MARX, NIETZSCHE, & IDEA OF HISTORY
Daya NegriWijaya
University of Sunderland, UK
Professional historian will agree that history is difficult to define. The word “history” is in fact used to mean different things; not only past events, but also the methods that are used to discover what they were and what has been written about them (Sturley, 1969, p.1). It is believed that history is a future in medieval European era because history is used to teach people in order to have basic understanding of their religion. Mankind compete to have many merits from god and tend to obey the rule of church as the hand of god before the judgment day to heaven and hell. In this era, religion determined all aspect of life not only the throne of kingdom but also the man’s way of thinking, such as the church believed that the world was flat and people tended to obey this rule, if they disobeyed the rule, they placed to the hell. The dogma of church had determined human consciousness. People ignored their life and felt useless. It made crowded and the church used this circumstances for their importance just like indulgences practices. The sense of humanity appeared because of this chaos. There were some great men introduced this idea to the world, both of them were Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche. They believed that human was the centre of everything and their attempt of it, called modernity (Childs, 2000, P.16).
Modern man believed that history was the human activities of past, just like Marx, he learned history to have the archetypal of the past event and predict the future. Hence, Nietzsche argued that people tend to remember and forget in the best time. He believed that people should take good things of history and did not repeat their mistakes to be better in the future. However, R.G. Collingwood (1989) & P. Gardiner (ed. 1959) have studied the idea of history from the time of Herodotus till present day but it was a little information about Marx’s perspective and Nietzsche’s idea remain unstudied. The lack of such information represents a gap in our knowledge of history idea. Although both of two men are not historian but it is so interesting to elaborate both of their Marx’s & Nietzsche’s views of history especially in term of meaning, approach, and goal of history.
This study tends to use history of ideas approach that is revealed the emergence and the end of ideas in changes (Gordon, n.d). Furthermore, the founding father of history of ideas, Arthur O. Lovejoy (1940) introduced history of ideas as unit-ideas which was explaining the stable mind and the task of historian was to explore the emergence and the end of ideas historically. The unit ideas of Lovejoy’s concept was concerned were of many varieties. In one listing he mentioned: “types of categories, thoughts concerning particular aspects of common experience, implicit or explicit presuppositions, sacred formulas and catchwords, specific philosophic theorems, or the larger hypotheses, generalizations or methodological assumptions of various sciences” (Mandelbaum, 1983, p.199). But, the unit-ideas had a critic from Quentin Skinner (1969) who argued the history of ideas should be emphasizing on cultural context in text that was the medium of ideas which was elaborated comprehensively. The author will conceive all of approaches to have a good understanding of history ideas in Marx & Nietzsche perspectives.
Karl Marx who the famous thinker from modern age was a brilliant thought of economy, politics, philosophy, and history. He proved that history was not a rival of philosophy or political science but it’s a house in which they dwell. It was the cement that holds together all the studies relating to the nature and achievement of man (Sturley, 1969, p.7). He was inspired by GWF Hegel, who was well known with the idiom of professor from the other professors, in term of dialectical and speculative history. But, he did not follow Hegel’s perspective of dialectics because in his observations, there were a lot of social beings especially capitalism and economical activities influence the consciousness of man. He was really against capitalism and tended to give solution to make prosperous society in term of communism through speculative history. He read a lot of books and learned that how the past composed the present and the future of society. He found the archetypal development of society from the ancient time which had a character of communalism to at present day with capitalism and his finding was sovereignty of economy explained the mode of production of material life influenced the process of social, political, and intellectual life. It means it is not consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness (Elley, 2003, p.63). It can be argued that Marx’s thought of history is changes and the main change is economy especially forces of production and its relations. Furthermore, Singer (2000, p.57) pointed that Marx saw history as the progress of the real nature of human beings satisfying their wants and exerting their control over nature by their productive activities.
