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THE POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KARL MARX

A seminar given in the Spring quarter, 1960 in the Department of Political Science University of Chicago by Professors Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey Professor Leo Strauss and

This transcription is a written record of essentially oral material, much of which developed spontaneously in the classroom, and none of which was prepared with publication in mind. The transcription is made available to a limited number of interested persons, with the understanding that no use will be made of it that is inconsistent with the private and partly informal origin of the material. Recipients are emphatically requested not to seek to increase the circulation of the transcription. This transcription has not been checked, seen, or passed ony by lecturers.

The production and distribution of this transcription are subsidized by the Relm Foundation, Ann Arbor Michigan. Financial assitance was granted by the Relm Foundation on application made in behalf of the recipients of the transcriptions. Relm Foundation is not responsible for any of the views expressed herein.

NOTE: The last seven meetings were devoted mainly to a discussion of Das Kapital by Mr. Cropsey. These meetings were recorded but have been only partially transcribed. The tapes will be preserved, however, and may be borrowed by subscribers for a reasonable period of time.

Copyright C 1963 by Joseph Cropsey

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Marx Seminar, first meeting. March 30, 1960

(The tape commences with the lecture already in progress).

...description as distinguished from the qualitative differences. Now modern philosophy as it emerged since the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is. as I said before. anti-socialistic in this older sense of the word. Man. the individual not a member of society. not even as a potential member of society. is primary. Society is simply derivative from beings who are not as such social beings. Man is -the fundamental phenomenon. therefore. is freedom, not obligation. All obligation is derivative from free acts of previously non-obliged individuals. That's the meaning of the strict - the strict meaning of the doctrine of the social contract. Therefore the fundamental moral phenomenon does not have the character of duties. but of rights. The rights of man in the strict sense are a modern notion. We must here make a distinction as I have made it on a former occasion between various waves of this modern thinking. The first wave is represented most clearly by Hobbes and by Locke and this Hobb-Locklan version of which to say only a few words is the origin of political economy. The second wave embodies politcal economy, but does not create it. Now what is characteristic here? The fundamental phenomenon is self-preservation, the preservation of life and limb. To understand this. one must contrast it with the Thomistic doctrine. According to Thomas there are three kinds of natural inclinations. The first is directed toward self-presentation. The second is directed toward social life. And the third is directed toward cognition. Self-preservation is the lowest and cognition the highest. Now what men like Hobbes and Locke did is. as it were. disregard the two higher or to deny they are natural inclinations and concentrate only on the primary, self-preservation. The reason for that was what one can call "realism." They wanted to have a doctrine which was not in any way [you plan]? or visionary, but solid. Low but solid is. I think, a beautiful formilation due to Winston Churchill. to this doctrine. Low but solid. Not trust such fanciful things as inclination toward society and natural desire for cognition, but self-preservation. That we run-we take cover when someone points a gun at you that is the real stuff. And of the same kind, of course, also food. That is also necessary for self-preservation. And food is almost the same thing as property, as will appear when Mr. Cropsey will take over. This kind of doctrine is. of course. also characterised by an intense simplification. If you have three fundamentally different natural inclinations that gives the complicated doctrine, but if there is only one: great simplification. Therefore it was possible to present the doctine in quasi-mathematical form as Hobbes did openly and Locke in a slightly concealed matter. Now self-preservation. while being the basic phenomenon is not the complete phenomenon as far as the human will is concerned because man, as we all know. is not satisfied with self-preservation a lone. He also wants to be happy. and we have to consider the relation between self-preservaation and happiness in order to begin a possible understanding of Marx.

The view which Hobbes and --(by the way, you can find a chair. I believe. so you don't have to stand: there is a chair) - now Hobbes and Locke admit. of course that man desires happiness and that he's not satisfied with self-preservation. but they say, in our language. happiness is entirely subjective. Someone finds his happiness in eating a special kind of cooked apples and another in readiing novels: others perhaps even in writing novels and so on: infinitely subjective and nothing can be built on that. Self-preservation is the same in all men. Therefore it is objective. Therefore something can be built on that. Happiness cannot be the end of civil society because of its subjectivity. Civil society can only guarantee the conditions of happiness. Without - because without life you cannot be happy.

