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| 24314 | Once religion is unmasked, the task of philosophy is to unmask other types of self-estrangement |
| Full Idea: The immediate task of philosophy, which is at the service of history, once the holy form of self-estrangement has been unmasked, is to unmask self-estrangement in its unholy form. | |||
| From: Karl Marx (Collected works (w Engels) - 50 vols [1860], Vol 3: 176), quoted by Jaime Edwards/Brian Leiter - Marx | |||
| A reaction: I take it that this means that the first task is to deconstruct religious beliefs, and the second is to deconstruct cognitive bias. I find the image of unbiased philosophers smugly unmasking all the pathetic masked people very unattractive. |
| 23874 | Armies and businesses create moralities in which their activity can do no wrong |
| Full Idea: Marx saw that social groups manufacture moralities for their own use, so their activity is placed outside the reach of evil. Thus the first articles of soldiers and businessmen is to deny that it is possible to do evil while waging war or doing business. | |||
| From: report of Karl Marx (Collected works (w Engels) - 50 vols [1860]) by Simone Weil - Fragments: London 1943 p.146 | |||
| A reaction: This is especially true of the modern reverence for 'market forces'. It is a key debate in the ethics of warfare - compare Walzer and McMahon. A striking thought, obviously containing a lot of truth. |
| 24310 | Young Hegelians think the conflict only concerns concepts and ideas |
| Full Idea: [The Young Hegelians] consider conceptions, thoughts, ideas as the real chains of men, and take it as evident that they have to fight only against these illusions of consciousness. …They are opposing nothing but phrases to these phrases. | |||
| From: Karl Marx (Collected works (w Engels) - 50 vols [1860], Vol 5: 30), quoted by Jaime Edwards/Brian Leiter - Marx 5.1 | |||
| A reaction: [compressed] This leads Marx to dialectical materialism, and to revolutionary thinking. |
| 24309 | An ideology is largely false, is biased and unevidenced, and supports the ruling class |
| Full Idea: Marx assumes, in general, that at least some of an ideology is false, that an ideology is the product of theorists who make biased claims undetermined by evidence, and that an ideology only supports the interests of the ruling class. | |||
| From: report of Karl Marx (Collected works (w Engels) - 50 vols [1860]) by Jaime Edwards/Brian Leiter - Marx 5.0 | |||
| A reaction: [summarised] I tend to understand an ideology as simply the theory which guides any social movement, and that it is possible for an ideology to be very good. If a Marxist ideology is gradually improved, when does it stop being an ideology? |
| 24311 | Ideologists think their theories drive social forces, when they are actually mere symptoms |
| Full Idea: In general ideologists inevitably put the thing upside-down, and regard their ideology both as the creative force and as the aim of all social relations, whereas it is only an expression and symptom of these relations.154 | |||
| From: Karl Marx (Collected works (w Engels) - 50 vols [1860], Vol 5: 419-20), quoted by Jaime Edwards/Brian Leiter - Marx 5.1 | |||
| A reaction: Marx can't seem to decide whether ideologists are actively duplicitous, or merely misguided. I presume the latter, since Marxists tend to assume that no one (apart from Marxists?) is aware of their own biases. |
| 18662 | Liberal freedom is the right to be separate, and ignores the union of man with man |
| Full Idea: The liberal right of man to freedom is not based on the union of man with man, but on the separation of man from man; it is the right to this separation. | |||
| From: Karl Marx (Collected works (w Engels) - 50 vols [1860]), quoted by Will Kymlicka - Contemporary Political Philosophy (1st edn) 7.2.a | |||
| A reaction: [quoted from an anthology] It is interesting that liberal freedom is the right NOT to be involved in politics, and even not to vote in elections. Home counties England (high hedges etc) is the embodiment of the freedom not to be involved in society. |
| 23372 | Liberals want the right to be separate, rather than for people to be united |
| Full Idea: The [liberal] right of man to freedom is not based on the union of man with man, but on the separation of man from man. It is the right to this separation. | |||
| From: Karl Marx (Collected works (w Engels) - 50 vols [1860], p.53), quoted by Will Kymlicka - Contemporary Political Philosophy (2nd edn) 7 | |||
| A reaction: [in collection ed.McLelland p.53] That nicely encapsulates the debate. Modern liberal thinkers regret the loss of community, but people in authoritarian communities yearn for separation. You can have too much 'union'! |
| 20576 | Early Marx anticipates communitarian objections to liberalism |
| Full Idea: The early writings of Marx anticipate the communitarian critique of liberalism. | |||
| From: report of Karl Marx (Collected works (w Engels) - 50 vols [1860]) by Johanna Oksala - Political Philosophy: all that matters Ch.8 | |||
| A reaction: [Oksala says modern writers seem to prefer this to the hardcore later Marx, which is presumably too 'scientific'. He says 'Capital Vol 1' is Marx's most important work] |
| 23862 | By saying the material dialectic of history aspires to the best, Marx agreed with capitalism |
| Full Idea: When Marx inverted Hegel's dialectic of history, by substituting matter for mind as the motive, he attributed to matter the essence of mind, an unceasing aspiration towards the best - which was in keeping with the general current of capitalist thought. | |||
| From: comment on Karl Marx (Collected works (w Engels) - 50 vols [1860]) by Simone Weil - Reflections on Liberty and Social Oppression p.43 | |||
| A reaction: [compressed] A rather nice debating point! Marx seems to share the universal nineteenth century belief in unremitting progress. Without that, it is impossible to believe that a revolution will necessarily improve anything. |
| 23875 | Marx says force is everything, and that the weak will become strong, while remaining the weak |
