Marxism and Relativism ...
 

Are Marxism and Relativism incongruent with one another?

Relativism: the belief that concepts such as right and wrong, goodness and badness, or truth and falsehood are not absolute but change from culture to culture and situation to situation.

Marxism: the doctrine that the state throughout history has been a device for the exploitation of the masses by a dominant class, that class struggle has been the main agency of historical change, and that the capitalist system, containing from the first the seeds of its own decay, will inevitably, after the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat, be superseded by a socialist order and a classless society.

Bonus question: does shopping at Walmart make anyone else depressed?

They are incongruent with one another. Marx was not a relativist. He was a historical materialist with a grand narrative (the truth and inevitability of communism). For Marxists, consciousness is not even relative--it is connected, and in some variations, caused, by the means and relations of production. Such fundamental Marxist notions as alienation and demystification are incompatible with relativism. The class consciousness Marx is interested in is obscuring what he calls species being, and is not relativistic either.

These are some of the reasons Marxists and Neo-Marxists of every stripe and type critique postmodernists.

I'm well-read in several branches of Marxism--the 1844 Manuscripts and their application to British Cultural Studies, the French Situationists, the Frankfurt School sociologists, Gramsci's adaptation of Marx, Althusser and the structural Marxists, Antonio Negri's Italian Marxism, Lenninism...

I should mention that I am not a Marxist. But understanding it is invaluable in my discipline.

Is not the truth of the state relative? This is where I find a congruity. Without question you must be well versed in Marxism in your discipline. My fascintion is merely a daliance. I am quite sensitive to postmodernism, however as you well know my tone is often very dogmatic :)

As far as Marxism and Relativism, I like Groucho relative to Harpo.

Shopping at Stuff-mart is depressing to everyone except my son, who thinks it's the greatest thing ever. It's actually really cute to take him and makes it almost worth the trip. I have to admit, though, I'm trying to convert him to Target.

Marx was not a relativist. If you ever met his mother in law you would know why.

The truth of the state is inseperable from historic material conditions.

I can think of one branch of Marxism that might have you voting for Romney, though. The social scientists think that all of the attempts to reform and make capitalism friendlier are just prolonging its reign. They think we should let the Romney's of the world run things without encumberance because they'll bring on revolution, or the collapse of the private property system, or something.

Needless to say, most Marxists find them suspect.

There's always Richard:

Oceans apart day after day
And I slowly go insane
I hear your voice on the line
But it doesn't stop the pain

If I see you next to never
How can we say forever

Wherever you go
Whatever you do
I will be right here waiting for you
Whatever it takes
Or how my heart breaks
I will be right here waiting for you

I swear I'm not gay, but I looked at your avatar and I think it moved.

"Oh can't you seeee it baby; you've got me gooooin crazy"

Gee, thanks, SIEQ. That'll be stuck in my head for a week at least! Oh, well, at least I'll finally be rid of Amy Grant's "Rockin' around the Christmas Tree."

Yeah, Santa hats do that to some people.

And incidentally, I'm not gay either, but there's at least three avatars around here that could probably convert me.

Let me try to justify this thread's presence in the religious studies forum.

Have you, or your family or friends, ever run into that person who thinks that Marx's quip that religion "is the opiate of the people" settles everything?

Maybe you were a sophmore in college and somebody dropped that on you at a party?

Often the person spouting this line has completed a sociology class or two and knows just enough to be dangerous. Other times he wears a beret and spends too much time hanging out at the indy theater.

Fortunately, there are some simple arguments that usually convince Mr. Marx to cool his jets:

1. Just say two words: Max Weber. It's better if you take the time to read Weber's Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, but Weber's main point is this: If Marx is right and religion is just another institution in the economic superstructure that dehumanizes and supports the status quo, a set of ideas that flow from economic conditions, why is it that 16th century protestantism actually preceded 19th century capitalism? Weber makes strong arguments that institutional religions can create new economic realities. Don't let Mr. Marx softplay this--Weber is a heavyweight thinker and can't just be dismissed. Moreover, Weber's historical narrative fits religion much better than Marx's does.

2. The quote as commonly referenced is a bit out of context. Marx was reacting against mid-19th century protestantism (and especially Hegel's valorization of such), and Marx's comment cannot explain religions that seek to challenge the status quo, or who have no notion of a happy afterlife. Here's the fuller quote:

"Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people."

Think of a shoulder with a bullet in his chest. For Marx, religion is like the opium that will make him feel better, but it's doing nothing to get the bullet out. For Marx religion is misplaced compassion. It is just one more thing that keeps the soldier from being motivated to remove the bullet.

3. For Marx, the content of religion--theology, ritual, particular beliefs and so on--is irrelevant. What is relevant is how religion functions in society (to perpetuate economic relations and class consciousness). If Mr. Marx is trying to skewer someone about a particular belief, he's caring about something that Marx's thinking purposefully ignores. In other words, he's either feigning or entertaining an ideology that Marx would say is also part of the superstructure.

4. There are problems with Marx's theories of value and surplus value that undermine his economic determinism (it isn't relativism, TB), and thus call into question his base(economy)-superstructure(ideology) formulation. In this way they indict the positing of religion within such a framework. To be brief, Marx was mistaken in thinking that human labor would be more profitable than machine labor and that the connection between labor and value was more important than the subjective judgment of purchasers.

For all of that, Marx is right that religion and economics sometimes wash each other's hands. His indictment of the way 19th century protestantism smoothed the excesses of industrial capitalism does have merit. But don't fall for the "opium" line as some kind of comprehensive and air-tight explanation.