Alexander Isakov. The Metaphysics of Marxism. Vol. 4. No. 1. 2019

Publication Details

The Metaphysics of Marxism
Title in the language of publication: Метафизика марксизма
Author:
Alexander Isakov
PhD in Philosophy, Associate Professor of the Institute of Philosophy of the Saint Petersburg State University.
Address: 7/9 Universitetskaya emb., St. Petersburg 199034, Russia.
Issue:
P. 5–42.
Language: Russian
Document type: Research Article
DOI https://doi.org/10.31119/essephts.2019.4.1.1
 

Abstract

The article clarifies the meaning of the philosophical component of Marxism in three respects. 1. Marxist dialectics has deep phenomenological roots, which is caused by its fundamental generic connection with Hegel’s dialectical phenomenology. Marxist phenomenology includes two types of phenomena: the fetishist consciousness of bourgeois type and the class consciousness of the proletariat, oriented toward revolution, while the pre-phenomenal foundations of these phenomena types are the sides of the dialectical relation. For the former type, this is the repressed content of bourgeois consciousness, a synthesis of the relationship of private property and alienated labor, while for the latter it is the communist sensuality of the intermonadial order, which, in the process of returning the repressed, generates the class consciousness of the proletariat as a condition of socialist revolution. 2. Marxist materialism, from a philosophical point of view, is tied to Marx’s discovery of the unconscious, which can be understood as a discovery of the objective reality of the third type, namely, the reality of social relations invested by the unconscious, and, by virtue of this, irreducible to either the corporeal materiality of the nature or the spiritual ideality of the culture. 3. The revolution, in general, from the perspective of Marxism, is not a matter of oughtness, but the objective reality given in its revelation. A revolution clears the world from a false consciousness of bourgeois type, but, due to the complex, composite nature of this phenomenon, which includes a double revelation of being and language, the revolution itself can generate a false consciousness of a new type, since the freedom of the aggregate will that commits revolution is not able to preserve the significance of its revelation by virtue of the indicated contradictory duality of the nature of this revelation.

Keywords

Marxism, socialism, dialectics, dialectical materialism, historical materialism, phenomenology, fetishist consciousness, ressentiment, class consciousness, revolution, revelation of language.

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© Alexander Isakov, 2019

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