Thursday, February 25, 2010

Does Marx overlook the Complete Human in his ideology?

According to Hegel, Consciousness goes out in search of resistance to its will within the world. When it finally finds this resistance, it demands recognition, and assuming it gets that recognition, it discovers itself as an 'us'. Then, my understanding is, that through finding the differences between Consciousness A, and the newly found and recognized Consciousness B, both may realize their individuality from one another. THIS is the end of the search. I am unsure as to what Marx would say about this moment, but I feel that he sweeps it under the rug in many ways. Marx would rather Consciousness stop this process at the discovery of itself belonging to an 'us' rather than continuing to reflect upon the implications of that 'us' and the uniqueness it brings with it. This uniqueness, or individuality, I would propose is the source of what Marx would claim as one of the "man made illusions"- Competitiveness.

I would argue that this is not an illusion but rather an primitive thought, and an animalistic based reality. The first claim, of it being reality based in primitive thought, is shown by Hegel in the Phenomenology at the very beginning, when Consciousness strove to individualize everything. I would argue that this desire expressed by Consciousness is derived from a innate sense of its own individuality. Thus, once it realizes that it is indeed its own individual, it in turn realizes within others its own faults and shortcomings, much as we saw within the chapter on morality, when Acting Conscious saw its own hypocrisy within the hypocrisy of the Judging Conscious. After realizing such shortcomings, Consciousness A then attempts to better itself in order to be saved from further critique. When Consciousness B sees what is happening, an interesting problem begins to unfold. Although Consciousness B wants Consciousness A to better itself and hold itself to the same standard that others hold themselves to, there is another force within Consciousness B that rears its ugly head; the Animal.

If we were dealing with beings of Pure Consciousness, I would believe Marx's idea to be a stroke of genius, and lacking little to nothing as a blueprint to Utopia, however that is not the case. As humans we exist as creatures of a dualistic nature; Consciousness and Animal. Mind and Body. As a Consciousness we are able to overcome the animal in many instances, but to demand such of the body full time is something that we cannot expect from the masses. The most basic, and thus most innate, of these instincts is man's aversion to pain/death [self preservation]. Once Consciousness B realizes Consciousness A is outdoing it, then it will, under the same instinct of self preservation, attempt to combat this new threat to its position in the world. Although there are those who are able to overcome such instincts, the idea that we could expect such behavior from people on a universal scale rather than individually is presenting a large problem to Marx's ideology.

With this fundamental difference between Marx's vision for the world and the base of our existence, is it possible then for his ideas to ever truly be realized? If so, how can we as humans combat our very nature and the evils that arise with it [greed, lust, envy, etc.] through the process of recognizing ourselves and others as individuals?

3 comments:

  1. Marx definitely has some interesting theories, but I tend to agree with you that maybe competition is more of an uncontrollable, animalistic drive that he gives it credit as being. Dr. J obviously said we all just think this way because we're all little capitalists... while maybe this is true, I think we can still see evidence as to why Marx's system does not work on a large scale. The key is to consciousness' sense of identity, I believe. As long as consciousness can recognize another consciousness as connected to himself, as a part of himself, the consciousness will do what it can for its own good as well as those of the other. This is why families and tribes work well together in a some-what communistic type of way, working and giving what they earn for the good of the whole. But on a large scale, it is difficult for consciousness to feel connected to so many others, many of whom are very different and very far removed from itself. This is where I see Marx's system breaking down in reality. When consciousness no longer identifies with the other consciousness, it become competitive, more concerned with its own good than those of the other.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think you have a good point. And my thoughts aline in most aspects with Morris's, namely that we are all influenced by our capitalist society. But, i would disagree in the idea that this large scale is where Marx system breaks down. I would mostly disagree with this because no matter how big the population is, we are always going to be broken down into smaller and smaller groups of people. from our state to our county, to our city, to our street to our home. These groups are always broken down into smaller and smaller communities. I feel that in this way it doesn't matter how big the population is, because it will always be divided.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I agree that we are influenced by our capitalist society, as that is obvious, however I think that the natural need for competition goes deeper than this influence. I make this claim after observing those whom live in other societies (namely the "communist" ones), and coming to the realization that these societies still have leaders who are not sharing the power or wealth but rather using the "communist" lifestyle to keep others down while their own competitive spirit drives them to reign over the people.

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.