MARX AND MARXISM: an anarchist's assessment  

Marx wasn't totally stupid. Despite his cooption and distortion by ideological Marxists (and the power hungry Soviet 'Socialists' who didn't even pretend to true Marxist ideology), his ideas when properly understood may have something of use to anarchists. I offer this as a brief but concise analysis of the Marxian legacy.

Marx's philosophy was primarily a creative combination of three precursor positions - Marxian materialism, left Hegelianism and philosophical radicalism (see appendix), though one that contained ambiguities and contradictions allowing different interpretations, or Marxism(s) when taken ideologically.

 
Marx begins his philosophical account of politics in The German Ideology, a combination of his and Engel's view of - what the latter would call - dialectical materialism.

The basic premise of this is of a foundational reality of ''living human individuals". All three of these states are held to be self evident (a reasonable extension of Descarte's cogito - possibly the only unassailable self evident truth - together with some basic intuitions about our existence). From this Marx attempted an analysis of what this meant in physical terms. (This departure from radical Hegelianism seems to have been due to the influence of the unconscious bourgeois materialism of Engels - partly conditioned by his commercial activity and a subsequent influence of Philosophical Radicalism, via Chartism. An influence that would become stronger as the two became closer, and Marx became financially dependent on him).

This step meant there would be a deficit of psychological and phenomenal content in the Marxian account. Marx would not have regretted this for two reasons; one, he was reacting to the 'idealist' bias (as he saw it) of many Young Hegelians, and two, he had bought the British Empiricist line, that the only reliable and consensual forms of data were objective facts, free of subjective content (at a time when this was believed possible).

A modern, less naive, interpretation of this might be to view this as a first thesis put forward in a greater dialectic, rather than a totalitarian account (this would be more in keeping with Marx's Hegelian background, and match his statement that his account is "in direct contrast to idealist philosophy"). In a less Hegelian way his 'materialism' could be seen as a perspective rather than a truth, though there is always a tension between Marxian pragmatism and Engelian dogmatism.

Marx focuses on physical organization as the key to understanding 'living human individuals'. By which he means (psycho-) physiology, biology, ecology (in the original sense of relation to environment), and scientific sociology, and the way these are modified by human actions. These modifying actions are what distinguishes the human from the animal he claims (a simplistic but broad truth). Marx concentrates on the latter in the above list, because he believes they are more accessible in factual terms (true in his time, and partially so today - brain function is still a mystery for instance). The former are simply described as conditioning the latter, foundations knowable (at present) only as manifest within social realities studied in the latter sciences. They are also most prone to human modification (so most characteristically human). Arguably an over hierarchical approach, but one initially adopted for pragmatic reasons.

Material sociology can be primarily understood as conditioned by our relationship to our environment and the way we subsist. Thus Marxian analysis of society (as a set of relations of individuals) is predominantly an ecological and economic one. This approach was also shaped by the premature belief amongst the economists of his time that that they had perfected economics as a science (and perhaps further conditioned by Marx's experience of poverty). Thus the theory of the economic base, for Marx, is not a metaphysical stance but purely a practical method of understanding the world, in a way that was open to consensus (and identification with by the dispossessed) and so suitable for immediate utilization by a mass political movement. It was only later that the spiritual impoverishment of this approach, and the fatal errors due to its simplistic reductionism, became appparent. Particularly after it had become dogmatized as a secular religion and imposed as a redemptive solution.

In his early phase Marx applies a systematic analysis of socio-economic organization that is heavily indebted to Left Hegelianism. Here the dialectic is used a method of conceptualizing the interplay of forces in this sphere.

The primary dialectic is between living individuals and their historical environment. Just as a chain of conditioning exists from the embodied individual to the socio-economic level of organization, so does a chain of 'reverse-conditioning' exist from the historically constructed socio-economy back to the embodied individual. The former is described as the physical life-process and the latter the historical life-process, with each stage in the chain being a life-process under definite physical and historical influence. Marx describes the conditioning of the embodied individual by society as one that occurs exclusively on the psychological level. Thus consciousness can be understood as being conditioned by socio-economic forces. To reemphasis an important point, this perspectival bias is initially seen as a pragmatic heuristic, later becomes a theoretical proposition and under Marxist ideology becomes a tenant of faith.

