By Andrew Aaron
There is, there must be a good deal of caution used
when one discusses human nature and Marx's view of it. It is somewhat easier to
diagram (at least partially) a Gandhian picture of human nature. The reasons
for this have as much to do with the structure of communism, as well as Marx's
way of seeing humanity. Another problem, and perhaps more basic, is the
complexity, scope, and breadth of Marx's writing and the way that writing has
been filtered, repackaged, reformulated, shortened or lengthened, and overall,
edited as it makes its way through society(s). The first two problems will be
dealt with during this essay, the last will be touched on at the end.1
Locke, Hobbes, the libertarians, the utilitarians,
all have in common a belief in the power of the individual. Although it would
seem that the “greatest happiness” principle is one of collectivism, it really
is an individualistic idea. Each individual must and does seek their own best
happiness. Now, this may be inside a group, but it does not have to be. The
power of the enlightenment belief in the individual, in man as prime actor in
the drama of history was and is pervasive. We, at the end of the twentieth
century, still wrestle with the age old rubric of the "great (individual)
men” of history. This idea, which is millennia-old (or more), certainly became
a central force during the enlightenment and the renaissance. Both The Prince
and Leviathan are examples of the "great men" pushed to their logical
conclusion. The rugged individualism of American thought had deep roots in the
writings of Locke. Yes, the social contract is a good. Yes, the Bible is
correct when it speaks of "it not being good for man to be alone,” but it
is always at the discretion of the individual to stay or leave and bear the
consequences of that choice.
The belief in the individual that characterizes many
of the philosophers and political writers that the course covered had
interesting ramifications for the systems that they created or espoused.
Democracy is the great individual political movement. “One man, one vote” is so clear a statement
of this that almost no more need be said. Almost. By making the individual so
powerful, there is a loosening of the bonds of history, of circumstance. The
extreme end of this view is that of the self-help books that clamor on the
shelves of bookstores. Each one is pushing hard to make the individual
responsible for their own lives, for their own destinies. “America is the land
of opportunity. Anyone can make it here” are familiar phrases that are used to
boost America. It is beyond the scope of this essay to debate the merits of
these beliefs, they are merely examples of how deeply influential individualism
and the belief in the freedom of the individual to make his or her own destiny
is in our society.
What makes Marxism so radical in its view of the
individual is how it strips much autonomy away from the individual. The theory
of human nature in Marxism was (and is) new in philosophy. It is assumed that
man entered into the social contract for various reasons. It is further assumed
that this was a good thing. Marx seems to accept most of the ideas about the
state of nature and the social contract that went before him. However, where
Hobbes saw man as a baseless creature, very much a loner, who is constrained
and kept in check by the social contract, Marx sees the social contract as a
good that arises naturally out of the fact that man is a creature of community.
Where Locke sees the social contract as a binding instrument that exists to
allow the good nature of man to thrive and prosper, to create and develop the
greater good of capitalism, Marx sees capitalism as an evil that changed the
very nature of humanity's relation to the world and weakened the social bonds
of the social contract.
For Marx, the debate between Hobbes and Locke about
the goodness or baseness of man is almost moot. Marx as a scientist, or at
least a philosopher who tried to be as scientific as possible, saw man as an
animal, highly intelligent and capable, but an animal nonetheless. We begin to
see now, one of the two problems I spoke of at the beginning of this paper. It
is hard for me to see man as an individual in Marxist thinking. I continue to
see humanity as a pack animal who moves through history in group formations.
Whatever the system of government, whatever the system of trade, man is acted
on largely as part of a group. Marx views human nature not as the conflict
between good and evil, or as the battleground between opposing moral forces but
almost as a changing object that is subject to the power of economic forces.
Human nature is no to be redeemed by religious or spiritual forces. It is not
to be saved by the intervention of superior moral forces, although they may be
created later on in history. Human nature is in continuous flux, and growth
rising from one thought pattern created by economics to another until finally
it reaches or will reach that of the consciousness of the proletariat.
Now, the second problem arises. Because Marx does
not see human nature as good or evil, inherently, the reason that humanity does
what it does must be located elsewhere. I touched on this briefly in the last
paragraph. Marx is very much a believer in progress, in an inevitable course of
events unfolding along dynamic economic lines. The old barter, small-town
economy gives way to feudalism, which yields to small capitalism then large
capitalism and industrialism, which ushers in the growth of a massive growth of
workers, the proletariat, who will lead the world to communism and freedom from
economic slavery. In the Marxist model, while there may be individual acts of
wrong doing, indeed there must be many acts of economic cruelty and corruption
to push the need for economic change. However, the capitalist can only act this
way. Even those capitalists who try to do the "right thing" are
doomed to failure and worse. Hence, the disdain that both Marx and, especially,
Engels have for utopian socialists, for anyone who advocates capitalism with a
friendly face.
