Buddhist Influence in the Methodology of Karl Marx
By Adrian Chan-Wyles PhD
As, in religion, man is governed by the products of his own brain, so in capitalistic production, he is governed by the product of his own hand.
(Karl Marx – Das Kapital) [1]
A new approach is needed to analyse the similarities between the method of critical observation developed by the Buddha, and the method of continuous deconstruction revealed through the work of Karl Marx. A superficial surface reading gives the (false) impression that Buddhism is one thing, and Marxism another. Buddhism, dominated as it is by bourgeois sentimentality in the West, is presented as a form of idealism similar to that found in medieval Christianity, whilst Marxism is equally misrepresented by the same bourgeois as being simply a materialist system of thought that rejects all idealism. The problem is twofold; Buddhism is mistakenly viewed as ‘idealistic’, when it is clear even from a cursory reading of the sutras that the Buddha rejected the notions of idealism and materialism as being unable to explain his system, whilst Marx is misrepresented as teaching a gross materialist approach to the interpretation of reality, which is nothing other than the product of pure bourgeois fantasy. This mistaken (and often deliberate) misinterpretation is the corrupt product of the minds of poorly educated men who suffer continuously through distortions of a false or deluded consciousness. It is essentially the religious attitude at work, which routinely views causation in an inverse (and incorrect) direction. For those stuck in this product of an oppressive society, the world of matter, that is the physical world, is believed to have emerged (as if from nothing), through the influence of a divine entity or god. This is nothing other than thoughts in the mind that are not yet known to be false. This is precisely the point where Buddhism and Marxism over-lap. Both systems are not two different or unique entities vying for human appreciation, but in reality represent a single philosophical perspective that transcends and completes all previous (and limited) philosophical perspectives that have developed throughout time. Buddhism and Marxism express exactly the same message filtered through the culture of their respective times in history. Buddhism through the history of ancient India, breaking free as it did, of Brahmanic religiosity, and Marx through the rubric of 19th century European culture, which was dominated by the processes of industrialisation, mass social upheaval, injustice, war, famine, imperialism, and secularisation, etc.
Although it is possible that Buddha and Marx could have arrived at their similar conclusions independent of the influence of one another’s work, it is also true that both thinkers, as rationalists, taught that the numerous links in a logical chain of cause and effect should be read clearly and in the right order, so that error, imagination, fantasy, and religious or superstitious beliefs can be eradicated from the equation of rational observation. Once it is understood that it is the human mind that creates, through the evolved process of thought, all ideas, views, and opinions, then the falsehood of misplaced interpretation can be abandoned as the pointless exercise it is, and rational thought established by turning the mind the right way around. The Buddha never claimed originality for his method, but instead insisted that others had known this dialectical path in the past, and that he had merely re-discovered it. Marx never looked back, but always dynamically looked forward with his method. His method of dialectical assessment put an end to all dogmatism and pushed on through to an open ended freedom that can not be adequately explained, due to the immensity of its implications. Its transition Marx labelled as Socialism, and in completion he called it Communism. His method does not allow for a concretised definition to set into place, as this would imply a sliding back into the dualistic (and limited) thinking of the past. Applying dialectical assessment to Marx himself, it is likely that his developed method, at least in part, was influenced by the structure, presentation, and objective of Buddhist philosophy, and that the theory developed by Marx did not appear out of thin air. This is not to say that Marx is simply re-stating the Buddhist message through European values, far from it, but rather that a similar spark of creative genius is at work in both philosopher’s systems that creates anew as it deconstructs and makes irrelevant the old ways of viewing the world. For the Buddha it was the world as envisioned through the teachings and imaginations of Brahmanism, whilst for Marx it was the world as mediated through the Judeo-Christian tradition – both philosophers had to see through the religiosities of their respective historical epochs and geographical locations. This ability of ‘seeing through’ may be described as being exactly the same for both Buddha and Marx, regardless of the different historical conditions to which it was applied. The logical consequence of seeing through the illusionary nature of Brahmanism created the distinct body of knowledge that is known as Buddhism. Buddhism, in its purest form, is a rationality freed of Brahmanic religiosity. The logical consequence of seeing through the illusionary nature of the Judeo-Christian tradition created the distinct body of knowledge known as Marxism. Marxism, in its purest form, represents human rationality freed of the inverted thinking of the Judeo-Christian tradition. For both Buddhism and Marxism, (and despite each system representing a method for correcting the mind and establishing an optimum intellectual functioning), conditions on the ground varied to such an extent that each had to create a unique response to the ignorance of human religiosity. This explains why each system appears to be different when viewed in a superficial manner. Indeed, when viewed in this shallow manner, Marxism is mistakenly perceived to be a system of gross materialism, and Buddhism a peculiarly Asian system of deluded religiosity. In reality, both of these assumptions are incorrect.
Marx studied Greek and European philosophy whilst Studying in Berlin in the late 1830’s, but is it possible to discern any connection with Buddhist philosophy? Buddhism and Brahmanism were certainly known in the West at this time, although the study of these two Indian systems was still very much in its infancy. It can be reasonably speculated that Marx may have come across the mentioning of Buddhism in the works of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, or perhaps in specialised academic manuscripts dealing with the subject, but such encountering of Buddhism is limited to the mind of the European philosopher concerned, and his viewpoints of existence, rather than being an indepth examination of Buddhist principles in and of themselves. However, it is known that Marx was exposed to the real and genuine teachings of Buddhism through his lifelong association with his colleague and friend Karl Koppen. In 1837 Berlin, Marx was a member of the Doctors Club, a group of young Hegelians run by the radical theologian Dr Bruno Bauer. This is where Marx met Koppen. Shlomo Baker describes Koppen and his expert knowledge in the field of Buddhist studies, and another important member of the Doctors Club named Ruttenberg who routinely interacted with Marx at this time:
‘Other leading members of the Doctors Club with whom Marx developed close ties included Karl Friedrich Koppen and Dr Adolf Ruttenberg. Koppen was a 29 year old former history teacher, who was to dedicate his Frederick the Great and His Opponents to his ‘Karl Marx of Trier’. He also produced an expert – and lasting – work on Tibetan Lamaism and the origins of Buddhism. Ruttenberg, a former Burschenschaftler several times imprisoned for radical student agitation, and recently dismissed from a post as a geography-and-history teacher at the Cadet School, was now making a name for himself as a journalist in Berlin writing for provincial newspapers.’ [2]
Baker goes on to explain how Bauer, Marx, Koppen, and Ruttenberg functioned as the ‘Doctors Club’ in the drinking establishments of Berlin:
‘Back in 1837, however, Dr Bruno Bauer, 28 and full of life, was only debunking Strauss to save ‘the honour of Jesus’ and protect the Saviour from ‘unscientific’misrepresentation. He befriended the second-year student Marx, another budding ‘self-god’, but not yet godless. Bubbling with high spirits and beer, the two of them kept ‘Hegelising’ in taverns along with Koppen (who, before proving his erudition in his work on Buddhism, was chiefly conspicuous for wearing a coat with epaulettes and sporting a rapier) and Ruttenberg (a hot-tempered fellow, occasionally involved in street brawls).’ [3]
It is interesting, when assessing the different systems of Marxism and Buddhism, to develop an understanding of what both thinkers were doing when they developed their respective theories. This is required because the developed theories appear very different from one another at the surface level. This is a clear example of looks being deceptive, as both men worked from exactly the same philosophical premise, which only differed in the historical era from which it emerged, and the cultural milieu through which it was filtered. This philosophical premise may be defined as follows:
1) Ordinary life is defined by suffering (dukkha) and (bourgeois) oppression.
