CHAPTER I MARXIAN APPROACH IN SOCIAL PHENOMENA Jayaraj,M K. A Study in the perspective of marxian philosophical and sociological approach on ideological dominance of communalism fundamentalism and terrorism in kerala since 1980 s. Thesis, Department of Philosophy, University of Calicut, 2012.
CHAPTER I MARXIAN APPROACH IN SOCIAL PHENOMENA Marxism is one of the unique methodologies to approach a discipline with scientific and systematic fervor, to expose the mysterious content, which is otherwise not accessible to explain by a conventional approach of social science. When the issues are something related to subjective nature, the limitation of bias will be enormous, and whatever may be the amount of attempt invested in research to probe in details, the result may erode badly in the pursuit of its excellence. This hurdle can be avoided, if it resorts to a systematic and scientific methodology as a tool to go ahead in the process of research. The confusion in this regard would aggravate when, the subject seems controversial and vulnerable to the subjective bias and manipulation. The study on communalism, fundamentalism and terrorism is one of such subjects drawing all complexities in its enquiry. This unique context, definitely tempt a researcher to resort a systematic and scientific doctrine like Marxism as a tool and methodology to examine social phenomena like communalism, fundamentalism and terrorism. This chapter is devoted to enquire the rationale and justification to study the subject matter in a Marxian perspective. A western economist 1 Prof. Robert Heilbroner, had a decade and half years ago posed and answered a basic question regarding the Marxism: Why is it that the works of Marx, from which Marxism springs, exert such fascination after more than a century and half? The answer is that Marx had a necessary genius to create a method of enquiry that imposed his stamp indelibly, on the world. As with Plato and Freud, Marx s combination of 1
insight and method permanently altered the manner in which reality would thereafter be perceived. There is in Prof. Heilbroner s view, a set of premises that define Marxist thought. The major premises which are making Marxism as a scientific approach to given subject are A. Its dialectical approach to knowledge B. Its material approach to history and C. View of capitalism that starts from Marx s socio analysis I.1 Dialectical Approach The dialectical approach considers the innermost nature of things to be dynamic and conflictual rather than inert and static, a view therefore that searches with in things for their contradictory attitudes. This is a philosophic premise. Marx and Engels established the dialectical materialistic conception of development. The key to understanding development in nature and society and leaps and breaks in continuity which characterize all real development lies in the recognition of the inner contradictions and opposite conflicting tendencies which are in operation in all processes. Dialectical approach holds that the world is not complex of things but of processes, that matter is inseparable from motion, that motion of matter comprehends an infinite diversity of forms which arise one from another and pass into another, and that things exist not as separate individual units but in essential relation and interconnection. The dialectical approach is, indeed, nothing but the method of studying and understanding things in their real change and development. The Marxist dialectical method demands that consider things, not in isolation but in their interconnection with other things, in relation to the actual conditions and circumstances of each case, and that consider things in their change and 2
movement, their coming into being and going out of being, always taking particularly into account what is new, what is rising and developing. In this context, examining the principles of dialectical method and approach has utmost relevance to approach important social phenomena. I.1a Four Principle Features of the Marxist Dialectical Method In his Dialectical and Historical Materialism 2 Stalin said that there are four principal features of the Marxist dialectical approach: 1. Dialectics does not regard nature as just agglomeration of things, each existing independently to the others, but it is considers things as connected with, depended on and determined by each other. Hence it is considers that nothing can be understood taken by itself, in isolation, but must always be understood in its inseparable connection with other things, and as conditioned them. 2. Dialectics considers everything as in a state of continues movement and change, of renewal and development, where something is always arising and developing and something always disintegrating and dying away. Hence it considers things not only from the standpoint of their interconnection and interdependent, but also from the standpoint of their movement, their change, their development, their coming into being and going out of being. 3. Dialectics does not regard the process of development as a simple process of growth, but as a development which passes from. qualitative change to open, fundamental change, to qualitative changes, which occur abruptly, taking the form of a leap from one state to another. Hence it considers development as an onward and upward movement, as a transition from an old qualitative state to a 3
