Climbing ‘the Tower of Babel’

“‘Come,’ people said, ‘let us build ourselves a City and a Tower

 with its top reaching the heaven.’ ‘This is only the start of their

 undertaking,’ said Yahweh. ‘Now nothing they plan to do will be

 beyond them.’”

·                                                                  Genesis; 11: 1-9

“They still dream of experimental realization of their social Utopias,

of founding isolated ‘phalansteries,’ of establishing ‘Home Colonies,’

 of setting up a ‘Little Icaria’ – duodecimo editions of a New Jerusalem.”

·                                                                  Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto; MECW 6: 515-516

Max Stirner, a Hegel epigone of ‘the Society of Free Men,’ was perhaps the ultimate personification of what Hegel characterized as the ‘beautiful soul.’ To Stirner, everything outside the singularity of the bare personality, dubbed ‘the Unique,’ deserved to perish. While upholding the self-certainty of the Ego, he rejected all mediations, all universals, and everything that connects the Individual to a Whole. Thus he wrote: “My concern is neither the divine nor the human, not the true, good, just, free, etc., but solely what is mine, and it is not a general one, but is ‘Unique,’ as I am unique. Nothing is more to me than myself.” (The Ego and His Own, p.41)

When Stirner chose, as the heading of a ‘Preface’ to is 1845 book the expression, “I have built my cause on nothing,” he meant to declare war not only on theology but also on philosophy. Stirner certainly knew that this expression was from Goethe’s poem ‘Vanitas, Vanitatum, Vanitas,’ but perhaps he didn’t know that this rebel without a cause exemplified precisely the type of subjectivity described by Hegel as “the son of civil society.” While passing judgment on the world, this kind of personality proclaims “all is vanity.” (Phil. of Right, Par. 140)

Having argued that not just religion but also reason is responsible for the oppression of the individual, Stirner’s position was certainly considered to be the extreme left of all the Left Hegelians – Straus, Bauer and Feuerbach. Accusing also Marx of being under the spell of ‘abstract ideals’ naturally did not sit well with Marx who had just issued a critique of abstract idealism in his The Holy Family. Allocating hundreds of pages of his The German Ideology to Max Stirner, Marx felt compelled to come o the defense of Hegel. Thus he wrote, “The emptiest, shallowest brain among the philosophers had to ‘end’ philosophy by proclaiming his lack of thought to be the ‘end of philosophy’ and thus the triumphant entry into ‘corporeal’ life.” (MECW; 5:449) Let’s remember that the theoretic preoccupation of the time was with a new beginning in the aftermath of the French Revolution.

In The Holy Family, Marx had already argued that the “French Revolution gave rise to ideas which led beyond the ideas of the entire world order…This idea, consistently developed, is the idea of the new world order.” (MECW; 4:119) In taking the measure of the Terror, he revealed the counter-revolution that had emerged from within by pointing to the tragic fate of Saint-Just. What a terrible illusion, to confuse the ancient, realistic-democratic commonwealth based on real slavery with the modern spiritualistic-democratic representative state which is based on emancipated slavery, bourgeois society.” Thus it was that on the day of his execution, Saint-Just pointed to the large table of the Rights of Man hanging in the Hall of Conciergerie and said with proud dignity: “C’est pourtant moi qui ai fait cela.” (“Yet it was I who made that.”) Finally, after the fall of Robespierre, Napoleon “perfected the Terror by substituting permanent war for permanent revolution.” (Ibid, p.122-123)

Now comes Stirner on the scene with his bold but abstract statement that the revolution cut off the heads of men because it “served Man.” Thus to “live for a cause,” or to “create for the sake of an idea” is tantamount to ‘Clericalism.” According to Stirner, there is nothing concrete about ideas. To him, exclaims Marx, the revolutionary idea that inspired the ‘honnetes genes of 1789 is the same ‘idea’ as that of sans-culottes of 1793.” (MECW; 5:179) In contrast, Marx quotes Hegel’s Philosophy of History, where it is stated that “we see in the French Revolution that the abstract idea should dominate; state constitutions and laws should be based on it, it should constitute the bond between people, and the people should be conscious that that which they hold as valid are abstract ideas, liberty and equality.” (Ibid, p.174) Thus, wrote Marx, “one can see how infinitely more materialistically Hegel proceeds than our ‘corporeal ego’,” (p.319) for Hegel “depicts all relations as relations of the objective spirit.” (p. 410)

