Religiosity and the Practical Materialism of Marx
By Adrian Chan-Wyles PhD
‘Or does critical criticism believe that it has even begun to grasp historical reality when it continuous to exclude from the moment of history the theoretical and practical relations of men to nature, natural science and industry? Or does it think it has in fact already understood any period without having understood for example the industry of that period, the immediate mode of production of life itself? Of course spiritualistic, theological critical criticism knows only (at least it imagines it does) the main political, literary and theological events of history. Just as it separates thinking from the senses, the soul from the body, and itself from the world, so it separates history from natural science and industry, and sees history’s point of origin not in coarse material production on the earth, but vaporous clouds in the heavens.’
Karl Marx: Holy Family (1845) - Quoted from: Alfred Schmidt: The Concept of Nature in Marx, Verso, (2014) - Page 21
Marx was born in Trier (Southwestern Germany) in 1818. Both his father (Heinrich) and his mother (Henrietta) were born into the Jewish religion. His father was German, whilst his mother was Dutch. Trier was a staunch Catholic area, and Heinrich, whilst acknowledging his Jewish ethnicity throughout his life, converted to Protestant Christianity to further his career as a lawyer in the region. Although Heinrich had ancestors who were rabbis in the region, he was remarkably unaffected by his Jewish ancestry in the sense that his outer cultural behaviour was typical of an idle-class German than a German of Jewish origin. The Napolean Laws that operated in the Rhineland had granted German Jews a measure of equality, with Karl Marx being brought up in an area of Germany that had known utopian Socialism which had been in favour with various local politicians (particularly that of Saint Simon and Fourier, etc). It was within this tolerant milieu of French egalitarian Socialism, Judaism, Protestantism and Catholicism that Karl Marx experienced during his childhood. His Jewish father changing the ‘code’ of his outward behaviour to better fit-in with German culture, may have appeared something akin to a ‘secular’ attitude for Marx, particularly as his home life was not dominated by religion to any great extent. He certainly was not brought up a Jew whilst living amongst Jews in a manner that suggested he was one of them, and yet simultaneously existing ‘outside’ of their cultural behaviour. His father was an ‘outward’ Christian, but this conversion did not (and could not) change his inherent ‘Jewishness’. His mother remained a Jewish woman from the Protestant Netherlands who faithfully ‘served’ her husband without comment, and looked after her children without complaint. As well as this almost post-modern existence, Marx had the opportunity to observe two different types of Christianity (Protestant and Catholic), objectively and at close-quarters.
He seems to have lived entirely ‘detached’ from the immense and powerful religiosity that surrounded him as a child. Normally, up until that point in history, the usual pattern would have been for an individual to have been born into one dominant religion, that existed and functioned in a particular area with no threat or competition from any other religion. Multiple religions inhabiting the same geo-political space was not unusual, but it certainly was not standard, with the particular dynamics that surrounded the Marx family perhaps making the situation distinctly ‘modern’. Karl Marx occupied a central position like a birdwatcher hidden in his or her camouflaged ‘den’ and quietly observing the wildlife in its natural habitat. He was able to apply the secular knowledge of a ‘common-sense’ acquired through the study of mathematics or physics learned in the classroom to the often surreal and apparently illogical machinations of the religions operating around him. His later study of ancient and modern philosophy would provide him with ‘why’ he thought that religions manifested in this manner, and it is these conclusions that ‘Marxists’ use to assess and condemn religion, and which religions use to condemn and criticise the thinking of Marx!
For religionists, Marx is dismissed as an atheistic materialist, and condemned as a ‘demon’ or a ‘devil’. Anyone who subscribes to the Marxist view of religion is likewise also condemned as a ‘demon’ and the ‘devil’. Religionists who describe themselves as ‘Socialists’, often align themselves with thinkers and reject Marx due to his attitudes about religion. This is to be expected, because whereas Utopian Socialist advocate ‘equality’ for everyone within society (including religionists), the Scientific Socialism of Marx seeks to entirely ‘end’ the practice and influence of religion throughout society and the world. At any rate, say Marx, as a Socialist society transitions into Communism, life would be so psychologically and physically satisfying that ‘religion’ in its traditional sense would quite literally ‘die away’. The problem for religionists is that they believe that what they think is ‘holy’, ‘ever-lasting’ and really manifesting from the ‘mind of god’. Religionists think that god is real and Marx is wrong. They are of the opinion that god will endure whilst Marx with be forgotten. Like one of the many devious schemes of the devil, god will defeat the challenge from Marx and religionists can go back to worshipping their god safe in the security that such behaviour is unchallenged.
