Karl Marx and the Divination of a Progressive Right
In an article published on March 19th 2024, Why the Left Should Reject Heidegger’s Thought, Part One: The Question of Being, Colin Bodayle argues that Martin Heidegger’s concern over the ontological difference leads to idealist descriptions which are inconsistent with the materialist metaphysics of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Implicit to this argument is that the left must reject Heidegger’s idealism if it continues to ground its activism on the materialism of Marx/Engels.
Undoubtedly, there is value in a contemporary comparison between the philosophy of Marx/Engels and Heidegger. The concretion of the activist left and its progressivism has caused a pronounced break from liberal philosophy and the policies which are grounded upon it. Because liberalism has stood as the principal political philosophy of the United States since the country’s inception, this break is dramatic. On the national level, this break is likely most pronounced in the progressives’ antiracism, which often manifests as a renunciation of Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream of a colorblind United States. However, in local canvases, progressivism not only manifests through DEI’s antiracism policy. In the city of Chicago, for example, the real material construction of the city is being challenged through proposals for municipally-owned business ventures (also known as state capitalism), including grocery stores in economically underinvested neighborhoods. Next, the progressive ideal of equitable transportation has led to proposals for ruining portions of Lake Shore Drive (a major traffic artery), and activists are calling for the construction of light rail instead. These proposals are championed in the social sector as well as in Chicago City Council through the progressive caucus.
One of the intellectual traditions from which the progressives draw their inspiration has been historically critical towards liberalism: it is known as socialism. While progressivism may remain a movement outside party politics, there is alignment between the progressives, the Democrats, and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). What is important to our consideration of Bodayle’s argument is that Heidegger’s anthropological thinking places him within the intellectual tradition of the socialists together with Marx and Engels. As an example, we might consider Judith Butler’s performativity, which can be read as a perverted reading of Heidegger’s philosophy of being. This perversion results when interpreting being as performing. In Butler’s metaphysics of performing, we would say that a certain configuration of wood and metal performs as a table, and that the male sex of the human species performs as a man. This change in description, from objective being to subjective performing, animates John Locke’s individual and its social and legal rights. In Butler’s philosophy of performing, the individual is freed from its social conditioning and is invested with the power to choose its being (something which non-human beings, such as tables or non-human animals, do not have the liberty to do). Butler’s is an anthropocentric and liberal reading of Heidegger’s philosophy of being. At the same time, the classical liberal is quick to appeal to physics and shame the left for its “social constructivism”, meaning that the being of the world is grounded in human being and the social commerce of human animals. The classical liberal would no doubt include Heidegger together with Butler.
Also worthy of note is Heidegger’s cultural criticism which is both related and relevant to socialist thinking. We can remember that Heidegger rejects the commodification of beings, known in Heideggerian scholarship as Gestell (“enframing”), which refers to the rendering of the world into a stockpile of raw materials at the disposal of human being. It appears that Heidegger would not only be useful within anti-liberal propaganda, but also anti-capitalist as well. This is true even if Heidegger also had the advantage of worrying about the Soviet machinization of economy, while Marx and Engels did not. For us living today, we have the greatest view of history, having witnessed the atrocities of World War I and II, the fall of the Soviets, and the subsequent exportation of liberalism on a global scale.
Because of the split in contemporary United States politics, and what appears to be the crystallization of a returning ideological dichotomy, I am genuinely eager to read Bodayle’s argument as it develops and he defines the proper intellectual tradition of the left — but I am particularly interested because I find Bodayle’s arguments currently unsatisfactory.
