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On the Conflagrations of Marxist Thought and a Generalised View of Ideology
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16 May 2024
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17 May 2024
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Abstract
This article is an early draft on a proposed alternative to the current Marxist mode of thought; one that seeks to reject the generally ill-conceived and dogmatic proposals formulated by Marx in favour of another predicated on the more unwavering emotional ideals of the philosophy that preceded it. It eliminates that dogmatic mode in favour of a wholly social society, one that is founded upon the Marxist superstructure and intends hence to capture that humanity and re-form particularly economic principles that are used to construct the utopia into what is instead an entirely socially idealised frame of living.
Keywords:
marxism
; ideology
; spirit
; mind
; social revolution
; social ideology
; philosophy
Complex Networks and Social Networks
1. Introduction
Evidently, as much as it can be inferred and related to, Marxism has effectively disappeared as a recognizable political entity. This is two-fold, it relates partially to the temporal disjunction between Marx’s own aggressively nineteenth-century disposition and modern perspectives, and an unwavering attachment to that logical method of dialectical materialism.
One of the major issues with this stature is that it supports a particularly stagnant frame of ideological reasoning as found in historical materialism. This is problematic because of its falsity, of which is attested to with respect to Popper1 and Okioshio’s Theorem2.
However, it should be noted that the very political ideals discussed in Marx’s work are quite largely derived from a philosophical basis that Marx believed to be non-scientific. However, as this article would enjoy suggesting, the very nature of ideological politics is itself quite non-scientific. Instead, Marx’s scientific3 appropriation is such that its basis has been produced with relation to the very physical realities of the proletarian class. The many falsities and corrections made in modern academic economics supports the very imperfect status of Marxist Theory so conceived in Kapital - namely its connection to the theory of surplus value4.
Considering that Marxism’s own fault is in its obstinacy, the major change in the theory relates to an ability to detach oneself from that same obstinacy that Marxism follows. This will be presented in its divorce from a causality between social and economic prerogatives, of which Marxist Theory has described as the base and superstructure of a society respectively - a definition and purpose are described in 1.1.
1.1. Defining Economic and Philosophic Ideals in Marxist Thought
To begin, a functioning definition of the term social is required to understand how it is interpreted in the context of this theory. In accordance with this article’s particularly derivative position with respect to Marxist Theory5, the terms base and superstructure have been employed as definitions for economic and social ideas respectively – this has been done for two purposes, the first is to allow for a commentary to be made upon Marxist ideals cleanly within the boundaries that were originally set; the second is because the terms social and economic are qualitatively used in this article, such that their own meanings are retained.
Although the idea of the relation between the base and superstructure is entirely necessary to its consideration according to traditional Marxist Thought6, such has been disregarded for reasons so described in later sections while the structure (naturally without the relation, or certainly its implicit state) has been retained.
This subsection focuses on two major points of Marxist Theory’s derived Philosophy. These have been chosen because they represent irrefutable arguments made upon the basis of a personal philosophy.
The first is alienated labour, which is derived from the idea of a supernatural god alienating the natural traits of human beings. This was extended by Marx to become alienated labour, whereby human traits in labour are mollified by the practice of proletarian labour7.
We can thus understand that Marx’s extension to the frame of labour remains correct because it retains that abstracted master of the world8 that is present also in the idea of a supernatural god.
The following idea which Marx explores is that of Hegel’s idea of world history traversing through stages9, whereby the argument begins with a conception of a higher level of human consciousness and freedom that is thus attained.
Both of these points, alone, are placed within a philosophical treatment10, such that we can understand that their own correctness does remain valid. In effect, this argument attempts to retain the explicit degradation of the proletariat while removing the implicitly false scientific (in the words of Marx) status of Marxist Thought.
1.2. Assuming the Scientific Part of Marxist Thought to be Incorrect and Negligible
Das Kapital11 describes explicitly the assumed relationship between the capitalist and the proletariat, one that is centred on the idea of the wage-based cell unit. It assumes that this state is contradictory in the context of a steadily decreasing profit margin for the capitalist. The practice of capitalism is hence determined as simultaneously exploitative and self-destructive12.
What we understand now is that Marx’s point of capital outlay is evidentially false13, but importantly that the alienation of labour remains correct by that same philosophical interpretation. These are adept at describing social (recall that the term social relates to the aforementioned superstructure) issues and remain so.
