What If Socrates Met Marx?
Sound of Trumpet
The Comprehensive Claim of Marxism | Peter Kreeft | From Socrates
Meets Marx: The Father of Philosophy Cross-Examines the Founder of
Communism
Introduction
This book is one in a series of Socratic explorations of some of the
Great Books. Books in this series are intended to be short, clear, and
non-technical, thus fully understandable by beginners. They also
introduce (or review) the basic questions in the fundamental divisions
of philosophy (see the chapter titles): metaphysics, epistemology,
anthropology, ethics, logic, and method. They are designed both for
classroom use and for educational do-it-yourselfers. The "Socrates
Meets . . ." books can be read and understood completely on their own,
but each is best appreciated after reading the little classic it
engages in dialogue.
The setting – Socrates and the author of the Great Book meeting in the
afterlife – need not deter readers who do not believe there is an
afterlife. For although the two characters and their philosophies are
historically real, their conversation, of course, is not and requires
a "willing suspension of disbelief ". There is no reason the skeptic
cannot extend this literary belief also to the setting.
This excerpt is Chapter 2 of Socrates Meets Marx.
SOCRATES: Perhaps it would be best for you to introduce your book
first, to explain its context and its purpose, as if you were teaching
it in a university classroom. I think you are much readier to lecture
than to dialogue at this point, so perhaps this method would relieve
that itch a bit.
MARX: Do you really expect me to respond to an insulting invitation
like that?
SOCRATES: Yes.
MARX: Why?
SOCRATES: Because you are an egotist. And also because you have no
choice: there is nothing else to do here.
MARX: Hmph! Well, I will take up your challenge.
The book we are about to explore is very short: a pamphlet of only
12,000 words. Yet it has changed the world, as I knew it would. It
contains the essentials of Communism in these few pages. All the rest
of my writing consists in additions or refinements to this.
I wrote it at age twenty-nine. Engels did not write a word of it.
However, he supplied some of the ideas. The Manifesto corresponds to
the first twenty-five questions in his Catechism. More importantly, he
supplied most of the money to print it.
It is a Great Book because it finally solves the mystery of man and
lays bare the most fundamental laws that have always governed human
behavior. I did for man's history what Darwin did for the history of
an- imal species and Newton did for the inorganic universe. It is the
supreme achievement of human thought. I was the first to make history
truly scientific.
All the philosophers, from Plato on, sought the "philosopher's stone",
the world system, the formula. Each claimed to find it, but none did.
Every time thought came to a halt before the timeless formula of some
philosopher, the world moved on and refuted it.
Then came Hegel, who made change itself the formula. That was true,
but not original: Heraclitus, even before your time, Socrates, had
seen that "everything flows", like a river. He sought for the logos,
the law or formula, for universal change; but it was not found until
Hegel, who saw for the first time that logic itself moves with
history, that truth itself changes according to the pattern of what he
called the "dialectic": a thesis generates its own antithesis, and
from this perpetual conflict emerges a synthesis, which then becomes a
new thesis generating its own new antithesis, and so on until the
final synthesis. Hegel, with unbelievable stupidity, identified this
with "God", or "The Absolute" or "Spirit"--probably the three worst
words in human speech and the three most harmful myths in human
thought.
Heraclitus discovered the universality of change, or "becoming". Hegel
discovered the logical form of it, the "dialectic". But I discovered
its true content: matter, not spirit. Hegel thought that ideas caused
historical conflicts; I found the causes in the real world. Ideas are
only the echo or the effect.
Furthermore, within the real world I found the source of historical
change, not in unpredictable individual characters or choices or
passions, but in economic determinism. This was the key to making
history a science: something predictable and controllable.
The forces of the dialectic of history are economic classes. Class
conflict is history's engine.
I was also the first to show how the socialist, classless Utopia of
which others had dreamed would grow like a flower from the plant of my
present world. For once the number of classes is reduced to one--the
proletariat--conflict is reduced to zero.
This is accomplished by the elimination of the only other remaining
class, the bourgeoisie. The meaning of my era is precisely there:
Capitalism had already reduced the plethora of classes that had
characterized feudalism to just two, the bourgeoisie and the
proletariat. The Communist revolution will be the last great event in
history, for it will eliminate the bourgeoisie, leaving only "the
dictatorship of the proletariat", as I said in my Critique of the
Gotha Programand elsewhere, that is, a society of perfect equality and
justice, where "the free development of each is the condition for the
free development of all", and where, as I said in the same book, all
things flow "from each according to his ability to each according to
his need."
SOCRATES: That was a wonderful speech, Karl! It did exactly what it
needed to do, in introducing your book. It was admirably clear and
simple: even I could understand it. It was powerful and appealing: you
are truly a great rhetorician. Lastly, and best of all, it was short.