As it stands at the time of this reflection, Bodayle’s characterization of Heidegger as an idealist is incomplete. We can remember that Heidegger abandons idealism when he abandons Sein und Zeit (“Being and Time”). Furthermore, Bodayle’s consideration of Marx/Engels’ materialism is metaphysically uncritical. Therefore, to say that Marx/Engels’ materialism and Heidegger’s idealism are incompatible requires more thought than has been given yet. In addition to these metaphysical concerns, Bodayle’s argument appears ignorant of the common sociological characteristics running through the philosophies of Marx/Engels and Heidegger. We can remember that Marx/Engles, as well as Heidegger, follow G.W.F. Hegel who first showed us how to think of subjectivity in terms of the “everyone”. Because of this, we should expect the sociological flavor of Heidegger’s philosophy could lead to policies favored by socialists on the left. While this may appear striking to a self-identified leftist, you might consider Aleksandr Dugin (the Russian political strategist, nationalist, and Heideggerian philosopher) who supports the Black Lives Matter movement as a way to reach the supposed African da sein.
By publishing this reflection, I hope to crystallize terminology for use in both public and intellectual discussions and perhaps for continuing my dialogue with Colin himself. In this reflection, I will not argue against Bodayle by suggesting that Heidegger should be included within the intellectual tradition of the left. But I will propose that the philosophies of Marx/Engels and Heidegger belong together in a discussion on political theory. When joining these thinkers together as socialists opposed to liberalism, we find a novel space from which activism can be drawn — activism which might be juxtaposed against the progressive left with names such as the progressive right, the socialist right, or the meta-right.
Preparation for the comparison between Marx/Engels and Heidegger: identifying our discipline
First, we must admit the differences between Marx/Engels and Heidegger. While each is philosophizing, the subject of their investigation is not the same. For Marx/Engels, the subject matter of their political theory is the economic class. However, the subiectum (the ground for the being of the world) is history. This subject is inherited from G.W.F. Hegel’s Phänomenologie des Geistes (“The Phenomenology of Spirit”). Furthermore, for Marx and Engels, this subject is known empirically; history is also real history.
The subject matter of Heidegger’s Being and Time is likewise derived from Hegel. However, we must note that Heidegger takes over Hegel’s phenomenological method, while Marx and Engels do not. Phenomenology leads Heidegger to ontology, a science which is noticeably untouched in Marx/Engels’ “empiricism”. This is important. Hegel’s phenomenology encourages an encounter with the subiectum which Heidegger later investigates in Being and Time — namely, da sein (“being there”). We can remember that in the Phenomenology, Hegel establishes distinctions between the “I”, the “other”, and the one who is making the investigation — the “we”. Early in Hegel’s dialectic, a moment of consciousness arises in which it understands the totality of sense-certainty for the “I”. Yet, that “I” does not make a distinction from you. The “I” is as much me as it is you. In this moment of the dialectic, “I” is everyone. The phrase “I see this” simply means “this can be seen”. I am aware of something like consciousness, for which the totality of sense-certainty is an object. Remembering A.V. Miller’s translation of the Phenomenology, we can recall that,
“When I say ‘I’, this singular ‘I’, I say in general all ‘Is’; everyone is what I say, everyone is ‘I’, this singular ‘I’.”
In the history of Western thinking, it was Hegel who first showed us how to think about subjectivity in terms of “everyone”. Of course, Hegel does affirm Immanuel Kant’s understanding of the “I” as a subject possessed with Reason. Yet, rather than as an isolated individual (constituted by a mind or consciousness), the braiding of the “I”, the “other”, and the “we” in the Phenomenology challenges us to see knowledge, truth, and beauty as something common and shared — something “objective”. Because of this, it should be unsurprising how Hegel’s philosophy directs subsequent intellectual thoughts toward a sociological or anthropological form of investigation; these include the works of both Marx/Engels and early Heidegger. In Being and Time, Heidegger interpreted Hegel’s “everyone” as “anyone” (da sein), which refers to the conditions by which the possible “pass through” and become actual.
Because of the differences in both the method and the science of Marx/Engels and Heidegger, what is firstly required in order to compare the writings of these thinkers is to bring each into the discipline of the other. The strategy I will pursue has already been suggested here: I will make a metaphysically critical reading of Marx/Engels. However, this will also be followed by a political reading of Heidegger.