2) Ordinary perception is flawed (false or deluded consciousness).
3) Correct use of dialectics (wisdom) can see through this illusion.
4) The human mind can be trained so that a true-self can be realised (enlightenment).
5) A mind can change its own programming, and effect change in the world.
6) A changed world affects the minds of the individuals who inhabit it.
7) The current status quo must be rejected as thoroughly corrupt.
8) Religions must be understood as being the product of delusive imagination.
9) Individuals must work on their own education, and the education of the collective.
10) Class and caste must ultimately be transcended.
11) The force of history conditions all things.
12) Revolution is change.
13) A radical break with the past, and the present.
14) Compassion for the welfare of humanity as a prime motivator.
15) Criticism of prevailing economic conditions.
16) The genuine needs of humanity over the distorted greed of humanity.
17) Self-discipline as a vehicle to effect change in the world.
18) A selfless attitude toward the welfare of others.
19) A preferred ethical and moral programme.
20) Behavioural modification.
Despite this shared similarity, Buddhism and Marxism appear very different in manifestation due to one primary reason, and that is in the treatment of the prevailing religious systems as experienced in ancient India and modern Europe. The Buddha thoroughly rejects the teachings and caste system associated with Brahmanism, but nevertheless retained in his new system the notions of karma, divine beings, and rebirth. This has to be viewed in context. By retaining such Brahmanic notions, the Buddha radically altered, and ultimately negated the validity of these terms. The Buddhist teachings read as if the Buddha is adjusting his new found rational insight to the deluded conditions that exist in the minds of his disciples, all of whom have been brought up within the religiosity of Brahmanism. All are familiar with the notions of karma, divine beings, and rebirth, and so the Buddha directly attacks Brahmanic authority by using these terms in a manner that the Brahmins would neither recognise nor respect. The Buddha rejects the theory of an ‘atma’, or ‘soul’, and in so doing undermines the caste system which is premised upon the religious teaching that says individual souls are continuously reborn throughout the various social castes depending upon their own behaviour and the decisions of gods. Once atma is rejected, the notion of Brahmanic deterministic karma (which condemns an individual to just one path in life that can not be changed until death), has no agency to work through, and therefore no means of taking rebirth, which always occurs through an incarnating atma. The Buddha’s version of karma is a theory that recognises free will coupled with the exercise of moral responsibility. The Buddha describes divine beings as more or less pointless entities that are no better than human beings, and which have no authority and say in human affairs. Indeed, within the Buddhist teachings, gods are invariably replaced with meditative levels of development, suggesting that a rational mind does not believe in gods, and rebirth is explained as not existing in the enlightened state. The enlightened state of the Buddha must not be mystified or obscured by religious thinking – it simply refers to a fully functioning rational mind that has thrown off the conditioned fetters of greed, hatred, and delusion, and which no longer mediates either with itself nor the physical world through these selfish agencies. In this highly rationalised state, the Buddha states over and over again that karma, gods, and rebirth do not exist. The Buddha seems to be using elements of the old Brahmanic religion to bring people’s minds into the rational light of his own understanding.
Karl Marx treats the Judeo-Christian religion very differently. This is appropriate for the modern Europe within which he was born. Europe had been dominated for centuries by the theology and politics of the establish Roman Catholic and Protestant churches. Rationality had not been allowed to develop, but was always held back and negated by a highly spurious theology. Although the myth is that this theology had arisen from the mind of god or his representative upon earth, the reality is more mundane. Ordinary men seeking power and influence on earth, had cobbled together unconnected and incoherent stories of imagined miracles and used these stories as a means to scare an uneducated populace into doing as they say. These men are, of course, the established Christian church. So strong has the hold of theology been on the minds of the uneducated masses, that Marx could not make use of any theological notion without running the risk of encouraging religious thinking in his audience, and thus undermining the premise of his own rational method. Marx’s theory hinges upon the ruthless criticism of religion, because all else within a bourgeois society hangs off of it. The hold of religion in the mind of the masses must be broken, and the social structures of the church dissolved so that no more conditioning agencies remain to adversely affect the people. Whereas the Buddha was culturally invested in the Brahmanism he rejected, (he was of the 2nd highest caste), Marx was not invested in the Judeo-Christian church he rejected. The Buddha had received a very privileged upbringing and had been trained in all the Brahmanic systems extant in his day. He was familiar with the intricate teachings of Brahmanism, but through the act of sustained meditation, he had freed his mind of its conditioning and understood that these teachings were not correct. On the other hand, he felt confident enough to re-interpret some of these concepts to assists others to free their minds. Christian theology, however, was so dominant in its anti-rational stance, that the best manner in which Marx could serve his European audience at the time was to make an obvious and total break with its influence. Marx then goes on to assess what he believes to be correct ethical and moral behaviour within society, and to analyse and describe in detail the socio-economic situation in Europe following the Industrial Revolution. The Buddha, by way of contrast, also advocates a strict ethical and moral path, and firmly condemns greed as an agency for sustained human interaction. He does not formulate an economic criticism of the Indian society of his day, but instead rationally deconstructs the Brahmanic caste system through the use of ruthless logic. With the caste system negated, and the authority of the Brahmins undermined, all else for the Buddha becomes superfluous. For Marx and Buddha, it was the deconstruction of the prevailing religious systems that both understood to be the doorway to a new and radical interpretation of the world.
An important question is how is Marx formulating his theory and does it have any similarity to Buddhist philosophy? In his ‘For a Ruthless Criticism of Everything that Exists’ Marx states:
‘And the socialist principle itself represents, on the whole, only one side, affecting the reality of the true human essence. We have to concern ourselves just as much with the other side, the theoretical existence of man, in other words to make religion, science, etc, the objects of our criticism. Moreover, we want to have an effect on our contemporaries, and specifically on our German contemporaries. The question is, how is this to be approached? Two criticisms cannot be denied. First, religion, and second, politics, arouse predominant interest in contemporary Germany. We must take these two subjects, however they are, for a starting point, and not set up against them some ready-made system such as the Voyage en Icarie.
