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1022519
12/12/13
HONORS 394A
Essay 2 Question 2 [Marxism, Existentialism, Postmodernism]

One of prolific writer Jared Diamonds earliest works was a book titled The Third
Chimpanzee. In it, he explored how certain human behaviors sexual, linguistic, expansionist,
self-destructive make humans human. It was a catalytic publication, garnering Diamond the
audience which his literature enjoys today and generating three, more in-depth works including
the famous Guns, Germs, and Steel. The success of a book on human natures exemplifies our
species constant quest to define ourselves as thinking, conscious beings. While most early
philosophies relied on ethereal concepts like ideal forms, God, or rational thought as
elementary to the human condition, the Modernist movements successors Freudianism,
Marxism, Existentialism, and Postmodernism concerned themselves with an altogether
different axis: the material world (or lack thereof). By centering themselves on the material
experience of common people, these last three philosophies foretold the rising power of the
individual in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by promoting pragmatic self-
determination above lofty idealism.
Marxism embraced this ideology with a passion, focusing on economics as basis for
human nature. Economics differentiates humans from other animals by their ability to
produce their means of subsistence, and forms the basis, or substructure, for all other aspects
of human society, the superstructure (Kerbo 101). As time passed, mere subsistence agriculture
eventually led to the genesis of other forms of production: the creation of material possessions,
services, and more technology. The advent of surplus allowed those with more material goods
(and thus power) to begin to own the production of others. So it came to be that during the
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mid-eighteenth century, Marx and Engels were surrounded by the second-to-last stage of
economic development in the socialist framework: capitalism. In capitalism, the majority of
people dont own their own means of production; they work for someone else. By doing so,
they are alienated from their species being, as production is the essential human activity
(Bright lecture 11/12). Marx and Engels sought to push their world into the fifth and final stage,
in which the working proletariat would rise up and reclaim the means of production as their
own and the entire world would become communist. In their Communist Manifesto, Marx and
Engels sowed the seeds of discontent by lambasting the bourgeoisie establishment for their
continued subjugation of the lower classes, including women.
In this regard the Manifesto proposed reforms similar to Platos ideals of a community
of people without the nuclear family. The Marxists claimed that the family was the method by
which women were made slaves; they were treated as mere instruments of production by
the bourgeoisie male establishment and were prevented from possessing their own means of
production because of their separation from economics (Marx and Engels 35). In capitalism, the
Marxists saw that women and children were only valued for their ability to maximize the
private gain of the family, usually controlled by the father. By pushing for the dissolution of the
private sphere, the Marxists aimed to have the slaves of the family experience their own
uprising against the superstructure of patriarchy. Reasonably expecting a backlash against this
radical notion, they claimed the higher ground by arguing that the community of women was
natural: an essential human relation torn asunder during the early days of societal formation by
the simple fact that womens maternal function and inferior biological physicality made her
poorly matched versus men (Mitchell 24). It was only right for women to return to a modern
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derivative of the state of nature and reclaim their means of production. Marx and Engels
explicit concern for the treatment of women in society in their core literature marks their
movement as the first major, direct, pragmatic feminism by men, as opposed to the equality
only implied by Modernism or Jesus teachings.
While Marxism was notable for its proposed ideological alliance with the lower classes,
Postmodernism defined itself by what it was not: Modernism. Everything in Modernism
Postmodernism trampled into the dust. Modernists believed in a reality fixed and certain;
Postmodernists defined it as fallible perception. Modernists held reason as the essential human
faculty and science as an objective, reliable, and universal foundation for knowledge (Flax
624). Postmodernists brought them back to earth by claiming that the narratives of knowledge
were bound by the context of their wielder (Bright lecture 11/26). Like Marxism,
Postmodernism divorced itself from the existence of a higher truth. Instead, it urged skepticism
of anything that proposed a natural or higher truth. This skepticism would take the form of
deconstruction an uncompromising analytic method by which any arbitrary system, including
the patriarchy of western civilizations, could be torn apart, its contradictions and assumptions
revealed (Glossary 1). Adopting a postmodernist framework makes it easy to ideologically reject
social systems like the gender binary as a set of social codes instead of a universal truth.
However, this does make it difficult to effect social change: deconstructing a popularly held
system of identity for an oppressed group has the deleterious side effect of making unification
of said group more difficult, as the rallying cry of us versus them no longer carries the same,
definitive weight (Hooks 26). However, there is a way out of this conundrum: postmodernism
posits that although systems can be mentally deconstructed, if they are still held true by
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society, one will continue to be defined, at least in that context, by that arbitrary system.
Therefore, oppressed groups can continue to unify, not under the banner of those who are, by
definition, a particular identity, but as recipients of a prescribed definition.
It may seem ironic that a philosophical system would base itself off of the notion that
any system of principles should be treated with skepticism. However, Postmodernism avoided
self-contradiction by explicitly not holding anything as fundamental: it asked individuals to find
for themselves what their reality was made of. By grounding reality in the experience of its
perceiver, the Postmodernists allowed every person, not just philosophers, to question the
social context in which they existed, an ideological uprising which the Marxists would approve
of.