Marx/Engels’ practical materialism, the objectivity of objects, and the material dialectic
From where can we start an interpretation of Marx/Engels’ writing through the lens of rigorous metaphysics? Marx/Engels’ reflections on and their critique of materialism and idealism can suffice. I turn towards Die deutsche Ideologie (“The German Ideology”). Within the various compositions contained in this publication, Marx/Engels make arguments for “practical materialism”. What is the meaning of this phrase? Non-metaphysicians may be quick to associate materialism with physics — namely, the material with the physical. In physics, the real can be described as material or as energy, or in some other physical form. But whatever is called physical has priority to the human animal. What is physical is also called natural; nature is that which is prior to the human animal and is what is discovered through this animal’s environment and its commerce within it. When subjecting the physicalist’s understanding to rigor, we find the reason for this priority is purely taxonomical; the human animal is merely one type of physical form within the physical world. Supplanting this reasoning with evolutionary theory, we would say that animal bodies first evolved from nature, and only later did some of those bodies possess a consciousness and the unique being of “man”. This description may be practically sound — and that depends on the practice which one finds themselves in. When pursuing metaphysically, anyone must admit that such a physicalist description has limitations. The limitation which we should find important regards the scope of realist description. Realism cannot approach the foundation of its own questioning into nature; it does not ask into the possibility of questioning outright. Questioning sets the scope of what is described and therefore sets limitations to natural description. This is where objectivism goes further than realism. We can say that objectivism supplants realist description.
In Kantian terms, we would say that objectivism describes the objectivity of objects. Metaphysics is the discipline concerned with such a description. Metaphysicians have most recently described the objectivity of objects by grounding them in human being. Subjectivity supplies the answers which realism cannot approach — the possibility of questioning outright, including the scope of what can be known, discovered, or (according to ontology) what simply is. Therefore, when layering realism at the top of a hierarchy, followed by objectivity, and then subjectivity as the foundation, we can see that every appeal to realism and objectivism remains subjectivism. Bodayle refers to subjectivity as “subjective idealism”. In this case, the word idealism denotes a dependence on human being. This implies that whatever is real and objective is subordinated to human being. Likely for Bodayle, as for Marx/Engels too, idealism is meant to refer to the Kantian subject — the individual human animal as subiectum and that animal’s mind or consciousness. Importantly, we must note that in the case of Marx/Engels’ critique of idealism (as it is found in The German Ideology), idealism does not refer to subjectivity as Heidegger presented it, which refers to the social limiting conditions which the possible “pass through” to become actual. We can be sure of this. The social description of subjectivity did not exist in Marx/Engels’ time, except as anticipated by Hegel and his sense-certain “everyone”. Therefore, saying that Heidegger’s “subjective idealism” contrasts with Marx/Engels’ materialism is something that requires further consideration. Perhaps a rigorous interpretation of Marx and Engels’ metaphysics will reveal their material to be tantamount to what is called the “equipmental totality” in Heideggerian scholarship.
Now, we might be quick to retort that Marx and Engels were not interested in the nuanced metaphysical rigor which has just been presented — and, furthermore, that such an investigation ruins the essence of their critiques of materialism and idealism. After all, these thinkers are interested in what is practical. Remember that we are in the midst of understanding the meaning of Marx/Engels’ practical materialism. Yet, even when concerned with the practical, we notice that the conflictual dichotomy of idealism and materialism still arises in Marx/Engels. Let us consider their Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy. Here we read that, “A railroad on which no one rides, which is consequently not used up, not consumed, is but a potential railroad, and not a real one”. That this conflict arises for Marx/Engels at all allows us to continue a description of their metaphysics. When we follow this lead, we understand that not only the meaning of material becomes interesting, but also potential and real. Deeper into The German Ideology, we read reflections on human being (“man”), its subsistence, its production, and its material. These reflections will help us produce a description of Marx/Engels’ metaphysics,
“By producing their means of subsistence, men are indirectly producing their material life. The way in which men produce their means of subsistence depends first of all on the nature of the means of substance they actually find in existence and have to reproduce. As individuals express their life, so they are. What they are therefore coincides with their production. Hence, what individuals are depends on the material conditions of their production.”