Reason has always existed, only not always in reasonable form. The critic can therefore start out by taking any form of theoretical and practical consciousness and develop from the unique forms of existing reality the true reality as its norm and final goal.’ [4]
The book Marx mentions entitled ‘Voyage en Icarie’ (written by Cabet) was a utopian socialist novel published in Paris in 1840. The followers of Cabet at the time were referred to as ‘communists’, but Marx rejects the utopic vision of Cabet and instead advocates not the replacement of one system with another, but rather the re-discovery of true and correct reason through criticism or effective analysis. His system of analysis, of course, derives from the dialectics of Hegel which may be defined as the use of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. This is the logical weighing up of opposites (thesis, antithesis) so that a new third way (synthesis) is developed through the integration of the other two aspects. If this third position is deficient in some way, and does not represent true knowledge, it collapses back into opposites and the process begins again. This is a dynamic interaction that does not rest on the authority of convention or tradition, but ruthlessly assesses all data without mercy. This breaks the habit associated with the past, of following redundant, incorrect, or obviously dangerous ideologies or modes of existence. For Marx, modern humanity is alienated from its true essence. There is a loss and obscuration of the true-essence of humanity that must be regained. In the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx writes:
‘The man estranged from himself is also the thinker estranged from his essence – that is, from the natural and human essence. His thoughts are therefore fixed mental shapes or ghosts dwelling outside nature and man.' [5]
The principle of alienation is a very important part of the Marxist analysis of history. Humanity has lost something essential and must regain it through logical reason and correct interpretation of events. Religion and politics, although representative of official institutes and establishments within European culture, are nevertheless objects to be avoided, despised, and deconstructed as soon as possible as they embody the very essence of humanity’s alienation from its own essence. Politics promises wholeness on a mundane level whilst continuously keeping humanity from its essence, but perhaps the greater hypocrisy lies with religion as its theology promised to unite humanity with its spiritual essence, but in reality does everything to prevent such reconciliation from taking place. In this regard, politics may be discerned as mundane delusion, and religion viewed as spiritual delusion. Marx, following Feuerbach, does not accept that god has created the world and everything in it, but rather that it is the human mind that has created the illusion of god and the edifice of mythology and false imaginings premised upon his existence. This simple reversal of polarity of human perception is the progressive essence of Marxism, which is more properly described as an ongoing developmental philosophical method, rather than an ideology with fixed parameters. The ideas of Socialism and Communism are theoretical developments out of the current socio-economic conditions that are the products of history. In his ‘Society and Economy in History’ Marx clarifies this point:
‘What is society, whatever its form may be? The product of men’s reciprocal action. Are men free to choose this or that form of society? By no means. Assume a particular state of development in the productive faculties of man and you will get a particular form of commerce and consumption. Assume particular stages of development in production, commerce and consumption and you will have a corresponding social constitution, a corresponding organisation of the family, of orders or of classes, in a word, a corresponding civil society. Assume a particular civil society and you will get particular political conditions which are only the official expression of civil society.' [6]
In the German Ideology Marx explains how this process eventually evolves into Communism:
‘Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality (will) have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things.’ [7]
For Marx, the history of the individual workers has been transformed into world history through the process of industrialisation. Oppression of the workers is the historical fuel that drives the evolutionary process toward a complete break with the past. This complete break, however, is not just physical, but also psychological. A worker can not be just physically free without first throwing off the shackles of psychological conditioning, or in Marxian terms, creating a ‘class consciousnesses’.
As the teachings of Buddhism have existed for thousands of years, and given that Marx knew about these teachings, did the philosophical methodology of the Buddha have any influence upon Marx in the formulation of his theory of perpetual criticism and deconstruction? Although the theory of the dialectic certainly existed in ancient Greece, and was employed by Kant and Hegel, Marx utilised it in a very different and peculiar manner that had never been seen before in European philosophical narrative. Of course, the received history of Marxism is that it is a distinctive and unique outpouring of the European philosophical tradition, as Marx studied European philosophy for his doctorate. In the study of Marx, it is Feuerbach who is given the credit (and not Buddha) for first stating that it is the mind of humanity that creates religion, and not that religion creates humanity, despite the fact that Buddha clearly stated this thousands of years before Feuerbach even existed. It must also be asked where it was that Feuerbach got his version of this idea from? It obviously wasn’t fully developed, because although Marx borrowed and developed the idea, he also ruthlessly criticised Feuerbach for not going far enough in his analysis of the status quo. In the Dhammapada the Buddha makes this humanity-centred statement:
‘Only a man himself can be master of himself: who else from outside could be his master? When the Master and servant are one, then there is true help and self-possession.’ [8]
This is how the British academic Edward J Thomas describes Buddhism in relation to a god concept:
‘It is doubtful if God as an ultimate reality, an ens realissimum as in Vedanta or Platonism, was conceived, but the denial of such a conception is implicit, and it is certainly denied that Brahma is the Lord, or maker of the universe, or omniscient. Equally important from the standpoint of theistic religion is the exclusion of the gods from any share in the plan of salvation. The disciple neither desires the heaven of Brahma, nor looks to him for help in attaining the goal. He aims at attaining the ultimately real, and this is Nirvana. It is not stated in such a way that can be identified with God…’ [9]
Buddhism is not a religion, as its method of self-cultivation to over-come suffering is non-reliant upon the assistance of theistic entities. However, as the centuries have gone by, Buddhism has spread from ancient India into the world, and has, on occasion, integrated itself with local beliefs and customs. In fact this process was already under way before it left India, as Brahmanic features rejected by the Buddha started to subtly find their way into Buddhism, despite the Buddha’s teaching in the suttas remaining more or less unchanged, although of course, occasionally interpretations were added by latter monks that reflected their understanding and socio-economic conditions as well as their political aspirations, etc. The essential teaching of the Buddha is often not the obvious manifestation that passes as cultural Buddhism, either East or West. This is to say that although some schools or traditions of Buddhism may appear to act as atheistic religion for the uneducated and poor masses in the East, or the affluent bourgeois in the West, the true teachings of the Buddha are something entirely different. This situation has led to the author G Grimm, in his 1926 book entitled ‘The Doctrines of the Buddha, the religion of Reason’to make the following comment:
‘All that has hitherto been held to be the ancient Buddha doctrine is false, inasmuch as its root idea, with the passage of time, has no longer been understood, nay has actually been perverted into its very opposite.’ [10]
This an important observation and one which figures prominently in the assessment of any Buddhist influence upon Marx. Obviously it is not the Buddhism of elaborate ritual and theistic tendencies such as that Marx critiques in the German Ideology, but instead the pure Buddhism as preserved in the earliest teachings referred to by Grimm, and which was studied by Karl Koppen. This fact establishes a definite link between the early pure Buddhism and Karl Marx which may well have influenced Marx in a positive manner. If this was the case, then of course, this does not render Buddhism as a feudalistic construct immune to Marxist critique – indeed, although Marx (and Engels) praised early Buddhism, Marx ruthlessly criticised those aspects that he perceived as superstitious and backward. This is good for Buddhism as Marx is drawing attention to those aspects of modern Buddhism that are nothing more than the rantings of intruding theism into the purity of the Buddha’s original and pristine insight.
Marx is occupied in his theory by a search for reason. This is also the position of the Buddha, who describes human suffering as the product of ignorance that is the psychological state of ‘not knowing’ or understanding the true nature of reality. For the Buddha, ignorance is not a ‘first cause’, as Buddhism rejects all such theistic concepts, but is itself a product of the four ‘asava’ or ‘effluents’ of poisonous mind-states that flow into the mind and distort perception. The four asava are:
1) The gratification of desire in relation to the five bodily senses (Kamasava).
2) Attachment to viewpoints and beliefs; especially that the body is a self, or belongs to self (Ditthasava).
3) Desire for various states of being and the aspiration to attain and maintain them (Bhavasava).
4) Ignorance of the way things really are (Avijjasava).
