Enlightenment, Romanticism and Marx

1. Marxism can be seen in many different contexts. One useful context for our purposes is to see it as bringing together the aspirations of the enlightenment and the romantic period.
2. Marxism shares with the romantics a belief that human happiness can be found in freedom, where full and complete freedom requires the removal of the various constraints on following our deepest nature.
1. Human happiness for the romantics and Marx requires us to express our nature in our action.
1. Like many romantics, Marx assumes that we are most ourselves when we are freely creative.
1. When we can follow our own path rather than take the conventional route.
2. When we are inventive and innovative, when we make new forms and modes of things.
2. And, like many romantics, Marx supposes that in following our deepest nature, we will live in ways that make for communal as well as individual wellbeing.
1. Marx assumes that once we free ourselves, we will appreciate the freedom of our fellow human beings.
1. He supposes that we can develop a many-sided appreciation for the activities and projects of our fellow human beings. Thus, we will take pleasure in their successes as well as our own.
2. Many of the romantics, like Marx, also assume that scarcity can be overcome.
1. In part, because of the massive expansion of human powers to transform the world.
2. And, in part, because they believe that when men and women live lives that are freely creative, and come to enjoy each others creative lives, they will be less concerned with accumulating material goods for their own sake. The internal goods of free creative activity will be much more important than the external goods of money, power and prestige.
1. The romantics and Marx assume that men and women do not pursue these external goods, for their own sake but, rather..
1. because of the uncertainties and insecurities of life in liberal political communities, which are characterized by individualistic competition.
2. There is little or no opportunity for people to engage in unalienated work.
3. These are the only goods that are generally held in high esteem in liberal political communities.
1. Because these goods are instrumental to all other goods and because they are difficult to secure.
2. Because of the diversity of ways of life and goals, and the limited capacity of human beings to appreciate other goals, particularly when they are constrained by the constant need to secure the instrumental goods in order to stay alive and take care of their families.
2. In a more communal political community, there would be less need to focus on external, instrumental goods rather than internal goods.
1. The common provision of the necessities of life would free everyone to focus on doing unalienated work.
2. Such work would be available to everyone.
3. People who are creative and innovative will come to esteem creativity and innovation rather than the accumulation of material goods.
2. Thus, Marxism like romanticism, seeks to remove the constraints on human freedom.
1. The social of class conflict.
2. The natural constraints of scarcity.
3. The internal constraints—the mind forg’d manacles—that prevent us from recognizing our true nature as productive beings.
1. Where Marx differs from romantics like Blake, is that he gives an account of the political and social sources of these internal constraints.
3. Marxism shares with the enlightenment a belief in the capacity of human reason to both conquer nature and improve the shape our political and social life.
1. As we have seen, many romantics had ambivalent attitudes towards the enlightenment.
1. On the one hand:
1. We can see some romantics glory in the huge expansion of human understanding and powers that is created by enlightenment philosophy and science.
2. Romantics are
2. On the other hand: Many romantics thought descried the Lockean focus on being rational and industrious:
1. The enlightenment can seems to dismiss or downplay that passions that lead men and women to be concerned about more than comfort and commodious living.
2. The objective, analytical and reductionist scientific reasoning of the enlightenment leads us away from recognizing
1. the beauty of the world in which we live;
2. the unique qualities of individual people and things
3. the power of our subjective imagination to shape and change our world
4. the enduring importance of mysterious questions—such as about our origins and place in the world as a whole—that resist hard and fast answers.
2. Marx supports enlightenment ideas and tries to bring them together with romantic themes.
1. Marx believed, with the enlightenment, that scientific thought was they key to explaining and manipulating the world to suit human purposes.
1. But these purposes were not just to make life easier, to enable us to work less hard and buy more material goods.
2. Rather, for Marx, scientific thought enables us to helps understand the world and ourselves in depth and to revolutionize the political, social and natural worlds in which we live. Rather than neglect deep and mysterious questions, it reveals the answers to us.
1. It explains to us our true nature and destiny as productive species beings. Rather than help us satisfy the desires we have now, it teaches us what desires we would have if we were truly free.
2. It explains to us the origins of our ideas of God and why we should abandon them
3. It explains to us how our political and social world was formed and where it is heading.
4. It explains not only the force but the source of our subjective ideas about the world.
5. It explains to us the origins of human conflict and the way in which we will be able to overcome such conflict.
2. Marx also believed, with the enlightenment, that useful knowledge would lead to a great expansion in human productive powers.
1. But Marx romanticizes machinery and factories. He sees them not just as tools for the production of useful goods, but as the means by which human beings can transform nature and overcome scarcity and necessity.
3. Marx certainly believed, with the enlightenment, in the democratization of knowledge and the importance of the diffusion of knowledge for democracy.

1. Marx held that knowledge of the world around us could be spread among all people. He held that everyone could and should come to understand their political and social life so that they can play a part in the revolutionary transformation of it.
2. And the spread of knowledge was, of course, vitally important to his desire to create a radical democracy, one in which everyone has an equal share of political influence.
1. 4. And, finally, Marx believed with many of the enlightenment philosophers, in the possibility of rationally planning the future of political and social life.
1. This aspiration is more clearly found in some 18^th century figures of the enlightenment, such as Condorcet and Helvetius, than in Locke.
2. Marx radicalizes the enlightenment hope for an educated citizenry that would direct the future of political and social life. For Marx hopes that, after the revolution, all aspects of our political and social life will come under the direction of a democratic polity.
1. The ideal of many liberal enlightenment figures, such as Locke, was to minimize the role of politics, to allow the future of political and social life to be the result of the "natural" interaction of human beings, unfettered by government regulation and control. Marx hoped, in a way that is not entirely clear, to combine both the democratic and individualist aspirations of the enlightenment to the fullest degree. We shall see, in What is Dead in Marx, that this leads to difficulties for Marx.
3. The third of Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach, read: "The materialist doctrine concerning the changing of circumstances and upbringing forgets that circumstances are changed by men and that it is essential to educate the educator himself."