new qualitative state as a development from the simple to the complex, from lower to the higher. 4. Dialectics holds that the process of development from lower to the higher takes place..as a disclosure of the contradictions inherent in things.as a struggle of opposite tendencies which operate on the basis of these contradictions. The most common emphases of the concept in Marxist tradition are as (a) a method, most usually scientific method, instancing epistemological dialectics; (b) a set of laws or principles, governing some sector or the whole of reality, ontological dialectics; and (c) the movement of history, relational dialectics. All three are to be found in Marx. Marx observes that the secret of scientific dialectics depends upon comprehending economic theories as the theoretical expression of historical relations of production, corresponding a particular stage of development of material production. Marx s dialectic is scientific because it explains the contradictions in thought and the crises of the socio-economic life in terms of the particular contradictory essential relations which generate them. And Marx s dialectic is historical because it is both rooted in, and an agent of changes in the relations and circumstances it describes. 3 In its long and complex history five basic threads of meaning of dialectic, each of which is more or less transformed with in Marxism, stand out (1) dialectic contradiction, involving inclusive oppositions or conflicts of forces of non-independent origins, are identified by Marx as constitutive of capitalism and its mode of production. (2) the dialectical argument is on the one hand transformed under the sign of the class struggle, but on the other continues to function in some Marxist thought as ideal conditions a norm of truth. (3) dialectical reason takes on a range of connotations from conceptual flexibility and novelty-of the sort which, subject to empirical, logical and 4
contextual controls, plays a crucial role in scientific discovery and development through enlightenment and demystification to the rationality of materially grounded and conditioned practices of collective selfemancipation (4) dialectical process of original unity, historical fragmentation and differentiated unity, remains, on the one hand, as the counterfactual limits or poles implied by Marx s systematic dialectic of the commodity form, and acts, on the other, as a spur in the practical struggle for socialism. (5) dialectical intelligibility is transformed in Marx to include both the casually generated presentation of social objects and their explanatory critique- in terms of their conditions of being, both those which are historically specific. 4 The dialectical approach engraved in Marxism provide better vision to the social phenomena because, as per the Marxism, the basic tenet of all phenomena concerned to social change is on the economic system of the society, and its ramifications. In a globalised world scenario, where the complications are aggravated in a multi-dimensional perspective, the examination of social phenomena, require minute attention, so the support of dialectical approach is much relevant. I.2 Material Approach The material approach to history a perspective that highlights the central role played in history by the productive activities of mankind and located a principle motive for historical change in the struggle among social classes over their respective spheres. Materialism is opposed to idealism, since while idealism holds that the spiritual or ideal is prior to the material, but materialism holds that matter is prior. This difference manifests itself in opposed ways of interpreting and understanding every question, and so in opposed attitudes in practice. While idealism takes many subtle forms in the writings of philosophers, it is at 5
bottom a continuation of belief in the supernatural. It involves belief in two worlds, in the ideal or supernatural world over against real material world. In essence idealism is a conservative, reactionary force; and its reactionary influences demonstrated in practice. Marxism adopts a consistent standpoint of materialism. 5 Materialism is not a dogmatic system. It is rather a way of interpreting, conceiving of, explaining every question. 6 I.2a The Basic Teachings of Materialism 1. Materialism teaches that the world is by its very nature material that every world is by its very nature material that everything which exists comes to being on the basis of material causes, arises and develops in accordance with the laws of motion of matter 7. 2. Materialism teaches that matter is objective reality existing outside and independent of the mind; and that far from the mental existing in separation from the material, everything mental or spiritual is a product of material processes. 3. Materialism teaches that the world and its laws are fully knowable, and that while much may not be known there is nothing which is by nature unknowable. Historical materialism asserts the causal primacy of men s and women s mode of production and reproduction of their natural being, or of the labour process more generally, in the development of human history. Scientific materialism is defined by the content of scientific beliefs about reality. The so called materialist world-outlook consists of a looser set of (historically changing) practical beliefs. 8 The principle philosophically-significant connotations of Marx s materialist conception of history are : (a) a denial of the autonomy, and then of the primacy, of ideas in social life; (b) a methodological commitment to concrete historiographical research, as opposed to abstract philosophical 6
