james daly wrote:
> Materialism on the contrary consists in seeing that particular
> philosophical
> position (German Idealism) as *the German Ide(a)-ology* reconciling
> feudalism and the nascent bourgeoisie; and that what would be reason
> now
> would be to see the even more recently nascent working-class as the
> universal (ethical) class, whose particular interest is the general
> interest); and to see working class Communists as leading the
> movement of
> the most downtrodden of classes towards its opposite, the negation
> of class
> in a world community which would *really* (materially) be the fullest
> development of humanity and human rationality, springing from the
> base of
> production from each according to ability and distribution according
> to
> need.
The working class is only potentially the "universal" class.
It is the class, according to Marx, whose "being," as constituted by the relations and activities of wage-labour (i.e. by the specific "internal relations" constitutive of working class "being"), will lead to a "development of the human mind" in its individual members that in turn will eventually develop in them the "powers" and will required to initiate the "revolutionary praxis" that will itself complete the development of powers required to "appropriate" the existing productive forces and use them to construct a society from which all barriers to full human development, to the actualization of "the unity of the universal and individual" in the full "freedom of the will" elaborated in the Engels Anti-Duhring passage, have been eliminated.
As I've pointed out many times, all this is a sublation of Hegel, i.e. of Hegel's "idealism."
Thus Engels's "freedom of the will" as the unity of "freedom" and "necessity" is a sublation of Hegel's ideas of the "will proper" and the "universal will," ideas themselves a sublation of Greek ideas.
“In caprice it is involved that the content is not formed by the nature of my will, but by contingency. I am dependent upon this content. This is the contradiction contained in caprice. Ordinary man believes that he is free, when he is allowed to act capriciously, but precisely in caprice is it inherent that he is not free. When I will the rational, I do not act as a particular individual but according to the conception of ethical life in general. In an ethical act I establish not myself but the thing. A man, who acts perversely, exhibits particularity. The rational is the highway on which every one travels, and no one is specially marked. When a great artist finishes a work we say: ‘It must be so.’ The particularity of the artist has wholly disappeared and the work shows no mannerism. Phidias has no mannerism; the statue itself lives and moves. But the poorer is the artist, the more easily we discern himself, his particularity all caprice. If we adhere to the consideration that in caprice a man can will what he pleases, we have certainly freedom of a kind; but again, if we hold to the view that the content is given, then man must be determined by it, and in this light is no longer free.” Hegel, Philosophy of Right, Introduction http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/pr/printrod.htm
This elaboration of "freedom" makes the ontological assumption that there are objective and knowable ethical and aesthetic "laws" (as in Marx's idea of "the laws of beauty") that provide the basis for fully rationally self-determined willing and acting. For Marx, however, the "laws of ethics" specify a wholly positive "eudaimonic" ethical ideal of relations of mutual recognition.
“Sophocles in his Antigone, says, ‘The divine commands are not of yesterday, nor of today; no, they have an infinite existence, and no one could say whence they came.’ The laws of morality are not accidental, but are the essentially Rational.” Hegel, Philosophy of History, § 41 http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hi/introduction-lectures.htm
The whole of history is then interpreted as a set of internally related "educational" "stages in the development of the human mind" that "through an incalculable medial discipline of the intellectual and moral powers" works to substitute rational for instinctive determination of feeling, thinking, willing and acting, i.e. serves to actualize "freedom" in Engels's sense.
"The error which first meets us is the direct contradictory of our principle that the state presents the realization of Freedom; the opinion, viz., that man is free by nature, but that in society, in the State – to which nevertheless he is irresistibly impelled – he must limit this natural freedom. That man is free by Nature is quite correct in one sense; viz., that he is so according to the Idea of Humanity; but we imply thereby that he is such only in virtue of his destiny – that he has an undeveloped power to become such; for the “Nature” of an object is exactly synonymous with its “Idea.” But the view in question imports more than this. When man is spoken of as “free by Nature,” the mode of his existence as well as his destiny is implied. His merely natural and primary condition is intended. In this sense a “state of Nature” is assumed in which mankind at large are in the possession of their natural rights with the unconstrained exercise and enjoyment of their freedom. This assumption is not indeed raised to the dignity of the historical fact; it would indeed be difficult, were the attempt seriously made, to point out any such condition as actually existing, or as having ever occurred. Examples of a savage state of life can be pointed out, but they are marked by brutal passions and deeds of violence; while, however rude and simple their conditions, they involve social arrangements which (to use the common phrase) restrain freedom. That assumption is one of those nebulous images which theory produces; an idea which it cannot avoid originating, but which it fathers upon real existence, without sufficient historical justification.
“What we find such a state of Nature to be in actual experience, answers exactly to the Idea of a merely natural condition.
“Freedom as the ideal of that which is original and natural, does not exist as original and natural. Rather must it be first sought out and won; and that by an incalculable medial discipline of the intellectual and moral powers. The state of Nature is, therefore, predominantly that of injustice and violence, of untamed natural impulses, of inhuman deeds and feelings. Limitation is certainly produced by Society and the State, but it is a limitation of the mere brute emotions and rude instincts; as also, in a more advanced stage of culture, of the premeditated self-will of caprice and passion. This kind of constraint is part of the instrumentality by which only, the consciousness of Freedom and the desire for its attainment, in its true – that is Rational and Ideal form – can be obtained. To the Ideal of Freedom, Law and Morality are indispensably requisite; and they are in and for themselves, universal existences, objects and aims; which are discovered only by the activity of thought, separating itself from the merely sensuous, and developing itself, in opposition thereto; and which must on the other hand, be introduced into and incorporated with the originally sensuous will, and that contrarily to its natural inclination.” Hegel, Philosophy of History <http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hi/introduction-lectures.htm
>
“Freedom” in this sense is actualized in what Hegel calls the “educated” person, the "divine being" who actualizes "freedom" as "the unity of the universal and individual":
"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, § 187) <http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/pr/prcivils.htm>
Educated individuals "determine their knowing, willing, and acting in a universal way." (Hegel, Philosophy of Right, § 187)
These ideas are repeated by Engels in the passage from Anti-Duhring:
"Freedom of the will therefore means nothing but the capacity to make decisions with knowledge of the subject. Therefore the freer a man's judgment is in relation to a definite question, the greater is the necessity with which the content of this judgment will be determined; while the uncertainty, founded on ignorance, which seems to make an arbitrary choice among many different and conflicting possible decisions, shows precisely by this that it is not free, that it is controlled by the very object it should itself control." <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch09.htm>
Ted