Seen from the viewpoint of the religionists, god lifts the veil that covers their eyes, and they ‘see’ the beauty and magnificence of his teaching and presence! Marx is evil because he dares to judge the process that this happens within. Furthermore, the viewpoints of Marx are insulting to religionists who sincerely believe in their god and rituals. Who is right? Marx argues against religion on two counts: 1) Established religion has taken-on (the inner) and outer structures of the bourgeoisie, and supports that class and its capitalist ideology without question, and 2) The theology of religion represents an ‘inversion’ of mentality, where a thought in the mind is mistaken as a concrete reality in the environment. This is a misrepresentation of reality that diverts the human mind and body away from considering and understanding things as they should be (so that the world can be progressively transformed through labour activity), and into an apathetic and inward-looking quagmire of reactionary conservative subjectivity. The dynamics of theistic religion misrepresent the universe as it is, and deceives those trapped in its rituals and ceremonies (as if they have fallen into a dark pit). Religion replaces the practical history of materialism, with the impractical history of idealism.
Whereas Hegel emphasises his system of dialectic as ‘spirit’ representing ‘thesis’, humanity as ‘antithesis’ and the ‘world dominated by religion’ as ‘synthesis’ - Marx rejects this interpretation of reality, as Hegel suggests that physical existence emerges from ‘spirit’ (offering no explanation as to ‘how’ or ‘why’ this happens). Hegel appears to be offering a secularised ‘idealist’ view of the Genesis story contained in the Christian Old Testament. Following the trend of thought of Feuerbach, Marx retains the Hegelian tripartite dialectic, but ‘inverts’ or places it the ‘right way around’ and completely transforms the dialectic! In the model that Marx advocates, ‘humanity’ is the ‘thesis’, and the ‘human mind’ (which replaces ‘spirit’) is the ‘antithesis’. Through this interaction, a ‘synthesis’ occurs which generates ‘self-consciousness’. The body interacts with environment through the ‘senses’ (this is the productive activity of the ‘self’), and experiences are ‘imported’ into the brain and create a functioning mind (this is the development of ‘consciousness’ and ‘awareness’). Marx perceived that as reality is the permanent integration of thought, sensation and environment, the religious notion that ‘spirit’ and ‘soul’ exist in some unknown location in (or through) the mind disembodied from practical life, communicate with an ‘unseen’ theistic entity, and ‘ignore’ the bodily senses and the environment – inverted religious belief cannot be correct! This is why Marx advocates ‘practical’ materialism which is often further explained as both ‘dialectical’ and ‘historical’. All three terms are correct providing the ideas of Marx are properly understood and not conflated with other interpretations of materialism.
‘...The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production... The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch.’
Karl Marx: The German Ideology, (1845), The Ruling Class and the Ruling Ideas
In a 1950s Soviet translation, the German term translated into English here as ‘mental’ production (by Robert Tucker, for instance) has been rendered as ‘spiritual’ production, which can sometimes appear a little confusing. In reality Marx is not talking about a religious ‘spirit’ as opposed to ‘matter’, (the essence of inverted ‘idealism’), but is rather explaining that the class that dominates the means of production, also dominates the pervading ‘spirit of the age’, and manifests this dominance through its ideas, attitudes, policies, religious attitudes and opinions, etc. In other words, the intellect, as a rarefied form of matter (which emerges from the physical brain), is distinguished from vulgar or concrete matter by the term ‘spiritual’ - which the Soviet ideologues had no problem with. MI Kalinin – in his excellent ‘On Communist Education’ (published in the USSR) translates the above extract of The German Ideology as:
‘"...The class that possesses the means of material production, by virtue of this also possesses the means of spiritual production... The individuals composing the ruling class possess, among other things, consciousness as well, and by virtue of this, think. In so far, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and scope of an epoch. It is self-evident that they do this in all its spheres, hence rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age; and that means that their ideas are the dominant ones of the epoch."’
