In what sense does Hegel synthesize the entirety of previous philosophy? What his intellectual impact on 19th c Russia and Europe?

When all this was set forth in the early nineteenth century, and for several decades afterward, Hegel’s great structure of thought was regarded by many as the most satisfying and indeed ultimate philosophical conception in the history of the Western mind, the culmination of philosophy’s long development since the Greeks. Every aspect of existence and human culture found a place in this world conception, embraced by its all-encompassing totality. Hegel’s influence was considerable, first in Germany and later in English-speaking countries, encouraging a renascence of classical and historical studies from an Idealist perspective and providing a metaphysical bulwark for spiritually disposed intellectuals grappling with the forces of secular materialism. A new attentiveness to history and to the evolution of ideas was thereby engendered, with history seen as motivated ultimately not simply by political or economic or biological—i.e., material—factors, though these all played a role, but rather by consciousness itself, by spirit or mind, by the self-unfoldment of thought and the power of ideas.

 

Marx:

 

Alienation

Marx had a specific understanding of the very sharp experience of alienation which is found in modern bourgeois society. Marx developed this understanding through his critique of Hegel. According to Hegel, through their activity, people created a culture which then confronted them as an alien force. But for Hegel human activity was itself but the expression of the Spirit (or Zeitgeist) which acted through people. In the first place, Marx insisted that it was human labour which created culture and history, not the other way around; in other words spirit was a human product, not the other way around. But secondly, practice changes the material world, practice was therefore objective; the labour process was therefore an objectification of human powers. But if the workers related to their product as an expression of their own essence and recognised themselves in their product and were recognised by others in their work, then this was not the basis for alienation; on the contrary, this was the only genuinely human relation.

Dialectic

From German philosophy--in particular that of Hegel--Marx took dialectics. Hegel was an idealist who believed that the whole of human history was a continual movement, through contradiction, toward absolute reason. He used an analogy from the physical world to illustrate his approach. Marx argued that dialectics could be rescued from Hegel's idealist outlook--"turned on its head" to reveal a "rational kernel within the mystical shell." Formal logic, or what philosophers have sometimes called "metaphysics," sees things as static and unchanging: A always is equal to A, and can never become B. To the extent that this approach sees movement, it is one "thing" acting on some other "thing." To the extent that there are cycles, they are endlessly repeating cycles.

Dialectical materialism

Materialism suggests that the world is material by its very name. Everything is caused, oriented, moved and developed by matter. Matter decides and determines everything in the society. Matter has the objective existence. From matter we get materialism that can be seen, observed material and its true value can be ascertained. A matter is knowable. It can be known on the other hand. To Hegel the world is ideal by its very nature. Ideas determine the matters or reality. Reason is the essence of reality. Idea is what it is as against what is not. Ideas run the world but matter runs the one that have a subjective existence. Matter has a subjective existence. In fact, this is an egg-hen question as to which idea is first or matter is first. Marx says “My ideas of dialectics are not only different from Hegel but also are its direct opposite.” Hence Marx believes that the idealists are superficial about their position. In fact, Marx idea is nothing but the material world reflected by human mind and translated into human thought. Marx believes that which is ideal is also material.

 

Base and superstructure

Simply put, base refers to the forces and relations of production—to all the people, relationships between them, the roles that they play, and the materials and resources involved in producing the things needed by society. Superstructure, quite simply and expansively, refers to all other aspects of society. It includes culture, ideology (world views, ideas, values, and beliefs), norms and expectations, identities that people inhabit, social institutions (education, religion, media, family, among others), the political structure, and the state (the political apparatus that governs society). Marx argued that the superstructure grows out of the base, and reflects the interests of the ruling class that controls it. As such, the superstructure justifies how the base operates, and in doing so, justifies the power of the ruling class. Marx theorized that the superstructure effectively grows out of the base and that it reflects the interests of the ruling class that controls the base (called the “bourgeoisie” in Marx’s time).