Human animals produce their material life, and what individuals are is material conditioned by what is naturally given. Material is the name for the condition and the natural state from which material is inherited and subsequently produced — this process (where what is the condition is produced, and what is produced later becomes the condition) is what we call the material dialectic. As the condition, the material dialectic describes the ground for Marx/Engels’ real history which, as real, is independent of human being and their will,
“The social structures and the state are continually evolving out of the life-process of definite individuals, however, of those individuals, not as they may appear in their own or other people’s imagination, but as they actually are, i.e., as they act, produce materially, and hence as they work under definite material limits, presuppositions and conditions independent of their will.”
When thinking on the material dialectic as a condition, we must keep in mind the thought of Marx/Engels: the material dialectic itself is not composed of wood or timber — neither feminism nor liberty either — not any one of these material or ideal descriptions which merely “appear in people’s imaginations”. Rather, as a condition, the material dialectic describes the limiting conditions for the being of the world: “The way in which men produce their means of subsistence depends first of all on the nature of the means of substance they actually find in existence and have to reproduce”. At the same time, material is that which is produced through this commerce. Material is real. For Marx/Engels, being real means that which can be empirically proven. Much like Hegel before them, the proof is history. What is historically real is what is actual. To be sure of this reading, we can remind ourselves of Marx/Engels’ remarks in The German Ideology on communism,
“Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality will have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the now existing premise.”
Until communism is the historical movement of human animals, it is a mere premise, and not real history. In conclusion, we can say that the metaphysics of Marx and Engels’ practical materialism states how history is both real and a condition of human being. In Kantian terms, we would say that human being produces its (empirically ideal) material, which has practical effects, and then becomes the material (transcendentally real) condition of human being. We can confirm that for Marx and Engels, history is not idealistic since human being is subjected to this power, which is greater than its own.
What remains for us here is to compare this metaphysics to the “subjective idealism” of Heidegger, both in Being and Time and following its abandonment.
Heidegger’s abandonment of subjectivity
What must first be noted is that Heidegger appears to have had a more robust understanding of metaphysics than Marx/Engels. Coming later than both Locke and Marx/Engels in the history of ideas, Heidegger presents us with a philosophy which brings together the individual of liberalism and the πραξις (praxis) of communism. Of course, Heidegger is a controversial philosopher for some, and likely for those identifying as left. After all, he did have great hopes for the future of national socialism in Germany, which today can equally be understood as a political answer (and middle ground) between western liberalism and eastern socialism. Heidegger’s adoption of Hegel’s phenomenological method leads Heidegger to account for the being of the authentic Self, but only so from within its spatial condition and on the backdrop of the horizon of time and its historical circumstance (conditions which Heidegger develops as the existentiale of da sein). If you can accept this reading, then it becomes clear that Heidegger was not merely operating with the individual as a white paper, but neither was he operating solely with the concrete economic reality to which any one of us has been thrown, and to which we have been mechanically destined to overcome through, say, a proletariat revolution. A bit of posthumous psychoanalysis might tell us that Heidegger was seeking political answers to his specific political position in history through metaphysical description.