Generally speaking, consciousness within Soviet academia is described as a ‘special arrangement of matter’, the details of which humanity does yet fully understand (although neuroscience is steadily progressing toward developing this understanding). Consciousness does not emerge from a theistic entity situated somewhere in the universe, and is not ‘mysteriously’ projected into the head ‘at a distance’ - independent of the human-body (and its senses). The brain has evolved to interpret all the data received through the bodily senses, and has developed the ability to objectively ‘assess’ or ‘think’ about what has been ‘sensed’. A human mind cannot communicate with another human mind without first manifesting its volitional intentions as ‘behaviour’, ‘activity’ or ‘labour’ in the physical environment, and having this communicating information ‘sensed’ through the bodily senses of other living-beings. There must be some kind of physical ‘productive’ activity (‘sensed’ by other living-beings) for meaningful communication to take place. The brain, however, has developed the ability to not only absorb environmental data, but also store it (and randomly access it) in limitless permeations (depending upon environmental necessity). This is how ‘free will’ is developed (through ‘experience’). Although the mind undoubtedly manifests psychological activity within its interior, regardless of its internal content (positive, negative or neutral), none of this would exist without first being imported from the external (physical) environment. Eventually, as the interior of the mind is ‘saturated’ with externally-derived phenomena, even when the physical stimulus ceases in the external environment, its imprint continues to function (as a habitual ‘reflection’) in the interior of the mind. Marx recognises this when he observes:
‘The materialist doctrine concerning the changing of circumstances and upbringing forgets that circumstances are changed by men and that it is essential to educate the educator himself. This doctrine must, therefore, divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society.
The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-changing can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice.’
Karl Marx: Theses On Feuerbach, (1845) - III
Therefore, the practical materialism of Marx should not be confused with other versions of materialism, and should not be turned into a metaphysical dogma that refuses to acknowledge the validity of the mind and its internal functioning. Marx states clearly that the mind ‘exists’, and that it must be purposefully ‘educated’ in a Revolutionary manner, in accordance with ‘productivity’ that advances the welfare and prospects of the working class. The practical materialism of Marx is not overly ‘deterministic’, and should not be interpreted in such a manner so as to stifle creativity. If religions can transform their idealistic theology and adjust it to recognise the truth of the practical materialism of Marx, then even religion can become a vehicle for progressive action and development.
©opyright: Adrian Chan-Wyles (ShiDaDao) 2020.
Karl Marx: Holy Family (1845) - Quoted from: Alfred Schmidt: The Concept of Nature in Marx, Verso, (2014) - Page 21
Marx was born in Trier (Southwestern Germany) in 1818. Both his father (Heinrich) and his mother (Henrietta) were born into the Jewish religion. His father was German, whilst his mother was Dutch. Trier was a staunch Catholic area, and Heinrich, whilst acknowledging his Jewish ethnicity throughout his life, converted to Protestant Christianity to further his career as a lawyer in the region. Although Heinrich had ancestors who were rabbis in the region, he was remarkably unaffected by his Jewish ancestry in the sense that his outer cultural behaviour was typical of an idle-class German than a German of Jewish origin. The Napolean Laws that operated in the Rhineland had granted German Jews a measure of equality, with Karl Marx being brought up in an area of Germany that had known utopian Socialism which had been in favour with various local politicians (particularly that of Saint Simon and Fourier, etc). It was within this tolerant milieu of French egalitarian Socialism, Judaism, Protestantism and Catholicism that Karl Marx experienced during his childhood. His Jewish father changing the ‘code’ of his outward behaviour to better fit-in with German culture, may have appeared something akin to a ‘secular’ attitude for Marx, particularly as his home life was not dominated by religion to any great extent. He certainly was not brought up a Jew whilst living amongst Jews in a manner that suggested he was one of them, and yet simultaneously existing ‘outside’ of their cultural behaviour. His father was an ‘outward’ Christian, but this conversion did not (and could not) change his inherent ‘Jewishness’. His mother remained a Jewish woman from the Protestant Netherlands who faithfully ‘served’ her husband without comment, and looked after her children without complaint. As well as this almost post-modern existence, Marx had the opportunity to observe two different types of Christianity (Protestant and Catholic), objectively and at close-quarters.
