Michael D. Yates on Teaching Workers

By Michael D. Yates

Karl Marx’s famous dictum sums up my teaching philosophy: “The philosophers of the world have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” As I came to see it, Marx had uncovered the inner workings of our society, showing both how it functioned and why it had to be transcended if human beings were to gain control over their lives and labor. Disseminating these ideas could help speed the process of human liberation. From a college classroom, I thought that I could not only interpret the world, I could indeed change it.

Thinking is one thing; the trick is bringing thoughts to life. How, actually, does a person be a radical teacher? How, for example, can students be shown the superior insights of Marxian economics in classes that have always been taught from the traditional or neoclassical perspective—taught, in fact, as if the neoclassical theory developed by Adam Smith and his progeny is the gospel truth? My college expected me to teach students the “principles” of economics: that people act selfishly and independently of one another, that this self-centeredness generates socially desirable outcomes. And further, that capitalism, in which we, in fact, do act out of self-interest, is therefore the best possible economic system. Had I refused to do this and taught only Marxian economics, I doubt I could have kept my job.

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Barbarism on the Horizon: An Interview With István Mészáros

by Eleonora de Lucena

Lucena: Mr. István Mészáros, you are coming to visit Brazil to talk about György Lukács. As a profound expert of the work of the philosopher, how do you evaluate the importance of his ideas today? 

Mészáros: György Lukács was my great teacher and friend for twenty-two years, until he died in 1971.  He started publishing as a politically conscious literary critic almost seventy years earlier, moving toward the discussion of fundamental philosophical issues as time went by.  Three of his major works in that field -- History and Class Consciousness (1923), The Young Hegel (1948), and The Destruction of Reason (1954) -- will always stand the test of time.  His historical and aesthetic studies on great German, French, English, Russian, and Hungarian literary figures continue to be most influential in many university departments.  Moreover, he is also the author of a monumental aesthetic synthesis which, I am sure, will see the light one day also in Brazil.  More fortunately, his equally monumental volumes on the problems of the ontology of social being are being published right now in this country by Boitempo Editorial.  They address some vital issues of philosophy which also have far-reaching implications for our everyday life and ongoing struggles.  What is less well known about Lukács's life is that he was directly involved at high levels of political organization between 1919 and 1929.  He was Minister of Culture and Education in the short-lived revolutionary government of 1919 in Hungary, which emerged from the great crisis of the First World War.  In the Party he belonged to the "Landler Faction" -- indeed he was its second in command.  This faction -- named after Jenö Landler, who was a leading trade unionist before becoming a high-ranking party figure -- tried to pursue a broader strategic line, with much greater involvement of the popular masses.  Lukács was defeated in direct politics in 1929.  However, way back in 1919, in one of his articles (you can find it quoted in my book on Lukács now published by Boitempo), he warned that the communist movement could face a great danger when "the proletariat turns its dictatorship against itself."  He proved to be tragically prophetic in this warning.  In any case, in all of his public roles, political as much as theoretical, one can find his great moral stature always in evidence.  Nowadays we read so much about corruption in politics.  One can also see Lukács's importance as a positive example, showing that morality and politics not only ought to (as Kant advocated it) but also can go together.

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Rescuing Sartre From Anachronistic Individualism

In this updated version, see here, István Mészáros lucidly rescues Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialist anthropology from the philosophical hermeneutic watershed of anachronistic individualism. The author critically examines evidence for a complementarity between Sartre's phenomonological ontology with historical-materialism, while paying particular attention to how Sartre's work is largely contributive to the Marxist Humanist attention to forms of social consciousness. What is stressed is that although Sartre rejects the 'dialectics of nature', this is not a total rejection of the dialectical method, since Sartre's attention to issues of morality are squarely placed in a historically-specific social context, specifically with respect to the parameters and social practices of capitalism, whereby, in similar fashion to Marx's concern with the dialectical contradictions between authentic human development and alienation, 'nothingness', or 'free will', is limited by the extent to which the actually existing physical world forces mankind to be subservient to constrained subjectivities, of which meaningful sense of self and dignity are lost in translation.

PS: Note that Mészáros is often considered part of Marxist Humanism, a school that emphasizes Marx's early writings, in particular his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts. Mészáros most famous book is on Marx's theory of alienation here (and where he applies Marx's theory of alienation to reassessing the socialist alternative, and the conditions for its realization, is here). For the more directly relevant economic aspects of Marx's critique and reconstruction of the surplus approach one only needs to read his Theories of Surplus Value and, obviously, Capital (and the extent to which Piero Sraffa revived Marxist Economic Theory - see here & here ). Mind you, this is not to suggest an epistemological break in Marx's work, as authors like Louis Althusser have propounded. For debates on the supposed structural discontinuity, see here (subscription required) and here.