Monday, 12 August 2019

‘The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles!'

The Mirage of Individual Freedom | Marx & Engels

Consciousness, is a ‘social product,’ according to Marx and Engels!

If consciousness is indeed a ‘social product,’ then it goes without saying that, all the literary, cultural and artistic output of a given society, are manifestations of the ‘forms of consciousness’ that’s determined by the given society’s relation to the ‘means of production’; or in other words, they are all aspects to its ideology!

And since this relation to the ‘means of production’ has almost always been one of domination and exploitation, Marx and Engels point out in The Communist Manifesto that, ‘The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles’.


Therefore, ideology, which includes all the literary, cultural and artistic output of a given epoch, is in actuality a set of discourses whose sole objective and purpose is to maintain the position of the powerful, or the elite or the ruling class’s status quo!

Take for example the ideology of ‘freedom,’ which the duo discuss in their discourses!

Although a great value was attributed to the concept of individual liberty, equality, freedom and fraternity to mid-nineteenth century in England, the duo strongly beg to differ.

Cos they feel that, this concept of ‘individual freedom’ that was ‘propagated’ during the times of the industrial revolution, was in actuality a mirage-o-mirage! Since this ‘individual freedom’ was the sole preserve and the regal recline of the dominant classes alone! Or to be specific, the industrial capitalists!

For all the pavapetta labourers or the proletariat who worked for the dominant classes, their freedom was of a different kind altogether! Their freedom was a ‘restricted freedom’ of sorts!

They could either accept to work for very low wages, under harsh conditions, for long hours without number, or face the music - prefer to starve and to die! This was their limited ‘choice of freedom’ given to them! Hence the ‘individual freedom’ celebrated by the dominant class was always conditioned by the ‘capitalist ideology’!

As such, there wasn’t a ‘real freedom,’ real liberty or real equality of any sorts!

That’s why in The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels point out this bitter truth about freedom, that,

‘Your very ideas are but the growth of the conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property’.

Capitalism then, according to Marx, dehumanized humans!



So! If humanism should be restored to humans, Marx feels that, men and women should be able to govern their own lives, by an autonomous human reason; or in other words, they should be given back their agency!

Althusser, attesting to this advocacy of humanism by Marx, puts forward the concept of humanism as the theory of ‘man at the centre of his world’!

The million dollar question, then, for debate and for deliberation is,

‘Do you think this form of humanism can be restored or given back to men and women, wherein they are able to govern their own lives, by autonomous human reason, where they call the shots, and are at the centre of their own sweet worlds?’

to be continued...

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