Marx criticises all previous states, traditions, conventions, habits, and points of view. This seems to be very near to the Buddha’s definition of ignorance as found in the asava (number 2 in the list) which is described as an ‘attachment’ the clinging to ‘viewpoints and beliefs’. This definition is augmented by the 4th asava in the list, which clearly states that human suffering is the product of not knowing (or understanding) the way things really are. Coupled with the idea that the Buddha rejected the Brahmanic notion that the physical world is the creation of a god, and instead interpreted the world through perception and psychology, a very close theoretical association between pure Buddhism and Marxism can be discerned. Marx, of course, never utilised Christian theology, or Christian spiritual training techniques in his search for true reason or knowledge about existence. Marx rejected Christian theology a priori. The Buddha, on the other hand, explored many Brahmanic and Yogic spiritual developmental techniques during his quest for enlightenment. He followed each path to its developmental conclusion, and understood that the knowledge it advocated was incomplete and therefore not representative of the highest reason available to the human mind. This process of exploration, attainment, and rejection eventually led to the Buddha abandoning the teachings (i.e. viewpoints and beliefs) of the past and going his own way. This process of refinement led to a secular and rational interpretation of Brahmanism as a system stripped of its religiosity. After the Buddha explored and subsequently rejected religion, he arrived at exactly the same mind state as that occupied by Karl Marx. The Buddha’s system is secular, but contains elements of apparent religiosity designed to lead ancient Indians out of the domination of Brahmanism in their minds and in their environments (i.e. castes). This is seen during the biography of the Buddha contained in the suttas which describes the religious aspects of his search, which are radically rejected upon his enlightenment. The Buddha describes in part, his own enlightenment in the following manner:
‘And in me emancipated arose the knowledge of my emancipation. I realised that destroyed is rebirth, the religious life has been led, done is what was to be done, there is nought (for me) beyond this world.’ [11]
Whereas Marx had been historically freed from the grip of religiosity through his Jewish ancestry eventually converting to Christianity, a process which facilitated his birth into a Europe of secular reason and a family which was not that concerned with religious practice; the Buddha had no such historical transformation, and had to undergo the developmental process from religiosity to secular reason within a single lifetime. It was Marx’s father - Heinrich Marx – formerly ‘Hirschel’ – who converted to Lutheran Christianity prior to the birth of his son. The Buddha’s father – Suddhodana – was not only fully immersed in Brahmanic culture, but was part of the 2ndhighest caste of Kshatriya – or the caste of warriors and kings. This gave him direct access to very real political power premised upon the unquestioning acceptance of the Brahmanic spiritual and world ordered. It is remarkable to consider the Buddha’s example in this context that he was able to free his mind from religion in a single life time, through the techniques (i.e. meditation) of religion, and arrive at a mind in possession of an advanced secular reason. During this process the Buddha single-handedly invents the world’s first coherent school of psychology, and empiricism. More than this, however, the Buddha appears to be suggesting that the mind and world are inherently linked, (although they appear separate), and this comes very close to the teaching associated with the contemporary philosophy of Quantum theory (which states that ‘perceiver’ and ‘perceived’ are inherently linked).
Was Marx influenced by the Buddha’s method of logically deconstructing reality as it seems, to reveal reality as it is? This is an interesting question and a trail of evidence for Marx’s association with Buddhism can be developed:
1) 1837 Karl Marx Meets Karl Koppen (who would later become a renowned Buddhist scholar) in Berlin. [12]
2) 1845-46 Marx writes The German Ideology where he distinguishes between Buddhism and Lamaism (i.e. Tibetan Buddhism), and within which he criticises the Dalai Lama for assuming that his excrement is holy. Marx also states that if certain Europeans (who assumed that only Christianity represented spirituality) were to look, they would find a very different system of spirituality represented through the teachings of Buddhism. [13]
3) 1857 Marx writes an article for the New York Tribune within which he describes Buddhists as being ‘Brahmanical rationalists’. [14]
4) 1867 Karl Marx meets Karl Koppen in Berlin, and after a heavy drinking session, Koppen presents Marx with copies of his books on Buddhism. [15]
5) 1883 (the year of the death of Marx) Friedrich Engels states in his unfinished book entitled the ‘Dialectics of Nature’ that the ancient Greeks and Eastern Buddhists developed dialectics to a high degree.
Whether or not Karl Koppen knew anything about Buddhism in 1837, it can not be denied that by the middle of the 1840’s, Marx was writing with authority on Buddhists matters, albeit in a highly peripheral manner to his general theory. The point is that he knew about Buddhism and had a reasonable appreciation of its workings. He even understood that there is a difference between early Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism whilst advising Europeans to become aware of other spiritual systems. It just so happens that Koppen’s two fields of expertise within academia were early Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism, which would suggest that even as a young student in 1837, he possessed a considerable knowledge of Buddhism which he explained to Marx throughout their lifelong friendship. This does not exclude the idea that Marx may have sought out other avenues of information regarding Buddhism, and the distinct possibility remains that the Buddha’s abandonment of religion, and his person-centred theory may have influenced Marx to seek out (within Western philosophy), anyone who had formulated a similar idea of reversing the creationist theory of ‘god made’,and instead replacing it with the theory of ‘man made’. Marx found such a development in the work of Feuerbach. Marx probably thought that as he was criticising the historical conditions of the West, he required a Western philosophical source by way of demonstrating the effectiveness of his theory. Marx may well have thought that the Buddha was correct in his assessment of reality, but could not make a direct or obvious reference to an Eastern philosophical trend developed well over two thousand years ago. The Buddha’s example may well have served as the inspiration for Marx to discover Feuerbach and subsequently unleash a powerful critique of Western religion and politics, similar in its shocking power to that unleashed by the Buddha in ancient India. This may well be the unseen (and unaccredited) legacy that Buddhism as bequeathed to Marxism.
©opyright: Adrian Chan-Wyles (ShiDaDao) 2014.
[1] Marx, Karl, Capital, Wordsworth Classics of World Literature, (2013), Page 432.
[2] Baker, Shlomo, The Doctors of the Revolution – 19th Century Thinkers who Changed the World, Thames & Hudson Ltd), 2000, Chapter 19 Marx and the Influence of Hegel -Page 544.
[3] Ibid – Pages 547-548.
[4] Tucker, Robert C, Editor, The Marx-Engels Reader, WW Norton & Company, (1978), Pages 13-4.
[5] Ibid, Page 123.
[6] Ibid, Pages 136-137.
[7] Ibid, Page 162.
[8] Mascaro, Juan, Translator from the Pali, The Dhammapada – The Path of Perfection, Penguin Books, (1988), Chapter 12 – Self-possession, Verse 160, Page 58.
[9] Thomas, Edward J, The Life of the Buddha in Legend and History, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co Ltd, (1931), Page 208.
[10] Ibid, Page vi.
[11] Ibid, 68.
[12] McLellan, David, Karl Marx – A Biography, Papermac, (1995), Page 25.
[13] Marx, Karl, The German Ideology, Prometheus Books, (1998), Page 561, and Page 183 respectively.
[14] Husain, Iqbal, Editor, Karl Marx on India, Tulika Publishers, (2011), Pages 246-248.