Ideology

 

According to Marx, various positions and beliefs held by people, be it religious, moral and so on, are created and conditioned by their material circumstances. This is true, as Marx points elsewhere, to both historical circumstances and class, social and economical circumstances (and here we can see why "class consciousness" is such an important term in Marx's philosophy). For Marx it is not enough to claim that people create their own images, ideologies and so forth, as suggested by Feuerbach and others. For Marx in "The German Ideology" people's ideas and ideologies are conditioned by the historical formation of powers of production and relations of production (these ideas by Marx are elaborated later in "The German Ideology"). This is the ground for Marx's famous distinction between economical base (which includes the forces of production, relations of production and division of labor) and the "superstructure" which includes culture, ideology, religion etc. for Marx, the superstructure is determined by the material base, and not as the Idealist philosophers would have it.

Historical progress

The Marxist theory of historical materialism sees human society as fundamentally determined at any given time by the material conditions—in other words, the relationships which people have with each other in order to fulfill basic needs such as feeding, clothing, and housing themselves and their families. Overall, Marx and Engels claimed to have identified six successive stages of the development of these material conditions in Western Europe. In contrast to many of his followers, Marx made no claim to have produced a master key to history, but rather considered his work a concrete study of the actual conditions that pertained in Europe. As he put it, historical materialism is not "an historico-philosophic theory of the marche generale imposed by fate upon every people, whatever the historic circumstances in which it finds itself."

Labor theory of value

Labor theory of value: The value of any commodity is ultimately derived from the labor used to create it.

Use value: whether something is useful or not; produced to satisfy one’s own needs; measured qualitatively.

Exchange value: produced to be exchanged for other use values; defined quantitatively. (Under capitalism, the purpose of work is to produce exchange value.)

Capitalism obscures the fact that labor is the ultimate source of value. Since workers produce commodities for capitalists (instead of for themselves), these commodities and markets take on an independent existence. This process, the fetishism of commodities, allows for the exploitation of laborers. Workers are exploited because they are paid less than the value they produce with their labor E.g., workers are paid for the value of four hours of labor, but they work eight hours. The value of the four additional hours of work is surplus value kept by the capitalist.

Surplus theory of value

 

Marxian economic concept that professed to explain the instability of the capitalist system. The capitalist pays his workers less than the value their labour has added to the goods, usually only enough to maintain the worker at a subsistence level. Of the total worth of the worker’s labour, however, this compensation, in Marxian theory, accounts for only a mere portion, equivalent to the worker’s means of subsistence. The remainder is “surplus labour,” and the value it produces is “surplus value.” To make a profit, Marx argued, the capitalist appropriates this surplus value, thereby exploiting the labourer.

Creativity

In this respect, it should be said that human creativity and productivity could be used to change the world as Karl Marx appeals. In general, it should be said that creativity is viewed by the philosopher as an essential part of human nature. Moreover, it is human creativity that actually distinguishes humans from all the other living beings. Thus, it is the really unique characteristic of humans and human nature.

In this respect, it is worthy of mention that Karl Marx states that “the animal is one with its life activity. It does not distinguish activity from itself. But man makes his life activity itself an object of his will and consciousness. He has a conscious life activity. It is not a determination with which he is completely identified” .

In such a way, it is obvious that Karl Marx sincerely believes that human creativity is a very powerful tool that can change not only social relations but human nature itself. In fact, according to Karl Marx, creativity is the tool with which human beings actually shape their nature because it is due to human creativity humans constantly progress and develop and this is due to creativity one formation is gradually changed by another, more progressive one.

Revolution

 

In history, those members of the aristocracy and the church owned the means of production, and the peasants worked for the aristocracy. With the onset of the Industrial Revolution, Marx thought that he would see more of the working poor rise financially and socially. However, this did not materialize. In the industrial society, the aristocracy was replaced by the capitalists (also known as the bourgeoisie). These were the people who owned businesses with the goal of earning a profit, and the working class was replaced by the proletariat, the people who labored for wages. Marx believed that this system was inherently unfair. Under capitalism, Marx believed that the workers would become poorer and poorer and experience alienation. Alienation is seen as the workers becoming more distanced from, or isolated from, their work, resulting in a feeling of powerlessness. To replace this alienation and extreme social class structure, Marx believed that capitalism had to end and be replaced by a socialist system that would make all equal and have all people's needs met. In his work with Fredrick Engels, The Communist Manifesto, Marx stated, ''The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.'' Thus, Marx had called for a workers' revolution where the proletarians would rise up against the bourgeoisie, overthrowing capitalism. To Marx's despair, though, such revolutions occurred in various countries such as Russia and China, but did not occur in the more industrialized nations of the time, like Britain and Germany.

 

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