Matter, Spirit, and Labor in Marx’s Philosophy

“The modern world is rooted in spirit and it can be free, can release the other, nature, out of itself.”

§  Karl Marx, CW; 1:423

When Marx first began to measure, in his own words, “the individual existence by the essence, and the particular reality by the idea” as the “direct realization of philosophy,” (1841 ‘Doctoral Dissertation’) he asked, “Must philosophy adopt different principles for every country”? “Is there no universal human nature”? Philosophy, said Marx, asks what is true not what is accepted as such.  It does not “recognize the boundaries of political geography.” Its outlook is “the true horizon of the human mind.” (1842, CW: 1:191)

IRAN’S LABOR POISED TO DEEPEN THE PROTESTS

“The workers attach so much importance to citizenship, i.e. to active citizenship, that, where they have it, for instance in America, they ‘make good use’ of it, and where they do not have it, they strive to obtain it.”

                                                                                     -Karl Marx, German Ideology, CW: 5:217

The unprecedented turn out of millions throughout Iran on the 31^st anniversary of 1979 Revolution revealed something new that has not yet been brought to light. While there has been much exposes about the costly endeavor to bus Ahmadinejad supporters to the scene and to bring Tehran under military occupation, hardly any mention is made of the deep desire to reclaim that Revolution as one that belongs to the people as its true creators. Thereby undermining its instrumental use by the Islamic Republic as a way to terrorize people into submission. 

The great divide, the historic divide is about continuity or discontinuity with that great revolution, and its unfulfilled goals. It is high time for those within the opposition who confine revolution to the past alone, and tremble even at the thought of ‘another revolution’, to now take full notice. At the same time those within the Left who are serious about revolution should never again be content with the overthrow of the old without the projection of the new, i.e. what they are for.