From: Ted Winslow c b wrote:
> We can be sure that Marx was also aware of the wisdom of Robert > Burn's poem "To a Mouse" when it says "The best laid plans of mice > and menoften go astray". ( Evidently, mice plan. smile) Marx did > cheer the Paris Commune while saying it was doomed to fail, folly of > despair or some such. Materialism means trial and error; theory > (plan)- and practice- new theory (new plan). Practice is > experimentation and industry. We shouldn't be afraid to plan nor to > modify the plan based on experience with it. "It was doomed to fail" in a political context where masses of French peasants lived within social relations productive of a degree of "superstition" and "prejudice" that made them supporters of "despotism". That's implicit in the passage from the Eighteenth Brumaire. ^^^^^ CB: "implicit" hmmmm. So he doesn't specifically mention superstition and prejudice ? So, France was not sufficiently "developed" ? Would England have been the only country that Marx considered had a population with powers developed enough for a successful revolution in his day ? Holland ? At any rate, his discussion of the Paris Commune indicates that he is not suggesting that mass efforts to start a revolutionary process should wait until the masses become enlightened and able to make judgments. And today, aren't there dozens of countries with sufficiently enlightened and judgement-capable masses ? Certainly the US working masses are very bourgeoisified in consciousness. Where do you consider "superstition" and "prejudice", inclination to "despotism", to be a problem today ? Certainly not in Paris. ^^^^^ Since the developed "powers" that constitute "enlightenment" and "judgment" define, for Marx, the "true human being", where "despotism" "has a majority behind it, human beings constitute the minority" and where it "arouses no doubts, there human beings do not exist at all." ^^^^ CB: I think you might want to consider that most of the quotes below are from 1845 and before. Marx may have developed his thinking beyond the focus on these specific social psychological characteristics as necessary criteria for mass consciousness. His discussion has a more idealist ring to it than later ^^^^^^^ "The monarchical principle in general is the despised, the despicable, the dehumanised man; and Montesquieu was quite wrong to allege that it is honour [Montesquieu, De l'esprit des lois]. He gets out of the difficulty by distinguishing between monarchy, despotism and tyranny. But those are names for one and the same concept, and at most they denote differences in customs though the principle remains the same. Where the monarchical principle has a majority behind it, human beings constitute the minority; where the monarchical principle arouses no doubts, there human beings do not exist at all." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/letters/43_05.htm Moreover, this problem cannot be solved through the imposition of a "change in conditions" by a "vanguard", i.e. by a "part of society" self-contradictorily treated as "superior to society". That's the point made in the third thesis on Feurbach, which substitutes for such a "vanguard" the "educative" role of a particular kind of "revolutionary practice", namely, one that enables the individuals whose practice it is to develop the "powers" - the degree of "enlightenment" and "judgment" - required to "appropriate" the ideas objectified in developed "productive forces", i.e. to end their "estrangement" from them. Thus Marx claims that, in the Prussian context to which the claim associating "despotism" with the non-existence of "true human being" is applied, "the wishes and ideas actually produced by" the "enlightened" despot, Frederick William IV, "could not affect the situation since the philistine is the material of the monarchy and the monarch is no more than the King of the philistines. As long as both remain themselves he can turn neither himself nor them into real, free human beings." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/letters/43_05-alt.htm "The materialist doctrine concerning the changing of circumstances and upbringing forgets that circumstances are changed by men and that it is essential to educate the educator himself. This doctrine must, therefore, divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society. "The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-changing can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm "Both for the production on a mass scale of this communist consciousness, and for the success of the cause itself, the alteration of men on a mass scale is, necessary, an alteration which can only take place in a practical movement, a revolution; this revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew.” http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01d.htm "Thus things have now come to such a pass that the individuals must appropriate the existing totality of productive forces, not only to achieve self-activity, but, also, merely to safeguard their very existence. This appropriation is first determined by the object to be appropriated, the productive forces, which have been developed to a totality and which only exist within a universal intercourse. From this aspect alone, therefore, this appropriation must have a universal character corresponding to the productive forces and the intercourse. "The appropriation of these forces is itself nothing more than the development of the individual capacities corresponding to the material instruments of production. The appropriation of a totality of instruments of production is, for this very reason, the development of a totality of capacities in the individuals themselves." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01d.htm "private property can be abolished only on condition of an all-round development of individuals, precisely because the existing form of intercourse and the existing productive forces are all-embracing and only individuals that are developing in an all-round fashion can appropriate them, i.e., can turn them into free manifestations of their lives." http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch03o.htm Ted _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