He seems to have lived entirely ‘detached’ from the immense and powerful religiosity that surrounded him as a child. Normally, up until that point in history, the usual pattern would have been for an individual to have been born into one dominant religion, that existed and functioned in a particular area with no threat or competition from any other religion. Multiple religions inhabiting the same geo-political space was not unusual, but it certainly was not standard, with the particular dynamics that surrounded the Marx family perhaps making the situation distinctly ‘modern’. Karl Marx occupied a central position like a birdwatcher hidden in his or her camouflaged ‘den’ and quietly observing the wildlife in its natural habitat. He was able to apply the secular knowledge of a ‘common-sense’ acquired through the study of mathematics or physics learned in the classroom to the often surreal and apparently illogical machinations of the religions operating around him. His later study of ancient and modern philosophy would provide him with ‘why’ he thought that religions manifested in this manner, and it is these conclusions that ‘Marxists’ use to assess and condemn religion, and which religions use to condemn and criticise the thinking of Marx!
For religionists, Marx is dismissed as an atheistic materialist, and condemned as a ‘demon’ or a ‘devil’. Anyone who subscribes to the Marxist view of religion is likewise also condemned as a ‘demon’ and the ‘devil’. Religionists who describe themselves as ‘Socialists’, often align themselves with thinkers and reject Marx due to his attitudes about religion. This is to be expected, because whereas Utopian Socialist advocate ‘equality’ for everyone within society (including religionists), the Scientific Socialism of Marx seeks to entirely ‘end’ the practice and influence of religion throughout society and the world. At any rate, say Marx, as a Socialist society transitions into Communism, life would be so psychologically and physically satisfying that ‘religion’ in its traditional sense would quite literally ‘die away’. The problem for religionists is that they believe that what they think is ‘holy’, ‘ever-lasting’ and really manifesting from the ‘mind of god’. Religionists think that god is real and Marx is wrong. They are of the opinion that god will endure whilst Marx with be forgotten. Like one of the many devious schemes of the devil, god will defeat the challenge from Marx and religionists can go back to worshipping their god safe in the security that such behaviour is unchallenged.
Seen from the viewpoint of the religionists, god lifts the veil that covers their eyes, and they ‘see’ the beauty and magnificence of his teaching and presence! Marx is evil because he dares to judge the process that this happens within. Furthermore, the viewpoints of Marx are insulting to religionists who sincerely believe in their god and rituals. Who is right? Marx argues against religion on two counts: 1) Established religion has taken-on (the inner) and outer structures of the bourgeoisie, and supports that class and its capitalist ideology without question, and 2) The theology of religion represents an ‘inversion’ of mentality, where a thought in the mind is mistaken as a concrete reality in the environment. This is a misrepresentation of reality that diverts the human mind and body away from considering and understanding things as they should be (so that the world can be progressively transformed through labour activity), and into an apathetic and inward-looking quagmire of reactionary conservative subjectivity. The dynamics of theistic religion misrepresent the universe as it is, and deceives those trapped in its rituals and ceremonies (as if they have fallen into a dark pit). Religion replaces the practical history of materialism, with the impractical history of idealism.
Whereas Hegel emphasises his system of dialectic as ‘spirit’ representing ‘thesis’, humanity as ‘antithesis’ and the ‘world dominated by religion’ as ‘synthesis’ - Marx rejects this interpretation of reality, as Hegel suggests that physical existence emerges from ‘spirit’ (offering no explanation as to ‘how’ or ‘why’ this happens). Hegel appears to be offering a secularised ‘idealist’ view of the Genesis story contained in the Christian Old Testament. Following the trend of thought of Feuerbach, Marx retains the Hegelian tripartite dialectic, but ‘inverts’ or places it the ‘right way around’ and completely transforms the dialectic! In the model that Marx advocates, ‘humanity’ is the ‘thesis’, and the ‘human mind’ (which replaces ‘spirit’) is the ‘antithesis’. Through this interaction, a ‘synthesis’ occurs which generates ‘self-consciousness’. The body interacts with environment through the ‘senses’ (this is the productive activity of the ‘self’), and experiences are ‘imported’ into the brain and create a functioning mind (this is the development of ‘consciousness’ and ‘awareness’). Marx perceived that as reality is the permanent integration of thought, sensation and environment, the religious notion that ‘spirit’ and ‘soul’ exist in some unknown location in (or through) the mind disembodied from practical life, communicate with an ‘unseen’ theistic entity, and ‘ignore’ the bodily senses and the environment – inverted religious belief cannot be correct! This is why Marx advocates ‘practical’ materialism which is often further explained as both ‘dialectical’ and ‘historical’. All three terms are correct providing the ideas of Marx are properly understood and not conflated with other interpretations of materialism.
