Between Marxism and Existentialism

Complementary philosophies impossible to synthesize

Reading George Novack’s essay, Marxism Versus Existentialism, has sent me down an exploratory path of the two philosophies that have the greatest appeal to me.

Novack, in his exploration, comes to the conclusion that the two philosophies can never be mixed. He spells this out firmly and unapologetically in his final sentence by saying that “Their mismating can produce only stillborn offspring, whether in philosophy or in politics.”

This may be true, Existentialism is not at all a political philosophy, it is an individualist one that contends that the absurdity of life (and death) demands of us to embrace our freedom in radical ways. Of course, it would be shortsighted to claim that embracing rebellion is not political due to its individualistic orientation. Albert Camus makes that clear when he says “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” Paradoxically, Camus also notes that “every act of rebellion against oppression is justified in itself but installs a new form of servitude.”

Comic including Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Simone de Beauvoir, and Soren Kierkegaard; all key Existentialist philosophers — comic by Existential Comics

This apparently contradictory stance is understood better in the context of Existentialism that sees the ambiguity of life as inescapable. So even the success of a rebellion (individual or political) that allows for greater radical freedom for the individual will still need to contend with absurdity as a brute psychological force. It’s this stance that lends to Existentialism its ‘brooding’, dark, and depressive aesthetic which has also become a way to comically portray and delegitimize its validity as infantile.

On a more practical level, rebellion against oppression is in and of itself a choice to subjugate oneself to, something external to their individual identity. Choosing to take up a political cause in the hopes that it may deliver you the freedom you desire requires you to give up your freedom to pursue your radical freedom now — to subsume your identity into into something outside of yourself.

Incompatibility with Marxism

Novack refuses Existentialism on the pretext that the isolated individual is a wholly abstract notion.

Novack brilliantly explains Marxism — Dialectic Materialism as “an unequal synthesis of extrinsic determination and self-determination. People react consciously and vigorously to their environment and take initiatives to alter certain aspects of it. The measure of control exercised by the objective and subjective components of the causal process changes and develops in the course of time according to the growth of our mastery over nature and society.”

There are two important things to be taken away from this in relation to Existentialism. The first, is that even the absurdity of life/death is not out of reach of human understanding. Absurdity is what it is simply because of our current lack of mastery — or lack-thereof — over nature (science) and society. With enough time and exploration even absurdity can be brought into the fold of understanding.

Novack elaborates on this by saying “The existentialists go wrong…in making an eternal absolute out of the occurrence of chance events and unruly phenomena. These are not unconditioned and unchangeable but relative and variable aspects of being…Marxism, which holds fast to the rationality of the real, esteems scientific knowledge …believes that the discovery of physical and social laws can serve to explain both the regularities and irregularities of development, so that even the most extreme anomalies of nature, society, and the individual can be understood.”

This suggests an inverse relation between science and Existentialism — that, as science progresses — which it will at an accelerated rate once we are freed from the material conditions imposed by capitalism — the need for Existentialist philosophy will disappear, or to use another Marxist favorite, will wither away.

Second, that it is absurd that a person can pursue their radical freedom outside their material conditions (extrinsic determination). If me living my radical freedom involves traveling around the world, this will be near impossible to accomplish if I don’t have a passport or money. If my conception of radical freedom involves walking on grass where there is signage not to then I am still going to get a fine or chased off the grass by a police officer — knowing this will have an impact on how I decide to practice my ‘radical freedom’. It is the material world interacting with my self-determination.

Novack reflects this by saying “ People have been enabled to enlarge their freedom not by ignoring and rejecting the determinants of history but by recognizing them and acting in accord with their requirements.” A statement as to how, historically, progress towards individual liberty as a whole has only ever been established through structural (material) evolution.

Taking it too far

There is a slightly scary component to the Marxist analysis. The over reliance on the advance of science seems almost to suggest that human consciousness will one day be unraveled — a plausible outcome. This would make Marxists natural supporters of Neuropsychology.

Novak states that: “The scientists of the future, in teamwork with highly conscious individuals, will plan to reshape the physiological side of life and subordinate that to the control of reason and will. Biology and medicine will ease the processes of birth and postpone the incidence of death. The coming biological-social type of human will manifest a new psychology in which, among other things, people will no longer have reason to dread death.”

This, however, also subscribes them to a field of absolute material determinism leaving no room for consciousness or self determination at all collapsing Novack’s definition of Dialectic Materialism.

The Marxist aversion to the abstract individual as posited by Existentialists also leads to the collapse of Dialectic Materialism leaving us simply with Materialism. Marxists, then, put the same expiry date on their philosophy as they do on Existentialism and they do so with a sense of unfounded nihilistic optimism — almost as an instrument of faith.

The radicalizing nature of Existentialism

In all of this, it is impossible to ignore the radicalizing nature of existentialism itself. It is in coming to terms with the ‘absurdity’ of life that one comes to the conclusion that the meaning of life is not what it is presented to be under the current capitalist doctrine.

Sure, this being uncovered does not necessitate a move towards Marxism — an understanding that life has no intrinsic meaning may just as well make someone double down on the current state of affairs. After all, under Existentialism, any system of organization is equally as absurd as the current one. But a move towards Marxism — not just Communism as an economic doctrine — necessitates a level of Existentialism. This is where the self-determination part of the Dialectic Materialism comes from.

Existentialism also contains, in its philosophy, a refusal of social and moral tradition. In this way it is more radical than Marxism which, although acknowledges a near amoral future, still contends that we need to get there through societal transformation.

Existentialism is also greater radicalizing force than Marxism because it does not deal with the material conditions of the individual. This is convenient for those who may find ideas of communal ownership anxiety inducing for fear of, what they perceive, they may lose.

In these ways, Existentialism leapfrogs over Marxism and becomes the engine of the self-determined component described in Novack’s definition of Dialectic Materialism.

What came first?

Sartre, an Existentialist philosopher and a Marxist, argued that, since Existentialism represents only part of the equation that Marxists propose then it must be subordinate to it. This is impossible.

It is self-determination that determines what is done with self-determination. Yes, material conditions play a role in the formulation of our self-determination, but Existentialists are right to place priority on our own perception of the world around us in their analysis as opposed to material conditions. Put simply, we cannot bring to life what we cannot first conceive — irrespective of why we were drawn to conceive it.

Sartre’s argument can easily be inverted so that one may say that: since Marxism is a method of trying to create understanding beyond the absurdity of life/death, then it is the one that is subordinate to Existentialism.

This stalemate situation confirms Novack’s argument that the two ideologies cannot be synthesized — even though he says it with some unnecessarily harsh words. Yet, to suggest that there is no relationship between the two is simply callous. Marxism embodies the same quest for individual freedom that Existentialism does and both require each other — in method and thought — to reach their objectives. Marxism requires the Existential call for revolt against order, and Existentialism requires Marxism to empower and proliferate that revolt so it may be possible in spite of our material conditions.