Was marx a determinist?

[ItWillNeverWork]

Two quotes that I used in an essay for a Soviet history class I took last year, and that seem relevant for contrasting Marx with Marxists in regards to determinism:

"Marxism [...] is an integral world outlook, a philosophical system, from which Marx’s proletarian socialism logically follows. […] It is self-evident that the socialist system will follow capitalism as inevitably as day follows night..”

(Stalin, J.V., 1954, Anarchism or Socialism?, Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, Works, Vol. 1, November 1901 - April 1907, accessed at marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1906/12/x01.htm

“It is not history which uses men as a means of achieving - as if it were an individual person - its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.”

(Marx, K, 1845, The Holy Family or Critique of Critical Criticism. Against Bruno Bauer and Company, MECW Volume 4, Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975, accessed at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/holy-family/ch06_2.htm)

 

[tar1984]

Two quotes that I used in an essay for a Soviet history class I took last year, and that seem relevant for contrasting Marx with Marxists in regards to determinism:

Fantastic, very illuminating.

 

[tar1984]

That whole thing about marx not considering himself a marxist makes sense now.

 

[Casually Red]

he never worked a day in his life

wouldnt know one end of a hammer from the other, much less a sickle.

 

[tar1984]

he never worked a day in his life

wouldnt know one end of a hammer from the other, much less a sickle.

He spent loads of time in the library though

 

[cesare]

Was Marx convinced he was right? If he entertained self doubt, use that for your essay.

 

[tar1984]

Was Marx convinced he was right? If he entertained self doubt, use that for your essay.

I haven't seen any doubt in the limited reading I have done, but I am inferring from your post there is some to be found

 

[cesare]

I haven't seen any doubt in the limited reading I have done, but I am inferring from your post there is some to be found

Don't infer anything from what I ask But he spent a fuckload of time fucking people over during his mission. You could approach it from the angle of whether Marx himself thought he was determinist.

 

[Idris2002]

he never worked a day in his life

wouldnt know one end of a hammer from the other, much less a sickle.

He says this as if it was a bad thing.

 

[tar1984]

Excellent tagline Idris2002

You could approach it from the angle of whether Marx himself thought he was determinist.

Yup totally think this is best. The focus will be on marx's own writings and ideas, but I will also make the marx/marxism distinction and how determinism is more applicable to the latter etc.

 

[Jeff Robinson]

This from Raymond Williams might be worth a quote:

Now it is important, as we try to analyse this proposition, to be aware that the term of relationship which is involved, that is to say ‘determines’, is of great linguistic and real complexity. The language of determination and even more of determinism was inherited from idealist and especially theological accounts of the world and man. It is significant that it is in one of his familiar inversions, his contradictions of received propositions, that Marx uses the word ‘determines’. He is opposing an ideology that had been insistent on the power of certain forces outside man, or, in its secular version, on an abstract determining consciousness. Marx’s own proposition explicitly denies this, and puts the origin of determination in men’s own activities. Nevertheless, the particular history and continuity of the term serves to remind us that there are, within ordinary use—and this is true of most of the major European languages—quite different possible meanings and implications of the word ‘determine’. There is, on the one hand, from its theological inheritance, the notion of an external cause which totally predicts or prefigures, indeed totally controls a subsequent activity. But there is also, from the experience of social practice, a notion of determination as setting limits, exerting pressures.

Now there is clearly a difference between a process of setting limits and exerting pressures, whether by some external force or by the internal laws of a particular development, and that other process in which a subsequent content is essentially prefigured, predicted and controlled by a pre-existing external force. Yet it is fair to say, looking at many applications of Marxist cultural analysis, that it is the second sense, the notion of prefiguration, prediction or control, which has often explicitly or implicitly been used.

http://newleftreview.org/I/82/raymond-williams-base-and-superstructure-in-marxist-cultural-theory

 

[Casually Red]

He says this as if it was a bad thing.

so its Karl Marx, liberator of mankind but probably useless if youve any odd jobs need doing or a hand fixing the shed.

 

[Jeff Robinson]

Also, if you feel like a break from reading and would rather do some listening, this talk from Bill Keach gives a very clear account of the base-superstructure metaphor in Marx's writings and the impliciations it has for determinism:

http://wearemany.org/a/2013/06/understanding-base-and-superstructure

 

[Idris2002]

so its Karl Marx, liberator of mankind but probably useless if youve any odd jobs need doing or a hand fixing the shed.

You say that as if it's a bad thing.

 

[tar1984]

so its Karl Marx, liberator of mankind but probably useless if youve any odd jobs need doing or a hand fixing the shed.

Still more convincing than the liberal critique

 

[tar1984]

Thanks for the links Jeff Robinson