Marxism and Other Western Fallacies: An Islamic Critique by Ali Shari'ati

Author:Ali Shari'ati [Shari'ati, Ali]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BookBaby
Published: 2015-06-24T18:30:00+00:00

We see that what many writers, including large numbers of communists, have attacked as the “Stalinist economy” was based on the policies of Lenin. It must be added that Lenin was thus realizing the scheme Marx and Engels had proclaimed as the method for constructing the ideal society!

How is it that “justice and equality” as a principle of social relations becomes, in Marxism, entirely conditional upon elements borrowed from the capitalist system, culture, and Western morals, to wit: (1) mechanism, (2) techno-bureaucracy, (3) acquisitiveness, (4) economic competition, and (5) the individual profit motive? At last, the ultimate goal comes into sight: the greatest possible degree of material prosperity.

The question naturally arises, So what is the fundamental difference in philosophy of life between Marxism and the bourgeoisie? After all, the difference between the two theses “Capital will be at the disposal of a single class” and “Capital will be at the disposal of the state” is the difference between two systems, not that between two philosophies or two different conceptions of life, humanity, moral values, or the universe.

Accordingly, if we infer that, from the standpoint of outlook as well, Marxism shares the bourgeois world-view, anthropology, and morals, and that inasmuch as it appeared in a Western bourgeois cultural setting (the inevitable product of the infrastructure of its age), it shares the intellectual content, spirit, and object in life of its adversary the bourgeoisie, have we judged it unfairly?

Not at all! As Marx fully accepts, the Western bourgeoisie comprises not merely an economic system, but likewise a particular spirit, outlook, anthropology, philosophy of life, and morality. Through these, in which all spiritual motives are dismissed in favor of the dominion of base material life over all the higher qualities of humanity, it addresses man as a being who will work, deceive, and wage war all the more in order to eat all the more.

Therefore, as Professor Grimbert says, “Isn’t it true that Marxism is trying its utmost to build a totally embourgeoise society?” That is to say, the difference between Marxism and the Western bourgeoisie lies in the fact that one promotes a bourgeois class, and the other a bourgeois society.

Saint-Simon, founder of the “religion of industrialism,” divides society into two classes: the industrial class, which has a role in production and is composed of workers, engineers, capitalists, and factory workers; and the class of parasites, composed of consumers uninvolved in production, such as intellectuals, writers, artists, clergy, philosophers, heroes, statesmen, athletes, soldiers, and so forth. This outlook, exemplifying the utmost in worship of production and even placing worker and capitalist in a single class (one disposed against the spiritual and cultural forces of society, at that), despite its apparent opposition to the outlook of Marx from the standpoint of sociology, resembles it in the essence of its philosophy, its approach to man.

In Communist China, we know, the very small steel blast furnaces set up in the villages have come to be regarded as symbols of the revolution and designated “the People’s Sacred Blast Furnaces.

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