In light of this perspective the vaguely conceived foundational life-processes (individuals) enter into our understanding as conditioned members of a wider socio-economic life-process, of which we have (allegedly) clear empirical knowledge. From a definable socio-economic perspective we can conceive of definite active individuals (delimited by material conditions), Marx claims. Later discovery of the initial bio-physiological situation will only perfect our knowledge of Man rather than changing it (its effects already being experienced within the conditions of the socio-economic matrix).

Thus history can be conceived of as the dialectic interplay of individual biological forces and universal socio-economic ones, currently understandable only from a general material perspective.

Engels differed radically from Marx at this point. While Marx saw the dialectic as a tool of consciousness, allowing us to conceptualize (perhaps ultimately inconceivable) material processes, Engels thought the dialectic represented a metaphysical reality. In the Dialectics of Nature, he would expound this idea, that nature proceeded to evolve via a dialectical process. The dialectic becomes applicable to everything, and the material world is no longer just understandable in terms of dialectics, it is driven by it. The historical process becomes historical necessity. True socialism is accordingly not an ideology, or religion, but a science. One compatible with positivism and Darwinist theory. This idea would be taken up by Lenin too and influence most subsequent Marxist theory.

In some radical interpretations of Engels reality itself can be seen as a product of the dialectical interaction of the perceived and its perceivers.

Marx seems to have been influenced by Engels to the extent that he held that our conceptual world was just as much the creation of our own minds as a reflection of an external reality. The human 'essence' of its so-called 'species-being' ('man' in potentia) is said to be creativity, we are active beings in an active reality not passive respondents to it.

Engels's account is deeply speculative and history seems to demonstrate it to be false. Marxian philosophy (a la Engels) is not at all scientific it is as arbitrary as any other ideology. As a myth of orientation it may have limited value, especially if the Marxian claim - that only dialectics allow conception - is true. But to assess the value of Marxian philosophy we have to abandon the Engelian input and isolate Marx's own insights.

The strength of Marx's ideas are in his emphasis on the actual structures that underlies reality, or at least our conception of them. It is useless to try and create a new society from imaginary premises that have no connection with this reality. But this does not make it scientific, Marx's claims as to the nature of these structures are conceptual theories not hypotheses that change with data. As noted previously, these theories can become valuable as part of a wider dialectic, but not as dogmatic assumptions. Despite Marx's professed holistic dialectic he does sometimes seem to fall foul of a limited dialectic that approaches dogmatism (how much of this is his own fault or the influence of the bourgeois Engels is now undecidable).

Marxian dogmatism is also more deeply evident in the privileging the physical over the mental (a typically bourgeois position). This can be seen not only in the physicalist bias of dialectical materialism, but also in the linearity of his accounts of both the physical and historical life-process. The process runs exclusively from particular physiology, via economic conditions, to society, and then back, via cultural conditions, to particular psychology. The subjective is secondary to, and emerges from, the objective. But there is a contradiction here, Marx correctly identifies the psychological (notably the creative faculty) as the 'essence' of the human (allowing him to describe the 'living human individual' in terms of socio-economics, according to his linear model), but if this is so psychology is primary not secondary. Otherwise the human would be a secondary product of a deterministic nature and so incapable of original creativity or mental independence (human criteria according to Marx).

Either we have to deny that physical nature is totally deterministic or that the mental is secondary. Modern experience points to both of these approaches being true. Determinism is only a probabilistic approximation according to today's physics. Within the philosophy of mind and psychology, physicalism is being abandoned as a valid approach, as consciousness is increasingly recognized as an irreducible phenomena. In the light of this human psychology, while obviously conditioned by physical and historical factors, cannot be reduced to them. Marx was over optimistic in thinking that  changing an economy would change the society (as history has born out). Change requires the liberation of more than one vector. He based his hopes on the belief that the more individual (and subjective) features would merely complete and perfect the view obtained at the macro end socio-economy. Unfortunately he underestimated the incompleteness of this pespective.

In defence of Marxian bias claims are often made to the effect that the Marxist perspective is true because it offers a complete analysis of our socio-economic history. With challenges to provide a better account. However this challenge does not have to be met. The modern Quinian analysis of conceptual plurality (the underdetermination of theory by evidence), plus the more Continental notion of the undecidability of meaning (or the Discordian 5 pebble argument if you prefer), demonstrates that given enough time an infinite number of conflicting theories, of equal explanatory and predictive power, can be produced from any one set of data. Marx just had a lot of time on his hands. His perspective is therefore not an absolute truth, merely one useful position.

