Philosophy

Spinoza and contemporary Marxism

Part four of a series . Introduction The Marxist revival of interest in Spinoza dates from the 1960s. Tired of the dogmatic Stalinist orthodoxy of “dialectical materialism”, some Marxists turned to Spinoza for inspiration, to understand where Marx’s ideas had come from and how Marxism might be refreshed by the engagement. This Spinzoist turn was immediately contested. In Considerations on Western Marxism (1976), Perry Anderson dismissed Marx’s references to Spinoza as merely a handful “of the most banal sort”. He warned of a prolonged recourse to pre-Marxist philosophical traditions...

Spinoza and classical Marxism

Part three of a series . Introduction Spinoza was the pioneering philosopher of the radical Enlightenment. A whole series of materialist thinkers, including Diderot, Helvétius and Holbach built their philosophies on Spinoza’s foundation. Similarly, Hegel and the young Hegelians acknowledged their debt to Spinoza. In the aftermath of the French revolution and at the dawn of socialist thought, Spinoza was a constant referent. In 1833, Ludwig Feuerbach published the History of Modern Philosophy from Bacon to Spinoza (1833). A decade later, Feuerbach, in his Principles of the Philosophy of the...

Spinoza's ideas

Part two of a series . Bento Spinoza (1632-77) was a pioneer of modern revolutionary thought. His Theological-Political Treatise , published anonymously in 1670, was the most dangerous book of his age. Together with his Ethics and the unfinished Political Treatise , both published by Spinoza’s friends shortly after his death, these books made him the first modern democratic philosopher. His writings inspired the radical Enlightenment, which began to shake off ecclesiastical authority, spawned materialist explanations of nature and society, and ultimately promoted liberty, democracy and...

Spinoza: a rebel's life

Part one of a series . Introduction Where do socialist ideas come from and how were ruling ideas challenged in the first place? Marx and Engels began in the early 1840s, emerging from a European socialist milieu, itself only a few decades old. These pioneer socialists of all stripes recognised that they stood on the shoulders of earlier thinkers and writers, stretching back at least to the seventeenth century (1600s), to the period known as the Enlightenment. Seventeenth century Europe was not especially advanced by global standards. Some Europeans had begun colonising parts of Latin America...

Spinoza, democracy and socialism: four articles

An overview of the historical context, life, work and ideas of the radical 17th century philosopher. • Spinoza: a rebel's life • Spinoza's ideas • Spinoza and classical Marxism • Spinoza and contemporary Marxism

Hegelian usages in Marx's Grundrisse

In an 1873 afterword to an edition of Capital volume 1, Marx wrote: "The mystifying side of Hegelian dialectic I criticised nearly thirty years ago, at a time when it was still the fashion..."

To bring revolution "down to earth"

The socialist activist and scholar Robert Fine, who passed away on 9 June 2018 at the age of 72, was a long-time sympathiser and sometime activist with Workers’ Liberty. Our series of book reviews to commemorate Fine continues with Political Investigations: Hegel, Marx, Arendt (Routledge 2001). Karl Marx (1818-83) was the first writer to integrate socialist politics with comprehensive and well-documented theories of economics and history. Most working-class socialists since his time have regarded themselves as Marxists to one degree or another, and by now most of us vehemently reject the idea...

“Heat death” of the cosmos

Paul Vernadsky ( Solidarity 520 ) wrote a valuable article on Marx and the environment, and a review of a book on the same topic. I want to pick up on one point. “Similarly, Engels is sometimes accused of rejecting the second law of thermodynamics in the course of an argument with scientists over the heat death hypothesis. William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) had supported the latter claim to justify the role of God in the universe. Engels rejected the role of a deity on materialist grounds, while accepting that entropy was a feature of the universe. Latter day scientists agree with Engels...

Lukács: another view

According to John Rees and the Counterfire group (a splinter from the SWP), Georg Lukács was "the most important Marxist political philosopher since Marx". He was "the great theorist of revolution in the 20th century", and his writings were "the most sophisticated development of the classical Marxist tradition that anyone has developed". John Cunningham's presentation ( Solidarity 511 ) is more sober. But generally Lukács has enjoyed high repute in a wide range of the left since the early 1970s, and with many Third Camp Marxists since Michael Harrington made the first English translation from...

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