Existentialism takes Postmodernism to the extreme by rejecting reality entirely. Jean-
Paul Sartre, the father of Existentialism, criticized his peers for falsify*ing+ human existence by
pretending that it is solid and determinate (Macintyre 27). From this point of view, if human
existence is meaningless, then Existentialism pushes Postmodernism further by utterly rejecting
systems as falsifications (Macintyre 30). However, Sartre distinguishes himself from
Postmodernism by positing that human nature is only defined by an individuals actions; any
attempts to justify zher choices is an example of bad faith, or acting in the false belief that it
is not a choice (Hampshire 61). Contrary to the continued definition of an individual by the
systems in which zhe exists, Sartre concludes that ones choices alone define them. Though this
may seem empowering at first, it becomes less palatable when one considers that it essentially
engages in victim blaming, faulting the oppressed for operating within systems of oppression.
However, Sartres position is reconcilable. De Beauvoir attempts to apply Existentialism to the
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feminist movement by working within a group framework instead of a personal one. She urges
her peers to choose not to be women: woman, she says, is only a term that is applied to those
who perceive themselves as Other, and not Self (Bright lecture 11/21). In this way, the only way
for Existentialist movements to push for social change is if everyone rejects definition as a
whole; if people reject bad faith on an individual level, it maroons them in a sea of Other that
will continue to limit their choices. Critical mass is required to overthrow the existing hierarchy.
The Era of the Lay Philosopher
Today, philosophers have largely fallen out of the public sphere where they once held
sway. Seldom do dedicated philosophers so massively motivate political action the way Marx
and Engels did; rarer and rarer is it to find that students select a school based on the quality of
its philosophy department, if any. Instead, economics and law practice in place of ponderings
have inherited the mantle of distinction. What happened? By empowering and tasking the
proletariat those disenfranchised by the hierarchy of religion and the rational perfection of
Modernism with the control of their worlds (either real or perceived), the post-Modern
movements effectively democratized philosophy. They dethroned the philosopher king by
grounding reality not in an intangible Heaven or rational ideal whose pearly gates were guarded
by a privileged few, but in the sweat and blood of the meek.
The magnitude of this break from their forebears becomes movingly clear when you
equate this democratization to a willing abdication from the hallowed throne of philosophy.
Pre-post-Modern era, philosophies, whether intentionally or not, tended to favor those who
wielded them. Whereas Plato and Aristotle promoted arte that allowed the philosopher-kings
to keep their crowns, Marx and Engels made class revolt core to their manifesto, despite the
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distinct possibility that such revolution could land them in the dirt. Jesus taught that faith can
move mountains; Sartre considered faith a deception (Hampshire 29). While Descartes
proclaimed the unquestionable purity of the system of rational thought, the post-modernists
questioned the validity of any system, including their own. This does not mean, however, that
the post-Modern movements limited their own legitimacy. Rather, they are made all the more
compelling by their willingness to put their own thought processes on the line, like a general
who inspires zher soldiers by rushing into battle alongside them.
So where does this leave us, the beneficiaries of the post-Modern abdication? We live in
a time where we benefit from a preponderance of information, thanks to the Internet. We can
peruse the works of all the major Western schools of thought at once and engage in critical
discussion regardless of our background, thanks to social media. This unique perspective offers
an unprecedented opportunity for meta-analysis. Its to this end that I shape my own theory of
social change. It has the closest ties to Postmodernism in that systems are deconstructed and
questioned, but assigns temporary populist value to them in order to facilitate the eventual
transition from classification-conscious societies to those that operate on a spectrum.
To begin, we must establish a basic claim: language is the most basic label. Inherently,
language was invented as a way to classify and categorize things a labeling system mapping
concrete, and later abstract, representations to sounds and/or symbols. As language evolved,
the categories mutated to include more diversity in the things that words could describe. Heres
an example. Oftentimes, in the discussion of gender equality, the concept of gender pronouns
arises as a system of oppression of transgendered individuals. Critics propose a third pronoun
to account for those who do not feel represented by the pervasive he/she dualism. This
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replaces the binary with a (admittedly more inclusive) trinary. But what happens when this
system fails to serve the needs of another subset of the population? Further atomization of the
pronoun system would seem in order, and so the cycle continues. Theoretically, it is possible to
break down language to the point that each individual (the indivisible atom of the human race,
unless we consider mental disabilities that encompass multiple personalities) feels
includedbut I have a hard time believing that a language filled with addendums
(he/she/they/zhe/?) would survive long in the public sphere. It is not only pragmatic but
necessary to expect that some level of compromise be reached between personal preference
and language efficiency.
With this in mind, the way forward becomes clear. Though the ultimate goal is to
deconstruct value-laden systems in order to create a society in which all forms of individual can
be accepted as legitimate methods of self-definition, it is only possible to do so by balancing
said deconstruction with temporary labeling. Such labels make policy-making effective, as
public policies usually apply to large groups of people those with disabilities, for example, or
people under the age of 21. Additionally, proponents of a particular arbitrary system tend to
react defensively when attacked by deconstruction. In order to find a way forward, temporary
compromises must be made between Postmodernist deconstruction and cultural idealism. In
this way, society can continue to operate while the old systems are brought to their eventual,
peaceful death.