Karl Marx and Materialism

Feuerbach’s Materialism
 The German idealists suppose that nature can be known through our consciousness. But how does the consciousness come into being? Where does it originate?
 Freuerbach finds the answer in that the consciousness originates in that we differ ourselves from nature. So, nature is the fundamental of consciousness. What so called “Idea” or “Spirit” depends on nature, i.e. material process.
God as Projection
 Feuerbach applied Hegel’s theory of alienation in the phenomenon of religion. Man thinks on his own characteristics, e.g. that he is just, good or powerful. These characteristics are idealized so that he doesn’t find them no more as his own characteristics. They are projected outside his mind as objective realities. Then he views them as the characteristics of God. But in fact they are the essences of man. Here the theology is actually an anthropology. In the theology man talks about his own essences, i.e. his characteristics in idealized form.
Marx and Feuerbach
 Marx agreed with Feuerbach that religion is a form of alienation (or projection). But he disagrees with all materialists before him, because their doctrines are contemplative and not practical.
 The young Marx adopted the materialism of Feuerbach, but his starting point was different: For him matter is not ‘nature’, but ‘social labor’ (instrumental action).
Marx and Hegel
 Marx adopted Hegel’s dialectic as his method. But he criticizes Hegel that the Hegelian synthesis occurs only in Hegel’ mind. It doesn’t exist in the empirical or concrete social reality. Instead of synthesis there are contradictions in the capitalist society, i.e. between the bourgeois and working classes.
 He wanted to build ‘a philosophy with practical intention’, i.e. a though that transforms the social reality.
11th Theses on Feuerbach
 “Die Philosophen haben die Welt nur verschieden interpretiert, es koemmt darauf an, sie zu veraendern” [The philosophers have only interpreted the world in different ways. But the problem is how to change the world]
Social Labor and Alienation
 Labor expresses that man is a social being, because he expresses and realizes him self through his products. This deep anthropological meaning of labor is collapse in the capitalist society. The laborer is alienated from his own products, because he sells his labor (Lohnarbeit = paid labor) to the factory owner.
 The forces of his body is objectified as a thing that can be counted and sold. So, the labor is alienated from its producer.
Threefold Alienation
 1. The laborer are alienated from their own products, because these products are no more theirs.
 2. They are alienated from themselves, because they lose their freedom
 3. They are also alienated each other and from the capitalists. So, the social solidarity is broken.
Root of Alienation: Private Property
 Contrary to Hegel, Marx thinks that not the spirit (der Geist), but the laborer is alienated in history. Agree with Hegel he says that the cause of this alienation is not the individual, but something beyond the individuals, i.e. the structure of capitalist society that is based on private property. This private property is the base of the dichotomy between the capitalist class and the working class.
 Marx convinced that the alienation is solved through the elimination of the private property.
Base-Superstructure Analysis
 Marx saw the society as a huge structure that consists of two parts:
 1. The base (Unterbau), i.e. economics: the productive forces ( technology) and the relations of production (power relation)
 2. The superstructure (Ueberbau), i.e. consciousness: law, religion, ideology, politics etc.
 The base determines the superstructure. So, the change of the economic base determines necessarily the change of the ideological superstructure.
How does the revolution happen?
 1. The contradictions in the economic base of the capitalist society (between the conservative relation of production and the progressive force of production) become intense. The revolution explodes through this tension. The private property is eliminated by the working/ proletariat class
 2. The change in the base transforms the whole ideological superstructure.