[15] McLellan, David, Karl Marx – A Biography, Papermac, (1995), Page 290-291.
(Karl Marx – Das Kapital) [1]
A new approach is needed to analyse the similarities between the method of critical observation developed by the Buddha, and the method of continuous deconstruction revealed through the work of Karl Marx. A superficial surface reading gives the (false) impression that Buddhism is one thing, and Marxism another. Buddhism, dominated as it is by bourgeois sentimentality in the West, is presented as a form of idealism similar to that found in medieval Christianity, whilst Marxism is equally misrepresented by the same bourgeois as being simply a materialist system of thought that rejects all idealism. The problem is twofold; Buddhism is mistakenly viewed as ‘idealistic’, when it is clear even from a cursory reading of the sutras that the Buddha rejected the notions of idealism and materialism as being unable to explain his system, whilst Marx is misrepresented as teaching a gross materialist approach to the interpretation of reality, which is nothing other than the product of pure bourgeois fantasy. This mistaken (and often deliberate) misinterpretation is the corrupt product of the minds of poorly educated men who suffer continuously through distortions of a false or deluded consciousness. It is essentially the religious attitude at work, which routinely views causation in an inverse (and incorrect) direction. For those stuck in this product of an oppressive society, the world of matter, that is the physical world, is believed to have emerged (as if from nothing), through the influence of a divine entity or god. This is nothing other than thoughts in the mind that are not yet known to be false. This is precisely the point where Buddhism and Marxism over-lap. Both systems are not two different or unique entities vying for human appreciation, but in reality represent a single philosophical perspective that transcends and completes all previous (and limited) philosophical perspectives that have developed throughout time. Buddhism and Marxism express exactly the same message filtered through the culture of their respective times in history. Buddhism through the history of ancient India, breaking free as it did, of Brahmanic religiosity, and Marx through the rubric of 19th century European culture, which was dominated by the processes of industrialisation, mass social upheaval, injustice, war, famine, imperialism, and secularisation, etc.
Although it is possible that Buddha and Marx could have arrived at their similar conclusions independent of the influence of one another’s work, it is also true that both thinkers, as rationalists, taught that the numerous links in a logical chain of cause and effect should be read clearly and in the right order, so that error, imagination, fantasy, and religious or superstitious beliefs can be eradicated from the equation of rational observation. Once it is understood that it is the human mind that creates, through the evolved process of thought, all ideas, views, and opinions, then the falsehood of misplaced interpretation can be abandoned as the pointless exercise it is, and rational thought established by turning the mind the right way around. The Buddha never claimed originality for his method, but instead insisted that others had known this dialectical path in the past, and that he had merely re-discovered it. Marx never looked back, but always dynamically looked forward with his method. His method of dialectical assessment put an end to all dogmatism and pushed on through to an open ended freedom that can not be adequately explained, due to the immensity of its implications. Its transition Marx labelled as Socialism, and in completion he called it Communism. His method does not allow for a concretised definition to set into place, as this would imply a sliding back into the dualistic (and limited) thinking of the past. Applying dialectical assessment to Marx himself, it is likely that his developed method, at least in part, was influenced by the structure, presentation, and objective of Buddhist philosophy, and that the theory developed by Marx did not appear out of thin air. This is not to say that Marx is simply re-stating the Buddhist message through European values, far from it, but rather that a similar spark of creative genius is at work in both philosopher’s systems that creates anew as it deconstructs and makes irrelevant the old ways of viewing the world. For the Buddha it was the world as envisioned through the teachings and imaginations of Brahmanism, whilst for Marx it was the world as mediated through the Judeo-Christian tradition – both philosophers had to see through the religiosities of their respective historical epochs and geographical locations. This ability of ‘seeing through’ may be described as being exactly the same for both Buddha and Marx, regardless of the different historical conditions to which it was applied. The logical consequence of seeing through the illusionary nature of Brahmanism created the distinct body of knowledge that is known as Buddhism. Buddhism, in its purest form, is a rationality freed of Brahmanic religiosity. The logical consequence of seeing through the illusionary nature of the Judeo-Christian tradition created the distinct body of knowledge known as Marxism. Marxism, in its purest form, represents human rationality freed of the inverted thinking of the Judeo-Christian tradition. For both Buddhism and Marxism, (and despite each system representing a method for correcting the mind and establishing an optimum intellectual functioning), conditions on the ground varied to such an extent that each had to create a unique response to the ignorance of human religiosity. This explains why each system appears to be different when viewed in a superficial manner. Indeed, when viewed in this shallow manner, Marxism is mistakenly perceived to be a system of gross materialism, and Buddhism a peculiarly Asian system of deluded religiosity. In reality, both of these assumptions are incorrect.
Marx studied Greek and European philosophy whilst Studying in Berlin in the late 1830’s, but is it possible to discern any connection with Buddhist philosophy? Buddhism and Brahmanism were certainly known in the West at this time, although the study of these two Indian systems was still very much in its infancy. It can be reasonably speculated that Marx may have come across the mentioning of Buddhism in the works of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, or perhaps in specialised academic manuscripts dealing with the subject, but such encountering of Buddhism is limited to the mind of the European philosopher concerned, and his viewpoints of existence, rather than being an indepth examination of Buddhist principles in and of themselves. However, it is known that Marx was exposed to the real and genuine teachings of Buddhism through his lifelong association with his colleague and friend Karl Koppen. In 1837 Berlin, Marx was a member of the Doctors Club, a group of young Hegelians run by the radical theologian Dr Bruno Bauer. This is where Marx met Koppen. Shlomo Baker describes Koppen and his expert knowledge in the field of Buddhist studies, and another important member of the Doctors Club named Ruttenberg who routinely interacted with Marx at this time:
‘Other leading members of the Doctors Club with whom Marx developed close ties included Karl Friedrich Koppen and Dr Adolf Ruttenberg. Koppen was a 29 year old former history teacher, who was to dedicate his Frederick the Great and His Opponents to his ‘Karl Marx of Trier’. He also produced an expert – and lasting – work on Tibetan Lamaism and the origins of Buddhism. Ruttenberg, a former Burschenschaftler several times imprisoned for radical student agitation, and recently dismissed from a post as a geography-and-history teacher at the Cadet School, was now making a name for himself as a journalist in Berlin writing for provincial newspapers.’ [2]
Baker goes on to explain how Bauer, Marx, Koppen, and Ruttenberg functioned as the ‘Doctors Club’ in the drinking establishments of Berlin:
‘Back in 1837, however, Dr Bruno Bauer, 28 and full of life, was only debunking Strauss to save ‘the honour of Jesus’ and protect the Saviour from ‘unscientific’misrepresentation. He befriended the second-year student Marx, another budding ‘self-god’, but not yet godless. Bubbling with high spirits and beer, the two of them kept ‘Hegelising’ in taverns along with Koppen (who, before proving his erudition in his work on Buddhism, was chiefly conspicuous for wearing a coat with epaulettes and sporting a rapier) and Ruttenberg (a hot-tempered fellow, occasionally involved in street brawls).’ [3]
It is interesting, when assessing the different systems of Marxism and Buddhism, to develop an understanding of what both thinkers were doing when they developed their respective theories. This is required because the developed theories appear very different from one another at the surface level. This is a clear example of looks being deceptive, as both men worked from exactly the same philosophical premise, which only differed in the historical era from which it emerged, and the cultural milieu through which it was filtered. This philosophical premise may be defined as follows:
1) Ordinary life is defined by suffering (dukkha) and (bourgeois) oppression.