reflection; (c) a conception of the centrality of human praxis in the production and reproduction of social life and, flowing from this, (d) an emphasis on the significance of nature for man which changes from the expressivism of the early works where, espousing a naturalism understood as a specieshumanism, Marx conceives man as essentially at one with nature, to the technological Prometheanism of his middle and later works where he conceives man as essentially opposed to and dominating nature; (e) a continuing commitment to simple everyday realism and a gradually developing commitment to scientific realism, throughout which Marx views the man-nature relationship as asymmetrically internal with man as essentially dependent on nature, but nature as essentially independent of man. 9 The hallmark of the dialectical materialist tradition was the combination of a dialectics of nature and a reflectionist theory of knowledge. Both were rejected by Lukacs in the seminal text of Western Marxism, History and Class Consciousness, which also argued that they were mutually inconsistent. Gramsci, redefining objectivity as such in terms of a universal intersubjectivity, asymmtotically approached in history but only finally realized under communism, went even further, claiming: it has been forgotten that in the case of (historical materialism) one should put the accent on the first term- historical - and not on the second which is of metaphysical origin. The philosophy of praxis is absolute historicism, the absolute secularization and earthliness of thought, an absolute humanism of history. 10 In any discussion of materialism there lurks the problem of the definition of matter. For Marx s practical materialism, which is restricted to social sphere (including of course natural science) and where matter is to be understood in the sense of social practice, no particular difficulty arises. But from Engels on, Marxist materialism has more global pretensions, and 7
difficulty now appears that if a material thing is regarded as a perduring occupant of space capable of being perceptually identified and re-identified, then many objects of scientific knowledge, although dependent for their identification upon material things, are patently immaterial. Clearly if one distinguishes scientific and philosophical ontologies, such considerations need not, as Lenin recognized, refute philosophical materialism. Some materialists have subscribed to the idea of the exhaustive knowability of the world by science. On the other hand, the weaker supposition that whatever is knowable must be knowable by science, if not tautologous, merely displaces the truth of materialism onto the feasibility of naturalism in particular domains. 11 Marxism has conducted a double polemic : against idealism and against vulgar, reductionist or undialectical, e.g. contemplative(marx) or mechanical (Engels) materialism. And the project of elaborating a satisfactory materialist account or critique of some subject matter, characteristically celebrated by idealism, has often amounted in practice to the endeavour to avoid reductionism without reverting to a dualism, as would more than satisfy idealism. 12 Historical materialism, which is what one would expect of the relations between a philosophical position and an empirical science. On the other hand, historical materialism is rooted in ontological materialism. Only the first proposition can be further commented upon here. Both Marx and Engels were won to defend historical materialism by invoking quasi-biological considerations. In The German Ideology they state: The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals. Thus the first fact to be established is the physical organisation of these individuals and their consequent relation to the rest of nature..men begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their 8
means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical organisation. 13 The other important premises which are making Marxism as the scientific approach is the view of capitalism in Marxism. I.3 View of Capitalism in Marxism The relationship between nature of capitalism and social condition are evidently depicted all Marxist thinkers. The founders like Marx and Engels precisely pointed out the development of capitalism its nature and its multidimensional consequences and impact in the society as before more than one and half century ago. The Communist Manifesto rings even truer today than it did in 1848. Key features of nineteenth century capitalism are clearly recognizable, and even more strongly developed, in the early twenty first century. They include internationalization of trade, production and finance, the growth of transnational corporations, the communication revolution, the diffusion of western culture and consumption patterns across the world, and so on. Nobody put the theory on capitalism more forcefully than Karl Marx, who attributed the rise of capitalism to violent acts that expropriated the land and other property of the great mass of population. The concept of primitive accumulation began in confusion and latter settled into an unfortunate obscurity 14. The seemingly Marxian expression primitive accumulation, originally began with Adam Smith s assertion that the accumulation of stock must, in the nature of things, be previous to the division of labour 15. Marx emphasized primitive accumulation, the expropriation of land and other means of production, rather than the accumulation of stock through saving and investment. 9