With this distinction, the point is made for a differentiation between that original philosophical conception and Marxist Thought – naturally that the Philosophy occupies a characteristic universality to which its application can be considered. Such ideas as alienated labour and self-interest14 can absolutely be justified as possessing a more consistent stature because they relate to the modern moral argument for such socialist policies and too a perceptive ideal of societally derived reason.
2. How, Like Marxist Theory, Can Such Social Issues Be Interpreted?
As suggested in 1.2, the ideas that do support the later Marxist Economy are attached significantly to the real-world resultant of the time. Naturally, it is expressed that the proletariat is identified with the philosophy rather than by or from it. It should be noted that the idea of systematic economic determinism15 is absent in this description.
In this sense, it can be understood that the applicability of the theory extends to other forms rather than just the economic idea. However, considering the explicit faults that are understood in the context of the economic state, the same can be assumed for other ideas that are applied on top of the philosophies. This creates the new format of describing the philosophies in the context of which they do mark their origin: the social idea on which they are predicated.
Of course, in pursuing a matter of this context, a difference between the social and economic states must be assumed. However, the previous paragraph does not consider that such a position had not been assumed by Marx and Engels, and that to assume a disjoint notion between the philosophies that prefixed the later ideology is to consider an interjection upon the original theory. Indeed, Engels suggests that “But, in its theoretical form, modern Socialism originally appears ostensibly as a more logical extension of the principles laid down by the great French philosophers of the 18th century” – completely discrediting a social idea in favour of such translating to an economic statute. The position taken by this article affirms that position and situates itself in the context of that pre-Marxist theory predicated by Hegel and his contemporaries.
To consider the initial section of the Manifesto, Bourgeoisie and Proletarians16, it can be asserted that it has provided the reader with a perspective that adjoins the social and economic ideas quite decisively in the form of a more abject class struggle. Indeed, such is presented with “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles’’ (1848 [1992], p. 3). In the modern historical epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, the class struggle had been simplified—there were now only ‘‘two great classes,’’ the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Since the industrial revolution, the bourgeoisie had captured political control; ‘‘the executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.’’ Once in control, the bourgeoisie ‘‘pitilessly’’ put an end to all feudal and patriarchal relationships between employers and workers, and ‘‘left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous ‘cash payment’. . . for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation …” – in this quite elongated extract, there exist two elements that do contribute to the idea of a social and economic conflagration, these being class and the expression of power; expression of power relates explicitly to what it describes – that pragmatic usage of power. The distinction that class defines is a dual causality between social and economic stature: a greater economic reality contributes to a greater social reality and vice versa; however, the expression of that power considers a different approach than merely class such that it is absolute from that frame.
What must be understood instead is that, considering the intuition of the individual and one’s own self-determination along with one’s resources as well, that a whole removal of dialecticism is misplaced. Instead, it is more advantageous to assume that dialecticism operates in a more conscious manner of contradictions rather than an unconscious one. In this sense, the conscious dialecticism is explicitly determined, while the unconscious one is implicit. Dialectical Materialism is only applicable in explicit stages.
As has been derived from this extract, it can be understood that a greater “political control” relates exclusively to the domain of the bourgeoisie. However, it should be understood that the falsities of dialectical materialism are present here; and indeed, that the non-deterministic yet imbued interrelations that are proposed by Marx17 are followed to affect still to that same necessity of the class that controls its epoch to manifest a “political control”, as such. It is this blind regularity and innate disposition toward the form of the Contradictory18 that creates its own incorrect identities (as have been discussed) instead of simply assuming a set of falsities in capitalist modes and an accompanying set of truths in philosophical modes.
2.1. On Wholly Different Outcomes of Theory
For a brief introduction, the word outcome has been employed to describe the idealised worldview that ideology so describes. In this subsection, it has been used for the purpose of defining differences between the finality of Marxist Thought and that of this new form.
The previous section considered the differences between social and economic issues as a matter of causality from the original Philosophy to Marxist Thought. However, it does not provide distinction for the social and economic outcomes themselves and treats them as interconnected objects of the Thoughts (á la the relation between the base and superstructure). In discussing an outcome of social and economic issues – with the outcome intuitively describing a worldview in which the absolution of one principle becomes present (represented by Tabak as the “would-be state of the state in Communist society”19 – there remains a strong pertinence for an assumed causality between social and economic issues such that the theory develops into an agglomeration of these parts (the superstructure).