Now, what cannot be ignored is the fact that Heidegger eventually abandoned his project. Being and Time was left incomplete, the Third Division of Part One was never published, and Heidegger never delivered on his initial promises — namely, to answer “the meaning of being”. This event is relevant for understanding the incompleteness of Bodayle’s characterization of Heidegger as an idealist. In order to understand this incompleteness, we can turn towards fragments from Heidegger’s compositions following the publication of Being and Time — particularly fragments from his lecture material on Friedrich Nietzsche — which come down to us by way of David Farrell Krell and Frank Capuzzi’s English translations of material first presented in 1936 at the University of Freiburg. The passage is lengthy. However, repeating it in full will help us understand how Heidegger understood the failure of “subjective idealism”,
“In Being and Time, on the basis of the question of the truth of Being, no longer the question of the truth of entities, an attempt is made to determine the essence of man solely in terms of his relationship to Being. That essence was described in a firmly delineated sense as da sein. In spite of a simultaneous development of a more original conception of truth (since that was required by the matter at hand), the past thirteen years have not in the least succeeded in awakening even a preliminary understanding of the question that was posed [i.e., the question of the truth of beings]. On the one hand, the reason for such noncomprehension lies in our habituation, entrenched and ineradicable, to the modern mode of thought: man is thought as a subject, and all reflections on him are understood to be anthropology. On the other hand, however, the reason for such noncomprehension lies in the attempt itself, which perhaps because it really is something historically organic and not anything ‘contrived’, evolves from what has been heretofore; in struggling loose from it, it necessarily and continually refers back to the course of the past and even calls on it for assistance in the effort to say something entirely different.”
“Above all, however, the path taken terminates abruptly at a decisive point. The reason for the disruption is that the attempt and the path it chose confront the danger of unwillingly becoming merely another entrenchment of subjectivity; that the attempt itself hinders the decisive steps; that is, hinders an adequate exposition of them in their essential execution. Every appeal to “objectivism” and “realism” remains “subjectivism”: the question concerning being as such stands outside the subject-object relation.”
While this passage may be interpreted to suit the many different needs of scholars, it must be clear that Heidegger means to say that asking about the truth of being (Truth) requires turning away from investigations into “the essence of man” — that is, subjectivity. However, to replace subjectivism with questions into reality or objectivity will be just as unsatisfactory. We can remember that from a rigorous metaphysical investigation, all appeals to realism and objectivism remain subjectivist. We can also recall Heidegger’s concern over the political consequences of such realism, objectivism, and subjectivism (collectively, “metaphysics”) — namely, the advent of nihilism and the crystallization of the interpretation of all beings through the lens of Bestand (meaning, in Heidegger’s sense, “stock”, “holdings”, “assets”, or, the term Heidegger uses often, “standing reserve”). What is lost in this interpretation is human being itself, which in turn becomes oriented to the world through its relationship to the standing reserve. Like many of the revolutionaries of his time, for Heidegger too, this orientation towards beings is evident when looking at American philosophy especially. The United States and the pragmatic approach towards beings epitomizes Western nihilism. Charles Sanders Peirce seems to have given explicit form to what Heidegger worried over, including the subordination of the real and the objective to human being. Peirce’s expression comes down to us as the following pragmatic maxim,
“Consider the practical effects of the objects of your conception. Then, your conception of those effects is the whole of your conception of the object.”
For Peirce, whatever your conception of an object is, that conception must be its practical effects. However, what might be surprising to Bodayle is that according to this schematic, Heidegger would likely include Marx/Engels in the pragmatic project as well. We can remember that for Marx/Engels, human being produces its (empirically ideal) material, which has practical effects, and then becomes the condition for (transcendentally real) material. Yet, their practical materialism also suggests a prescription. The form which material has taken until now must be overcome. The overcoming of the subjection of human being to the material dialectic takes precedence. Marx/Engels divinate the end of this subjection and the advent of a freedom which they name communism. Communism names the modernist state of affairs in which human being has overcome the material dialectic. Communism is the fulfillment of a pragmatic state in which human being has domesticated nature, including itself, as a natural phenomenon.
Identifying the real political distinction between Marx/Engels and Heidegger. The sustaining premise of communism
In the first section of this article, I acknowledged the necessary distinctions between the metaphysics of Marx/Engels and Heidegger. I am now prepared to join them together in political activity. When pursuing this end, what I first noticed in Marx/Engels, as well as in Heidegger too, is a concern over the subjection of human being. For Marx/Engels, the subiectum is real history. Human being’s subjection to history is called the material dialectic. Communism is a state in which human being has overcome the dialectic. However, what we must take note of is that even in such overcoming, human being is not choosing its destiny. For Marx/Engels, that destiny is apparent given the existing premise of capitalism. Therefore, what we must conclude, then, is that human being is subjected to powers greater than its own within the material dialectic, in its own destiny, and even in its freedom.