Deeply, there are two cores theory of Marx on dialectical materialism and historical materialism. Furthermore, Sturley (1969, p.28) explained that dialectical materialism was the concept, which was derived from Hegel, explaining every idea or thesis having a clash with another idea or antithesis and out of the conflict between them a new synthesis will arise, so on. Marx criticized Hegel’s idea that it is not ideas or spirit but also the production of the means to support life which provides the key to an understanding of history. For Marxist the main motor of change under capitalism was class conflict. Such conflict was considered to be structural and endemic, a permanent and irreducible feature of social life under capitalism, based in the unavoidable antagonism of mutually incompatible, collectively organized class interests (Eley, 2003, p.66). Marx also described the stages in development of society which was influenced by forces of production or economic activity, called historical materialism; the fifth stages consisted of (1) primitive, communal society; (2) slave-owning society; (3) feudal society; (4) capitalist society; and (5) socialist, leading to a communist society, which would complete the cycle and the dialectical process (Sturley, 1969, p.29). Eley (2003, p.65) explained that in the scheme of history, human society advanced from lower to higher stages of development, demonstrating ever-greater complexity in the form of organization of economic life and making possible the eventual replacement of material scarcity by material abundance. The primary context for this thinking was the urban-industrial transformation of European society directly observed by Marx.
It can be clearly seen that the goal of history in Marx’s perspective is socialism, when the productive forces the state will be adequate to provide a good life for everyone, society will be classless, there will be no exploitation of man by man and their needs will prevail. Hence, Singer (2000, p.56) stated that Marx’s idea of the goal of world history was different from Hegel’s view. He replaced the liberation of mind by the liberation of real human beings. The development of mind through various forms of consciousness to final self-knowledge was replaced by the development of human productive forces. The way is to have a good history which can predict the future; it needs an approach to learn history effectively. Eley (2003, p.65) described two majors of Marx’s thought in approaches to history: its progressivism theory of history based on ascending base and superstructure model of social causality; and its ascription of meaningful historical change to the conflicting interests and collective agency of social classes and its sense of itself as a science of society.
First, economical structure of society was in conditioning everything else, including the possible forms of politics and law, institutional development, and of social consciousness and belief. The commonest expression for this determining relationship was the architectural language of base and superstructure (Eley, 2003, p.66). The base & superstructure is an analogy explaining particular between determinations of x (superstructure) by y (society’s relations of production). Base is not society’s most basic element but Marx refers to the totality of the relations of production, the economic structure, as society’s foundation and superstructure is everything relate to society such as class formation, ideological structure, cultural structure, law, and politics. The clearly explanation of the relationship can be described in French Revolution which marked the victory of bourgeois over the feudal. Bourgeois revolutions as the political recognition of prior changes in society’s relations of production: the new bourgeois society which rests on entirely different foundation (from feudalism to capitalism) and on a new mode of production, had to seize power for itself; it had to snatch this power from the hands those who represented the foundering society, hence Revolution (Rigby, 1987, p.180). However, Marx was not a historian but he was really success to influence modern historiography and he proposed economic history as an approach to understand the past. Economic history is one province of history concerned with the material underpinnings of human existence: how people make their livings, how food and goods are produced and distributed, and the sorts of societies, ways of life and institutions that different regime of production and consumption support or encourage (Hudson, 2003, p.223). Hudson (2003, p.225) also described that in Marxian approach to history adopts this position, as do some forms of modernization theory. Marxian studies of social, cultural, legal or other aspects of life in the past inevitably involve relating the nature of their subject and change in their subject over time, to the nature of the economy and shifts in the economic base of society. John Foster in his work of “class struggle in the industrial revolution” used the Marxian base/superstructure model to compare the nature of class consciousness in three English towns in the nineteenth century. He argued the economic stability of a more mature capitalism resting on the gains from imperialism.
Second, empiricism believing that knowledge coming from experience or historical phenomenon and concluded or called inductive mode was genuinely affecting Marx’s thought. It is true that for Marxist, Marxism is scientific studies of society. Sturley (1969, p.29) reported that they claim it because the laws of development of society can be discovered and applied to foretell its future course. In early twentieth century, it influenced the new forms of historical inquiry, called social history (Eley, 2003, p.67) or even Eric Hobsbawm as one of Marxist historian stated that Marxist history and social history should be seen as synonymous because it is Marxism that provides the best foundation for history of society (Lloyd, 1988, p.286). Commonly, social history refers to history of society or history of ordinary people and their strategies of coping with life. The scope of social history today developed over theme such as labour history, oral history, and feminist history (McLennan, 1981, p.112). In brief, Llyod (1988, p.287) pointed out that Marx’s approach to social history especially structural historical transformation contained three main elements. The first was a mechanism of transformation such as contradiction between the forces and relations of production. The second was a model of all the levels of society-economic structure, superstructure, and forms of consciousness. Moreover, this model posits the analytical primacy of the mode of material production. The third element was an underdeveloped conception of the relationship between conscious human action and objective structural history. The good sample of Marxist social history described in EP Thompson work of The Making of English Working Class. He wrote that he understood historical phenomenon by class which happened a lot human relationship and life (Howard, 2012).
