Communism/Marxism

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Voegelin, Eric wrote:

Again, the determination of this area of agreement will permit us to fix the point at which Marx departs from Bakunin. Marx does not share the primordial lust of destruction with his rival, nor the absence of any idea of order. He is willing to guide the revolution by providing it with a “scientific” system of social theory and a “philosophy” of history. In this respect, the organizing will of Marx, his dictatorial intellectualism, is related to that of Comte. Bakunin, on the other hand, heartily detests both Marx and Comte because their "authoritarianism" would limit his lusty passion for destruction by visions of responsible, ordering action. Moreover, Marx goes beyond Bakunin in defining the, proletariat as the specific agent of the revolution instead of the vague "poor classes”, “masses” and “real people.” In the 1860’s, when Marx is engaged in laying the groundwork for an international organization of the proletariat, Bakunin still indulges in romantic pamphlets glorifying the Russian robber. Nevertheless, while at the end of their lives the scientistic, authoritarian socialism of Marx and the anarchistic revolutionary existence of Bakunin have moved far apart, we should be aware of the common beginnings. The Marxian line of revolution was successful because of the elements that were missing in Bakunin, but the system of Marx would never have been written and never exerted its influence unless it had originated in the genuine pathos of revolutionary existence that we find in its purity in Bakunin.

[From Enlightenment to Revolution]

Voegelin, Eric wrote:

’With me the Ideal is nothing but the Material transformed and translated in the head of man.’ The sentence sounds excellent and carries a vivid impression; it would have to be considered brilliant if it were an occasional, rhetorical flourish that metaphorically expresses what has been set forth with critical thoroughness in another context. The trouble is that the other context in which this metaphor would receive its critical meaning does not exist in the collected works of Marx. The metaphorical sentence is all that we have. We are faced with an ‘Ideal’ and a ‘Material’ without knowing what these terms signify.
We are told that the Ideal is the same as the Material but ‘transformed and translated’ and we are left to ponder what the terms ‘transform’ and ‘translate’ in this relation might conceivably mean. And, finally, we learn that the locale of this mysterious process is the ‘head of man’ and we wonder whether Marx means a miracle of brain physiology or a mental activity, whether he thinks of cognitive acts of some specific man or of a cosmic process under the collective skull of mankind. Nevertheless, to the kind of reader who swallows that sentence hook, line and sinker, it conveys an awe-inspiring picture of an intellectual giant who, performs such wonderful metaphorical feats as ‘turning dialectics upside down,’ and putting it ‘on its feet’ while formerly ‘it stood on its head.’
[From Enlightenment to Revolution]

Voegelin, Eric wrote:

We can be brief on the problem of inversion proper. Our analysis has shown that the so-called inversion of Hegelian dialectics through Marx is a complicated operation. We have, first, isolated the anti-philosophical attack which results in the establishment of an empirical pragmatic reality as the object of further investigation as well as of a special linguistic medium for its expression. This first phase of the operation is not an inversion of dialectics but the logophobic destruction of philosophical problems in general. Within the new medium of expression, nothing is inverted; the Hegelian gnosis is translated as a whole into pseudological speculation. The inversion in the technical sense occurs in a third phase in which the result of the first two preparations is construed as un interpretation of the realms of being from the bottom of the ontological hierarchy. On this third phase, however, we can be brief, because Marx has said next to nothing about it beyond assuring us that this was indeed his intention.
The execution of his plan would have involved a philosophy of culture. First, he would have had to explain the nature of cultural Phenomena; secondly, it would have been necessary for him to show that these phenomena could be interpreted from whatever he would consider the bottom of existence, as for instance, matter; and, finally, it would have been necessary to explain what this bottom of existence is. Of this whole plan, as far as principles are concerned, nothing exists but the previously analysed formula of the consciousness that is conditioned by existence.”
[From Enlightenment to Revolution]

Voegelin, Eric wrote:

The starting point for the independent movement of Marx’s thought seems to be a gnostic position which he inherited from Hegel, specifically, the Marxian gnosis expresses itself in the conviction that the movement of the intellect in the consciousness of the empirical self is the ultimate source of knowledge for the understanding of the universe.
Faith and the life of the spirit are expressly excluded as an independent source of order in the soul. Moreover, this conviction is from the beginning accompanied by an attitude of revolt against ‘religion’ as a sphere which recognizes the existence of a realissimum beyond human consciousness. This is the Marxian position as it appears in his doctoral dissertation of 1840-41.

[From Enlightenment to Revolution]

Voegelin, Eric wrote:

The attitude of revolt becomes historically effective through the fascinating program of incarnating the logos in the world by means of revolutionary human action. For Hegel, the logos (reason) was incarnating itself in reality, and because reason was in reality its manifestation could be discovered through the reflection of the philosopher. His philosophy, of history was a contemplation of the actual unfolding of the Idea in reality. Never could the unfolding of the Idea be made the intention of human action. We should be aware in particular that Hegel’s definition of the great historical figure as a person whose actions are in conformance with the movement of the Idea is not a recipe for becoming great historical figure by producing this conformance at will. Nevertheless, this is precisely the perversion in which Marx indulged. Hegel’s gnosis was contemplative. Instead of abandoning gnosis and restoring true contemplation, Marx abandoned contemplation and translated gnosis into action.
[From Enlightenment to Revolution]

