Marxist humanism

(Also called humanist Marxism ) Marxian humanism as a special case of philosophical humanism is a branch of humanism, which is very focused on the early works of Karl Marx. Its representatives try the humanistic aspect, according to their interpretation of the essence of Marxism to win again. An important movement of Marxist humanism presented represents the practice squad

Origin, history, and representatives

1890 Friedrich Engels had stressed in a letter to Joseph Bloch, that they had misunderstood Marxism and it was a mistake to see an absolute and unilateral determinism of the forces of production on the consciousness and the superstructure. The awareness has in turn impact on the structure and is necessary for the understanding of the revolutionary changes in the structure and the contradiction between the productive forces and social relations.

An important opponent of Marxist humanism was the philosopher and representatives of the so-called " anti-humanism ", Louis Althusser, who called the Marxist humanism as " revisionist ". He criticized the fact that the representatives of the flow does not take into account the opposition of the young and older Marx - he himself describes the change in the thinking of Marx, which was completed in The German Ideology, as " epistemological break ". For Althusser, the humanism of the influenced by Friedrich Hegel and Ludwig Feuerbach early writings of Marx incompatible with the "scientific" theories of the later Marx, as they occur in the capital for example.

Thinking

" Karl Marx: Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, Book III. Marx and Engels issue. Division I. Volume 2 p 263 "

The representatives of Marxist humanism emphasized the importance of the early writings of Karl Marx, especially the " Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 ", the " German Ideology " and the "Critique of Hegel 's Philosophy of Right ". These early works were only discovered in the 1930s and were in many parts of the Eastern Bloc as documents immature thinking of Marx. The representatives also tried to create a new interpretation of the thought of Marx by an interpretation that was not strictly economic and materialistic.

They stressed also those section of the " Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts ," in which Marx asserts: " But man is not only a natural being, but he is human nature beings; that is, for themselves existent being, and therefore a species-being, than which he must both acknowledge and bethätigen in his being as in his knowledge. So neither are the human objects are natural objects as they provide a direct [ ... ]. But nature, taken abstractly, for itself, fixes in the separation v [ om ] people, for the people nothing. ". Marx continued writing in the " Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts ": " Here we see how the naturalism or humanism carried out differs from both the idealism, as materialism and at the same time is both their unifying truth. "

According to the philosopher Rodolfo Mondolfo (1877-1976) must, if one historical materialism of Marx and Engels studied in detail " to acknowledge that it is not materialism, but a true humanism, which in the center of each observation and discussion concept of man is. " There was a" realistic humanism ( real humanism ) as calling him the creator himself, who tries to see the people in its effective and concrete reality. He tries to understand and the story to be understood as a reality that has been created by man through his activities, his work, his social actions over the centuries in which the education and the process of change of the environment in its existence in history which man lives and in which man develops himself simultaneously as cause and effect of any historical evolution. "In this sense could be said that historical materialism can not be confused with a materialistic philosophy.