02-08-2006, 08:54 PM
<i>" Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of the heartless word, just as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people." - Marx</i>
He postulated that, the matter is the only reality. Mind, life, consciousness etc. were the products of matter. He was inspired in the formulations of his theories, <b>by Darwin's "Theory Of Evolution", and Hegel's "Dialectical Logic". </b>
He declared, that in the former he got evidences in biology, supporting class war.
Like species (and everything else), social relationships at any point of time are decisively superior to the preceding form. Logic, well-suited to advance the theory of inevitable replacement of Capitalist system, by Communist system. But the same theory was quoted (survival of the fittest) by Nazis in support of racist agenda, and bigger capitalists swallowing the smaller ones. And Darwin, 10 years after the publication of his theory, regretted that it was misinterpreted and thoroughly abused by sociologists.
Next is Hegel (he was not a materialist but an idealist)'s three laws, borrowed by Marx for formulating his opinions.
<b>1. Law of transformation of quantity into quality</b>. Liquid does not gradually become more and more glutinous, and semi-solid. It leaps at one bound from liquid to solid state.-- Marx interpreted that, social revolution too is a sudden jump, when accumulated quantitative alterations pass into qualitative change. <b>In other words, when conditions in a bourgeoisie society reach a critical point, revolution would be a mere routine.</b>
<b>2. Law of unity of opposites</b>: Opposites do not express an absolute difference. They are same at the bottom. -- like debts and assets. What is negative to the debtor is positive to the creditor. The North pole of the magnet cannot be without South pole. Marx saw a parallel to his idea of class struggle. (In fact, the dictum of negation of negation--unity of the opposites- disapproves the Marx's theory of classless society)
<b>3. Law of characteristic features of evolutionary process</b>: One change negating a given state of affairs, and a succeeding change which negated the first, reestablishes with some essential features of the original state of affairs. Each idea calls forth its opposite. As these two ideas struggle, a new idea, synthesis would emerge , which contains elements of truth from both. <b>The synthesis , in turn, becomes a new thesis, and the process goes on. The process is called dialectic.</b>
<b>And Marx believed that Hegel's laws are universal and eternal; as they were essential to sustain the logic of inevitability and universality of his own theories.</b>
Marx took over from Saint Simon a fine sounding phrase, " In a socialist society, political government would cease to exist, and would be replaced, by administration of things.
At any rate, for other obvious reasons, his followers and devotees believe "Whatever Marx said could not be incorrect, for it was none but Marx who said it"
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Marx on India:
Between 1853 and 1857, Marx wrote 23 articles on India , and Engels eight, bearing on British rule in India. His was a "Europe centered" view, which Britain was to lay the foundations of the material progress in India on the annihilation of the traditional Indian society. <b>He wrote " Indian society has no History at all, at least no known History</b>. What we know as History, is but the history of the successive intruders who founded their empires on the passive basis of that unresisting and unchanging society. <b>The question therefore is, not whether the English had a right to conquer India, but whether we are to prefer India conquered by the Turk, by the Persian, by the Russian, to India conquered by Britain.</b>
"England had to fulfill a doube mission in India: One destructive, and the other regenerating - the annihilation of the old Asiatic society, and the laying of the material foundations of Western society in Asia.
Arabs, Turks, Tartars,Moguls, who had successively overrun India, soon became Hinduised, the barbarian conquerors being, by an eternal law of history, themselves conquered by the superior civilisation of their subjects.
<b>According to him, the British were the first conquerors who were superior, and therefore inaccessible to Hindu civilization</b>. <b>They destroyed by breaking up the native communities, by uprooting the native industry, and by leveling all that was great and elevated in the native society</b>.
The work of regenaration hardly transpires through a heap of ruins. Nevertheless it has begun." (The Future Results of British Rule in India--by Marx). <b>The Indian Marxists fully accept this thesis, and fully subscribe to it.</b>
In India by 1940 a serious Marxist history was produced--R Palme Dutt's "India Today" and, D.D.Kosambi's "An Introduction to the study of Indian History" 1956, Which is regarded as a substantial Marxist interpretation of Indian History from the earliest times to the rise of British power in India.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
He postulated that, the matter is the only reality. Mind, life, consciousness etc. were the products of matter. He was inspired in the formulations of his theories, <b>by Darwin's "Theory Of Evolution", and Hegel's "Dialectical Logic". </b>
He declared, that in the former he got evidences in biology, supporting class war.
