Marxist Philosophy - The Philosophy of Marx

The Philosophy of Marx

There are endless interpretations of the "philosophy of Marx", from the interior of the Marxist movement as well as in its exterior. Although some have separated Marx's works between a "young Marx" (in particular the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844) and a "mature Marx" or also by separating it into purely philosophical works, economics works and political and historical interventions, Étienne Balibar (1993) has pointed out that Marx's works can be divided into "economic works" (Das Kapital, 1867), "philosophical works" and "historical works" (The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, the 1871 Civil War in France which concerned the Paris Commune and acclaimed it as the first "dictatorship of the proletariat", etc.)

Marx's philosophy is thus inextricably linked to his critique of political economy and to his historical interventions in the workers' movement, such as the 1875 Critique of the Gotha Program or The Communist Manifesto, written with Engels (who was observing the Chartist movement) a year before the Revolutions of 1848. Both after the defeat of the French socialist movement during Louis Napoleon Bonaparte's 1851 coup and then after the crushing of the 1871 Paris Commune, Marx's thought transformed itself.

Marxism's philosophical roots were thus commonly explained as derived from three sources: English political economy, French republicanism and radicalism, and German idealist philosophy. Although this "three sources" model is an oversimplification, it still has some measure of truth.

On the other hand, Costanzo Preve (1990) has assigned four "masters" to Marx: Epicurus (to whom he dedicated his thesis, Difference of natural philosophy between Democritus and Epicurus, 1841) for his materialism and theory of clinamen which opened up a realm of liberty; Jean-Jacques Rousseau, from which come his idea of egalitarian democracy; Adam Smith, from whom came the idea that the grounds of property is labour; and finally Hegel.

"Vulgar Marxism" (or codified dialectical materialism) was seen as little other than a variety of economic determinism, with the alleged determination of the ideological superstructure by the economical infrastructure. This positivist reading, which mostly based itself on Engels' latter writings in an attempt to theorize "scientific socialism" (an expression coined by Engels) has been challenged by Marxist theorists, such as Lukacs, Gramsci, Althusser or, more recently, Étienne Balibar.