Chapter 3.4: Karl Marx, the end of history

[Music] Karl Marx is of course famous as a political theories theorist and especially as the inventor of communism but his defense of communism and even the very idea of communism is based on a philosophical theory of history known as dialectical materialism since Marx is without doubt the philosopher of history who has had the biggest impact on European history and since his ideas about history are interesting in their own right it will be useful for us to investigate them in some detail Marxist thinking about history starts from Hegel like Hegel Marx believes that the development of history follows a logical structure and that this structure is the structure of thesis antithesis and synthesis this pattern of development is sometimes called dialectic which explains the first part of the term dialectical materialism the name of Marxist philosophy of history but what about the other part the materialism well according to Marx although haigo got the dialectical structure of history right he was mistaken about exactly where we can find this structure recall that Hegel thought that the structure of thesis antithesis and synthesis was to be found in the underlying ideas of human societies ideas like the idea of freedom so for Hegel history is really about this development of ideas ideas are what push history forward Marxist criticism of Hegel is that he is looking at history on a level that is far too abstract far too far removed from the actual daily lives of human beings before anything else Marx tells us human beings are concerned with their material needs the need for food shelter clothing and so on by far the most important thing about any society is how it ensures that these needs are met how is food produced how is it distributed what about the other means of production what are they who owns them these are the most important questions for understanding any society and it is on this level the level of the production of material goods that the real dialectical structure of history can be found for Marx then the instability in the historical situation is caused by the struggle between people and more specifically by the struggle between two classes a class is a group in society that plays a specific role in the production and ownership of material goods for instance in medieval society there were Nobles who owned the land and serfs who had to work on the land and give part of what they produced to the nobles the nobles are one class the serves another it marks his own time there were the bourgeoisie who owned the means of production such as factories and a proletariat who had to work for wages different classes in society are always opposed to each other because they have different interests it is the struggle between the classes which moves history forward as Marx and Engels right at the beginning of the Communist Manifesto and they write the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle free man and slave patrician and plebeian Lord and serf Guildmaster and journeyman in a word oppressor and oppressed stood in constant opposition to one another carried out an that now hidden now open fight a fight that each time ended either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large or in the common ruin of the contending classes so in any society Marx claims thesis and antithesis are both present but as different social groups as different classes the tension between these classes were at some point lead to a revolution which creates a new society in which that specific tension has been removed just as in a Hegelian synthesis in which the specific contradiction that led to that synthesis has been removed but again like Hegel this synthesis will not be perfect there will be new classes opposed to each other new oppression and more struggle and a new revolution of course one can wonder whether this process will go on forever Hegel had toyed with the idea of a perfect situation at the end of history in which all the underlying ideas of society have been cleared up but of course you couldn't really claim to know what's such a perfect situation would be like for Marx however the story is very different first Marx couldn't believe in historical progress in the same way that Hegel did for Hegel every synthesis creates better ideas and therefore a better world but for marks every synthesis creates a society with new oppression new injustice and new struggle Marx looks at the terrible conditions of the factory workers in his own day and he doesn't see any clear progress he sees people who might be even unhappier than people in any earlier stage of history so for Marx if history is just an infinite series of revolutions which never solve anything the world will look very bleak and pessimistic however second because Marx believes that the opposition of classes is what moves history forward he also has a very clear idea about the perfect Society at the end of history this must obviously be a society without classes that is a society where everybody participates equally in the process of material production and everyone has equal ownership of the means and the products of that production such a society would have only one class so there would be no struggle no oppression and no need for a further stage in history the name that Marx gifted at society is of course communism so for Marx communism is the end of history in two different ways first it is the end in the sense of the last thing once communism is reached the historical process will stop there will still be development things will still happen but society itself will be stable and second communism is the end of history in the sense of the goal of history with Hegel everything is moving towards less contradiction better concepts with Marx everything is moving towards communism and in fact Marx goes as far as to claim that communism is just around the corner it's going to be the next stage of history the one after our current capitalist state all of this leads to a tough question for Marx and later Marxists which is the question of law and freedom on the one hand mark seems to claim that history develops according to a fixed scheme which is a version of Hegel scheme that we can already know what the next stage in history be and as communism is inevitable on the other hand Marx wants to claim that people are free that they can really do things make a difference change history proletarians of all countries unite he writes and he wants them to go out and make communism a reality but these two strands in his thought are of course intention if there is a strict law of history and an inevitable end towards which history is moving and either we are not free to act as we wish or at least it doesn't really matter what we do if on the other hand we can make meaningful choices then the future course of history can't be inevitable any thinker who wishes to use Marxist ideas will have to clarify whether its freedom or the strict law of history that is more central Marx himself seems to have emphasised freedom more but many may be most later Marxist thinkers emphasize the idea of the law of history and the inevitability of communism but that is a very dangerous choice by taking human freedom out of history out of politics one also removes the need for the liberation criticism democracy or even just simply asking people what they want what you want the future to be is irrelevant if the future is already determined some philosophers including karl popper in his book on Hegel and Marx have argued that this denial of freedom may have played a role in the terrible human tragedies that unfolded in many of the 20th century's communist states someone like Stalin they would say believed that he was doing the necessary work of history and that anyone who stood in his way was merely holding back in evitable progress so there was no reason to talk to those people you just had to remove so history could move on and remove them Stalin obviously did again Marx himself seems to have emphasized freedom rather than inevitability but the tension a Marxist philosophy of history between the struggle for freedom and a rigid law of history certainly exists and it has shaped world history to an extent that no previous theory of history has ever done

Channel: Leiden University - Faculty of Humanities

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Keywords: Universiteit Leiden, Leiden University (College/University), Humanities (field of study), Geesteswetenschappen, Bachelor, Education, gijsbers, victor, wetenschapsfilosofie, karl, marx

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Length: 11min 50sec (710 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 27 2017