Voegelin, Eric wrote:

This characterization must be qualified, however, insofar as Marx does not conceive the logos as a transcendental spirit descending into man, but as a true ‘essence’ of man which comes into its own through the process of history. Man, that is the true man, must be emancipated from historical encumbrances which still hold him in fetters in order to Achieve his completely free existence in society. The true essence of man, his divine self-consciousness, is present in the world as the ferment which drives history forward in a meaningful manner. At some point, this essence will break through-first in one man, then in a few, until the great revolution will bring the full social realization of true man.
The conception of this breakthrough is substantially the same as in Comte’s realization of the positive mind in one individual through the process of his meditation and the expansion of this personal renovation into social regeneration. The Marxian spiritual disease, thus, like the Comtean, consists in the self-divinization and self-salvation of man; an intramundane logos of human consciousness is substituted for the transcendental logos. What appeared on the level of symptoms as anti-philosophism and logophobia, must etiologically be understood as the revolt of immanent consciousness against the spiritual order of the world.
[From Enlightenment to Revolution]  

Voegelin, Eric wrote:

The Marxian critical practice starts with the critique of religion and it proceeds to the critique of politics and economics. The problem of this systematically second phase has been formulated by Marx in the Kritih der Hegelschen Rechtsphitosophie. ”The critique of religion ends with the insight that man is the highest being for man; this implies the categorical imperative to overthrow all relationships in which man is a humiliated, oppressed, neglected, despised being.” “The critique of religion is the presupposition of all critique.” In the illusionary reality of heaven, man “has looked for the superman”; instead he found the reflection of himself. Now he realizes that he himself is the superman and he will no
longer be satisfied with recognizing himself as the “non-man (Unmensch)” that he formerly believed himself to be. “Man makes religion, not religion man.” “Religion is the self-consciousness and self-feeling of a man who either has not yet found himself, or who has lost
himself again.” This man, however (directed against Feuerbach!), is not an abstract being outside the world. “Man is the world of man,” that is state and society. This social world produces religion “as a perverted consciousness of the world because it is a perverted (verkert) world.”
Religion is the general theory of a perverted world. It gives, imaginary reality to human essence (Wesen) because human essence has no true-reality.” “The struggle against religion is the struggle against that world of which religion is the spiritual aroma.” Religious misery is the manifestation of real misery, and at the same time a protest against it.
Religion is the cry of oppressed creatures – “it is the opium of the people.
[From Enlightenment to Revolution]

Voegelin, Eric wrote:

The last sentences should destroy the assumption (which is frequently made) that Marx was impressed by the actual misery of the worker in his time, and that with the material improvement of the works lot the causes of the revolution would disappear. Social reform
is not a remedy for the evil which Marx has in mind. This evil is the growth of the economic structure of modern society into an “objective power” to which man must submit by threat of starvation. The principal characteristic features which appear on and off in the descriptions
of Marx can now be summarized:
(1) The separation of the worker from his tools. This characteristic is determined by industrial technology. No man can individually own and operate the tools of modern industrial production. The ‘factory or,
generally, the ‘place of work’ cannot be the ‘home.’
(2) Job dependence. This characteristic has the same determining cause. No man can earn a living in an industrial system unless he finds a job in some ‘enterprise’ which assembles the tools for production and markets the product.
(3) Division of labor. No man can produce any whole product. The process of production must be centrally planned, and the single worker is confined to the phase in the process assigned to him. Marx was very much aware of the supreme insult to human dignity which lies in the
fact that at the end of his life, when a man summarizes what he has accomplished, he may have to say: all my life I have spent in cooperating in the production of a certain type of Grand Rapids furniture and thereby degraded humanity in myself and others.
(4) Specialization. This characteristic is intimately connected with the preceding one. Even if the total product is not an insult to human dignity, the productivity of man has no appreciable range for unfolding if his work is confined to a small sector of production on which as a
whole he has no influence.
(5) Economic interdependence. No man can live a whole life if his existence is permanently threatened, not by natural catastrophes as in the case of a peasant, but by social actions beyond his control - be they new inventions, or the closing of a market through a tariff, or miscalculation of management, or change in customers taste, or a general economic crisis.
[From Enlightenment to Revolution]

Voegelin, Eric wrote:

“Epilogue
The expansion of the will to power from the realm of phenomena to that of substance or the attempt to operate in the realm of substance pragmatically as if it were the realm of phenomena - that is the definition of magic. The interrelation of science and power and the consequent cancerous growth of the utilitarian segment of existence have injected a strong element of magic culture into modern civilization, The tendency to narrow the field of human experience to the area of reason, science and pragmatic action, the tendency to over value this area in relation to the bios theoretikos and the life of the spirit, the tendency to make it the exclusive preoccupation of man, the tendency to make it socially preponderant through economic pressure in the so-called free societies and through violence in totalitarian states - all these tendencies are part of a cultural process that is dominated by the idea of operating on the substance of man through the instrumentality of pragmatically planning will. The climax of this is the magic dream of creating the Superman, the man-made Being that will succeed the sorry creature of God’s making. This is the great dream that first appeared imaginatively in the works of Condorcet, Comte, Marx and Nietzsche and later pragmatically in the Communist and National Socialist movements”
[From Enlightenment to Revolution]

Satyr wrote:

Yes....it's all connected to the same psychosis.