we shall examine more closely two such “spiritual” hero’s of mine…
We have two such writers who lived roughly at the same time and yet,
have quite different agendas……
the first is Kierkegaard and the second is Marx……
I shall at the outset, make it understood that I was a Kierkegaardian
follower for years and read everything he wrote and was written about him…
I am less so a follower of Marx…
I shall cover Marx first for reasons that should become apparent…
Marx lived from 1818 to 1883…his theory of history was called,
“Historical Materialism” and
“that is centered around the idea that the forms
of society rise and fall as they further and then impede the development
of human productive power”
“Freedom is found in the human community, not in isolation”
(italics quotes are found in the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy)
for Marx, it wasn’t about the individual, it was about the society at large…
and how we adapted (or didn’t adapt) within society that was the question…
for Marx, it was about the overall movement of history that matter,
the large scale forces of society that moved and change history…
for Marx, the substructure of history was economics, as involving all of us,
that is what matter… the individual was simply a pawn or a toy within the
large scale forces of history……
and we have Kierkegaard lived from 1813 to 1855… who thought the opposite… he was about
the individual, he didn’t care about the large scale forces that dominated
our lives… for K. it was about our own individual choices that matter…
for K. it was about our own accountability and responsibility in making
our own choices, whereas for Marx, it didn’t matter if we were
accountable or responsible for our choices because our own choices
matter little given the broad scope of historical forces that dictated
our lives… dictated our lives politically, economically, socially…
we have very little or practically no choice in Marxist theory…
Marxism is the study of large scale forces that we cannot individually
have any control over…
whereas for K. those large scale forces don’t mean shit… because
K. was only interested in what it meant to be an individual, a Christian,
in our modern world…….
History, so far, has given the nod to Marx for his understanding that
the world is about the large scale, beyond our individual choices
and possibilities, our large scale movement of human beings who are
swept up by historical forces beyond their control…
think of the ism’s and ideologies of our modern age…
democracy, capitalism, communism, Catholicism, socialism…
not one is about the individual and their own individual choices…
each of these modern ism’s and ideology is about the large scale
historical movement of people leading toward some direction.
within these large scale forces, lies the single human being…
a human being made insignificant by the dominate forces of history that
move societies and entire civilizations…
For K. the choice was between an individual and god…
the large scale forces that dominated humankind like
capitalism wasn’t as important as the individual choices we made
in regards to what kind of person we are going to be……
that is why K. writes about morality and ethics and aesthetics and
psychology… these things matter when dealing with the individual…
but they aren’t important when dealing with the forces of history…
what does the force of history care about Aesthetics or morality when
it involves the motion of millions in its impersonal drive to achieve what?
is really the question that Marx labored under… if it is impersonal,
then what could those large scale forces be trying to achieve??
K. was called the first existentialist because he was the first to
write about the individual and their personal choices to be
who they are… we cannot become who we are given the
large scale nature of the human condition as given by Marx…
but we can become who we are given the understanding
by K.
if we are alienated by forces of history, as in Marx,
we have very little recourse outside of changing
the entire structure of man… we cannot become who we are
in a Marxist universe because we are determined by forces
that are too large for any one individual to comprehend or
to large for any one individual to change……
but K. doesn’t have this problem…
you can become who you are by your choices…
I can choose to become because the only choice we have
is between the individual and god… there are no other real choices…
whereas in Marx, you have no choice of any kind… life is determined
for you by the large scale forces that exists…
it is hard to change the nature of things if, as Marx thinks, you are simply
a drop of water in a large ocean…
but if you are a single drop of water, then you can make choices, as K.
works out…
for K. life is about the choices and decisions one makes…
one can become accountable and responsible for our lives…
for Marx, we cannot be guilty if we are simply a drop of water in the midst
of millions of drops of water…
in Marx, we are enslaved within the various ism’s and ideologies
of history…
we are free in K. because we are not enslaved within the various
ism’s and ideologies of history…
and what of my understanding of the universe?
is Kierkegaard right or is Marx right?
I believe both to be right… we do have choices and we can
answer to our responsibilities and obligations of existence
and we are enslaved within the vast forces of historical
existence… of forces that sweep us, to and fro, within
human existence…how do we reconcile our individual choices
as given by K. and how reconcile our choices within
a large scale domination of individuals by such forces
as historical materialism as given by Marx?
they are both right… now what?
Kropotkin