Karl Marx on Psychohistory.
GLOBAL
STRATEGIC HYPOTHESES.
Dear Reader,
GLOBAL STRATEGIC HYPOTHESES. Karl Marx was deeply concerned with and scientifically at work upon the science of Psychology.
However, in Marx’s view, the science of Psychology was not
the ideology of atomistically-conceived human-individual ‘‘‘molecules’’’,
detached from all social relations infrastructure, floating in mutual
detachment, mutual indifference, or mutual predation, in some kind of “human”
gas.
Such was the view of that Rockefeller-whore gas-bag,
Margaret Thatcher, who made war upon the British working class, and in whose
ideology human society, as such, simply did not exist. Another of her unique
distinctions is to have promulgated a Nazi -- racist/Eugenicist -- theory of Nazism,
holding that a flaw in German genetics made Germany susceptible to Hitler --
not post-WWI national humiliation, followed by hyperinflation, followed by
hyper-depression, etc., etc. Haggie
Maggie held that the British people, with their “better genes”, would never
succumb to Fascism, while all the while herself laying the groundwork of
Fascism in Britain, and bringing Britain to the brink of Fascism.
In Marx’s view, psychology was a collective ‘Psyche-ology’, a
‘Psyche-ology’ of what we call ‘The Human Phenome’ --
inherently a social and cultural and civilizational ‘Psyche-ology’.
All of this is manifested in the following passage from
perhaps Marx’s earliest writings as what we now call a
‘‘‘Marxian’’’: the “Economic-Philosophic
Manuscripts of 1844”. They were written
on the eve of the great European uprisings of 1848, against monarchical
despotism, that also signaled the birth of the modern working class movement
for the transcendence of capitalism.
We quote, below, from pages 162 to 164 of Karl Marx:
Early Writings, translated and edited by T. B. Bottomore,
foreword by Erich Fromm [McGraw-Hill, NY:
1964].
Thus, Marx: “It can be seen that the history of industry
and industry as it objectively exists is an open book of the human
faculties, and a human psychology which can be sensuously
apprehended.”
“This history has not so far been conceived in relation to
human nature, but only from a superficial utilitarian point of view,
since in the condition of alienation it was only possible to conceive real
human faculties and human species-action in the form of general human
existence, as religion, or as history in its abstract, general aspect as
politics, art and literature, etc.”
“Everyday material industry (which can be conceived
as part of that general development; or equally, the general development can be
conceived as a specific part of industry since all human activity up to the
present has been labour, i.e., industry, self-alienated activity) shows us, in
the form of sensuous useful objects, in an alienated form, the essential
human faculties transformed into objects.”
“No psychology for which this book, i.e. the most tangible
and accessible part of history, remains closed, can become a real science,
with a genuine content.”
“What is to be thought of a science which stays aloof from
this enormous field of human labour, and which does not feel its own inadequacy
even though this great wealth of human activity means nothing to it except
perhaps what can be expressed in the single phrase -- “ need,” “ common need ”
?”
“The natural sciences have developed a tremendous
activity and have assembled an ever-growing mass of data. But philosophy has remained alien to these
sciences just as they have remained alien to philosophy. Their momentary rapprochement was only
a fantastic illusion. There was a
desire for union but the power to effect it was lacking. Historiography itself only takes natural
science into account incidentally, regarding it as a factor making for
enlightenment, for practical utility and for particular great discoveries.”
“But natural science has penetrated all the more practically
into human life through industry. It has
transformed human life and prepared the emancipation of humanity, even though
its immediate effect was to accentuate the dehumanization of man.”
“Industry is the actual historical relationship of
nature, and thus of natural science, to man.
If industry is conceived as the exoteric manifestation of the
essential human faculties, the human essence of nature and the natural
essence of man can also be understood.”
“Natural science will then abandon its abstract materialist,
or rather idealist, orientation, and will become the basis of a human
science, just as it has already become -- though in an alienated form -- the
basis of actual human life. One basis
for life and another for science is a priori a falsehood.”
“Nature, as it develops in human history, in the act of
genesis of human society, is the actual nature of man; thus nature, as
it develops through industry, though in an alienated form, is truly anthropological
nature.”
“Sense experience (see Feuerbach) must be the basis
of all science. Science is only genuine
science when it proceeds from sense experience, in the two forms of sense
perception and of sensuous need; i.e. only when it proceeds from
nature.”
“The whole of [human] history is a preparation for “ man ”
to become an object of sense perception, and for the development of
human needs (the needs of man as such).
[human] History itself is a real part of natural history,
of the development of nature into man.”
“Natural science will one day incorporate the science of
man, just as the science of man will incorporate natural science; there will be
a single science.”
FYI: Much of the work
of Karl Seldon, and of his collaborators, including work by “yours truly”, is
available, for your
free-of-charge download, via --
Regards,
Miguel Detonacciones,
Member, Foundation Encyclopedia Dialectica
[F.E.D.],
Officer, F.E.D.
Office of Public Liaison