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In other words, to introduce a formula used in the Declaration of Independence. civil society makes possible the pursuit of happiness, but not happiness. That is the affair of the individuals. [Foom?] this follows a point with which Marx was very much concerned: a split between the public life and the private life. between the division or subject. on the one hand. and the private individual. The citizen is concerned with a self-preservation. The whole apparatus of the state is nothing but a big apparatue for self-perservation as you can see even today if you consider the importance of police officers. But now it is important: while the self-preservation is the basic thing which has an objective charactoer that - what we desire. that we desire. is happiness, because we want self-preservation but no one is siatsifed with mere preservation. So the higher is private. The public is the basic but not very exciting. One-- in the language of Locke. for example, one would have to say there is a difference between self-preservation. bare self-preservation. and comfortable self-preservation. The bare self-preservation is guaranteed by the government. Comfortable self-preservation : that is everybody's own business. Now you see here in [germ?] the distinction between state and society. The state takes care of self-preservation by guaranteeing the security of each. but the real life of man. the interesting life of man. concerns not bare self-preservation. but the comfortable self-preservation which can even consist. for example. in going to theaters .[Yes]? Some people need that for their happiness. but that is nothing for the state. So when- state. the formula of Max Weber. is characterised by the monopoly of compulsion and that has. according to the original notion. the function of guaranteeing self-preservation. Society is the sphere of freedom where everyone tries to do and does to some extent : what he wants. The freedom ... but naturally freedom in and through competition. and one of the great objections of Max against the earlier doctrines is that they did not succeed in bridging the gulf between state and society and therefore the only solution in his opinion is abolish the state in the end. but that stems from this basic principle which we [did?] already in the first wave.

Now we could turn to the second wave which is much closer to Marx and about which I have to speak at much greater length. Now I would like first to say a very general word about Rousseau. I think it is time that this be said again. When we look at these great antagonists around 1789 after Rousseau.s death but still he was still very much alive because there was a French Revolution going on [merely]? Burke and Rousseau. I for one cannot help feeling that Burke is a much sounder better helper for practical politics than Rousseau is but on the other hand one must also say and especially today where we all are so very conservative that however impossible Rousseaus doctrine is true but it is a repeat that is not meant to say that Rousseaus doctrine is true but it is a very profound and seminal doctrine. Now Rousseau began his career with a prize essay on the sciences and arts. the so-called First Discourse. in which he attacked the sciences and arts in the name of virtue. Within - the politcal meaning of this writing is this: the ancients talk in their political writing all the time of virtue. The moderns talk all the time of trade and money. You see how strong the economic element was at the very beginning in modern political thought and Rousseau takes. in this respect. the side of the ancients. Furthermore. in the first wave of modern political philosophy enlightenment played an absolutely decisive role. One can state this precisely as follows. Self-preservation is the principle and self-preservation means also. practically speaking. fear of death. What Hobbes says or presupposes - he says fear of death is the greatest power [ ir?]

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human life and that is by no means necessarily so as no one know better than Hobbes because many people fear punishment after death more than death. So Hobbes: doctrine presupposes: in order to become operative. that the fear of punishment after death ceases to be important and this will cease to be important only by means of enlightenment. by the fact that people learn either that there is no punishment after death -- yes. that there is no punishment after death in any serious sense. So the enlightenment is absolutely essential for the first wave of modernity and Rousseau begins his career wth an attach on that enlightenment. We must keep this in mind. We must see what this means. There is a connection between Rousseau.s attack on the Enlightenment and his appeal to virtue because this teaching of men like Hobbes and Locke degrades virtue to a means for self-preservation. It makes virtue instrumental or utilitarian. Why --what is goodness? Goodness is the habit by virtue of which you have a greater chance to survive. That is not what decent men understand by virtue and Rousseau acted --reacted correspondingly. But the --so this is --but Rousseau is simply a protect of --Rousseau begins with protest of moral common sense against these subversive doctrines. Yet Rousseau does not simply reject Hobbes or simply return to Aristotle. He never does that. He transforms Hobbes on the Hobbian basis and that is important to understand and I will proceed step by step. I have to read to you a message from Hobbes to show that. Yes- Now. Hobbes had taught regarding virtues: Virtue is identical with peaceableness. Self-preservation as possible only in peace as you know either from your own experience or from many historical books [in ?]. So that habit which enable man to live in peace is peaceableness which consists of various parts. Now one part is especially interesting in our present connection: Hobbes Leviathan. Chapter 15. "The question who is the better man has no place in the condition of mere nature: where. (as has been shown before. all men are equal. the inequality that now is has been introduced by the [ ?] civil. All inequality. in other words. is legal or conventional. "I know that Aristole in the first book of hiw Politices: for a foundation of his doctrine. makes man by nature. some more worthy to command. meanin the wiser sort (such as he though himself to be for his philosophy:) others to serve. (meaning those he thought himself to be for his philosophy:) others to serve. (meaning those that had strong bodies. but were not philosophers as he) as if master and servant were not introduced by consent of men. but by difference of wit: which is not only against reason: but also against experience. For there are very few so foolish. that had not rather govern themselves. than to be governed by others. Nor when the wise in their own conceit, contend by force. with them who distrust their own wisdom. do they alays. or often. or almost at any time. get the victory. If nature therefore have made men equal. that equalithy is to be acknowledged: or if nature have made man unequal that equality is to be acknowledged: or if nature have made man unequal: - Hobbes reminds himself for one moment of thi own wit. You [?] ....yet because men [?] think themselves equal. will not enter into conditons of peace. but upon equal term. such equality must be admitted." In other words. Hobbes does not really say all men are equal. but he says you have to - as don't know whether they are equal or not. but we have to act on the principle that they are equal. "And therefore for the ninth law of nature" - law of nature menas here a moral law - " I put this. that every man acknowledge another for his equal by nature. The breach of this precept is pride. " Now-pride. regarding the ones that are superior. With a view to natural equality. man ought to treat everyone else as his equal by nature. yet. as Hobbes admits. civil society is a state of inequality. You at least have the inequality of the governors and the governed or also the rich and the poor. Furthermore. the right of self-preservation which - from which Hobbes starts implies the right of everyone to be the judge of the means of self-preservation. That follows under certain conditions. Yes? I mean. if you are - have the right to self-preservation you have the right

