> joanna bujes wrote:
>>
>>
>> Is it possible to have a revolution without a change in consciousness?
>>
>
> Actually, yes, yes, and no. :- But sort of Yes.
>
> That's what the Third Thesis on Feuerbach is about essentially. Some
> kine of revolutionary activity, if only at a superficial level, has to
> initiate the process.
Isn't it essentially about the how to conceive and understand the process that brings about changed human selves, selves identified by Marx with a particular kind of "consciousness"?
It rejects a deterministic account of this i.e. it claims the version of "materialism" it is criticizing "forgets" that circumstances are changed by "men" and that the "educators" (itself an important word choice - it designates the process as a process of "bildung") who are to change circumstances in a way that enables others to become "educated" must themselves first be "educated" i.e. developed in a way that enables them to desire and know how to do this.
The meaning of "educated" derives from Hegel.
"By educated men we may prima facie understand those who without the obtrusion of personal idiosyncrasy can do what others do. It is precisely this idiosyncrasy, however, which uneducated men display, since their behaviour is not governed by the universal characteristics of the situation. . . . Education rubs the edges off particular characteristics until a man conducts himself in accordance with the nature of the thing." (Hegel, Philosophy of Right, p. 268)
Educated individuals "determine their knowing, willing, and acting in a universal way." (Philosophy of Right, p. 124-6)."
"Man, as an individual, stands in relation to himself. He has two aspects: his individuality and his universal essence. His Duty to Himself consists partly in his duty to care for his physical preservation, partly in his duty to educate himself, to elevate his being as an individual into conformity with his universal nature. Explanatory: Man, is on the one hand, a natural being. As such he behaves according to caprice and accident as an inconstant, subjective being. He does not distinguish the essential from the unessential. Secondly, he is a spiritual, rational being and as such he is not by nature what he ought to be. The animal stands in no need of education, for it is by nature what it ought to be. It is only a natural being. But man has the task of bringing into harmony his two sides, of making his individuality conform to his rational side or of making the latter become his guiding principle. For instance, when man gives way to anger and acts blindly from passion he behaves in an uneducated way because, in this, he takes an injury or affront for something of infinite importance and seeks to make things even by injuring the transgressor in undue measure." (Hegel, Philosophical Propaedeutic, pp.41-2)
Marx, again sublating Hegel, equates "being" with "activity." This is the idea of "internal relations." Here is Whitehead's elaboration of it in terms of "activity" (an elaboration that explains "abstraction" as an ontological feature of reality).
"the conception of the world here adopted is that of functional activity. By this I mean that every actual thing is something by reason of its activity; whereby its nature consists in its relevance to other things, and its individuality consists in its synthesis of other things so far as they are relevant to it. In enquiring about any one individual must ask now other individuals enter 'objectively' into the unity of its own experience. This unity is that individual existing *formally*. We must also enquire how it enters into the 'formal' existence of other things; and this entrance is that individual existing *objectively*, that is to say - existing abstractly, exemplifying only some elements in its formal content." (Whitehead, Symbolism, pp. 29-31)
Marx defines human "being" in terms of the relation of consciousness to activity - "what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is that the architect builds the cell in his mind before he constructs it in wax." So human "self-changing" involves change in and development of "consciousness" i.e. the development of rational self-consciousness.
These ideas about the nature of "being" in general and of human "being" in particular are embodied in the concluding claim of the third thesis.
"The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self changing can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice."
As I've pointed out, Hegel's account of the development of rational self-consciousness - of human history as a process of "education," of "bildung" - identifies a particular form of "human activity" (forced labour under conditions of deferred desire) with positive "self-changing" (the development of the degree of rational self-consciousness required for the will and ability to bring about revolutionary transformation of the relations responsible for the development} and this in turn with "the changing of circumstances" (the revolutionary transformation of these relations}.
This interpretation of Marx's understanding of the relation of "circumstances" to "consciousness" and "self-changing" is confirmed by passages such as the following:
"The extent to which the solution of theoretical riddles is the task of practice and effected through practice, the extent to which true practice is the condition of a real and positive theory, is shown, for example, in fetishism. The sensuous consciousness of the fetish-worshipper is different from that of the Greek, because his sensuous existence is different. The abstract enmity between sense and spirit is necessary so long as the human feeling for nature, the human sense of nature, and therefore also the natural sense of man, are not yet produced by man's own labour." (Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts in Collected Works, vol. 3, p. 312)
"When communist artisans associate with one another, theory, propaganda, etc., is their first end. But at the same time, as a result of this association, they acquire a new need - the need for society - and what appears as a means becomes an end. In this practical process the most splendid results are to be observed whenever French socialist workers are seen together. Such things as smoking, drinking, eating, etc., are no longer means of contact or means that bring them together. Association, society and conversation, which again has association as its end, are enough for them; the brotherhood of man is no mere phrase with them, but a fact of life, and the nobility of man shines upon us from their work-hardened bodies." ( p. 313)
I myself think Marx's account of the development of rational self-consciousness (e.g his account of how working class consciousness becomes revolutionary) is inadequate. It is, however, an account of the development of rational self-consciousness, no?
Ted