MARX: So if you are satisfied, let us do it, not just think about it.
Will you join the Party?
SOCRATES: Well, now, I think you will find some difficulty in
organizing that kind of thing here.
MARX: I am not afraid of any challenge, even in my dreams.
SOCRATES: You don't understand.
MARX: What is the problem?
SOCRATES: Well, in addition to the little detail that we are not in
your dream but quite real, we have one other little thing that we have
to take care of before we can think about practicing your philosophy.
MARX: What is that?
SOCRATES: What do you think? What should you make sure of first,
before you put any philosophy into practice?
MARX: That I have the money needed. Is Engels here, too?
SOCRATES: No, something more basic than that.
MARX: There is nothing more basic than that.
SOCRATES: Yes, there is.
MARX: That I have the power base? Fear not; I shall create it.
SOCRATES: No, something else.
MARX: Associates? Organizational skills?
SOCRATES: Something about the philosophy rather than about you. What
do you want to be sure a philosophy is?
MARX: Dynamic? Radical? Progressive? No? You still shake your bulbous,
ugly head! Challenging, engaging, galvanizing to action? No?
Flattering, perhaps? Sly and clever and winsome? No? Original?
Creative? Interesting? No, still! Surely you are not suggesting that
it be comfortably traditional? No, again. What, then? I give up this
demeaning guessing game. What are you after? Tell me the secret. What
is the occult quality that you demand in a philosophy before you will
put it into practice?
SOCRATES: I was thinking of truth.
MARX: Oh.
SOCRATES: Is that your only reply? That one little syllable?
MARX: But practice will reveal that, Socrates. Truth always emerges,
eventually, from the process of history, the dialectic. Truth does not
come outside of action and before it; it comes in action and as the
result of action.
SOCRATES: Is that so?
MARX: It is so, I assure you.
SOCRATES: So it is true that truth only emerges from the process?
MARX: Yes.
SOCRATES: And are we in the process now, or are we outside it and at
its end?
MARX: We are in process.
SOCRATES: And truth is not before this process, or outsideit, but only
emerges from it?
MARX: That is what I said. You have a very short memory.
SOCRATES: Then, since we are only in the process and not outside it,
how can we know what is outside the process?
MARX: We can't.
SOCRATES: We are like fish, then, in the sea, who cannot fly above the
sea like birds.
MARX: Right.
SOCRATES: So we cannot know what is or is not outside the process,
just as a fish cannot know what is or is not outside the sea?
MARX: Right again. You are beginning to understand my point, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Then how can you know that there is no truth outside the
process?
MARX: What? What's that you say?
SOCRATES: If fish cannot know what is outside the sea, they cannot
know what is notoutside the sea, either. So if we cannot know any
truth outside time, we cannot know that there is no such thing as
truth outside time, either. But you said you did know precisely that:
that there is no truth outside time.
MARX: I will not let myself be tricked by some philosopher's abstract
logical argument and diverted from the real into the ideal. All your
own ideas, Socrates, including that static logic of yours, too, are
nothing but the product of your pre-industrial peasant-aristocrat-
conservative social order.
SOCRATES: And yours?
MARX: All ideas are the products of social conditions.
SOCRATES: But your social conditions, including your education, were
thoroughly bourgeois. If ideas are nothing but products of their
social order, your Communism must be a thoroughly bourgeois idea.
MARX: I need not answer your pitiful logic, Socrates. It is impotent.
You seek in vain to slay the juggernaut of history's dialectic with
the weapons of words. 'Words are mere shadows, spectres, ghosts.
SOCRATES: Including your words, Karl? Are they also spectres?
MARX: You keep doing that, Socrates! It is a most annoying habit.
SOCRATES: Isn't that image--that of a spectre--exactly the one you
used for your own words, or your own ideas, namely, Communism, in the
very first line of your book? Here it is: "A spectre is haunting
Europe-the spectre of Communism."
MARX: I must warn you, Socrates, that your habit of throwing other
people's words back at them will not win you many friends. It will
only win arguments.
SOCRATES: My purpose here is not to win friends, or to win arguments,
either, but to be your helper, if not your friend, by being a mirror
held up to your mind so that you may know yourself.
MARX: Are you so naive as to expect me to believe you are my helper
when you subject me to such torture? And to expect me to accept it as
in my own best interests?
SOCRATES: Yes, indeed. Unless you want to be a comic figure instead of
a serious one. For I can think of nothing more comic than a philosophy
that does not account for its own creator. A philosophy without a
philosopher--now that's a paradox.
MARX: Is your task here to dissect me or my book?
SOCRATES: Only your book, for now. But that task is a means to the
higher end of knowing yourself. Are you ready to begin?
MARX: Go ahead, do your worst, Socrates!
