all in his work Das Kapital .

The practice group represented an important movement of Marxist humanism .

Think

“ Communism as a positive abolition of private property as human self-alienation and therefore as a real appropriation of human nature by and for people; therefore as a complete return of man, consciously and within the whole wealth of previous development, as a social , ie human, man. This communism is as perfect naturalism = humanism , as perfect humanism = naturalism, it is the true resolution of the conflict between man and nature and with man, the true resolution of the conflict between existence and essence, between objectification and self-affirmation , between freedom and necessity, between individual and species. He is the solved riddle of history and knows himself to be this solution. "

- Karl Marx: Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts , Volume III. Marx-Engels Complete Edition. Department I. Volume 2. p. 263

The advocates of Marxist humanism emphasized the importance of the youth writings by Karl Marx, especially the “ Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts from 1844 ”, the “ German Ideology ” and the “Critique of Hegel's Legal Philosophy”. These early works were not discovered until the 1930s and were regarded in large parts of the Eastern Bloc as documents of Marx's still immature thought. The proponents also sought a new interpretation of Marx's thought through an interpretation that was not strictly economic and materialistic .

They also emphasized that excerpt from the “Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts” in which Marx claims: “But man is not only a natural being, he is a human natural being; that is, a being that is for itself, therefore a species being , as which it must confirm and act both in its being and in its knowledge. So the human objects are neither the natural objects as they are immediately offered [...]. But also nature , taken abstractly, fixed for itself, in the separation from human beings, is nothing for human beings . " Marx further wrote in the "Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts": "We see here how the naturalism or humanism carried out differs from both idealism and materialism and is at the same time their unifying truth."

According to the philosopher Rodolfo Mondolfo (1877–1976), if one examines the historical materialism of Marx and Engels closely, “one must recognize that it is not a matter of materialism, but a real humanism that is at the center of every consideration and discussion Concept of the human being. ”It is a“ realistic humanism (real humanism), as the creators themselves called it, which tries to see the human being in its effective and concrete reality. He tries to understand his existence in history and to understand history as a reality created by man through his activities, his work, his social actions over the centuries in which the process of education and change of the environment in which man lives and in which man himself develops, at the same time as the effect and cause of all historical evolution. ”In this sense it could be stated that historical materialism cannot be confused with a materialistic philosophy.

See also

Web links

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  1. ^ Dictionary of the new humanism
  2. ↑ “The economic situation is the basis, but the various moments of the superstructure - political forms of the class struggle and its results - constitutions, established by the victorious class after a battle has been won, etc. - legal forms, and now even the reflexes of all these real struggles in the The brains of those involved, political, legal, philosophical theories, religious views and their further development into dogmatic systems also exert their influence on the course of the historical struggles and in many cases mainly determine their form. It is an interaction of all these moments, in which ultimately through all of the infinite amount of contingencies (i.e. of things and events whose inner connection with one another is so distant or so undetectable that we can regard it as nonexistent, we can neglect the economic one) as necessary Movement prevails. Otherwise the application of the theory to any historical period would be easier than the solution of a simple equation of the first degree. ”Friedrich Engels to Joseph Bloch September 21, 1890 (Marx-Engels-Werke. Volume 37, pp. 462–465 here p. 463 ). ( Memento of the original from January 18, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.dearchiv.de
  3. ↑ Karl Marx: Economic-philosophical manuscripts. Book III (Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe. Department I. Volume 2, pp. 409 and 416).
  4. ↑ Karl Marx: Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts , Volume III. Marx-Engels Complete Edition. Section I. Volume 2. p. 408.
  5. ^ Quote from the New Lexicon of Humanism