Karl Marx’s Influences and Materialist Philosophy
Karl Marx’s Philosophical Influences
Marx presented his doctoral thesis on Democritus and Epicurus. He admired the atheism of Epicurus and his courageous struggle against religion and prejudice. Besides materialism, Democritus and Epicurus had atomism in common. Marx exposes the difference between them: for Democritus, the atom is only material existence; for Epicurus, it is also essence. Marx also investigated Kantian philosophy, which had an enormous influence on German Idealism (Hegel, Fichte, Schelling…), who defended the conception of reason as something intimate and creative. But Marx gave an absolute return to this conception, aimed at raising theoretical philosophy to primordial processing: the revolution of reality.
Marx saw the vision of freedom in Kant, and furthermore, the categorical imperative, in its general formula, describes man as a final order and prohibits treating him as a mere thing. This inspired Marx’s criticism of alienation and economic exploitation as a form of objectification of man.
Marx’s Critique of Hegel’s Dialectics
Marx criticizes the meaning of dialectics in Hegel, who thinks that every manifestation of the spirit engenders its own contradiction, which implies a negation of the affirmed. For Hegel, everything is disconnected from reality because everything is matter. For Marx, the relations of production and exchange, the economic relations, determine dialectically the course of history, that is, the development of the idea or spirit of the materialistic and economic world.
The Left Hegelians and Feuerbach
The Left Hegelians, represented by Feuerbach, argued that man’s duty was to help transform society and promote progress. They end up criticizing the same idea and identify God with man, holding an atheist viewpoint. Marx thinks like Feuerbach that man is alienated, but in his opinion, the suppression of religion is not able to liberate man from alienation. This is because Feuerbach’s position places man in relation to nature as an external reality to the human being. For Marx, nature is not something external to man but also part of practical activity. Man finds fulfillment through work, which is the transformation of nature.
Influence of Adam Smith and David Ricardo
Marx followed Adam Smith and primarily David Ricardo, stating that the source of wealth was work and that capitalist profit was surplus labor unpaid to workers in their pay.
Comparison with Nietzsche
Regarding Nietzsche, Marx has a materialistic point of view: political and social changes occur from the changes that occur in the material basis of society, that is, modes of production. However, Nietzsche sees the world as a will to power, as a balance between active and reactive forces.
With respect to the theory of knowledge, Marx is influenced by positivism and the dialectic of language. Nietzsche criticizes metaphors that transform in that way. He criticizes science because it only establishes quantitative relationships, eliminates the qualitative, and does not penetrate things. Nietzsche believes that lying may be superior to the truth if it favors life; he says that the senses show us reality and reason deceives us. Marx believes that the essence of the human being is work and relationships with nature or other beings. Nietzsche thinks the main thing is instincts, the body, the irrational, the Dionysian. Marx thinks that ideologies are what make possible the application and alienation of classes. For Nietzsche, there are two moralities: masters and slaves.