SOCRATES: No, Karl, I will obey my mother instead of you: she always
told me to do my best.
Mike Schilling
M: There's nothing like Life, except Liberty and the Saturday Evening
Post.
raven1
<soundof...@dcemail.com> wrote:
>The Comprehensive Claim of Marxism | Peter Kreeft | From Socrates
>Meets Marx: The Father of Philosophy Cross-Examines the Founder of
>Communism
Wow, we get two Strawmen for the price of one! Well done.
Zerkon
> MARX: Why?
>
> SOCRATES: Because you are an egotist. And also because you have no
> choice: there is nothing else to do here.
MARX: A what?!?
SOCRATES: Egoist? uhhh..
MARX: Are you drunk? What is a Egoist?!? Sounds like lazy lingosim.
SOCRATES: I don't know. It just came to me as a horrible dream... but
going back to something you said.. what exactly is a 'factory'?
MARX: A bunch of workers
SOCRATES: Slaves?
MARX: Exactly.
SOCRATES:.... and..so.. what's the problem?
*Anarcissie*
You beat me to it, and in better form.
Michael Grosberg
wrote:
> http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2007/pkreeft_socrmarx_may07.asp
>
> The Comprehensive Claim of Marxism | Peter Kreeft | From Socrates
> Meets Marx: The Father of Philosophy Cross-Examines the Founder of
> Communism
disappointed. I was hoping Socrates would meet Groucho. Carl is my
least favorite of the brothers.
I'm certainly looking for the next installment in which Socrates meets
Dracula.
Michael Grosberg
wrote:
Also, it appears Peter Kreeft is a fan of Paarfi's writing style.
bigfl...@gmail.com
wrote:
I LOVE this. It is a wonderful journey into the world of deja-vu. A
perfect example of a dialouge beteween master and acolyte.
It is always the acolytes who get the 'following', validating their
theories. Believers seek and need strength in numbers.The TRUTH is,
the world of belief has to be resolved BEFOR truths can be
realized.Beliefs are for groups, knowing is individualistic.
Want to argue about this? Go ahead, there are plenty here who will
accomodate you
The only book I ever read that I connected with, was 'Socrates Last
Days by Plato', where I saw Plato in a very similar mind set as Marx.
I also formed the view bck then, that Socrates was NOT a philosopher.
If anything he was the philosophers stone.
There are a few Jesus-ites here no doubt. How many of you believe he
would associate himself with more the 5% of Christian attitude?
Same situation with most movements. Invariably the 'master' wrote
little if any, but it was the followers who 'interpreted' the timeless
words to suit the consciousness of the times, which is why such
movements evolve and diversify.
This is how all education takes place.
BOfL
bigfl...@gmail.com
> On Sun, 3 Jan 2010 09:45:28 -0800 (PST), Sound of Trumpet
>
> >The Comprehensive Claim of Marxism | Peter Kreeft | From Socrates
> >Meets Marx: The Father of Philosophy Cross-Examines the Founder of
> >Communism
>
> Wow, we get two Strawmen for the price of one! Well done.
Ravens make their nests out of straw.
BOfL
bigfl...@gmail.com
>
> - Show quoted text -
No wonder Soc was happy to leave.
BOfL
bigfl...@gmail.com
wrote:
Why dont 'you' write it? Could be a great exercise...or would that be
like trying to suck blood out of Mick Jagger (a Rolling Stone!).
BOfL
Father Haskell
wrote:
How about Socrates Conquers the Martians?
*Anarcissie*
wrote:
No, slavery had centuries yet to run.
bigfl...@gmail.com
>
Perhaps he came back as Lincoln.
BOfL
Lawrence Watt-Evans
<father...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>How about Socrates Conquers the Martians?
Don't tempt me.
--
My webpage is at http://www.watt-evans.com
I'm selling my comic collection -- see http://www.watt-evans.com/comics.html
I'm serializing a novel at http://www.watt-evans.com/realmsoflight0.html
Father Haskell
> On Mon, 4 Jan 2010 18:54:27 -0800 (PST), Father Haskell
>
You can write something even more awful than that old
movie? I bow before you.
*Anarcissie*
wrote:
> On Jan 5, 11:37 am, "*Anarcissie*" <anarcis...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Jan 4, 9:35 pm, "bigflet...@gmail.com" <bigflet...@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
>
> > > On Jan 4, 9:22 pm, "*Anarcissie*" <anarcis...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > > On Jan 4, 8:11 am, Zerkon <Z...@erkonx.net> wrote:
>
> > > > > On Sun, 03 Jan 2010 09:45:28 -0800, Sound of Trumpet wrote:
> > > > > > MARX: Why?
>
> > > > > > SOCRATES: Because you are an egotist. And also because you have no
> > > > > > choice: there is nothing else to do here.