The other man having the unique ideas of history is Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche was a German Philosopher and he had an impact in Germany from 1890 to 1990 especially NAZI, Hitler, as a leader of NAZI, borrowed characters of Supermen to motivate his people to beat the other. The characters above consisted of ambition to hold the power; never satisfied; want to be better than the other; and be able to create values from his self to take an optimistic life. Just like Marx or Darwin, the social background of his life was so genuinely determined by religion. Anything in life is non-sense without god in heart and this condition make him so sad. Furthermore, Stern (1978, p.49) revealed that he began his philosophy by taking issue with the cultural situation of the German Empire of 1871 that showed people had a concern with the past, supported by a powerful tradition of historical research. However, the goal history, generally, to make people happiness but Nietzsche saw that there were a lot people who had pessimistic thinking in life over his observation to society. It made him believed that abuse of history has occurred.
In brief, nihilism and aphorism are two important concept to understand Nietzsche’s thought and philosophy. Nihilism is the term of emptying the world and especially human existence of meaning, purpose, comprehensible truth, or essential value then reconstructing the new values of art not moral values. Nihilism is one concept; people know refer to Nietzsche, to make Nietzsche brave to criticize human condition and give a solution for degradation of human condition. Also, aphorism is the term to realize his condition and his thinking. It make people consider that the truth come from experience and empirical experiments. The truth will guide people to have a happy live. Hence, Tanner (2000, p.2) pointed out that Nietzsche’s thought was his reaction to the world and his society. So, his view of history was reaction to his daily and his important work on it is “nutzen und nachtel der historie fur das leben” (on the use and abuse of history for life). People can understand why he stated that learning history encouraged people to accept and refuse life.
Nietzche (2000) believed that history is all knowledge of man in the past based on his observation of people’s thinking. Hence, for him happiness was a central of human destination. He argued that both historical and unhistorical understanding was important because they led us to remember and forget something in the right time. Furthermore, He explained the way to have happiness through the ability to forget or, to express the matter in a more scholarly fashion, through the capacity, for as long as the happiness lasts, to sense things unhistorical. Anyone who cannot set himself down on the crest of the moment, forgetting everything from the past, who is not capable of standing on a single point, like a goddess of victory, without dizziness and fear, will never know what happiness is, and, even worse, he will never do anything to make other people happy. And peopleknow how to forget at the right time just as well as we remember at the right time, that we feel with powerful instinct the time when we must perceive historically and when unhistorical. This is the specific principle which the reader is invited to consider: that for the health of a single individual, a people, and a culture the unhistorical and the historical are equally essential.
Nietzsche (2010) offered three concept of history to understand the man’s view: historical man, unhistorical man, and super historical man. Firstly, unhistorical, thoroughly anti-historical-is the birthing womb not only of an unjust deed but even more of every just deed. No artist would achieve his picture, no field marshal his victory, and no people its freedom, without previously having desired and striven for them in that sort of unhistorical condition. So he is also always without knowledge. He forgets most things in order to do one thing; he is unjust towards what lies behind him and knows only one right, the right of what is to come into being now. So every active person loves his deed infinitely more than it deserves to be loved, and the best deeds happen in such a excess of love that they would certainly have to be unworthy of this love, even if their worth were otherwise incalculably great. Nietzsche (2010) who was inspired by Darwin described the concept using an analogy of the difference between human and beast:
“.....One day the man demands of the beast: “Why do you not talk to me about your happiness and only gaze at me?” The beast wants to answer, too, and say: “That comes about because I always immediately forget what I wanted to say.” But by then the beast has already forgotten this reply and remains silent, so that the man keeps on wondering about it. But he also wonders about himself, that he is not able to learn to forget and that he always hangs onto the past. No matter how far or how fast he may run, the chain runs with him. It is something amazing: the moment, in one sudden motion there, in one sudden motion gone, before nothing, afterwards nothing, nevertheless comes back again as a ghost and disturbs the tranquillity of a later moment. A leaf is continuously released from the roll of time, falls out, flutters away—and suddenly flutters back again into the man’s lap. For the man says, “I remember,” and envies the beast, which immediately forgets and sees each moment really perish, sink back in cloud and night, and vanish forever. In this way the beast lives unhistorical...”