A rejection of material bias does not entail a regression to a pre-Marxian dogma of idealism (a bourgeois ideology), or a rejection of the concrete, merely a delinearalisation of the dialectic into one that functions both ways. This makes the Marxian account incomplete with out an adequate knowledge of human psychology (something pointed to by Fromm and Marcuse amongst others). As this remains a half understood and ambiguous subject, a degree of mystery and ambiguity is itself injected into the Marxian worldview, negating its potential dogmatism. A stance closer to the pragmatism of 'real' people than the religious dogmas of aristocrats and scientism of the bourgeoisie. However despite this, Marx's initial intuitions remain born out by psychological observations that indicate that habitual activity and role playing have a deeper effect on human psychology than the mere exchange of ideas. So the core orientation of the Marxian worldview still remains intact.

But another problem with Marx though was his intellectual optimism. Marx assumes we can fully understand, and agree on, the socio-economic basis of our environment (the practical roots of his linear materialism). Today we are more skeptical. The classical economic theories he increasingly relied upon were undoubtedly misconceived, the labour theory of value in particularly is highly dubious. More generally (in the light of post-structuralism and the near collapse of realist philosophy), the idea of that schematic models of the world can be devised that accurately represent reality is a doubtful one, and even if conceivable, faith in the possibility of accurately communicating them seems over optimistic, to say the least, in light of the limitations of language. This does not mean that Marxian psycho-sociology is redundant, it means that it is an imperfect attempt to create a partial map, an historical map that can be read in a variety of ways. Again we have a high level of ambiguity emerging within the analysis, one that can only be dealt with pragmatically. Socio-economics is no better known (or perhaps knowable) than human psychology. What is needed to understand both is a true bi-directional dialectic that engages both processes with each other, and also relates both to actual experience in the world (both objective and subjective). The Marxian account thus becomes an emerging perspective on the world, experienced primarily at a personal and interpersonal level.

Beyond this, the increased subjectivity and essential ambiguity of the our new view of reality negates the possibility of a final, consensual, absolute truth. This in itself is not a problem for the Marxian analysis. Despite naive accounts of the dialectical process (of - and at times by - both Hegel and Marx), it is best seen as an open process that never achieves an absolute resolution or an (oppressive) totalisation. The process such is a living, dynamic one of indefinite becoming, rather than a decline to some deadly fixation. Being (and essence) is rooted in nothing more than the abstract terminology of a temporal perspective.

However dialectical incompleteness and non-linearity may undermine the possibility of a unified dialectical process. This is a problem for Engelian metaphysics rather than Marxian conceptualism though. The Marxian conceptualist can utilize a variety of hypothetical micro-dialectics - based on different idealizations of economics or psychology, or from different 'sites' in any overall process (such as a Weberian sociological position, rather than the socio-economic one) - in order to understand the world (some of which may be incompatible, in terms of traditional logic, just as is the case in modern physics). Unfortunately this is not open to the Engelian metaphysician who seeks a central, unified truth (Engel's 'myth' may now only be workable as a dynamic, discontinuous, pluralistic ontology. Equally free of the Hegelian metaphysic of unity and the positivistic metaphysic of a fixed atomism).

Consequently the idea of definable 'progress' would also seem to be redundant. Another stance of pragmatic pluralism has to take its place, one based on the ethics of utility, or perhaps of aesthetics, rather than a 'scientific' account of 'progress'.

Given all this it should be still possible to speak of a Post-Marxian philosophy. As long as the dialectical method itself is sound (and that is an issue for a different essay) post-modern considerations should not lead to a complete relativisation of all possible perspectives (of a type that would negate opposition to existing institutions), but rather Marxian pluralism would be integrated by an opposition to the totalizing influence of capitalism and dogmatic ideology.

This considered a closer look at the particular micro-dialectics of the original Marx can be undertaken.

Two dialectics are focused on; one between mankind and nature, reflecting ecological and economic organization, the other between human individuals, reflecting social organization (though Engels hints at a third between genders).

The dialectic between man and nature arises as man separates from the natural order and becomes socialized. That is technology of production is devised that supplies the community rather than allowing individuals just to fend for themselves. Synthesis of this dialectic is technological society (even if the technology is stone tools) and cultivated nature (originally the collective herding of animals). Neither of these are unique to humans, but the form it takes amongst them is held to be so. This is claimed to result in scarcity (as the produced means of life are inadequate due to population growth and inefficient technology). From this another dialectic is generated between individuals as they compete for products. In this dialectic property owning and propertyless classes emerge, the propertyless being oppressed and forced into productive roles. Creating the division of labour and private property.