Because of the systemic, almost inevitable, way that
economics and history unfold in the Marxist model, indeed history is just the
playing out of economic forces, because of this, it is difficult to posit where
exactly human freedom or individual action exists in Marxist thought and what
part these may play. I am not sure if it does, and if it does, how important
either or both are in the Marxist scheme of things. One answer to this problem
may be that human freedom, truly individuated individuals, real autonomy exist
until after the revolution of the proletariat and many years of stripping away
the baggage of capitalism and the instilling of new values, values that come
from the proletariat. If this is the case, then it would seem that Marx is
actually far closer to utopians like Thomas Moore and Jonathan Swift than not.
However, unlike the utopias of these two writers, utopias that seem to have
always existed without change, Marx has a plan to get there. Because in the end,
Marx believes in the perfectibility of the race. Hell is found present on earth
in the workhouses and prisons of Dickens' England, in the fire of the Triangle
shirt company, in the child labor practices of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. Heaven is waiting to be created in the years after the revolution of
the proletariat.
Yet, and yet. The golden period that will come has
to be worked towards. As inevitable as the revolution seems to be, Marx did
believe in struggling for it anyway. He wrote, published papers, set up groups,
was arrested, and exiled for his actions. So, in what appears to be a
contradiction, Marx the individual (with a few cohorts) helped to lay the
groundwork for the collective revolution. This opens a space for an interesting
question. Is there room in Marx's theories for political action?
It would
appear on the surface, at least, that voting, lobbying, and the other tools and
strategies that make democracy work (or not) would be absent in the Marxist world.
The high degree of individual choice coupled with the way politics often force
crossing of class lines, making for strange bedfellows, stands in direct
contrast to the way power is taken in Marxist thought by the workers. Since it
is only by seizing the means of production, that the workers gain power, all
the tools of democracy that are used to gain influence and power are rendered
superfluous. It is only after that the proletariat is in control that the
democratic tools come into use. Even then, they are circumscribed so as to not
allow capitalists to regain control. At base, democracy is clearly a middle-class
idea. The American Revolution and the Puritan Revolution in England were both
middle-class revolutions as such, and like the bourgeois class itself,
democracy has its merits over monarchy but is inferior to communism. Marx is a
believer in progress, and in his case, he has a very definite idea about where
it all should lead to in the end.
I mentioned a final, more basic problem, above. One
might term this problem as the problem of mass dissemination. The man wrote and
published a great deal. His final works were edited and published posthumously.
Whether in the hands of able, honest, careful translators (either from one
language to another or from difficult to layperson) or in the hands of less
scrupulous translators and redactors, Marx and his ideas have been moved widely
about. This makes it difficult to arrive at exactly what he was thinking on all
issues. It is especially difficult to decide this question of human nature.
However, I think some conclusions might be in order. Marx does believe in the
perfectibility of humanity in the aggregate. He does believe that a human being
is not evil by nature but is warped by economic forces. Those forces must
finally come under the control of the proletariat in order for humankind to be
free. Once this is achieved, there may be no limit to the good, to the progress
that humanity can achieve. Marxism is a fairly optimistic theory.
But. I am troubled by aspects of Marx's view of
human nature. I am not so willing to disregard the individual's role in
history. Nor, for that matter, am I willing to simply view history as the play
of economic forces. I am too much a product of my culture(s) to be able to
shake off the belief in the power, the drama of the individual to change things
for reasons quite apart or beyond economic ones. To some extent, Marx fits very
well alongside other scientists and philosophers of the last two hundred years.
He, like they, strives for that unified field theory. He, like them, is looking
for the big answer that will solve all the questions. Finally, he, like they,
is a firm believer in the momentum of history, in the continuous movement
forward of the human race. Progress was the definite watchword of his time, as
it was for the modernist period of our own century. I am not sure if this is
the case. Is there really such a thing as progress? Are we always moving
forward? Some religions say that we are devolving, that it has all been
downhill since Eden. I do not believe this at all. Yet, I am not convinced in
continuous forward progress interrupted by minor setbacks, either. Marxism as
an entire theory has much to recommend it. I certainly will not argue with the
analysis of capitalism or the sympathy that Marxist thought has for the worker,
the downtrodden, even the industrialist as a prisoner of the system. I do take
exception with the reduction of man to Homo Economicus. Humanity is far too
complicated to be so reduced. Humanity is such a bundle of virtue, vice,
neurosis, nonsense, pleasures and pain that I cannot honestly be altogether
with Marx's simplification of human nature.
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