Heidegger, on the other hand, is presented with the historical reality of Soviet Russia. He cannot divinate the real history of communism. Rather, he develops a speculative anthropological history in Being and Time. Following Being and Time, and the consummation and end of metaphysics, he is concerned with the advent of Western nihilism and the second commencement for philosophy which arose from it. In this second commencement, human being is open to post-metaphysical thinking. For Heidegger, the second commencement will not be characterized by a way of thinking in which beings (objects) are subjected to any contrived, human-informed criteria of success — such as we see with the scientific method’s hypothetical form of questioning. Rather, an alternative and primordial form of questioning will provide a horizontal clearing of “pure being” (Hegel). In this clearing, being may show itself of itself. Heidegger famously calls for Ereignis, the event of appropriation. He identifies this event with “the truth of being”. In his later compositions, including Das Ding (“The Thing”, 1950) and Bauen Wohnen Denken (“Building Dwelling Thinking”, 1951), Heidegger implements the language of a fourfold (earth, heaven, divinities, and mortals [things that are dying]) which is mediated by the location and presences being in negation and, by virtue of the mirroring of the fourfold, is joined and gathered by being itself. This showing of being by way of the event of the negation of being seems to be Heidegger’s best attempt at the truth of being (Truth) following Being and Time. Apparently, for Heidegger, in this clearing human being is positioned to receive nature’s quite bewildering answers — or at least, to receive answers which obscure attempts to capture and exploit it. Of course, we must admit that political activism does not appear to have the liberty to sit in such a non-exploitative position. If political activism must move beyond attempts to appropriate the natural condition, we would not know what that would look like. (Prefigurativism might be considered one attempt.) Because activism which rejects the appropriation of the natural condition is difficult for us to imagine, we find it difficult to follow Heidegger’s political prescriptions, except in that he has done one thing: he has not constrained our thinking to either materialism or idealism. In this liminal philosophical-political space, we are free to explore other forms of political activity. My claim is that only such a thinking space has the right to bear the name progressivism.
I can now clearly state the conclusion. In Marx/Engels, as well as in early and late Heidegger too, human being remains in a state of natural subjection. However, in this state, human being holds a privileged position. Whether that is following its fate in overcoming the dialectic or receiving the voice of being, human being manifests as political. This animates the only relevant distinction to be made between Marx/Engels and Heidegger. Marx/Engels were confident as to what has been delivered to “man”, while Heidegger is led into a liminal space. Whether one political space is more effective than the other will depend on the circumstances in which either are considered. It is now for us to consider the circumstances of our time, and which political space is called for today.
Reflection on the luxury dichotomy
Let me take a step back. Perhaps you are wondering why this reflection was necessary, and why I found it valuable to spend three days composing it. I have been born to a certain material luxury: I have never been presented with famine, untreatable diseases, or other life-threatening conditions. I suppose that this luxury is quite commonly widespread, despite the fact that hunger, homelessness, and diseases are real possibilities for certain people living today. I also suppose this luxury (as something now common and widespread) is relatively new in the real material history of human animals. However, I can also see that in this luxury, people have gravitated to one disposition or another.
The first disposition of luxury encourages confrontations with the historical or potential direness of the world. Growing up in the 1980s, I was subjected to TV commercials featuring starving children in Africa, and asking for my donation by appealing to my compassion. Today, I am asked to have sympathy for historically underserved communities within the United States; redlining is brought to my attention as something still present. I also recall the narrative of Al Gore’s The Inconvenient Truth or other environmental doom and guilt narratives such as that of Greta Thunberg. Precautions against the spread of Covid-19 also animated the potentially dire. Yet, these grim historical narratives remain unconvincing. Not because I doubt their truthfulness, but because they seek to evoke feelings of dread and guilt within me, something which is normally out of my character and insignificant to whatever is objectively already authentically present and future.