The dialectic now shifts to that between these classes (with a minor subject-object dialectic).

Various detailed versions of this were developed (including Engel's version in which the relation between patriarchs and their families - who also become their property - replace individual competition). Obviously these are hypotheses and the details are not important.

What is crucial in this account is the next stage. Given that there has come into existence the propertied and the propertyless (by what ever means) - evident from our existing situation - a new dialectic comes into play.

The essence of the human species-being, according to Marx, is creativity. A creativity (the affirmation of human individuality) that is properly put to social utility. A tense but productive dialectic exists between the individual and the community. The basic, practical manifestation of this creativity is economic productivity - and related technological development. It is not the only manifestation, but it is the one Marx feels is the most important. This productive dialectic is broken through the division of labour. The producers are robbed of their product by the property owners and with it the essence of their humanity. They are reduced to the level of sub-humans or animals and their human value is projected into the commodities they produce. Products become objectified creativity. In order to obtain the means to live the producer must buy it back from the capitalist. To do this they sell their labour (all the capitalist values about them). In doing so they commodify their labour and themselves. They too become objectified, a process that breaks organic interconnection. This objectification is an alienation from the source of the labour, the creative ego, which is now separated from its creativity, self and even its own body. Commodities (the objectified human essence) are then fetishised and sought to fill the void. Consumer capitalism is born.

Alienation accelerates and an objectified, mechanical social order emerges, conditioning all who live in it. A process heightened by industrial technology, as the boundaries between labourer and machine are blurred. The proletariat (fruitlessly) seek to become themselves in their private space, the workplace is a hated place of alienation. As the proletariat produces more their economic value decreases (as does their human essence) and their product increases in value. The capitalist process thus increasingly devalues, objectifies and alienates the human while increasingly evaluating commodity (and mechanical production) over humanity. As capitalists devour each other and become a smaller and smaller elite, the proletariat grows and eventually becomes a majority. Organic community dies and society is atomized into alienated individuals viewing each other as objects.

The greatest alienation however is between the capitalist 'class' and the proletariat 'class'. The capitalist class generates from itself an illusory community with its own collective interest. This collective interest manifests as the State and Law, whose purpose is to maintain the existing order.

However Marx sees cause for optimism within this depressing process, thinking that once the capitalist class contracts and the proletariat's situation worsens it will be overthrown and communism will emerge. Communism will manage (high and efficient) production in the interests of all, abolish scarcity and the division of labour (and with it fixed production roles, classes, private property and money), association will be voluntary and all will be reconnected to their creativity (and each other) as free individuals (able to express their recovered essence however they wish). This will be the final synthesis of the dialectic.

Thus the Marxian account provides a detailed explanation of the modern socio-economic plight and also demonstrates that the solution lies within the process itself rather than some vain opposition to it. A kind of political Taoism. As a myth it was very powerful, but it proved to be wrong.

The main problem being that even in this Hegelian form Marx relied to much on classical economic theory that has now been proved false. The objectification of human essence as product, is no more than the labour theory of value Hegelianised. It is also vague exactly what these Hegelian terms, like essence, are supposed to mean (the authoritarian essentialist connotations have been hammered by existentialists ever since). Crucially in practical terms his predictions have failed to come true as most workers actually felt they benefited from their exploitation.

However while the economics of the argument are flawed, it is still valuable as a psychological dialectic that demonstrates the effect of capitalism on human beings. The alienation of creativity can be seen in this context and the resultant objectification and social alienation are therefore still important observations. This was seen by Fromm when he attempted to combine Marxism and psycho-analysis. He claimed the economic system had caused a shift from a 'being mode' of existence to a 'having mode', a process he sought to reverse. It would be useful for Marxians to rewrite this dialectic of alienation in entirely psychological terms rather than pseudo-economic ones. A related genuine economic dialectic would be valuable but would probably be even harder to develop.

A further problem with the pseudo-economics of Marx was that it pushed him into admitting that high level industrialization and production would be necessary to meet the economic criteria for communism. This implied either a post revolutionary managed economy (and so a centralized State) and/or the globalization of capitalism. Either the long-term suspension of liberty or suspension of world revolution until civilization had degenerated to its worst possible extent. In practice both of these were adopted by the Soviet Union with disastrous results (as predicted by Bakunin, but dismissed by Marx).