>
> > > > > MARX: A what?!?
>
> > > > > SOCRATES: Egoist? uhhh..
>
> > > > > MARX: Are you drunk? What is a Egoist?!? Sounds like lazy lingosim.
>
> > > > > SOCRATES: I don't know. It just came to me as a horrible dream... but
> > > > > going back to something you said.. what exactly is a 'factory'?
>
> > > > > MARX: A bunch of workers
>
> > > > > SOCRATES: Slaves?
>
> > > > > MARX: Exactly.
>
> > > > > SOCRATES:.... and..so.. what's the problem?
>
> > > > You beat me to it, and in better form.- Hide quoted text -
>
> > > > - Show quoted text -
>
> > > No wonder Soc was happy to leave.
>
> > No, slavery had centuries yet to run.
>
> Perhaps he came back as Lincoln.
Socrates lived off slavery, so I don't know that
he would have wanted to do away with it. He
would have had to get a job. So maybe he came
back as John C. Calhoun instead. One of the
arguments of the Old South was taken from
Socrates's disciple Aristotle, who wrote,
"But is there any one thus intended by nature to be a slave,
and for whom such a condition is expedient and right, or
rather is not all slavery a violation of nature?
There is no difficulty in answering this question, on grounds
both of reason and of fact. For that some should rule and
others be ruled is a thing not only necessary, but expedient;
from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for
subjection, others for rule."
-- _Politics_, I.5
Franco
>
> - Show quoted text -
I seem to recall learning Socrates was a shoemaker, but according to
Wikipedia the tradition is that he was a stonemason.
bigfl...@gmail.com
>
> - Show quoted text -
As I mentioned earlier, Socrates was the master, his studnts were
equivalent to the priestcraft.
Did such statement 'create' slavery?
Do you but cheap third world goods, priced on the equivalent of 'slave
labour' costs 'because' of Socrates, or did he just see 'what is
what'?
BOfL
bigfl...@gmail.com
>
> - Show quoted text -
Perhaps he took his lessons from the behive.
BOfL
*Anarcissie*
We know that he hung out in the town square
chewing the fat with others of his kind, not making
shoes or banging on stones. However, I have read
that Socrates may have been supported by rich
guys, so that would make his exploitation of
slavery indirect. To his eternal honor, officers of
the Thirty summoned him to the police station
and warned him to shut up, so he must have been
pretty well known, implying that he worked hard
at his fat-chewing if not at making shoes.
hypa...@comcast.net
> > MARX: Why?
>
> > SOCRATES: Because you are an egotist. And also because you have no
> > choice: there is nothing else to do here.
>
> MARX: A what?!?
>
> SOCRATES: Egoist? uhhh..
>
> me as a member.
>
> SOCRATES: I don't know. It just came to me as a horrible dream... but
> going back to something you said.. what exactly is a 'factory'?
>
> How it got there, I'll never know.
>
> SOCRATES: Slaves?
>
> MARX: I wouldn't hire anyone who would work for me.
>
> SOCRATES:.... and..so.. what's the problem?
>
hypa...@comcast.net
wrote:
How about Socrates Meets Billy the Kid?
hypa...@comcast.net
>
> >How about Socrates Conquers the Martians?
What about Socrates meets the face on the barroom floor?
>
> Don't tempt me.
>
> --
> My webpage is athttp://www.watt-evans.com
> I'm selling my comic collection -- seehttp://www.watt-evans.com/comics.html
David Johnston
>SOCRATES: But your social conditions, including your education, were
>thoroughly bourgeois. If ideas are nothing but products of their
>social order, your Communism must be a thoroughly bourgeois idea.
The real Marx would have agreed that Communism was an outgrowth of
bourgeois society just as bourgeois society was an outgrowth of
previous stages of social evolution.
*Anarcissie*
> On Sun, 3 Jan 2010 09:45:28 -0800 (PST), Sound of Trumpet
>
> >SOCRATES: But your social conditions, including your education, were
> >thoroughly bourgeois. If ideas are nothing but products of their
> >social order, your Communism must be a thoroughly bourgeois idea.
>
> The real Marx would have agreed that Communism was an outgrowth of
> bourgeois society just as bourgeois society was an outgrowth of
> previous stages of social evolution.
Obvioiusly. The person or people who post these things
are not too sharp.
Chazwin
He was a soldier citizen of the "starship trooper" model.
A property owner, bourgeois.
Chazwin
wrote:
> http://www.ignatiusinsight.com/features2007/pkreeft_socrmarx_may07.asp
>
> The Comprehensive Claim of Marxism | Peter Kreeft | From Socrates
> Meets Marx: The Father of Philosophy Cross-Examines the Founder of
> Communism
What a shame the author of this dreadful fantasy knew nothing about
Marx or Socrates