For Marx 16 capital comes dripping from head to toe, from every pore, with blood and dirt. Workers were tortured by grotesquely terroristic laws in to accepting the discipline necessary for the system of wage-labour where Smith scrupulously avoided any analysis of social relations, Marx produced an elaborate study of the connection between the development of capitalistic social relations and the primitive accumulation. Nonetheless, Marx played down primitive accumulation because it detracted from his more fundamental analysis capitalism. With primitive accumulation, capitalism steals property from people. Their behavior merits disapproval because they act in a way that seems to be unfair. 17 Marx wanted to show how the normal, legal functioning of the market, aside from any individual unfair behavior expropriates value from the working class. Marx did not attribute this capture of surplus value to bad behavior on the part of individuals, but to the impersonal functioning of a class system. 18 According to the typical reading of primitive accumulation, this original expropriation occurred in the distant pre-capitalist past. After the completion of this initial burst of primitive accumulation, a small group of people could function as capitalists. The Marxist concept of capital is something which in its generality is quite specific to capitalism, while capital predates capitalism, in capitalist society the production of capital predominates, and dominates every other sort of production. 19 Capital cannot understand apart from capitalist relations of production, indeed, capital is not a thing at all, but, social relation which appears in the form of a thing. To be sure capital is about money making, but the asset which makes money embody a particular relation between those who have money and those who do not, such that not only is money made, but also the private property relations which engender such a process are themselves 10
continually reproduced. Marx writes: Capital is not a thing, but rather a definite social production relation, belonging to a definite historical formation of society, which is manifested in a thing and tends this thing a specific social character It is the means of production monopolized by a certain section of society confronting living labour-power as products and working condition rendered independent of this very which are personified through this synthesis in capital. It is not merely the product of the labourers turned in to independent powers, products as rulers and buyers of their producers, but rather also the social forces and the..form of this labour, which confront the labourers as properties of their product. Here then, we have definite and, at first glance, very mystical, social form, of one of the factors in a historically produced social production process. 20 Capital is accordingly a complex category, not amenable to a simple definition and the major part of the Marx s writings was devoted to exploring its ramifications.capitalism, a term denoting a mode of production in which capital in its various forms is the principle means of production. Capital can take the form of money or credit for the purchase of labour power and materials of production; of physical machinery or of stocks of finished goods or work in progress. Whatever the form, it is the private ownership of capital in the hands of a class- the class of capitalists to the exclusion of the mass of the population- which is a central feature of capitalism as a mode of production. In most modern capitalist countries having the features of predominant private ownership of means of production,use of debt-credit to finance accumulation, buying and selling of labour power, and capitalist control, more or less hindered, over hiring and firing and choice of techniques. The general perception is that all social phenomena especially issues like communalism, fundamentalism and terrorism are basically extract energy 11
from economic status of the society. Marxism considers that we ought to study the subject more concretely and ask how ideas actually arise, develop and are tested in the concrete condition of real human life, ie, in the material life of society. The social phenomena which are subjected to study here in the perspective of Marxism is closely connected to political economy, so that the relationship between political economy and Marxism has much more important than any other terminologies. I.4 Political Economy and Marxism The theme Ideological dominance of communalism, fundamentalism and terrorism in the light of globalised world scenario bears complex and diverse socio-political dimensions. Marxism as a tool to approach this issue has sufficient theoretical strength and more over, significant relevances. Above that Marxism is blended with particularly the philosophy and political economy, which would help to examine the issue against broad ideological canvass. Political economy, a term often used synonymously with economics to indicate the area which studies resource allocation and the determination of aggregate economic activity. Its more specific meaning in a Marxist context relates to the corpus of work of certain writers who dealt with the distribution and accumulation of economic surplus, and the attendant problems of determination of prices, wages, employment, and efficacy or otherwise of political arrangements to promote accumulation. 21 Marx regarded his major work Capital as a critique of political economy as a label for radical economics to distinguish it from bourgeois or neo-classical economics. Yet another strand in academic economics, which also calls itself political 12
