Karl Marx: Key Influences on His Philosophy
Key Influences on Karl Marx’s Philosophy
Hegel’s Idealism and Dialectic
To discuss the factors that influenced Marx, we must first discuss the first major philosopher who appeared in Europe after Kant’s death. This philosopher was Hegel, born in 1770 in Stuttgart. He knew the philosophy of Rousseau and Kant, and being young, with peers such as Schelling and Hölderlin, who later became great writers, received with great joy the storming of the Bastille. He moved to the German city of Jena, where he wrote his great work, The Phenomenology of Spirit. Afterward, he gave classes in Heidelberg and Berlin. His philosophy, successful in his time, advocated the creation of a great Prussian Empire, which is the germ of the idea of a great German Empire. He died of cholera in 1831.
Hegel is considered the last philosopher of history who created a vast system of philosophy, which is called Idealism. He was tremendously influenced by Romantic ideas.
He belongs to a group of thinkers that, after the Enlightenment, raised an important issue. We know, because the learned have taught us, that what they said in the Middle Ages—that history has a purpose given by God—is false. It is not true that history takes the path directed by God. Philosophers, thanks to the Enlightenment, now know that reason can dominate, and actually dominates. All that is irrational (such as feudalism or superstitions) can be replaced with new, sound systems.
Thus, Hegel asked: Is there any sense of history? It does have a sense; it is a rational sense. History goes toward the freedom of human beings (the influence of Romanticism). The sense is to go to the spirit that possessed Greek culture and was lost: the coincidence of the individual mind of each person with the ideals of the polis, the community. For Hegel, history is the development of spirit, of what he calls Reason. But it refers not to your spirit or mine, but to an Absolute Spirit, which is in all reality, which consists of the development of humanity toward an end.
Hegel’s Dialectical Method
One question that arises is, how does Hegel develop the Absolute Spirit? How does history unfold to reach its end? The answer is the dialectic, which is an evolutionary process consisting of three parts: thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Hegel’s example is not particularly good. An acorn (thesis) is ready to be an oak. But it is only an oak if it is deleted or denied as an acorn (antithesis). Acorns from the new oak (synthesis) contain a new reality, which has passed the first acorn, seed, and born of her tree. What Hegel means is that in history—and this can be seen perfectly in the development of a political or artistic moment (argument)—it is always followed by an opposite moment (antithesis). The clash between the thesis and antithesis creates a third reality, the synthesis, which outperforms the previous two. An example is seen in art. Romanesque art is overcome by a complete opposite, Gothic. The clash of these two ways of seeing art emerges as a synthesis: the Renaissance. How could this not apply to political systems that occur in countries where a conservative step is usually passed to a new progressive stage, and then to a more moderate one? What could it be that when we are children, we see parents as gods (thesis), and when we are teenagers, we see them as demons (antithesis), until maturity, when we see them more logically (synthesis)?
As seen, the dialectic integrates everything that happens to give it a dialectical sense, therefore rational. Therefore, one of Hegel’s most famous statements is, “All that is rational is real; everything real is rational.” That is, there is nothing in the development of history that we consider outside the dialectic, beyond reason. Everything that happens is part of a rational system.
From these ideas, Hegel, as we said, created a vast system of philosophy from which to explain science, art, logic, religion, politics, ethics, knowledge, and history. As noted above, it is considered the last great system in the history of philosophy. Hegel is the last great philosopher who is going to make a philosophy that covers all topics. From him, each philosopher will focus more on specific issues.
Economic Liberalism
The second major influence on Marxist thought is economic liberalism. Liberal philosophers and economists such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo, the successors of the political and economic ideas of the empiricists, defend above all that the economy should be governed by the law of the free market (supply and demand), whose operation is regulated by an “invisible hand”: the interaction of private interests and competition. The common good in society will emerge from the individual pursuit of self-interest and competition among members of society.
Utopian Socialism
The third major influence on Marx is Utopian Socialism. Against the individualism defended by liberal economists, a current emerged that defended the rights of the underprivileged. The term “socialist” appeared around 1830 and included a number of theories for the liberation struggle of the proletariat. Most socialist positions before Marx were called “utopian” by him to distinguish them from his own theory, which he conceived as scientific.
The utopian socialists advocated the creation of ideal societies in which there is no exploitation. Many of these theories would be role models for post-anarchist communes and experiments. The main philosophers that make up this current are Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Owen.
Anarchism
Alongside the utopian socialists, Marx received a large influence from Proudhon and Bakunin’s anarchism, but differed with them in that anarchists reject the state, considering it the origin of all the injustices of society. Marx was a harsh critic of anarchism and utopian socialism, as both doctrines lacked critical rigor. They simply make a surface analysis but do not criticize the bases that produce social injustice. The revolution cannot simply be a moral or ethical revolution, as the utopian socialists wanted. It should be a scientific-practical one.
The Left Hegelians
Finally, we note the influence of a group of philosophers known as the Left Hegelians. When Hegel died, his disciples were divided into two main camps: the right and the left. The Right Hegelians tried to continue Hegel’s philosophy in relation to the defense of a totalitarian state. This Hegelian right would have a great influence on what years later would become the great German Empire. On the other hand, the Left Hegelians focused on developing the idea of dialectics, trying to use this idea to defend a transformation of society. The principal author of the Hegelian dialectic is Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872).
Feuerbach’s Materialism
Feuerbach split from Hegel in his philosophy but also criticized him. While for Hegel all is Absolute Spirit, everything is subject to Feuerbach. The origin of reality is not a spirit, as Hegel said, that is developed throughout history, but it is originally material.
In addition, Feuerbach argued that religion is not a step in the dialectical evolution of the spirit, as Hegel believed. Religion is simply an expression of human desire. The secret of religion is anthropology. What does this mean? Simply that religion is merely the creation by men of a superior place in which human attributes and qualities are carried to perfection. It is a kind of alienation; that is, human beings go out of themselves to create a being different from them (the concept of alienation, as we shall see, will be crucial to Marx). Feuerbach’s conclusion is that humans must overcome God to turn back those human qualities that they put into it.