| Full Idea: Marx posits on the one hand that force alone governs social relations to the exclusion of anything else, and on the other hand that one day the weak, while remaining weak, will nevertheless be stronger. He believed in miracles. | |||
| From: comment on Karl Marx (Collected works (w Engels) - 50 vols [1860]) by Simone Weil - Fragments: London 1943 p.149 | |||
| A reaction: This is close to the obvious contradiction if the working classes despise the middle classes (the dreaded 'bourgeoisie') while their only aspiration is to be like them. It is hard to custom design a new class to which they could both aspire. |
| 18653 | Marx rejected equal rights because they never actually treat people as equals |
| Full Idea: Marx rejected the idea of equal rights, not because he was not a friend to the idea of treating people as equals, but precisely because he thought rights failed to live up to that ideal. | |||
| From: report of Karl Marx (Collected works (w Engels) - 50 vols [1860]) by Will Kymlicka - Contemporary Political Philosophy (1st edn) 5.1 | |||
| A reaction: Presumably because the power to award 'rights' goes to the highest bidder. If equality is to be enshrined in law, it is a bit difficult to see how else to manage it. |
| 24305 | The dictatorship of the proletariat is just a transition stage to a classless society |
| Full Idea: The dictatorship of the proletariat only constitutes no more than a transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society. | |||
| From: Karl Marx (Collected works (w Engels) - 50 vols [1860], Vol 39:62-5 letter), quoted by Jaime Edwards/Brian Leiter - Marx 3.0 | |||
| A reaction: The authors note that the Roman 'dictatura' was an office granted powers for up to six months. The concept seems to have been abused in the Soviet Union, where the power was both sustained and ruthless. |
| 24308 | The working class will gradual exclude social classes and their antagonisms |
| Full Idea: The working class, in the course of its development, will substitute for the old civil society, an association which will exclude classes and their antagonism. | |||
| From: Karl Marx (Collected works (w Engels) - 50 vols [1860], Vol 6:212), quoted by Jaime Edwards/Brian Leiter - Marx 3.4A | |||
| A reaction: A hopeless dream. The exclusion of the formation of classes will need to be enforced, which will necessitate a group with superior power (the Communist Party, for example). A group with superior power was precisely what Marx hoped to avoid. |
| 24307 | The proletariat will become the ruling class, wresting all capital, and centralising production |
| Full Idea: The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e. of the proletariat organised as the ruling class. | |||
| From: Karl Marx (Collected works (w Engels) - 50 vols [1860], Vol 6:504), quoted by Jaime Edwards/Brian Leiter - Marx 3.4A | |||
| A reaction: It strikes me that Marx failed to grasp the importance of education in the modern world. To run the modern world the proletariat need education, but it is obvious that highly educated people tend to become bourgeois. |
| 21999 | False consciousness results from concealment by the superstructure |
| Full Idea: False consciousness involves failing to see things as they really are. It comes about because a society's superstructure can conceal the real basis of the society. | |||
| From: report of Karl Marx (Collected works (w Engels) - 50 vols [1860]) by Peter Singer - Marx 9 | |||
| A reaction: That seems a poor label, probably revealing a Hegelian background. It seems a matter of knowledge rather than consciousness. Can a whole mind be in a state of error? |
| 20958 | Capitalism changes the world, by socialising the idea of a commodity |
| Full Idea: In Marx's view the essential factor in capitalism is that the encroachment of the commodity form into society fundamentally changes the world. | |||
| From: report of Karl Marx (Collected works (w Engels) - 50 vols [1860]) by Andrew Bowie - Introduction to German Philosophy 6 'Historical' | |||
| A reaction: The main point is that people and their labour become commodities. Haven't animals always been treated as commodities? Clearly slave were commodities, long before capitalism. Capitalism universalises it? |
| 23876 | The essence of capitalism is the subordination of people to things |
| Full Idea: Marx discovered a formula impossible to surpass when he said that the essence of capitalism lies in the subordination of subject to object, of man to thing. | |||
| From: report of Karl Marx (Collected works (w Engels) - 50 vols [1860]) by Simone Weil - Fragments: London 1943 p,155 | |||
| A reaction: I find this rather too vague to be a penetrating observation. I would suggest the obliteration of cooperation and community, in favour of competition. Winners and losers. |
| 20960 | Marx thought capitalism was partly liberating, and could make labour and ownership more humane |
| Full Idea: Marx did not disapprove per se of capitalism. New divisions of labour and forms of ownership could transform individuals in modern societies, creating a more humane world with the means capitalism had liberated from feudalism. | |||
| From: report of Karl Marx (Collected works (w Engels) - 50 vols [1860]) by Andrew Bowie - Introduction to German Philosophy 11 'Metaphysics' | |||
| A reaction: I'm guessing this might be early Marx, which has less to say about the 'scientific' inevitably of deep change, and the necessity for revolution. Nowadays we tinker with humane changes at the poorer end, while the rich run rampant. |
| 24306 | The bourgeoisie now control society, through modern industry and markets |
| Full Idea: The bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of modern industry and the world market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative state, exclusive political sway. | |||
| From: Karl Marx (Collected works (w Engels) - 50 vols [1860], Vol 6: 486), quoted by Jaime Edwards/Brian Leiter - Marx 3.2 | |||
| A reaction: This idea has endured and led to hatred of the middle classes, and even their extermination. And yet surely if the proletariat gain power and wealth, they become bourgeois? This is all outmoded by the modern super-rich. |