Heidegger’s Being and Time describes the ground for the being of the world in the authentic future. The authentic future is grounded in the essence of human being as projection. Projection implies value creation — whether that value is agricultural, medicinal, spiritual (as in the case of religion and arts/entertainment), or otherwise. Value creation is the subject matter of economics. Marx/Engels, as well as Heidegger, are economic philosophers and each are futurally oriented. Of course, in the United States, economic development is often considered a concern of the political right. Furthermore, the right’s economic maximization is contrasted to the left’s social and environmental justice. However, I urge anyone to forgo this twofold characterization. Remember that an economic or value-creation orientation requires systematic thinking. Therefore, it is holistic. Holistically, an economic orientation also has the capacity for maximizing inclusivity. The advantage of systematic, holistic, and inclusive value-creation analysis over social and environmental justice is that it offers relief from stories of victimhood and retribution. Taking up an economic orientation can move progressivism’s quest for social reform away from the various justice movements and towards the right-leaning value of economic maximization. Of course, in such a right-leaning and progressive thinking space, we must surely ask the question of who is the beneficiary of the value to be created? Yet, before we can even venture into that question, we must ensure that our social reform project is a joint venture between all proximal stakeholders. Because I move in this liminal philosophical-political space exploring its territory, I also admit that I situate in the second disposition within the luxury dichotomy: I am motivated by the political effectivity of dwelling in the liminal. Undoubtedly, this disposition towards liminal dwelling places me in the tradition of the right. However, anyone must notice that I am not interested in the conservation of my luxury at the expense of others who do not share it. Rather, what I see as the task for those of us dwelling in this space is the development of a strategy for progressively funding a civil infrastructure which invites participation. I have recently called for platform proposals to be championed within the Democratic Party which could be distinguished from the liberal and progressive agendas by the name national democracy. An investment into the United States’ civil infrastructure is something which has been neglected in the neoliberal economic period. However, what is apparent for me, following the exportation of liberalism and its market-driven economy on a global scale, is that the market cannot save us. Generation X’s technological industries have delivered us to more dissension and division, not less.
Aristotle, Marx/Engels, and first economics philosophy
Finally, I would like to say that rather than reject Heidegger in order to stand on the left with Bodayle, I choose to appropriate Marx/Engels and stand on the side of a working-class right. We can remember that each of these German thinkers were wrestling within the social conditions which caused them to address their feelings of the everyman’s alienation, rootlessness, and estrangement in the peoples of their times. To do so, all three of these figures followed the sociological movement in thought appearing in German firstly in the figures of Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Hegel — both of whom were reacting to emperor Napoleon. It would not be a mistake to trace a history of Western socialist thinking back to the ethnic or national struggle that occurred in reaction to the conquest of French liberals. It can be said that German nationalism is the foundation for later minority struggles in the United States.
In thinking of the name for the discipline which treats of the material dialectic as the subject of a rigorous metaphysical investigation, we can turn towards Aristotle’s metaphysics, τα περι της πρωτης φιλοσοφιας (that is, “the [writings] concerning first philosophy”). Of course, René Descartes offers a more English-friendly term for this realm of thought: prima philosophia. And so, following the Latinized expression, we might say that we are here doing prima economics — prime economics. However, for ease of translation into English, let us simply name the thinking space of the material dialectic first economics philosophy. Following in the tradition of Marx/Engels, first economics is “in direct contrast to German [idealist] philosophy, which descends from heaven to earth; here it is a matter of ascending from earth to heaven”. First economics describes material as both transcendentally real and as empirically ideal. However, first economics is not only metaphysics. Practitioners of first economics philosophy must be principally motivated by value creation. Metaphysical description is only valuable insofar as it belongs to projects seeking to affect local canvases. In my own case, this is currently Chicago, where this reflection has been composed. Here, I have urged both liberals and progressives to champion the development of our civic infrastructure as an end in itself.
I first introduced the thinking space of first economics in How to Nurture Truth and Authenticity, available through amazon.com.
