The spiritual flavour of modernist Marx

Avijit Pathak
Professor of sociology, JNU, New Delhi

The post-Enlightenment evolution of European modernity aroused the imagination of great sociologists like Max Weber and Karl Marx. True, they were the children of modernity-its promise of scientific reasoning, industrial progress and growing rationalisation of human life. Yet, their engagement with modernity was rather subtle and complex. While Weber saw the 'spirit' of capitalism in Protestantism and found the growing rationalisation of the world as an inevitable consequence of modernity, there was also a sense of discomfort with it, particularly, the trap of the 'iron cage of bureaucracy' and increasing 'disenchantment' because of the disappearance of magic, wonder and religiosity from life. Unlike Weber, Marx was more positive about the possibility in modernity. Possibly, he loved the science of Newton and Darwin; he loved its explanatory principles, its causality, its ability to determine and predict. Well, with his 'conflict theory' he could see more sharply than any of his contemporaries the cleavages within capitalism, the 'dialectical' interplay of the antagonistic classes, and above all, the agony of being 'alienated'-the way industrial workers lose control over what they produce and how they produce, and eventually the way they remain fragmented, crippled and spiritually impoverished. But then, Marx saw the remedy not in any 'non-modern ' past; he dreamed of a higher form of modernity-collective ownership of social wealth, and more meaningful use of techno-scientific progress that nurtures all the faculties of the 'whole man'.  

Today, the debate on modernity reveals diverse trends within Marxism. For instance, the likes of Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse were not altogether indifferent to Weberian pessimism regarding the fate of modernity; despite their affinity with 'Hegelian/humanistic' Marx, they critiqued modernity-the 'dialectic of Enlightenment', the violence implicit in 'instrumental rationality', and the emergent 'one dimensional man' seduced by 'culture industry'. But then, Jurgen Habermas, perhaps, was more in tune with the optimism of Marx regarding modernity. The Enlightenment project, he felt, has not yet exhausted its possibilities; he could see its ability to evolve a dialogic/communicative 'public sphere' capable of resisting the 'colonization of lifeworld'. In way, he did try to resist the recent postmodern/post-structuralist critique of the Marxian 'grand narrative' of unilinear historical progress. 

Marx and the historicity of Indian society 

In the context of the trajectory of the modern Indian society, to begin with, unlike the proponents of 'dialectical/historical materialism', Mahatma Gandhi was more in tune with the spirit of the ancient civilisation. He could tap the potential power of emancipation in spirituality, negotiate with the cultural symbols of the rural peasantry, and sustain a largely liberatarian struggle for 'swaraj'. Furthermore, the Gandhian experiment with 'satyagraha' and 'ahimsa', despite its occasional failures, posed a challenge to the doctrine of the 'inevitability' of violence in a 'class struggle'. Further, the likes of BR Ambedkar brought another dimension for understanding the hierarchical social division unique to Indian society-caste with its ascriptive status, exclusionary principles and graded inequality. The dynamics of caste conflict, as the Ambedkarites would argue, cannot be understood adequately through the Marxian paradigm of 'class conflict'. Again, unlike the utopia of the highly secularised communism that Marx strove for, Ambedkar saw immense possibilities in the egalitarianism of the Buddha's dhamma. 

Spiritual Marx  

Marx was no god; and there are obvious limits to Marxian determinism: a doctrine that seeks to reduce everything: be it culture, aesthetics or religion, into a mere epiphenomenon to be explained by the 'mode of production'. Yet, despite his scientism, there was a profound ethical/spiritual element in Marx — particularly, the way he wanted us to be free from the maya of 'commodity fetishism', its objectification and reduction of human souls into mere 'exchange values'. No wonder, in his sensitive book Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx felt the pain of 'alienated' human existence in a market-driven/profit-oriented/ exploitative society; almost like a meditative yogi. He pleaded for a society that values love and the ecstasy of human relationships. In today's onslaught of neo-liberal global capitalism all over the world, Marx would continue to emerge as the lost conscience of human civilisation. There's a need to learn to walk with all of them: Marx and Gandhi, Buddha and Ambedkar.