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To the means of self-preservation. Otherwise the right would be nugatory. But then who is going to judge of what are and are not good means? Either the wisest men- well. that is bad for you - for us - because the wisest man may not think that we are much worse preserved as we do. Therefore eveyone must be the judge as to what are mueans for self-preservation. And now - that is according to Hobbes the natural law. And now look at society. at Hobbes. society. who judges of the right means of self-preservation in Hobbes. socitey? The sovereign. That may very well be a king. one man. And how does a king judge of the means to my self-preservation? By making laws because laws are public judgments on means of self- preservation. as you can easily see when you look at certain individuals who steal - yes - or rob. They try to get means for their comfortable or maybe simple self-preservation and the law judes differently and the law decides the matter. So in civil society this fundamental natural right of equal judgment regarding the means of self-preservation and the law judges differently and the law decides the matter. So in civil society this fundamental natural right of equal judgment regarding the means of self-preservation is rejected. Civil society is essentially a state of inequality in Hobbes. teaching. But on the other hand morality: implies or consists in recognition of the natural right of man which includes the right to be the judge of the means. Civil society takes this away. But as Rousseau says from the very beginning morality is the one thing needful. That is the only consideration which ultimately counts. Peace. mere peace. is the lesser good than justice and justice consists in the recognition of the rights of each, including. naturally. myself. to be the judge. Therefore justice. consisting in the recognition of the right of each to be the judge. consists in reccognition of freedom because all freedom is concentrated in that right effectively to judge of the means to self-preservation. This is then the point. the starting point of Rosseau.s criticism of Locke. which became crucial. as we will see.

Now - we have to turn now to the precise procedure of Rousseau: how he tries to refute the Hobbian doctrine on the Hobbian basis. The Hobbian basis. to repeat. is self-preservation and the right of everyone to be the judge as to the means of self-preservation. Now Hobbes had taught that to understand a thing means to understand its genesis and Hobbes accordingly understands the commonwealth or the state by understanding its genesis. There he acts consistently. But Hobbes doesn't apply this demand. this general methodological demand as we can say. to the more fundamental phenomenon. So man.s rationality presupposes his sociality and yet Hobbes taught all the time that man is by nature a pre-social man. a manifest contradiction. because if man.s essence. the genesis of reason. and he never did that and that - that is what Rousseau does. For Roussean the study of man becomes the study of the history of man. of man.s -the study of man.s -of "man" becoming man. This process is the great - of man.s becoming man is the theme of Rousseau.s Second Discourse. the Discourse on the Origin of inequality. and I say only one word about that. This process of man becoming from a kind of orangutan a man is presented not as a teleological process. that the organutan was meant to develop into man. but as a strictly mechanical process. These sllightly -- these beings slightly different from orangutans were compelled by external. accidental causations: by floods or by ice or by heat - I don't know - to change. to come down from trees. as they say today. and then to become man. There is no- not a Teleological pro

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