What Marx Really Meant G D H
cole
(
from the Series of Notes taken by
Pattabiraman)
(Notes of Ch 1… 2nd speaks about Capitalism)
From Hegelian dialectic Marx built his materilistic dialectic
The world we have to study has grown directly out of
the world marx studied.. many of his qns are our qns too
One should Find his method more helpful than his
doctrine
No sense was stronger in Marx than the sense of
change.. only idiots learn The manifesto and capital by heart and conceive
themselves to have unlocked the secrets of the capitalist system as it now
exists
Societies are constantly changing collections of
individual men and women
Man cannot breathe the breath of life into a dead body,
or give concreteness to admittedly an
asbtraction
If we are setting out to understand a thing, we must
look directly at the thing itself, and not primarily at men's ideas about it..
The thing is prior to idea men form of it, but ideas formed can exert influence
in changing the shape of things
Inorder to become a force in history, the idea must be
made flesh and become a thing
For idealists there are no things there are only thoughts thinking them and
they proceed from universal mind
from Hegelian dialectic Marx built his materilistic dialectic
For Hegel human history was merely a phase in the
dialectical self realisation of the idea... idealism in evoultionary terms
For marx the things that we see feel and experience
directly with our minds and senses are real, but they are not static..
constantly changing, becoming waning passing into something other than
themselves
So Hegelian dialectic is the right method of
apprehending reality, but it needs to be applied directly to the world of
things
For Hegel the struggle of ideas is fought out again
and again in the dialectical form of thesis, antithesis and synthesis and each synthesis
becomes a thesis and fresh struggle is to be fought
The outcome of realist conception is not to dethrone
the mind of man, and to assert that men make their own history against those
who hold that God or the Absoulte makes it for them... Men make their own
history.. they make it primarily in the economic sphere
Great men do count, but greatness fits in with the
opportunities of their time.. it is not in the least true that in their absence
the world would stand still, or that they are only, the principal formative
force in world history 20
The causes are not complete until the human
beingswhose action makes history have done their part.
Marxism is determinist but not fatalist
If something other than Socialism should succeed to
Capitalism as the next historical form of social organisation, that would not
at all prove the Realist conception of History to be wrong
It is no doubt possible to hold, as an integral
element ina theory of history, that historical epochs do succeed one another in
a predestined order, so that there can be more than one possible successor to
any given system. But what conceivable ground can there be for such a view? If
it is held at all, it must be held simply apriori for it is by its very nature
incapable of verification or even of plausible demonstration in the light of
the facts
Men's choice is confined to the objectively possible
but how vital that choice may be when the alternatives are delicately poised
Marx did think that Socialism would be the next phase
in the history.. Marx's rightness or wrongness on this point does not in any
way affect the validity of his general theory
In Marx's vies the combatants in social conflict are
not things but men, rather groups of men ordered in economic classes in
accordance with their differing relations to the non human powers of production
and to one another
individual labour individual capitalist all in chain of
related process- interrelation of entire economic system is the process of
economic socialisation to which political socialism is the counterpart.
Capitalism socialising the workers .. socialisation of productive powers of
society is laying foundations for the socialisation of ownership- the means of
production
A man may be a
detail labourer in a factory, with no isolable individual product of his own,
without loosing his individuality as a person, however much he acts and thinks
as a member of a group.
An action is in the last resort individual action...
in social matters acting in association with others who are similarly placed.. even
if they differ, are such as to afford a basis for cooperative action..it is
possible for an individual to disassociate and act in opposition to his own
group or class
There has never been a human society in which each
individual acted by himself without group loyalty or collaboration
class loyalty need not imply class consciousness.. for
the upper strata class consciousness of a reasoned and explicit kind is
unnecessary -it is a positive danger
For a class which has still to win power, inorder to
become a controlling agent of social change, a considerable degree of positive
class consciousness is essential.. higher degree of deliberately organised
cooperation is needed for changing the face of society than for preserving the
status quo
Class consciousness is essentially a matter of
degree... turning of class loyalty into class consciousness is largely a matter
of propaganda and organisation
The objective situation by itself will not suffice to
create a consciously organised class- that is the work of men- leaders
Nothing in human history is ever inevitable until it
has happened, not because things happen without a cause, but because no chain
of causation is ever complete until it has actually produced its effect.
In marx's view no group plays a dominant role in
history unless it appears as the representative of a class
A group which is not the embodiment of a class does
not stand for any particular way of arranging the powers of production...
groups and associations are not classes but they can and do become in varying
degrees the rep of class aspirations and points of view
It is not suggested that the division of society into
economic classes is inevitable for all time
World history has to be written in terms not only of
the internal evoultion of a number of civilisations, but also their impact one
on another
Marx's realist conception of history may be
universally valid without his staement of it in terms of class struggles
possessing the same universality. There are other posssible dialectical forms
besides the class struggle
any institution, whether economic or not in its
origin, whether or not an embodiment of a class, can act upon men's minds, upon
other institutions and influence the course of history
The worst enemies of Marxism are those who harden it
into a universal dogma and thus conceal its value as a flexible method of
social analysis. The realist conception of history is a clue to the understanding
of social realities, and not a complete explanation of them.
A theory which is to serve as a guide to action can
afford least of all to decline into a dogma, or to be formulated rigidly on
mechanistic lines
The first essential of successful action is
flexibility in the application of principles, a quality often confused with
opportunism, but in truth its very opposite. opportunist does not apply
principles, he flouts them. But the successful man of action holds fast to his
principle, but at the same time understands the need of restating it constantly
in relation to changes in the objective
situation
Marxism a living force, not the opium of the socialist
orthodox
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