Related to this was the problem of economic classes. Marx originally used the abstraction of class to generalize and schematize the conflict between the producer and the property owner. But as the nearest correlation to this category developed in capitalism it became increasingly difficult to define class membership. Marx had emphasized class - particularly in his late period - seeing conscious as primarily conditioned by economic interests. Two obvious responses to this are economic and dialectical respectively. Firstly Marxian economics were wrong therefore any class model derived from it would be misconceived. Economic interest is now far more complex, in particular most people belong to a third intermediate class, a synthesis has occurred between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Secondly a proper understanding of a true dialectic would reveal that class is influenced by socio-psychology, culture and ideology as much as material factors and that the process is two way. This has been demonstrated by the ecological movement that reveals that an anti capitalist struggle can be based on cultural conflict as much as economic conflict. The cases of the feminist movement and anti-racist campaigns also demonstrate a potential, if unrealized, revolutionary possibility. An extreme criticism might even accuse class struggle monism of being racist and sexist.

Thus class - and social identity - is a complex subject. It is also an abstraction due to the incompletability of any schematization. In other words, individuals are individuals they do not entirely fit into neat categories. All theories will exclude something, and somethings may not be rationalisable into any theory. This is partly due to the dynamic ever changing nature of the world, the world transforms constantly, as do natural individuals (rigidified personalities being one psychological criteria for bourgeois man - the most unnatural of classes).

This is the real danger of a politically driven class analysis, an abstract class can be prioritized as a unified revolutionary class, into which real people are herded (or excluded from). This can be taken to imply the massification of individuals into one collective class identity to which conformity is a necessary requirement (thus aiding capitalism in its negation of the living, creative individual and the creation of mass culture) In its extreme this can be found in the writings of certain Marxists who claim that truth is conditioned by class consciousness, with only the 'real', historically conditioned proletariat class possible having access to the truth. Thus justifying their role in the dictatorship of the proletariat. Or as Bakunin would put, the next power elite.

However Marx (at least in his early period) would not have sanctioned these interpretations. For him the free, (self) creative individual was the basis of any society worth living in. As Lukács later brought out, Marx held that as part of the revolutionary process the individual must transcend their class identity and express themselves creatively, the proletariat is a degenerate product of capitalism and must be abolished with it. The class struggle thus has an inner dimension as well as an outer one. The revolution is one occurring within the context of everyday life, for the early Marx, not some future political event as many later Marxists would have it. Marx's only error was his insistence of a temporary inversion in the dictatorship of the proletariat, but even this has more radical interpretations.

Marx would have no doubt agreed with much of the above, but would probably have retained his simplistic class analysis. A more mature conception of social class would consider the economic, biological, psychological and cultural factors that define social identity and condition consciousness. A dynamic scheme of interlaced, multiple classes (with variable social mobility) would be the outcome of a modern analysis. Some of these would be conservative others radical or revolutionary. Thus the basic Marxian dialectic of conflict would remain.

Further disaster struck the Marxian project when, under the bourgeois influence of Engels, Marx shifted from his original Hegelian position to a more empirical economic one. The period of the classic Marx, with the foundational principle shifted from the individual to an abstract 'economic base' that shaped the superstructure of society. At the same time Marxian Philosophy became far closer to British philosophical radicalism than radical Hegelianism. Das Kapital being the culmination of this. After Marx's death with Engel's editing the last two volumes of this work the dogmatic reductivism was complete. It was this that became the basis of Marxism, a simplistic reading of the late Marx which distorted it even further (with Leninism and its offshoots becoming the ultimate inversion of the original Marx).

Fortunately this process was partly halted by the rediscovery of the original Marx (in the works of Lukács and in the translation of Marx early writings and in the 30's).

While on the whole Marxism has been a distortion of Marx's ideas, Neo-Marxism (following the rediscovery of the original Marx) moved in various degrees back to a purer Marxian form.

Lukács was the forerunner in this, but its most famous proponents being the Frankfurt School. Marcuse and Fromm attempted to bring a psychological dimension to Marxian thought by fusing it with psycho-analysis. They achieved a variable success but managed to widen the Marxist worldview. However the real genius of the school was Theodore Adorno. Adorno not only returned to the original Marx but added his own insights thus expanding greatly on the original. Arguing that culture played as an important a role as economy, he called for a counter culture to facilitate the revolutionary process. His explanation of the failure of social change to date was the presence of the culture-industry (media, art, science) and it was this that needed to be countered before change could occur. His greatest insight however was in what he called negative dialectics. Anticipating post-modernism, Adorno attacked Enlightenment rationalism and declared that the positive dialectic of Hegel was misconceived because it postulated an all encompassing philosophy of identity, moving towards a closed absolute. For Adorno the dialectic dissolves conceptual forms before they harden into lenses which distort our vision and impair our engagement with reality. Reality is not transparent to us there is a ''totally other'', a ''non-identical" which eludes our concepts. The dialectic is a never ending open process.

