SHAPE Journal

ABSTRACT:

In any causal account of Reality, the simplest possible view sees the World as a monolithic entity, defined, and then developed, from the bottom up. Such a view is termed Determinism, and when it was first suggested, was a step up from the original religious view, which explained the integrity of the World as due to its design by an all-powerful God. But, the deterministic assumption was, and still is, full of contradictions.

To explain absolutely everything in terms of a single, continuous, all-embracing and hierarchical system of causal developments does not gel with the very many conflicting “drives” evident on all sides. To see everything emanating from some common-to-all base could never remove these contradictions, because what was clearly evident was a diverse and even conflicting Superstructure. How could this have been produced from a single common base? Our desire for coherent explanation was seemingly scuppered by that contradictory nature. It seemed to be in disputable that the “general superstructure” was, and still is, NOT uniform and entirely mutually conducive, and hence could surely not be generated by a single initial state.

Yet for the last few hundred years, Mankind has been building edifices, each of which seem to be based entirely on Determinism as the complete and adequate truth. Indeed, the modern World can only be seen as a product of such causal processes harnessed by Mankind to human needs and desires. Clearly, our assumptions must be profoundly flawed. The question is “How?”, and how do we get away with it in our bending of Reality to our wants?

Now, by the middle of the nineteenth century, thinkers such as Marx were attempting to unify all sciences and other areas of study, under a single philosophical system. It had to cope with the above described diversity and contention, yet sought a coherent explanation. He began the task of bringing together all strand of human understanding under the umbrella of a unifying philosophy – Dialectical Materialism – based originally upon the idealist philosophy of Hegel, but doing it by turning the basic standpoint to its diametric opposite – Materialism & Science; he was able to see the possibility of a comprehensive and coherent system.

What frightened most thinkers were that he included Politics within his system, and considered that the current system of Capitalism was over-ripe for its replacement by “the next stage” - Socialism.

This aspect alone made his defeat imperative, and the conservative forces ranged against his position very quickly tarred his project with the clearly “flawed” determinist brush. “Marxists cannot even explain their own existence!” was their main criticism. “If determinism is true, how can opponents of the determining system be produced by that system?” This was the crux of their position (much easier to argue over this than privilege and exploitation). This paper reveals just how totally inappropriate was their criticism, and explains how Marx attempted to address Reality without the mechanical determinism of most scientists.