In order to form a contrast, the superstructure is to be understood as an article of knowledge about a status, which pertains considerably to the understanding of economic determinism to produce such truths. However, for the social part of a truly social theory, it can be recognized that a more absolute and imbued determinism in the social element is itself unattainable because the level of innate interaction between humans (in essence, characteristic emotional outbursts20) transcends more normative ideas of whole, idealised societies. It follows that the idea of providing greater parallel between the social and economic frames provides more emphasis on that same outcome that has been considered.
It is promulgated, firmly, that the enactment of class consciousness21 alone is simply too little to facilitate a properly heightened social position, and that the proletariat’s own lack of simple comprehensive intelligence generally is causal to its own inability to realise a properly capable society in the consequence of its ascension. The position of the proletariat is ignoble and undesirable, and for that reason it is an indelicate and importunate basis for meaningful societal change.
In sum, this section creates the basis to which a divergence from the ideas that govern Marxism – naturally, the dialectical materialism and combination thereof for economic and social issues – into an argument formed on the basis of a critique that champions an analysis of Marxist Thought into its barest state: a characterisation of the social and economic formalities and its ethical counterparts for a new mode of thought that is predicated on the same philosophical basis.
2.2. Constructing an Outcome with Respect to the Marxist Outcome
The prerequisites for a continuation into this section are an understanding of the innate difference between the social and economic outcomes (superstructure and base) and a reduction of the proletariat for the necessity of Revolution (according to the definition provided by Tabak22) as was catalysed by Marx. It underpins a more mainstream mode of economic thought – naturally, that which affects to contemporary understandings of supply-and-demand and removes the conception of a more antagonistic profile with respect to the firm; that dialectical materialism is a falsity of perception, but not of character, is applicable to this situation.
In line with the superstructure that has been discussed, this section uses an altered version of that superstructure that relies on the Hegelian principle of the mind rather than the superstructure alone, which is formed from what the mind may be dedicated towards rather than what the mind absolutely is itself. It is believed that this lack of inclusion of the intrinsic psychology, which requests substance, has negated that philosophical influence and instead imbued Marxist Theory with an interpretation that relies exclusively on particularly external factors.
The social outcome can be constructed via an intangibility of distinction given to individualised social conditions (of which cognates with the Hegelian substance) that pertains hence to a more active version of equity than is an abolition of social class. An intangibility of social distinction pertains to its parallel in its economic equivalent whereby a definition has been found by showing that economic positions can be expressed exclusively via their relations to what should enter and exit their own such economic frame. However, the social idea follows for the idea of intangibility – that it is possible to express a social state that is not reliant on the exterior in order to be substantive.
We begin to understand the point of social inordinacy – that which describes not a state between people in which misunderstanding is affected to, but rather for a conscious divergence of social standards; that a convergence of understanding is absent while a certain knowledge of events is retained.
This new outcome is assumed to parallel with the Marxist outcome, and it is here where a specific comparison can be made with respect to the divergence in method that has been utilised in previous paragraphs. Thus, we can assume that it observes those aforementioned philosophies with respect to centrality, yet understands the indelible status of our economic understanding (withstanding liberalism, keynesianism, et cetera).
2.2.1. Extending the Hegelian Spirit to Political Virtue
With the social frame now introduced, its validity can now be presented as a political issue. In essence, Hegelian psychology covers a particular strain of the study that effects to very intrinsic characteristics. In this sense, all members of the Hegelian Spirit23 are unequivocally objective for all people while political values can vary upon a stage of extremity. All, under their proclivities, should possess a maximisation of their social states if the same nullified externality in an absolute negativity – if we retain that equally objective society it can be furthered that the liberty rendered in self-identity does not create an intrinsically alternative absolute negativity.
As such, all people will understand the essence of politics upon that same basis regardless of any divergent perspective which should be igntroduced. If this is contrasted with the political sense for a scale of extremities, each is held upon an unchanging frame where this very vague idea of alignment becomes reduced to personal objectivities of outcome – that regardless of one’s individual benefit, the whole social outcome will necessarily be wholly beneficial for that same individual frame and therefore society.
Of course, alone, this is a highly naïve statement, and parallels can be made with a much more tangible assumption of an inherent equality of the mind, all with a simultaneously limited conscious understanding that perorates towards a difference in views that suggest an understanding of an outcome that pertains to a subjective social maximisation. This, in tune with that aforementioned limited conscious understanding is a false perspective to assume upon politics, in which personal contingencies are treated as an understanding.
It is now understood that there exist two conclusions to be explicated: that an objective politics can thus be inferred in tandem with Hegelian Psychology24, and that it relies on a basis of that objectivity which is attached to politics. In effect, extremities situated in the context of politics possess the potential to convey that objective truth (of which the specifics to such are not simply an undefinable wisdom but rather of a processional objective).
