Sartre's Existentialism and Marxism

[butchersapron]

His embrace of the PCF was more along the simple lines of "The true idea is an effective action" - i.e purely instrumental - wrongly assesed in any case as the PCF was not effective, the conservative right was - and that's just taking that useless defence in it's own terms. An utterly dishonest reading of Hegel's claim that the truth is always concrete.

 

[Good Intentions]

His embrace of the PCF was more along the simple lines of "The true idea is an effective action" - i.e purely instrumental - wrongly assesed in any case as the PCF was not effective, the conservative right was - and that's just taking that useless defence in it's own terms. An utterly dishonest reading of Hegel's claim that the truth is always concrete.

Thanks for clearing that up. I'd always thought that said defence could be nothing short of a horribly compromised position for Sartre, something he normally had the sense to avoid.

 

[revol68]

Free will only makes sense at the individual level - how can you apply it at a higher level?

in the sense that we collective together make our own future, truth and morality.

 

[Good Intentions]

in the sense that we collective together make our own future, truth and morality.

How?

Meaning: with what mechanisms? It's all a bit more complicated than that, isn't it? Stochastic distributions of activity, tendencies and counterreactions, "man makes history but does not choose it", etc etc.

Free will is shaky enough as it is, without extending it beyond the purely individual level.

 

[Dopermine]

We-subject

Free will is shaky enough as it is, without extending it beyond the purely individual level.

In the mists of time, I seem to remember Sartre using the term the "we-subject" - or was that Merleau-Ponty? It describes how subjective consciousness may begin in the first person, but the jump from singular I to plural We is inevitable (ie class consciousness).

It is not shaky at all. Free will tends to the collective since humanity is a species-being, a universally interrelated producer of life's conditions, to quote the early Marx. His theories of alienation are Sartre's mauvais fois by another name.

 

[revol68]

i mean there is nothing else but humanity, there are no pre written moral codes or compasses, no absolute truths. It's what Sartre is saying in Existenialism is Humanism, it isn't some sort of bourgeois free will of the individual shit, thats how it sits with marxism. We excercise our free will within a social sphere, infact free will is itself the product of the social.

 

[Batley]

'We excercise our free will within a social sphere, infact free will is itself the product of the social.'


Sartre said that? Really?
He may well have said that we tend to behave in ways which are socially/culturally/historically/economically etc influened (of course we do!) but I don't think he said we HAD to behave in that way as that suggests that the essence of free will is socially constructed - that would then contradict the first principle of his existentialism which is that existence preceeds essense. Indeed, if free will is a social construct then it really isn't free will.
Sartre continually insists that man is ultimately alone in his choices - even if he doesn't admit to it - anything else is a denial of existential freedom.

 

[Batley]

In the mists of time, I seem to remember Sartre using the term the "we-subject" - or was that Merleau-Ponty? It describes how subjective consciousness may begin in the first person, but the jump from singular I to plural We is inevitable (ie class consciousness).

It is not shaky at all. Free will tends to the collective since humanity is a species-being, a universally interrelated producer of life's conditions, to quote the early Marx. His theories of alienation are Sartre's mauvais fois by another name.

Isn't false class consciousness mauvais fois by another name?

 

[revol68]

Sartre continually insists that man is ultimately alone in his choices - even if he doesn't admit to it - anything else is a denial of existential freedom.

I think Sartre is talking about man in the collective sense, well thats my reading of him, and it's the only way i can reconcile him with Marx.

As for existance coming before essence, well surely existance is social and it comes before what is often held to be the essence, the individual.

Of course if im wrong in my interpretation of Sartre then his philosophy is nothing more than a theatrical reworking of the self contained bourgeois ego.

 

[Batley]

'I think Sartre is talking about man in the collective sense, well thats my reading of him, and it's the only way i can reconcile him with Marx.'

I agree and think that it is the only way to reconcile him with Marx. It doesn't quite fit though - tbh it amazes me to think that someone with a brain like Sartre (Being and Nothingness!) did not make his case for a clear synthesis of Marxism and existentialism more of a priority in his writing - perhaps I hold some of these writers in too high a regard!

 

[Dopermine]

Isn't false class consciousness mauvais fois by another name?

Sorry, I'll have to be reaching for my L'Etre et Le Neant to answer that. I understood that Sartre saw consciousness as constantly alienating itself from itself, trying to negate its own negation and falling back on mauvais fois in exasperation. So I suppose you're right - and I'm right.

 

[Batley]

Sorry, I'll have to be reaching for my L'Etre et Le Neant to answer that. I understood that Sartre saw consciousness as constantly alienating itself from itself, trying to negate its own negation and falling back on mauvais fois in exasperation. So I suppose you're right - and I'm right.

Phew!

 

[Batley]

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread.

Ta,
Batley.

 

[butchersapron]

Didn't get round to scanning the Castoriadis article yet - it's on the 'to do' pile though.

 

[Batley]

Didn't get round to scanning the Castoriadis article yet - it's on the 'to do' pile though.

Thanks very much - most appreciated.

 

[cathal marcs]

I've long thought that the conflict between individualism and socialism was a false dialectic. You can't produce free individuals in an unfree social environment. Here's a quote from Engels that's topical:

"Men make their own history, whatever its outcome may be, in that each person follows his own consciously desired end, and it is precisely the resultant of these many wills operating in different directions and of their manifold effects upon the outer world that constitutes history. Thus it is also a question of what the many individuals desire."

That's from Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy. It's interesting because it contrasts with percieved Marxist determinism sharply.

 

[butchersapron]

Right bit of a bump here but it is directly relevant - the latest issue of New Left Review publishes the first english translation of Sartre's (in)famous Rome lecture Marxism and Subjectivity from 1961. Also, here is Castoriadis piece i promised to scan in all those years ago Sartre, Stalinism, and the Workers.

 

[Greebo]

[QUOTE="butchersapron, post: 13458255, member: 366"<snip> latest issue of New Left Review publishes the first english translation of Sartre's (in)famous Rome lecture Marxism and Subjectivity from 1961. Also, here is Castoriadis piece i promised to scan in all those years ago Sartre, Stalinism, and the Workers.[/QUOTE]
Thanks for that.

 

[butchersapron]

For anyone still interested in investigating this, have a look at Modern French Identities #64 - The Early Sartre and Marxism.

Contents here.

 

[purves grundy]

Thanks for the bump, looking forward to a read. I was leafing through Ted Benton's Rise and Fall of Structural Marxism the other day; although as the title suggests and as you probably know it's mainly on Althusser, there's a good introductory chapter that helped me get to grips with the basic motivations of Satre and Merleu-Ponty and their place in the development of early humanism in Marxist thought. But where does the Frankfurt School and later socialist humanism of Erich Fromm, E.P. Thompson etc fit in (if at all)? Maybe covered in some of the above?