Monday, July 6, 2015

Materialist Pure Practical Reason and Dialectical Materialism

Marx's system effects two inversions of Hegelianism--not only Materialism over Idealism, as is generally explicitly recognized, but Praxis over Theory, as well.  So, in the latter regard, he has more in common with Kant, whom, like Hegel, he nevertheless tends to marginalize as a merely abstract thinker.  Still, a Materialist inversion of Kant's Practical Idealism, reveals some genetic foreshadowing of Marxism.  For example, a Materialist Pure Practical Reason closely resembles Rousseau's General Will, providing an analysis of the overcoming of Self-Interest by the latter, though hindered by a Bourgeois adherence to private property rights, i. e. an incapacity to recognize the Kingdom of Ends as populated by a 'We', rather than by a collection of 'I's.  Furthermore, the concept of a History of a Materialist Pure Practical Reason, constituted by a progression towards greater social comprehensiveness, in which war functions as a frequent productive means, very closely resembles the movement of Dialectical Materialism.  So, the influence of Rousseau on Marx is perhaps mediated more by Kant than by Hegel.

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