It can be concluded that the main difference of the both is man remember the past and beast is not. It is really different with the historical man who believes the past can determine present and future.
Historical people believe that the meaning of existence will come increasingly to light in the course of its own process. Therefore, they look backwards only to understand the present by considering the previous process and to learn to desire the future more keenly. In spite of all their history, they do not understand at all how unhistorically they think and act and also how their concern with history stands, not in service to pure knowledge, but to living. Finally, super historical man isa person who assumes such a stance could feel no more temptation to continue living and to participate in history, since he would have recognized the single condition of every event, that blindness and injustice in the soul of the man of action. He himself would have been cured from now on of still taking history excessively seriously. But, he would have learned, for every person and for every experience, among the Greeks or Turks, from a moment of the first or of the nineteenth century, to answer for himself the questions how and why people lived. Anyone who asks his acquaintances whether they would like to live through the last ten or twenty years over again will easily perceive which of them has been previously educated for that super historical point of view (Nietzsche, 2010).
Richardson (n.d.) stated that however history was learned to be a wise man but most people felt suffered because misuse of history and history belongs to the great men. Being unhistorical or historical man is not important and the important one is to have happiness. People do not need moral values because it determined people to suffer in the night. People need reconstruction of values, called nihilism, and the new values to make people happy is an art.
It is not like Marx who believe that people can understand history based on materialism and basically people make their own history, Nietzsche tended to offer historical philosophizing which is the method of examining the beliefs and ideas of a given society, primarily the beliefs and ideas of its great men (Stern, 1978, p.52). Nietzsche presented his work of historical philosophizing under the title of “history of an error” explaining how the real world finally became a fable in six stages:
1. The real world attainable for the wise man, the pious man, the virtuous man—he lives in it, he is it. (Most ancient form of the idea, relatively clever, simple, convincing. Paraphrase of the proposition: ‘I, Plato, amthe truth.’)
2. The real world unattainable for now, but promised to the wise man, the pious man, the virtuous man (‘to the sinner who repents’). (Progress of the idea: it becomes more cunning, more insidious, and more incomprehensible—it becomes a woman, it becomes Christian…)
3. The real world unattainable, improvable, unprofitable, but the mere thought of it a consolation, an obligation, an imperative. (This is the old sun in the background, but seen through mist and scepticism; the idea becomes sublime, pale, Nordic.)
4. The real world—unattainable? At any rate unattained. And since unattained also unknown. Hence no consolation, redemption, and obligation either: what could something unknown oblige us to do? (Break of day. First yawn of reason. Cock-crow of positivism.)
5. The ‘real world’—an idea with no further use, no longer even an obligation—an idea become useless, superfluous, therefore a refuted idea: let us do away with it! (Broad daylight; breakfast; return of bon sense and cheerfulness; Plato’s shameful blush; din from all free spirits.)
6. The real world—we have done away with it: what world was left? The apparent one, perhaps? … But no! With the real world we have also done away with the apparent one!
Even though Marx and Nietzsche is both German philosopher in modern era, they are strikingly different ideas of history in many ways. For example the meaning of history of each idea is different. Marx claims that history is social class changing, whereas Nietzsche believes that history is all knowledge of man in the past. Another difference is in their ideas of the aims of history. Marx has a decision that learning of history can predict the future of society because their activity and thought are determined by forces of production and its relations time by time, but Nietzsche has a unique idea that people should remember and forget history in the right time to have a happy live. Another difference is in their approach of history. Marx uses economic and social history to understand the past while Nietzsche observes the past with historical philosophizing.
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