In this character, a connection to that divergence of social standards can be appreciated for it is related to this particularly intrinsic ideal of psychological ideals.
3. How the Social Pretence Can Be Understood Pragmatically
The word, pretence, has been used with respect to the social state so defined. It has been used in this section for the purpose of considering the legitimacy and salience of these social principles that have predicated 2.2. Although it is intended to be distinguished from the main article, this section acts as a collection of supplementary material for the rest of the article and as a statement on the quality of a state where a non-socially oriented ideal (as considered in 2.2) is not followed.
3.1. Education
For a description of the pervasiveness of what is a depreciation of that social frame, the example of systemised liberal education25 is taken as an object of characteristics that demonstrate a further idea of alienated labour. This is represented in its repetition of faculty – understood in the context of defining a repeated usage of terms and ideas that are used in practice, particularly what relates to an objective treatment of that explanation – that asserts a meaning for which students dedicate their studies towards objects that are set for personage outside themselves rather than for themselves. Specifically, this is identified in the practice of assigning modes of education that rely upon that same frame of explanation, evaluation, et cetera – what therefore amounts to mere occupation for the student. This is considered further in Dewey’s How We Think26 whereby the overtly laborious stature of education is causal to its detriment for the student as a result. Perhaps it is akin to the barest contextual achievement for the student who indulges in this practice relative to reading about the material in a book.
3.2. Market Economics
With consideration given to the wide frame of work in which this study has been organized upon, to consider a necessary falsity in systematics is substantially incorrect. However, a note must be made upon the inadequacies of a capitalist system, and a focus must be directed instead upon the idea of a significantly reformist position. Likewise, the capitalist system is an inebriation made upon that original social mode (encapsulated in those original social philosophies) – if the base is to be assumed to be the basic social structure, it cannot, as has been assumed previously, be directly indicative of a change to the superstructure. It is with this definition that capitalism is rendered into a state of being a political inebriation.
4. Conclusions and Significance
Marxism’s flaws are most readily considered in the context of its theoretical origins and the displacement it enacts from the philosophy it supposedly predicates from. This is then supplemented by the lack of distinction between the social and economic statuses of individuals which discredits thus the isolation of either social or economic considerations; too the dogmatic principles that Marxism follows.
As a solution against the current Marxist prerogative, it has been proposed that a far less dogmatic stance on the same basis of philosophy as employed by Marx is a suitable alternative because it conforms to that same philosophical basis without, as Marxist Thought does, perturbing itself into a more guided approach to what is essentially derivative upon the same ideal.
For the significance of this text, it can be assumed that it functions in a manner two-fold. The first is that it suggests a non-entirely contradictory suggestion against Marxism; it follows that the second is an exploratory procession upon the philosophy with respect to our modern political ideals.
| 1 | Hudelson, Popper’s Critique of Marx, 259-70 |
| 2 | Okishio, Technical, 85-99 |
| 3 | Menand, Karl Marx |
| 4 | Tcherkoff, Pages of Socialist History |
| 5 | Mandel, Introduction, 18 |
| 6 | Eagleton, Base and Superstructure revisited, 231-40 |
| 7 | Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, 279-400 |
| 8 | Jones, Gareth S., The Communist Manifesto Introduction
|
| 9 | Walter, Marx’s Four Histories, 379-402 |
| 10 | Audi, Philosophy |
| 11 | Marx, Kritik der politischen Ökonomie |
| 12 | Marx, Processes of Capitalist Production, 53 |
| 13 | Okioshio, Technical, 85-99 |
| 14 | Levine, The Self and Its Interests, 36-59 |
| 15 | Coleman, American Historiography, 113-21 |
| 16 | Boyer, Historical Background, 151-74 |
| 17 | Mandel, Introduction, 18 |
| 18 | Charbonnant, Histoire, 477 |
| 19 | Tabak, Theory of Proletarian Dictatorship Revisited, 2 |
| 20 | Hviid, An Ambivalent Utopian |
| 21 | Borland, Class Consciousness |
| 22 | Tabak, Theory of Proletarian Dictatorship Revisited, 1-2 |
| 23 | G.W.F., Hegel, Philosophy of the Spirit (1830) Introduction, § 386 |
| 24 | G.W.F., Hegel, Philosophy of the Spirit (1830) Introduction, § 386 |
| 25 | van Doren, Liberal Education |
| 26 | Dewey, How We Think |
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