Marx: the consciousness and the social existence that determines consciousness

[ish mailian]

Why was Marx a materialist?


http://socialistworker.org/2011/10/28/why-was-marx-a-materialist

On Sat, Feb 13, 2016 at 6:22 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com> wrote:
> In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into
> definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely
> relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the
> development of their material forces of production. The totality of
> these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of
> society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political
> superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social
> consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the
> general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not
> the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their
> social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain
> stage of development, the material productive forces of society come
> into conflict with the existing relations of production or – this
> merely expresses the same thing in legal terms – with the property
> relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto.
> From forms of development of the productive forces these relations
> turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The
> changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the
> transformation of the whole immense superstructure.
>
> In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish
> between the material transformation of the economic conditions of
> production, which can be determined with the precision of natural
> science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic
> – in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this
> conflict and fight it out. Just as one does not judge an individual by
> what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of
> transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this
> consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material
> life, from the conflict existing between the social forces of
> production and the relations of production. No social order is ever
> destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient
> have been developed, and new superior relations of production never
> replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence
> have matured within the framework of the old society.
>
> Mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to
> solve, since closer examination will always show that the problem
> itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are
> already present or at least in the course of formation.
>
> https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l