Like species (and everything else), social relationships at any point of time are decisively superior to the preceding form. Logic, well-suited to advance the theory of inevitable replacement of Capitalist system, by Communist system. But the same theory was quoted (survival of the fittest) by Nazis in support of racist agenda, and bigger capitalists swallowing the smaller ones. And Darwin, 10 years after the publication of his theory, regretted that it was misinterpreted and thoroughly abused by sociologists.
Next is Hegel (he was not a materialist but an idealist)'s three laws, borrowed by Marx for formulating his opinions.
<b>1. Law of transformation of quantity into quality</b>. Liquid does not gradually become more and more glutinous, and semi-solid. It leaps at one bound from liquid to solid state.-- Marx interpreted that, social revolution too is a sudden jump, when accumulated quantitative alterations pass into qualitative change. <b>In other words, when conditions in a bourgeoisie society reach a critical point, revolution would be a mere routine.</b>
<b>2. Law of unity of opposites</b>: Opposites do not express an absolute difference. They are same at the bottom. -- like debts and assets. What is negative to the debtor is positive to the creditor. The North pole of the magnet cannot be without South pole. Marx saw a parallel to his idea of class struggle. (In fact, the dictum of negation of negation--unity of the opposites- disapproves the Marx's theory of classless society)
<b>3. Law of characteristic features of evolutionary process</b>: One change negating a given state of affairs, and a succeeding change which negated the first, reestablishes with some essential features of the original state of affairs. Each idea calls forth its opposite. As these two ideas struggle, a new idea, synthesis would emerge , which contains elements of truth from both. <b>The synthesis , in turn, becomes a new thesis, and the process goes on. The process is called dialectic.</b>
<b>And Marx believed that Hegel's laws are universal and eternal; as they were essential to sustain the logic of inevitability and universality of his own theories.</b>
Marx took over from Saint Simon a fine sounding phrase, " In a socialist society, political government would cease to exist, and would be replaced, by administration of things.
At any rate, for other obvious reasons, his followers and devotees believe "Whatever Marx said could not be incorrect, for it was none but Marx who said it"
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Marx on India:
Between 1853 and 1857, Marx wrote 23 articles on India , and Engels eight, bearing on British rule in India. His was a "Europe centered" view, which Britain was to lay the foundations of the material progress in India on the annihilation of the traditional Indian society. <b>He wrote " Indian society has no History at all, at least no known History</b>. What we know as History, is but the history of the successive intruders who founded their empires on the passive basis of that unresisting and unchanging society. <b>The question therefore is, not whether the English had a right to conquer India, but whether we are to prefer India conquered by the Turk, by the Persian, by the Russian, to India conquered by Britain.</b>
"England had to fulfill a doube mission in India: One destructive, and the other regenerating - the annihilation of the old Asiatic society, and the laying of the material foundations of Western society in Asia.
Arabs, Turks, Tartars,Moguls, who had successively overrun India, soon became Hinduised, the barbarian conquerors being, by an eternal law of history, themselves conquered by the superior civilisation of their subjects.
<b>According to him, the British were the first conquerors who were superior, and therefore inaccessible to Hindu civilization</b>. <b>They destroyed by breaking up the native communities, by uprooting the native industry, and by leveling all that was great and elevated in the native society</b>.
The work of regenaration hardly transpires through a heap of ruins. Nevertheless it has begun." (The Future Results of British Rule in India--by Marx). <b>The Indian Marxists fully accept this thesis, and fully subscribe to it.</b>
In India by 1940 a serious Marxist history was produced--R Palme Dutt's "India Today" and, D.D.Kosambi's "An Introduction to the study of Indian History" 1956, Which is regarded as a substantial Marxist interpretation of Indian History from the earliest times to the rise of British power in India.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->