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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