Moreover, Stirner’s empty negation of ‘the vocation of man,’ and of all ideas, fails to recognize that the all round realization of the individual will only cease to be conceived as an ideal, a vocation, when the impact of the world which stimulates the real development of the abilities of the individual is under the control of the individuals themselves. (p.292) One may not assume that just because Feuerbach’s ‘Man’ has proven to be an abstraction, that therefore, the concrete is ‘the Ego.’ To be sure, Marx had already questioned Feuerbach’s corporeal man, who is not seen in “his historical activity and existence,” but, alluding to Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature, Par.246 “can be deduced from the lobe of his ear.” (p.512) Hegel defines as philosophy’s task “the abolition of firm, definite, fixed ideas.” This, he accomplished with the help of the dialectics. The difference between Hegel and Stirner, contends Marx, is that the latter wants the same results “without the help of the dialectics.” (p.193)

In a sense, one can argue, that what also brings Marx and Hegel close to each other is their opposition to the Kantian “self-determination of the will and human beings as they ought to be.” (MECW; 5:196) Kant, wrote Marx, “was satisfied with ‘good will’ alone, even if it remained entirely without result, and he transferred the realization of this good will, the harmony between it and the needs and impulses of individuals to a world beyond. Kant’s good will fully corresponds with the impotence, depression and wretchedness of the German burghers.” (p.191) Unlike Rousseau’s development of the ‘general will’ in France, the backward and provincial German middle class was not able to develop its particular interest as the universal interest of Germany as a whole. Thus, the determinate will and the theoretical ideas of French were separated from the French condition and were transformed by Kant into “pure self-development of ‘free will,’ of the will in and for itself, and so converted into purely ideological conceptual determinations and moral postulates.” (p.195)

It is worth noting here that Hegel’s development of ‘The Moral View of the World’ in the Phenomenology of Mind seems precisely the source for Marx’s critique of Kant’s Practical Idea as a ‘moral postulate.’ Hegel merely reiterates this in the Philosophy of Right, where he states that the Kantian “never ending ought-to-be” is “the exclusively moral way of thinking” which “just wanders to and fro without being able to resolve them and get beyond the ought-to-be.” (Addition, Par. 135)

In the Grundrisse, Marx returns to this notion as he critiques the French Socialists “who want to depict socialism as the realization of the ideals of bourgeois society articulated by the French Revolution,” the idea that exchange and exchange value are originally a system of “universal freedom and equality” perverted by capital.  What divides these socialists from bourgeois apologists is “the utopian inability to grasp the necessary difference between the real and the ideal form of bourgeois society, which is the cause of their desire to undertake the business of realizing the ideal expression again.” (p.249)

Once the Paris Commune of 1871 broke out, Marx was ready to embrace “the grandeur of their cause.” As apposed to the Terrorism of the earlier era’s revolutions, he hailed the “moderation and the humanity” of the Communards’ new ‘world city.’ “Working, thinking, bleeding Paris – almost forgetful, in its incubation of a new society, of cannibals at its gates – radiant of its historic initiative.” (The Civil War in France, Selected Works; 2:229) The tale of two civilizations – “a phantom Paris” and the Paris of “all truth” – are here articulated magnificently. The undisguised savagery and lawlessness of a “nefarious civilization,” as the Paris of the “Decline,” and the “serene working men’s Paris” that was drowned in blood while “with the law in their hands” they had “the cry of civilization” on their lips. It is the cause’ of this ‘new world’ which is heralded by Marx as “immortal”!