2) Ordinary perception is flawed (false or deluded consciousness).
3) Correct use of dialectics (wisdom) can see through this illusion.
4) The human mind can be trained so that a true-self can be realised (enlightenment).
5) A mind can change its own programming, and effect change in the world.
6) A changed world affects the minds of the individuals who inhabit it.
7) The current status quo must be rejected as thoroughly corrupt.
8) Religions must be understood as being the product of delusive imagination.
9) Individuals must work on their own education, and the education of the collective.
10) Class and caste must ultimately be transcended.
11) The force of history conditions all things.
12) Revolution is change.
13) A radical break with the past, and the present.
14) Compassion for the welfare of humanity as a prime motivator.
15) Criticism of prevailing economic conditions.
16) The genuine needs of humanity over the distorted greed of humanity.
17) Self-discipline as a vehicle to effect change in the world.
18) A selfless attitude toward the welfare of others.
19) A preferred ethical and moral programme.
20) Behavioural modification.
Despite this shared similarity, Buddhism and Marxism appear very different in manifestation due to one primary reason, and that is in the treatment of the prevailing religious systems as experienced in ancient India and modern Europe. The Buddha thoroughly rejects the teachings and caste system associated with Brahmanism, but nevertheless retained in his new system the notions of karma, divine beings, and rebirth. This has to be viewed in context. By retaining such Brahmanic notions, the Buddha radically altered, and ultimately negated the validity of these terms. The Buddhist teachings read as if the Buddha is adjusting his new found rational insight to the deluded conditions that exist in the minds of his disciples, all of whom have been brought up within the religiosity of Brahmanism. All are familiar with the notions of karma, divine beings, and rebirth, and so the Buddha directly attacks Brahmanic authority by using these terms in a manner that the Brahmins would neither recognise nor respect. The Buddha rejects the theory of an ‘atma’, or ‘soul’, and in so doing undermines the caste system which is premised upon the religious teaching that says individual souls are continuously reborn throughout the various social castes depending upon their own behaviour and the decisions of gods. Once atma is rejected, the notion of Brahmanic deterministic karma (which condemns an individual to just one path in life that can not be changed until death), has no agency to work through, and therefore no means of taking rebirth, which always occurs through an incarnating atma. The Buddha’s version of karma is a theory that recognises free will coupled with the exercise of moral responsibility. The Buddha describes divine beings as more or less pointless entities that are no better than human beings, and which have no authority and say in human affairs. Indeed, within the Buddhist teachings, gods are invariably replaced with meditative levels of development, suggesting that a rational mind does not believe in gods, and rebirth is explained as not existing in the enlightened state. The enlightened state of the Buddha must not be mystified or obscured by religious thinking – it simply refers to a fully functioning rational mind that has thrown off the conditioned fetters of greed, hatred, and delusion, and which no longer mediates either with itself nor the physical world through these selfish agencies. In this highly rationalised state, the Buddha states over and over again that karma, gods, and rebirth do not exist. The Buddha seems to be using elements of the old Brahmanic religion to bring people’s minds into the rational light of his own understanding.
Karl Marx treats the Judeo-Christian religion very differently. This is appropriate for the modern Europe within which he was born. Europe had been dominated for centuries by the theology and politics of the establish Roman Catholic and Protestant churches. Rationality had not been allowed to develop, but was always held back and negated by a highly spurious theology. Although the myth is that this theology had arisen from the mind of god or his representative upon earth, the reality is more mundane. Ordinary men seeking power and influence on earth, had cobbled together unconnected and incoherent stories of imagined miracles and used these stories as a means to scare an uneducated populace into doing as they say. These men are, of course, the established Christian church. So strong has the hold of theology been on the minds of the uneducated masses, that Marx could not make use of any theological notion without running the risk of encouraging religious thinking in his audience, and thus undermining the premise of his own rational method. Marx’s theory hinges upon the ruthless criticism of religion, because all else within a bourgeois society hangs off of it. The hold of religion in the mind of the masses must be broken, and the social structures of the church dissolved so that no more conditioning agencies remain to adversely affect the people. Whereas the Buddha was culturally invested in the Brahmanism he rejected, (he was of the 2nd highest caste), Marx was not invested in the Judeo-Christian church he rejected. The Buddha had received a very privileged upbringing and had been trained in all the Brahmanic systems extant in his day. He was familiar with the intricate teachings of Brahmanism, but through the act of sustained meditation, he had freed his mind of its conditioning and understood that these teachings were not correct. On the other hand, he felt confident enough to re-interpret some of these concepts to assists others to free their minds. Christian theology, however, was so dominant in its anti-rational stance, that the best manner in which Marx could serve his European audience at the time was to make an obvious and total break with its influence. Marx then goes on to assess what he believes to be correct ethical and moral behaviour within society, and to analyse and describe in detail the socio-economic situation in Europe following the Industrial Revolution. The Buddha, by way of contrast, also advocates a strict ethical and moral path, and firmly condemns greed as an agency for sustained human interaction. He does not formulate an economic criticism of the Indian society of his day, but instead rationally deconstructs the Brahmanic caste system through the use of ruthless logic. With the caste system negated, and the authority of the Brahmins undermined, all else for the Buddha becomes superfluous. For Marx and Buddha, it was the deconstruction of the prevailing religious systems that both understood to be the doorway to a new and radical interpretation of the world.
An important question is how is Marx formulating his theory and does it have any similarity to Buddhist philosophy? In his ‘For a Ruthless Criticism of Everything that Exists’ Marx states:
‘And the socialist principle itself represents, on the whole, only one side, affecting the reality of the true human essence. We have to concern ourselves just as much with the other side, the theoretical existence of man, in other words to make religion, science, etc, the objects of our criticism. Moreover, we want to have an effect on our contemporaries, and specifically on our German contemporaries. The question is, how is this to be approached? Two criticisms cannot be denied. First, religion, and second, politics, arouse predominant interest in contemporary Germany. We must take these two subjects, however they are, for a starting point, and not set up against them some ready-made system such as the Voyage en Icarie.
