Lux Lucet

Summary:

Although the study of history is currently a matter of great interest, such was not always the case. The ancient Greeks showed little interest in the subject. Writing in the early nineteenth century, G.W.F. Hegel stimulated modern interest in the subject. Karl Marx, one of Hegel’s students, developed a system of dialectical materialism in which the notion of class struggle took center stage. The fundamental proposition of Marxism is that the mode of economic production at a given time is the basis for the political and intellectual history of the era. Clark casts doubt on this assertion by pointing out that, while the economic organization of most nations until very recently have been largely similar (most have been agricultural economies), the intellectual history of these nations have differed significantly.

The German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Frederich Hegel (1770-1831) is best known today for his dialectic. For Hegel, the world – ideas, religion, the arts,, the sciences, the economy, institutions, society itself (most of my discussion of Hegel is taken from The Story of Thought by Bryan Magee, pp.158-163) – was in a constant state of flux or change. This change did not occur randomly, but was the result of the dialectical process or simply the dialectic. The dialectic took place in three stages: thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. The first stage, thesis, is the initial state of affairs in a particular field. This state of affairs always provokes a reaction, which Hegel termed the antithesis. The conflict between the two views then resolves itself in synthesis, which as the name suggests, is a new state of affairs that combines elements of the prior thesis and antithesis. The synthesis then becomes the new thesis, which provokes a further antithesis resulting in still another synthesis, and so on and so forth. This three stage process is sometimes referred to as a triad.

Karl Marx, the best known student of Hegel, took the Hegelian dialectic and applied it to economics. In Marx, the conflict between the haves and the have nots was substituted for the thesis and antithesis of ideas in Hegel. Hence the term “dialectical materialism” referenced by Clark on page 35, paragraph 2.

Clark, quoting Frederick Engles, provides for us the fundamental proposition of Marxism,

“In every historical epoch the prevailing mode of economic exchange, and the social organization necessarily following from it, form the basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can be explained the political and intellectual history of that epoch.”

Clark proceeds to cast doubt Marxism by attacking this claim on its own terms. This is a type of argument known as ad hominem, Latin for “to the man.” Ad hominem is not so uncommon a term as to appear completely foreign to many people, but the sense in which I’m using it may seem a bit unusual to some. Usually when we hear the term ad hominem, the word is used in the sense of “personal attack,” where one man seeks to undermine the credibility of another’s argument by means of character assassination. This tactic is more accurately called an ad hominem abusive argument and is considered an informal logical fallacy.

Ad hominem in the sense Clark uses it is no fallacy, but an effective means of refuting an opponent’s position. Clark does is to assumes the Marxists’ premise on history and then demonstrates that their conclusions do not follow from it. Clark writes,

“in fact, until the recent past all countries have been mainly agricultural, and the methods have been basically the same; yet the intellectual histories of China, Persia, Russia, and France show much greater difference than the Marxist theory would lead one to expect”…

Perhaps Marx could defend his position by showing that the method of welding in Russia differs from the American method, and that Russian welding causes atheism, while American welding allows the churches considerable freedom” (CVMT, pp. 36, 37).

Clark ends this section by crediting Marx with at least recognizing the problem of history and making an attempt to solve it.