economy, studies the interaction of democratic political processes and market determined economic relations. 22 Marx called his work a critique of political economy because he showed that its basic categories were historical and not universal. The purely economic became relative to its particular epoch, and transitory. Marxism has blended exalted social ideas with sound grass root study of the process of history. It keeps well away from any and all utopianism 23. Marxism the synonym for a science of society as an integral, continuously growing system of social relations whose objective, law governed change leads to radical transformations and passage from one social system to next. Through Marxist ideologies first time in history have philosophical ideas acquired an economic and historical or precisely a practical ground work. 24 Marx also seeks dialectically to comprehend the history of philosophy as a process and formulation some profound ideas whose subsequent development in the light of dialectical and historical materialism was highly importance in making of marxist philosophy. The most cogent of these is the scrupulously to separate the objective content of a philosophical doctrine from its subjective form of construction and exposition which like the philosophers own personality, need to be understood from this system. So it is not the psychological analysis of the principles underlying his doctrine and separation of objective from the subjective, of the essential from the inessential that helps to understand the development of philosophy. This quality of Marxian philosophy is very essential to examine the issues related to religion, because there are chances to bias the findings and distort the result due to the affiliations of the researcher. 13
Referring to philosophical historiography Marx says: its concern to distinguish in each system the determination themselves, the actual crystallization pervading the whole system, from proofs, the justification in the arguments, the self presentation of philosophers as they know themselves, to distinguish silent, persevering role of real philosophical knowledge from voluble, exoteric, variously which is the vessel and motive force of those elaborations. 25 The implication is that the method political economy as a science in its own right has a complex structure, being based on dialectical and historical materialism, whose principles have been concretized application of the economic sphere of social life. On the basis, political economy works out its own specific method and technique of analysis, there by elaborating the general principle of material dialectic into concrete economic method of analysis. 26 I.5 Dialectical Materialism and Social Study As Marx separated the material element from its social form, he saw the reflections between men behind the relation between things, and so overcome the limitations of bourgeois political economy. Bourgeois economist had tried to explain economic phenomena from the process of nature ie, from the properties of things as such, while Marx went on to derive them from social relations. 27 This uncommon methodology in towards ideology would help to examine social phenomena very effectively. The approach, which Marx applied in the development of ideology actually cope up with the issues raised in this research problem. It was the formulation and use of the method of dialectical and historical materialism as the basis for overcoming the limitations of the method that bourgeois sociology enabled Marx and Engels after them to make 14
the study of social phenomena, truly scientific and that is why they always attached primary importance to elaborate the method of analysis, a point emphasised by Engels when he wrote the working out of the method which underlies Marx s Critique of Political Economy 28 is, we think a result hardly less significant them the basis material conception. Marx called his method of analysis materialistic dialectics, and its fundamental principles are consistent materialism and an examination of phenomena and process in their development, interconnection and mutual dependence. About his method he says: My method of presentation is not Hegal s since I can a materialist and hegal is an idealist. Hegal s dialectics is the basic form of all dialectics, but after it has been stripped of its mystical form and it is precisely this which distinguishes my method The resolution of economic categories into material content and social form and analysis of their interconnection and interaction became one of the key method of analysis in political economy. It helped Marx to overcome the unhistorical approach of bourgeois political economy. 29 It is a fact however that Marx s doctrine is a concretization of the principles of dialectical and historical materialism in the context of the specific subject-matter of political economy: the leading role of social production in the development of socio-economic phenomena and processes, the historical approach to these phenomenon and processes, the need to draw a distinction between the productive forces and the social production relations, the very beginning of economic life in society, and whole system of socio-economic phenomena and processes, the law of the unity and struggle of opposite in its specific economic forms and so on. All of that testifies the imperative need to apply Marx s doctrine to the analysis of socio-economic phenomena. 15