Reason has always existed, only not always in reasonable form. The critic can therefore start out by taking any form of theoretical and practical consciousness and develop from the unique forms of existing reality the true reality as its norm and final goal.’ [4]
The book Marx mentions entitled ‘Voyage en Icarie’ (written by Cabet) was a utopian socialist novel published in Paris in 1840. The followers of Cabet at the time were referred to as ‘communists’, but Marx rejects the utopic vision of Cabet and instead advocates not the replacement of one system with another, but rather the re-discovery of true and correct reason through criticism or effective analysis. His system of analysis, of course, derives from the dialectics of Hegel which may be defined as the use of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. This is the logical weighing up of opposites (thesis, antithesis) so that a new third way (synthesis) is developed through the integration of the other two aspects. If this third position is deficient in some way, and does not represent true knowledge, it collapses back into opposites and the process begins again. This is a dynamic interaction that does not rest on the authority of convention or tradition, but ruthlessly assesses all data without mercy. This breaks the habit associated with the past, of following redundant, incorrect, or obviously dangerous ideologies or modes of existence. For Marx, modern humanity is alienated from its true essence. There is a loss and obscuration of the true-essence of humanity that must be regained. In the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx writes:
‘The man estranged from himself is also the thinker estranged from his essence – that is, from the natural and human essence. His thoughts are therefore fixed mental shapes or ghosts dwelling outside nature and man.' [5]
The principle of alienation is a very important part of the Marxist analysis of history. Humanity has lost something essential and must regain it through logical reason and correct interpretation of events. Religion and politics, although representative of official institutes and establishments within European culture, are nevertheless objects to be avoided, despised, and deconstructed as soon as possible as they embody the very essence of humanity’s alienation from its own essence. Politics promises wholeness on a mundane level whilst continuously keeping humanity from its essence, but perhaps the greater hypocrisy lies with religion as its theology promised to unite humanity with its spiritual essence, but in reality does everything to prevent such reconciliation from taking place. In this regard, politics may be discerned as mundane delusion, and religion viewed as spiritual delusion. Marx, following Feuerbach, does not accept that god has created the world and everything in it, but rather that it is the human mind that has created the illusion of god and the edifice of mythology and false imaginings premised upon his existence. This simple reversal of polarity of human perception is the progressive essence of Marxism, which is more properly described as an ongoing developmental philosophical method, rather than an ideology with fixed parameters. The ideas of Socialism and Communism are theoretical developments out of the current socio-economic conditions that are the products of history. In his ‘Society and Economy in History’ Marx clarifies this point:
‘What is society, whatever its form may be? The product of men’s reciprocal action. Are men free to choose this or that form of society? By no means. Assume a particular state of development in the productive faculties of man and you will get a particular form of commerce and consumption. Assume particular stages of development in production, commerce and consumption and you will have a corresponding social constitution, a corresponding organisation of the family, of orders or of classes, in a word, a corresponding civil society. Assume a particular civil society and you will get particular political conditions which are only the official expression of civil society.' [6]
In the German Ideology Marx explains how this process eventually evolves into Communism:
‘Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality (will) have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things.’ [7]
For Marx, the history of the individual workers has been transformed into world history through the process of industrialisation. Oppression of the workers is the historical fuel that drives the evolutionary process toward a complete break with the past. This complete break, however, is not just physical, but also psychological. A worker can not be just physically free without first throwing off the shackles of psychological conditioning, or in Marxian terms, creating a ‘class consciousnesses’.
As the teachings of Buddhism have existed for thousands of years, and given that Marx knew about these teachings, did the philosophical methodology of the Buddha have any influence upon Marx in the formulation of his theory of perpetual criticism and deconstruction? Although the theory of the dialectic certainly existed in ancient Greece, and was employed by Kant and Hegel, Marx utilised it in a very different and peculiar manner that had never been seen before in European philosophical narrative. Of course, the received history of Marxism is that it is a distinctive and unique outpouring of the European philosophical tradition, as Marx studied European philosophy for his doctorate. In the study of Marx, it is Feuerbach who is given the credit (and not Buddha) for first stating that it is the mind of humanity that creates religion, and not that religion creates humanity, despite the fact that Buddha clearly stated this thousands of years before Feuerbach even existed. It must also be asked where it was that Feuerbach got his version of this idea from? It obviously wasn’t fully developed, because although Marx borrowed and developed the idea, he also ruthlessly criticised Feuerbach for not going far enough in his analysis of the status quo. In the Dhammapada the Buddha makes this humanity-centred statement:
‘Only a man himself can be master of himself: who else from outside could be his master? When the Master and servant are one, then there is true help and self-possession.’ [8]
This is how the British academic Edward J Thomas describes Buddhism in relation to a god concept:
‘It is doubtful if God as an ultimate reality, an ens realissimum as in Vedanta or Platonism, was conceived, but the denial of such a conception is implicit, and it is certainly denied that Brahma is the Lord, or maker of the universe, or omniscient. Equally important from the standpoint of theistic religion is the exclusion of the gods from any share in the plan of salvation. The disciple neither desires the heaven of Brahma, nor looks to him for help in attaining the goal. He aims at attaining the ultimately real, and this is Nirvana. It is not stated in such a way that can be identified with God…’ [9]
Buddhism is not a religion, as its method of self-cultivation to over-come suffering is non-reliant upon the assistance of theistic entities. However, as the centuries have gone by, Buddhism has spread from ancient India into the world, and has, on occasion, integrated itself with local beliefs and customs. In fact this process was already under way before it left India, as Brahmanic features rejected by the Buddha started to subtly find their way into Buddhism, despite the Buddha’s teaching in the suttas remaining more or less unchanged, although of course, occasionally interpretations were added by latter monks that reflected their understanding and socio-economic conditions as well as their political aspirations, etc. The essential teaching of the Buddha is often not the obvious manifestation that passes as cultural Buddhism, either East or West. This is to say that although some schools or traditions of Buddhism may appear to act as atheistic religion for the uneducated and poor masses in the East, or the affluent bourgeois in the West, the true teachings of the Buddha are something entirely different. This situation has led to the author G Grimm, in his 1926 book entitled ‘The Doctrines of the Buddha, the religion of Reason’to make the following comment:
‘All that has hitherto been held to be the ancient Buddha doctrine is false, inasmuch as its root idea, with the passage of time, has no longer been understood, nay has actually been perverted into its very opposite.’ [10]
This an important observation and one which figures prominently in the assessment of any Buddhist influence upon Marx. Obviously it is not the Buddhism of elaborate ritual and theistic tendencies such as that Marx critiques in the German Ideology, but instead the pure Buddhism as preserved in the earliest teachings referred to by Grimm, and which was studied by Karl Koppen. This fact establishes a definite link between the early pure Buddhism and Karl Marx which may well have influenced Marx in a positive manner. If this was the case, then of course, this does not render Buddhism as a feudalistic construct immune to Marxist critique – indeed, although Marx (and Engels) praised early Buddhism, Marx ruthlessly criticised those aspects that he perceived as superstitious and backward. This is good for Buddhism as Marx is drawing attention to those aspects of modern Buddhism that are nothing more than the rantings of intruding theism into the purity of the Buddha’s original and pristine insight.
Marx is occupied in his theory by a search for reason. This is also the position of the Buddha, who describes human suffering as the product of ignorance that is the psychological state of ‘not knowing’ or understanding the true nature of reality. For the Buddha, ignorance is not a ‘first cause’, as Buddhism rejects all such theistic concepts, but is itself a product of the four ‘asava’ or ‘effluents’ of poisonous mind-states that flow into the mind and distort perception. The four asava are:
1) The gratification of desire in relation to the five bodily senses (Kamasava).
2) Attachment to viewpoints and beliefs; especially that the body is a self, or belongs to self (Ditthasava).
3) Desire for various states of being and the aspiration to attain and maintain them (Bhavasava).
4) Ignorance of the way things really are (Avijjasava).
