thoughts and impression

Before I had a chance to learn more about Marxism, to me it was just a simple theory about non-possession, non-division between classes which has been proved to be a failure in a real life. I saw many of the communist countries suffer financially despite of their idea that seemed to be perfect in many ways, while some of them actually began to rapidly grow economically after they abandoned their old way of governing their countries and changed to that of capitalism. Marxism was then, plainly an idea too perfect to be realized.

Now that I have become more familiar with Marxist theory, I found it a lot more complex and interesting. The fact that Marx had considered the notion of economics as the fundamental and absolute foundation of all kinds of social interactions between people, between classes, was certainly interesting to me. This purely mechanical idea further explained struggles between classes, in terms of what was to be the basic cause and motif of that. Since people were basically governed with the idea of meeting their economic interests, exploitation of one class over another was inevitable in this sense. His idea about religion that it is merely a reflection of human weakness seemed to convey further the practical aspect of his theories. My puzzlement toward many of the governing system in communist countries now became clearer to me, and I certainly felt the power of ideology once again.

After reading theories of Gramsci and Williams, I was able to notice some of the possible reasons to explain failure of Marxist concept. In his article, Gramsci was concerned to eliminate Marx’s idea of “economic determinism” and tried to provide link between class structure and the way power influenced people’s idea in general. His idea of hegemony widened the view of Marxism into more logical one, possibly reducing what seemed to be less logical to be realized. Williams’ idea about how Marxism had errors even from the very beginning of the formation also allowed me to see some of the contradictions within the idea itself, as in “This confusion is the source of the naïve reduction, in much subsequent Marxist thinking, of consciousness, imagination, art, and ideas to ‘reflexes,’ ‘echoes’…”

I always had an impression that Marxist thinking was certainly one of the powerful theories in the world of ideas, but it was remarkable to see, after I got to learn more about the details within the idea itself, that such an idea too, when dissected and analyzed, was filled with errors and confusions despite of its crucial impact that had on people for so long a time.