The fundamental laws of dialectical materialism 30 are: (1) the law of the transformation of quantity into quality, according to which gradual quantitative changes give rise to revolutionary qualitative changes; (2) the law of the unity of opposites, which holds that the unity of concrete reality is a unity of opposites or contradictions; (3) the law of negation of the negation, which claims that in the clash of opposites one opposite negates another and is in its turn negated by higher level of historical development that preserves something of both negated terms. There is no doubt that Marx s theory of society is both materialist and dialectical, and claims to be scientific. If it is justified in claiming the cognitive advantage of scientificity it must have important continuities with the established natural sciences. It is that emphasis on the natural sciences and on historical materialism as a natural science of society that is distinctive, within Marxism, of dialectical materialism. In consequence, dialectical materialism has pressed historical materialism towards economism, the supposition that, as the material base of society, only the economy, and even perhaps only its most material aspect, productive technology, has real causal efficacy, the political and theoretical superstructure being epiphenomenal. 31 In the study of the ideological dominance of communalism, fundamentalism and terrorism in the light of new economic policies implemented by capitalism, the major socio-economic problem is warranting to explain the nature and characteristics of interrelation between social phenomena and its economic aspects. Marx in his essay The essence of materialistic conception of history, social being and social conscience 32 explained this precisely. The production of ideas of consciousness is first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life. 33 Conceiving, thinking, the mental intercourse of men, appear at this stage as the direct afflux of their material behavior. The 16
same applies to mental production as expressed in the language of politics, laws, morality, religion, metaphysics etc. of the people. Before Marx, sociologists altogether failed to see the reflections of men s social being in consciousness and does not understand the concept of social being and social consciousness. These key philosophical and sociological categories were elaborated by Marx and Engels as they formulated the science of society. The German Ideology shows the dialectics of social consciousness and social being which is why it is an outstanding contribution to the development of materialist dialecticism. I.6 Base Superstructure Paradigm and Socio-Political Phenomena In Marxism, communalism, fundamentalism and terrorism had their basis in the philosophical-political concept of superstructure, an area belong to consciousness. This consciousness in history and life was supposed to come later than economic mode of production. Marx said in his famous Preface to Contribution of the Critique of Political Economy 34 that of understanding the nature of human endeavor in history, one it find it useful to accord primary to economic base a change in which alone assure radical transformation. Consciousness or superstructure belonged law, philosophy, religion and culture. Marx also said that superstructure was an extremely important area, since in it people became conscious of the conflicts and contradictions of society and resultant consciousness changed society significantly. 35 A great deal of discussion on politics and society revolved around the formulation or what has come to be known as base-superstructure relationship. Marx s doctrine is a great asset for progressive humanity and regardless of ideological direction every thinking person must feel the need in some way to comprehend and absorb this wealth of ideas. There is growing recognition of Marx s outstanding scientific importance even among non- 17
Marxist, which is not to say that the urge intellectually to absorb Marxism is always equivalent to tackle socio-political problems in its light. 36 Base and structure is used by Marx and Engels to propound the idea that the economic structure of society conditions the existence and forms of the state and social consciousness. One of the first formulations of this idea appears in German Ideology 37 where a reference is made to the social organisation evolving directly out of production and commerce, which in all ages forms the basis of state and of the rest of the idealistic super structure. However, the notion of superstructure is not used only to indicate two dependent societal levels, namely, the state and social consciousness. At least once the term seems to refer to the consciousness or world view of a class: upon the different forms of property, upon the social condition of existence, rises an entire superstructure of distinct and peculiarly formed sentiments, illusions, modes of thought and views of life. The entire class creates and forms them out of its material foundations and out of the corresponding social relations 38. Neverthless, most of the time the metaphor is used to explain the relationship between three general levels of society, whereby the two levels of the superstructure are determined by the base. 39 This means that the superstructure is not autonomous, that it does not emerge out of itself, but has a foundation in the social relations of production. Consequently, any particular set of economic relations determines the existence of specific forms of state and social consciousness which are adequate to its functioning and any charge in the economic foundation of a society leads to a transformation of the superstructure. A more detailed description of what is understood by base is given by Marx in a passage which has become the classical formulation of the metaphor: In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of 18
