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STEPS TOWARD a MARXIST HUMANISM by John Locop A STEPS TOWARD A MARXIST HUMANISM by John Locop A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of The Wilkes Honors College in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences with a Concentration in Philosophy Wilkes Honors College of Florida Atlantic University Jupiter, Florida April 2019 STEPS TOWARD A MARXIST HUMANISM by John Locop This thesis was prepared under the direction of the candidate’s thesis advisor, Dr. Nicholas Baima, and has been approved by the members of his supervisory committee. It was submitted to the Faculty of The Honors College and was accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences. SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE: ____________________________ Dr. Nicholas Baima ____________________________ Dr. Christopher Ely ____________________________ Dean Ellen Goldey, Wilkes Honors College ____________ Date ii ABSTRACT Author: John Locop Title: Steps Toward a Marxist Humanism Institution: Wilkes Honors College of Florida Atlantic University Thesis Advisor: Dr. Nicholas Baima Degree: Bachelors of Arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences Concentration: Philosophy Year: 2019 The historical connections between Marxism and humanism are diverse and at times, contradictory. Contemporary debates within the Marxist tradition continue to revolve around questions regarding the proper attitude toward humanism and its universalizing implications. To state the problem as a question, “If a Marxist Humanism is possible, with what problems, convictions, concepts etc. should one be concerned in order to create a Marxist Humanist project?” This thesis draws out problems and solutions raised by different trends in the history of Marxist thought which attempt to deal with humanism in order to propose a few steps forward for Marxist Humanism. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter 1 - Marxist Humanism and Trotskyism…………………………………………………..4 Chapter 2 - Marxist Humanism Defending the Soviet Union……………………………………15 Chapter 3 - Marxism, Humanism, and Colonialism……………………………………………..27 Works Cited……………………………………………………………………………………...42 iv Introduction “As for socialist humanism, it can see itself not only as a critique of the contradictions of bourgeois humanism, but also and above all as the consummation of its ‘nobles’ aspirations. Humanity’s millenarian dreams, prefigured in the drafts of past humanisms, Christian and bourgeois, will at last find realization in it: in man and between men, the reign of Man will at last begin.”1 -Louis Althusser “There is no refugee crisis. There is, however, a crisis of humanism in Europe and North America.” -Vijay Prashad In 1964, Louis Althusser published his now famous critique of Soviet socialist humanism. With bitter sarcasm, he demonstrated the irony of the Bolsheviks’ newly adopted vision of the future: that it sought to fulfill the dreams of liberal humanism. Althusser was not the last thinker on the left to deal with humanism, no matter the power of his argument. As a matter of fact, it seems that something about our historical moment has left contemporary progressive thinkers preoccupied by questions about humanist ideas. Vijay Prashad has raised the concern that our world is currently having a “crisis of humanism,” that our country is suffering from a case of “iron in the soul.” Samir Amin, on the other hand, proposes a form of humanism which must universalize itself in order to build socialism and overcome reactionary nationalism. Cedric Robinson, meanwhile, proposes that the Marxist tradition is fundamentally limited by Eurocentrism, preventing it from forming a universal revolutionary theory. In view of this diversity of positions on Marxism and its relation to humanism, how are we to make sense of 1 Louis Althusser, For Marx. (London: Verso, 2005), 231 1 recent developments in leftist thought regarding humanism? Can humanism, in its implicit universalizing aspirations be reconciled with the history of class struggle? The materialist outlook of Marxist philosophy may seem to suggest that Marxists should condemn idealist ideologies such as humanism altogether. However, for Althusser, it was not a simple matter of condemnation or acceptance.2 To try and defeat humanism by way of condemnation would be itself an idealist move; to know an ideology, for Marx, it is necessary to understand the social and material conditions that give rise to it.3 Therefore, dealing a rhetorical blow to humanism does nothing in itself to defeat it. Similarly, to embrace the ideas of humanism would do nothing to give it strength in the real world. Neither approach to humanism takes into account the forces that grant the ideology its power. In an attempt to synthesize the best of Marxism and humanism, the socialist-humanists abandoned one for the other. In this manner, the Bolsheviks simultaneously made a wrong theoretical move and blinded themselves to their mistake. Through the example of the Bolsheviks’ idealist turn, Althusser indicates the problem at hand for Marxists confronted with humanism; they analyze humanism on its own idealist terms, abstracted from historical reality. In what follows, I will attempt to situate contemporary left discussions of humanism in terms of their historical conditions. Thus, I will connect the works of thinkers like Prashad and Amin with those of the Marxist humanists of the past, showing the ways in which their 2 “When (eventually) a Marxist policy of humanist ideology, that is, a political attitude to humanism, is achieved – a policy which may be either a rejection or a critique, or a use, or a support, or a development, or a humanist renewal of contemporary forms of ideology in the ethico-political domain this policy will only have been possible on the absolute condition that it is based on Marxist philosophy, and a precondition for this is theoretical anti-human-ism.” Ibid., 231 3 “Marx never believed that a knowledge of the nature of money (a social relation) could destroy its appearance, its form of existence – a thing, for this appearance was its very being, as necessary as the existing mode of production. Marx never believed that an ideology might be dissipated by a knowledge of it: for the knowledge of this ideology, as the knowledge of its conditions of possibility, its structure, of this specific logic and of its practical role, within a given society, is simultaneously knowledge of the conditions of its necessity.” Ibid., 230 2 philosophical stances bear the marks of their social and material conditions of possibility. That is to say; I will examine how the humanism with which the left is now concerned took form, not only in books but in the development of history. In Chapters 1 and 2, I will focus on earlier forms Marxist humanism, mediated by their then-crucial political stance on the Soviet Union. I employ this lens in order to observe these humanisms in the context from which they were birthed. That is to say, the context of sectarian struggle within and between different Marxist organizations over the question of alliance with existing socialist states. This context is crucial given the material consequences of foreign aid, government repression, etc. which helped to form the conditions under which different Marxist humanisms were created. In Chapter 3, I will look at more contemporary anti-racist and anti- colonial forms of Marxist and materialist theory (largely free from the question of the Soviets due to their time) which confront and pose challenges to the project of creating a Marxist humanism for today’s left. Then I will draw conclusions concerning the possibility of a Marxist Humanism today. 3 Chapter 1 - Marxist Humanism and Trotskyism “Communism as the positive transcendence of private property as human self-estrangement, and therefore as the real appropriation of the human essence by and for man; communism therefore as the complete return of man to himself as a social (i.e., human) being – a return accomplished consciously and embracing the entire wealth of previous development. This communism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism, and as fully developed humanism equals naturalism; it is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature and between man and man – the true resolution of the strife between existence and essence, between objectification and self- confirmation, between freedom and necessity, between the individual and the species. Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution.”4 -Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 “In personal socialist humanism, the Soviet Union accepts on its own account the supersession of the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat, but it also rejects and condemns the ' abuses ' of the latter, the aberrant and ' criminal ' forms it took during the period of the 'cult of personality '. Socialist humanism, in its internal use, deals with the historical reality of the supersession of the dictatorship of the proletariat and of the ' abusive ' forms it took in the U.S.S.R.”5 -Louis Althusser, For Marx The humanist strain running through the Marxist tradition centers itself around a few key propositions: 1) there is a fundamental and more or less positive essence to human beings, 2) the fundamental essence of humanity has been lost as a result of capitalism, and 3) the purpose of the Marxist project is to retake the lost essence of humanity through the class struggle. These foundational claims of the Marxist
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