Econlib

The Library

Other Sites

 Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow Materialism, Determinism, and Progress - Literature of Liberty, January/March 1979, vol. 2, No. 1

Return to Title Page for Literature of Liberty, January/March 1979, vol. 2, No. 1

Search this Title:

Also in the Library:

Subject Area: Political Theory

Materialism, Determinism, and Progress - Leonard P. Liggio, Literature of Liberty, January/March 1979, vol. 2, No. 1 [1979]

Edition used:

Literature of Liberty: A Review of Contemporary Liberal Thought was published first by the Cato Institute (1978-1979) and later by the Institute for Humane Studies (1980-1982) under the editorial direction of Leonard P. Liggio.

Part of: Literature of Liberty: A Review of Contemporary Liberal Thought, 20 vols. 19781-982

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


Materialism, Determinism, and Progress

Frederick Gregory

“Scientific versus Dialectical Materialism: A Clash of Ideologies in Nineteenth-Century German Radicalism.” Isis 68 (1977): 206–223.

In the nineteenth century “scientific materialism” denoted mechanistic materialism, not a scientific but rather a metaphysical position that claimed to be derived from natural science. Its major tenets were that (1) there is an independently existing world; (2) all objects, including human beings, are material entities; (3) the human mind does not exist as an entity distinct from the body; and (4) no nonhuman being could exist with a nonmaterial mode of existence. Its popular proponents were Karl Vogt, Jacob Moleschott, and Ludwig Büchner—all singled out for criticism by Marx and Engels, later themselves to be characterized as “dialectical materialists.”

Both scientific materialism and Marxian dialectical materialism shared conceptual debts to Ludwig Feuerbach, but differed on three key issues: religion, political activity, and philosophical materialism.

The scientific materialists used Feuerbach's arguments in their anticlerical polemics to replace traditional religion (and its alleged alienation) with a humanitarian, progressive religion based on love. But Marx and Engels wished to banish religion and not simply expose religion's anthropomorphic foundations or merely secularize it.

Feuerbach and the scientific materialists believed political activity and political emancipation would solve man's lack of freedom, by rooting political action in the values of German liberalism. For Marx, political action was a means to achieve progress and human emancipation, even from the political state—and man could break out of the political assumptions of his own society. The important thing was a social revolution, and as Marx and Engels came to see this as an inevitable development, political activity became even less important.

As reductionists, Vogt, Moleschott, and Büchner explained all forms of matter by the same deterministic general laws of physics. But neither they nor Feuerbach ever resolved the contradiction between their determinism and their call for human responsibility and political action. Although Marx opposed mechanistic determinism, his and Engel's materialist conception of history holds that man is determined by his surroundings. But Marx resolved the scientific materialists' contradiction by returning to Hegel's dialectic: the world of objects (mechanistic determinism) does not exist independently of the world of subjects (human responsibility). To be “scientific,” an explanation of reality must involve the acting subject as its core.

Marx and Engels were close to Feuerbach in that all three held that attention to empirical facts is necessary, but not sufficient, to philosophy, whereas the scientific materialists regarded it as sufficient.