production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of the society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political, and intellectual life process in general. 40 The economic structure is not, therefore, conceived as a given set of institutions, productive units or material conditions; it is rather the sum total of production relations entered into by men, or, in other words, the class relations between them. As Marx puts it, it is always the direct relation of the owners of the conditions of production of the direct producers- a relation always naturally corresponding to a definite stage in the development of the methods of labour and thereby its social productivity- which reveals the innermost secret, the hidden basis of the entire social structure, and with it the political form of the relation of sovereignty and dependence, in short, the corresponding specific form of the state. 41 Yet the character of the relationship between base and superstructure is more complicated than appears from these formulations. Marx is aware that the determination by the base can be misunderstood as a form of economic reductionism. That is why he further characterizes the relationship as historical, uneven, and compatible with the effectivity of the superstructure. As far as the first aspect is concerned Marx affirms that in order to examine the connection between spiritual production and material production, it is above all necessary to grasp the latter itself not as a general category but in definite historical form it is impossible to understand what is specific in the spiritual production corresponding to it and the reciprocal influence of one on the other 42. It is worth noting that although the specificity of the spiritual production is determined by the historical forms of material production, spiritual production is said to be capable of exercising reciprocal influence 19
on material production. In other words, the superstructure of ideas is not conceived as a mere passive reflection but it is capable of some effectivity. Marx underlines the effectivity of the superstructure when he answers the objection that the economic determination of the superstructure applies only to capitalism, not to feudalism or classical antiquity where Catholicism or politics played the main role. Marx reaffirms the pronciple of determination by saying that the Middle Age could not live on Catholicism, nor the ancient world on politics, but he adds that it is the mode in which they gained a livelihood that explains why here politics, and there Catholicism played the chief part. 43 Engels charactarises the relationship between the various effective determinations as an interaction among various super structural elements, and between them and the base, which neverthless takes place on the basis of economic necessity, which ultimately always asserts itself. 44 This account has been criticized for transposing into the base-superstructure relationship Hegel s conception of the Nature-Notion relationship; that is to say, for understanding the relationship between primary and secondary caused as the relationship between the necessary and accidental. The effectivity of the super structures is thus dissolved into an endless host of accidents. At all events, Engels account has enjoyed an immense prestige among Marxists. The superstructure of ideas can be treated as a secondary phenomenon, a mere reflection whose reality is ultimately to be found in the production relations. Consciousness; is thus emptied of its specific content and significance and is reduced to economic relations. 45 Some of Lenin s formulations have occasionally given this impression. For example in an early work the evolution of society is seen as a process of natural history which can be understood only by focusing on the relations of production. Lenin claims that Marx in Capital explains the economic structure only by the 20
relations of production and that in so doing he accounts at the same time for the corresponding superstructures. It is as though the super structures do not need to be analysed in themselves. Later, Lenin confirms this view by stating that materialism in general recognizes objectively real being(matter) as independent of consciousness, sensation, experience, etc., of humanity. Historical materialism recognizes social being as independent of the social consciousness of humanity. In both cases consciousness is only the reflection being, at best an approximately true reflection of it. 46 These statements are in stark contrast with Lenin s better known, and certainly on-reductionist, elaborations of the importance of political organisation and revolutionary theory. The socio economic phenomena like communalism, fundamentalism and terrorism in the light of neo-economical policy is comfortably accessible to the methodology put forth by Marxism for a detailed enquiry. The rationale and justification of this conviction has been dealt at length, but the simple reason is the scientific essence of Marxist theory and of the A Marxist approach towards any social study. 21
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