‘...The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production... The individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of an epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence among other things rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age: thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch.’
Karl Marx: The German Ideology, (1845), The Ruling Class and the Ruling Ideas
In a 1950s Soviet translation, the German term translated into English here as ‘mental’ production (by Robert Tucker, for instance) has been rendered as ‘spiritual’ production, which can sometimes appear a little confusing. In reality Marx is not talking about a religious ‘spirit’ as opposed to ‘matter’, (the essence of inverted ‘idealism’), but is rather explaining that the class that dominates the means of production, also dominates the pervading ‘spirit of the age’, and manifests this dominance through its ideas, attitudes, policies, religious attitudes and opinions, etc. In other words, the intellect, as a rarefied form of matter (which emerges from the physical brain), is distinguished from vulgar or concrete matter by the term ‘spiritual’ - which the Soviet ideologues had no problem with. MI Kalinin – in his excellent ‘On Communist Education’ (published in the USSR) translates the above extract of The German Ideology as:
‘"...The class that possesses the means of material production, by virtue of this also possesses the means of spiritual production... The individuals composing the ruling class possess, among other things, consciousness as well, and by virtue of this, think. In so far, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and scope of an epoch. It is self-evident that they do this in all its spheres, hence rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age; and that means that their ideas are the dominant ones of the epoch."’
Generally speaking, consciousness within Soviet academia is described as a ‘special arrangement of matter’, the details of which humanity does yet fully understand (although neuroscience is steadily progressing toward developing this understanding). Consciousness does not emerge from a theistic entity situated somewhere in the universe, and is not ‘mysteriously’ projected into the head ‘at a distance’ - independent of the human-body (and its senses). The brain has evolved to interpret all the data received through the bodily senses, and has developed the ability to objectively ‘assess’ or ‘think’ about what has been ‘sensed’. A human mind cannot communicate with another human mind without first manifesting its volitional intentions as ‘behaviour’, ‘activity’ or ‘labour’ in the physical environment, and having this communicating information ‘sensed’ through the bodily senses of other living-beings. There must be some kind of physical ‘productive’ activity (‘sensed’ by other living-beings) for meaningful communication to take place. The brain, however, has developed the ability to not only absorb environmental data, but also store it (and randomly access it) in limitless permeations (depending upon environmental necessity). This is how ‘free will’ is developed (through ‘experience’). Although the mind undoubtedly manifests psychological activity within its interior, regardless of its internal content (positive, negative or neutral), none of this would exist without first being imported from the external (physical) environment. Eventually, as the interior of the mind is ‘saturated’ with externally-derived phenomena, even when the physical stimulus ceases in the external environment, its imprint continues to function (as a habitual ‘reflection’) in the interior of the mind. Marx recognises this when he observes:
‘The materialist doctrine concerning the changing of circumstances and upbringing forgets that circumstances are changed by men and that it is essential to educate the educator himself. This doctrine must, therefore, divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society.
The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-changing can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice.’
Karl Marx: Theses On Feuerbach, (1845) - III
Therefore, the practical materialism of Marx should not be confused with other versions of materialism, and should not be turned into a metaphysical dogma that refuses to acknowledge the validity of the mind and its internal functioning. Marx states clearly that the mind ‘exists’, and that it must be purposefully ‘educated’ in a Revolutionary manner, in accordance with ‘productivity’ that advances the welfare and prospects of the working class. The practical materialism of Marx is not overly ‘deterministic’, and should not be interpreted in such a manner so as to stifle creativity. If religions can transform their idealistic theology and adjust it to recognise the truth of the practical materialism of Marx, then even religion can become a vehicle for progressive action and development.
©opyright: Adrian Chan-Wyles (ShiDaDao) 2020.