TGE considered: marx, socialism, neutrality of thought

Most of what Phyllis Ticke discussed in her book The Great Emergence was very enlightening in perspective, tying so many different ideas and movements into such a larger narrative. She was very graceful in her attitude of neutrality towards her/my/our history. It seems that she worked very hard to keep an nonjudgmental attitude towards it all. Although as true as it is of us all, judgments slipped out at points throughout.

One example which particularly struck me was her attitude towards Marx and the Russian actualization of Communism. She spends three pages basically demonizing the ideas of Marx and Hegel, and commenting on the waywardness of so many {intellectual/artistic} people who fell into its “attractiveness”, as she calls it. Instead of reading the Marx who describes man’s alienation from himself, his work, or community, she creates a Marx who wants to grab power through the state and control all of life. She more accurately described fascism not marxism.

She states, “[t]o that end, government or the state becomes the presence of the Absolute on earth, and it is the duty and salvation of every person to serve the state.” This sounds horrible, without the context from which is supposed to be understood. The Absolute, is a very unique technical term for Hegel from which Marx derives it—though I don’t think Marx liked the absoluteness of Hegel’s Absolute. It shouldn’t be understood in the standard sense, which seems to me, of implying God.

The Absolute for Hegel, in the simplest terms, is the zeitgeist (the spirit of the time) knowing itself as itself and that the spirit is what creates itself. To put it in some other terms, it is culture realizing that culture is not founded/created upon anything but itself. So for Marx to think of government inhabiting the presence of the Absolute means for government to be a true representation of the people, not simply to hold & protect the interests of the elite.

Although Marx’s views became very misconstrued through the actions of Stalin, it is still not necessary to think that this is a deficiency of the ideas. Many horrible things have been done in the name of Christ. Also she fails to mention to extensive work which was done within America during the early part of the twentieth century; socialism gave us worker’s unions, safety regulations, livable wages, among other things.

But that is only the venting of certain biases which I have personally. I am sure I would think differently of the whole matter if I would of simply lived during the era of Stalin, but since I am not it is easier for me to seperate the two from one another. Though I try not to demonize the likes of Capitalism simply as a result of the horrors which it has left in its wake, it is definitely hard for me not to biased against it and the largest realization of it.