Other important Neo-Marxists are Reich, who demonstrates the importance of sexuality in social change, Castoriadis with his emphasis on individual subjectivity, Lefebvre with his views of commodity fetishism, consumption and everyday life as being more significant than productive processes and work, and the Annas School, who attempted to develop a Marxian process based on geography and environment. All of these helped widen the domain of the dialectic. Perhaps the most influential of these being the Situationists; Debord, who synthesized much of the above Neo-Marxism(s) and added his own theory of the spectacle (the non-participatory consumption of life); Vaneigem, who surreally took Debord's basic ideas to almost spiritual dimensions; and many others who extended their work.

However with all these vestiges of naive Marxism and authoritative rationalism usually remained. Often including a crude materialism that excludes the more subtle aspects of life.

In light of the 'post-modern' revolution and the post-Marxism of writers like Barthes, Derrida, Deleuze and Foucault, Marxian philosophy should be moving much further in the directions initiated by the Neo-Marxists (particularly Adorno), towards a wider, true dialectic based on the life processes of the subjective individual within modern society. Then perhaps the problems of Marxism may be overcome and Marx may have something to offer anarchist theory.

      APPENDIX:  Precursors (of Marx and Engels):

Philosophical Radicals:

Lockean rational materialists and radical liberals. Active since early 18^th cent. Patient and fond of practical, detailed working out according to concrete evidence. Politically reformist. Pro-democracy. Anti-intuitive/anti-romantic. Security prioritised over liberty. Focus on 'science' of economics (from bourgeois perspective). Classical Economic Theory.

Left liberal form extended to plebian audience by Paine. 1770's (Paine's form greatly influenced workerist liberal movements, such as the later Chartists.) Rationalist workerist radicalism emerges, soon merging with Rousseauan and Christian Communism forming early Socialism.

Later liberals Benthamite - Egalitarian, Utilitarian, and Associationist (mentalistic form of behaviorist determinism) from 1780's. Bentham designs Panopticon (see Foucault). Middle class base. Left Benthamite wing of John Stuart Mill (1850's) embraced aspects of Owenite Socialism of 1820's (that the labour theory of value ethically implies co-operativism ). Romantic influence on Mill (particularly the communistic Coleridge and the proto-anarchist Shelley) civilize the Rationalist.

Strong influence of this milieu on British Humanists. Darwinism (1850's) emerges from right which extends the paradigm to all of nature. Later adopted by left. 

Left Hegelianism:

Anti Christian and anti-bourgeois Hegelianism. Naturalist Philosophy (sometimes Pantheistic). The natural world (and/or human nature) seen as the manifestation of the Hegelian dialectic. Continual evolutionary process based on the interplay of opposites. Arena of dialectic is the human (individual or collective), the result is an increasingly individualized egalitarian society (or an individuated ego). Hegelian Socialists predominantly take collectivist view (Stirner being main exception). Anti idealist, therefore committed to materialism. But what is not rational is not actual. Rational reality behind irrational appearance. The idea man has of himself is limited and leads to an alienation. The alienated is projected onto something 'good' or 'bad'. God (or the absolute) or Satan (the masses).

Marxian Materialism:

Marx's only original componnent. Marx developed the idea that the world as we experience it is a conceptual structure formed from the dialectic interaction of the human mind and an external reality. The mind is active, not a passive reflection of an active reality. However the underlying nature of both man and reality was one unified material universe. Hence the dialectic was a material one.

Marxian Philosophy:

These three components were creatively entwined by Marx into an eclectic philosophy that was never completely perfected and was continually evolving (and perhaps sometimes degenerating).

The early Marx is characterized by a high emphasis on Left Hegelian notions, the late Marx by a higher Philosophical Radical bias. This later phase was influenced by Engels whose ideas were essential Rationalistic with little genuine Hegelian input (despite earlier being a Young Hegelian sympathizer). Classical Marxism took this line. New Marxism resurrected the early Marx.