Marx criticises all previous states, traditions, conventions, habits, and points of view. This seems to be very near to the Buddha’s definition of ignorance as found in the asava (number 2 in the list) which is described as an ‘attachment’ the clinging to ‘viewpoints and beliefs’. This definition is augmented by the 4th asava in the list, which clearly states that human suffering is the product of not knowing (or understanding) the way things really are. Coupled with the idea that the Buddha rejected the Brahmanic notion that the physical world is the creation of a god, and instead interpreted the world through perception and psychology, a very close theoretical association between pure Buddhism and Marxism can be discerned. Marx, of course, never utilised Christian theology, or Christian spiritual training techniques in his search for true reason or knowledge about existence. Marx rejected Christian theology a priori. The Buddha, on the other hand, explored many Brahmanic and Yogic spiritual developmental techniques during his quest for enlightenment. He followed each path to its developmental conclusion, and understood that the knowledge it advocated was incomplete and therefore not representative of the highest reason available to the human mind. This process of exploration, attainment, and rejection eventually led to the Buddha abandoning the teachings (i.e. viewpoints and beliefs) of the past and going his own way. This process of refinement led to a secular and rational interpretation of Brahmanism as a system stripped of its religiosity. After the Buddha explored and subsequently rejected religion, he arrived at exactly the same mind state as that occupied by Karl Marx. The Buddha’s system is secular, but contains elements of apparent religiosity designed to lead ancient Indians out of the domination of Brahmanism in their minds and in their environments (i.e. castes). This is seen during the biography of the Buddha contained in the suttas which describes the religious aspects of his search, which are radically rejected upon his enlightenment. The Buddha describes in part, his own enlightenment in the following manner:
‘And in me emancipated arose the knowledge of my emancipation. I realised that destroyed is rebirth, the religious life has been led, done is what was to be done, there is nought (for me) beyond this world.’ [11]
Whereas Marx had been historically freed from the grip of religiosity through his Jewish ancestry eventually converting to Christianity, a process which facilitated his birth into a Europe of secular reason and a family which was not that concerned with religious practice; the Buddha had no such historical transformation, and had to undergo the developmental process from religiosity to secular reason within a single lifetime. It was Marx’s father - Heinrich Marx – formerly ‘Hirschel’ – who converted to Lutheran Christianity prior to the birth of his son. The Buddha’s father – Suddhodana – was not only fully immersed in Brahmanic culture, but was part of the 2ndhighest caste of Kshatriya – or the caste of warriors and kings. This gave him direct access to very real political power premised upon the unquestioning acceptance of the Brahmanic spiritual and world ordered. It is remarkable to consider the Buddha’s example in this context that he was able to free his mind from religion in a single life time, through the techniques (i.e. meditation) of religion, and arrive at a mind in possession of an advanced secular reason. During this process the Buddha single-handedly invents the world’s first coherent school of psychology, and empiricism. More than this, however, the Buddha appears to be suggesting that the mind and world are inherently linked, (although they appear separate), and this comes very close to the teaching associated with the contemporary philosophy of Quantum theory (which states that ‘perceiver’ and ‘perceived’ are inherently linked).
Was Marx influenced by the Buddha’s method of logically deconstructing reality as it seems, to reveal reality as it is? This is an interesting question and a trail of evidence for Marx’s association with Buddhism can be developed:
1) 1837 Karl Marx Meets Karl Koppen (who would later become a renowned Buddhist scholar) in Berlin. [12]
2) 1845-46 Marx writes The German Ideology where he distinguishes between Buddhism and Lamaism (i.e. Tibetan Buddhism), and within which he criticises the Dalai Lama for assuming that his excrement is holy. Marx also states that if certain Europeans (who assumed that only Christianity represented spirituality) were to look, they would find a very different system of spirituality represented through the teachings of Buddhism. [13]
3) 1857 Marx writes an article for the New York Tribune within which he describes Buddhists as being ‘Brahmanical rationalists’. [14]
4) 1867 Karl Marx meets Karl Koppen in Berlin, and after a heavy drinking session, Koppen presents Marx with copies of his books on Buddhism. [15]
5) 1883 (the year of the death of Marx) Friedrich Engels states in his unfinished book entitled the ‘Dialectics of Nature’ that the ancient Greeks and Eastern Buddhists developed dialectics to a high degree.
Whether or not Karl Koppen knew anything about Buddhism in 1837, it can not be denied that by the middle of the 1840’s, Marx was writing with authority on Buddhists matters, albeit in a highly peripheral manner to his general theory. The point is that he knew about Buddhism and had a reasonable appreciation of its workings. He even understood that there is a difference between early Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism whilst advising Europeans to become aware of other spiritual systems. It just so happens that Koppen’s two fields of expertise within academia were early Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism, which would suggest that even as a young student in 1837, he possessed a considerable knowledge of Buddhism which he explained to Marx throughout their lifelong friendship. This does not exclude the idea that Marx may have sought out other avenues of information regarding Buddhism, and the distinct possibility remains that the Buddha’s abandonment of religion, and his person-centred theory may have influenced Marx to seek out (within Western philosophy), anyone who had formulated a similar idea of reversing the creationist theory of ‘god made’,and instead replacing it with the theory of ‘man made’. Marx found such a development in the work of Feuerbach. Marx probably thought that as he was criticising the historical conditions of the West, he required a Western philosophical source by way of demonstrating the effectiveness of his theory. Marx may well have thought that the Buddha was correct in his assessment of reality, but could not make a direct or obvious reference to an Eastern philosophical trend developed well over two thousand years ago. The Buddha’s example may well have served as the inspiration for Marx to discover Feuerbach and subsequently unleash a powerful critique of Western religion and politics, similar in its shocking power to that unleashed by the Buddha in ancient India. This may well be the unseen (and unaccredited) legacy that Buddhism as bequeathed to Marxism.
©opyright: Adrian Chan-Wyles (ShiDaDao) 2014.
[1] Marx, Karl, Capital, Wordsworth Classics of World Literature, (2013), Page 432.
[2] Baker, Shlomo, The Doctors of the Revolution – 19th Century Thinkers who Changed the World, Thames & Hudson Ltd), 2000, Chapter 19 Marx and the Influence of Hegel -Page 544.
[3] Ibid – Pages 547-548.
[4] Tucker, Robert C, Editor, The Marx-Engels Reader, WW Norton & Company, (1978), Pages 13-4.
[5] Ibid, Page 123.
[6] Ibid, Pages 136-137.
[7] Ibid, Page 162.
[8] Mascaro, Juan, Translator from the Pali, The Dhammapada – The Path of Perfection, Penguin Books, (1988), Chapter 12 – Self-possession, Verse 160, Page 58.
[9] Thomas, Edward J, The Life of the Buddha in Legend and History, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co Ltd, (1931), Page 208.
[10] Ibid, Page vi.
[11] Ibid, 68.
[12] McLellan, David, Karl Marx – A Biography, Papermac, (1995), Page 25.
[13] Marx, Karl, The German Ideology, Prometheus Books, (1998), Page 561, and Page 183 respectively.
[14] Husain, Iqbal, Editor, Karl Marx on India, Tulika Publishers, (2011), Pages 246-248.
[15] McLellan, David, Karl Marx – A Biography, Papermac, (1995), Page 290-291.