Although Their Vehement Followers Resist Such Comparisons, Both Marx And Freud Suggest Profound Critiques Of The Moral Surface Of Society.

Marx and Freud, though their views on human nature are vastly at odds with one another, both radically destablised the assumptions of philosophical thought by revealing the irrelevance of much philosophy to the actual lived experiences of humankind. Both ushered in major shifts in social thought and practice by revealing the practical inconsequence of rational systems of thought that fail to take account of the unsaid complexity of the human relations that make up society. As such, much moral philosophy acts as a mere surface that damagingly conceals the realities of human exploitation and aggression. Marx s historical analysis of the ways that both philosophy and our lived experiences are conditioned by the economic interests of the state leads to the conclusion that most philosophical critiques to precede his, for instance those of Kant, in fact reflect the interests of bourgeois political economy. Marx aimed to reveal the kind of prejudices that masquerade as rationality and so to revise the boundaries of economic thinking. His critique of the Left Hegelian Feuerbach goes further in illustrating that a critique of the illusions perpetuated by religion, with which Marx would have been partly sympathetic, can itself be ideologically inflected due to the fact that such writing convinces us that real change can be initiated on the level of ideas, thereby perpetuating our inaction. Marx s writing goes so far as to show us that critique itself is absolutely insufficient for social change: it attempts not merely to initiate a refutation on the level of ideas, but destruction on the level of reality. Whilst Freud seriously doubts the possibility of achieving the kind of Utopian communist society ultimately aimed at by Marx, his writings likewise revised the boundaries of thinking about the self . His psychological revelations demonstrated the ineffectuality of high-minded critique that fails to take account of the unconscious (and therefore largely uncontrollable) drives that underlie all human action: be it moral or otherwise. Marx and Freud have inspired in their harshest critics similar charges of tyrannical thought, due to the pervasive impact of their all-encompassing modes of thought, despite the fact that both thinkers profoundly dismantled the assured rational claims of societies and selves who might partake in oppressive action against others, in order that the individual may become more liberated through a broader understanding of her limitations. Marx and Freud share the conviction that theory is insufficient by itself: theory has to become practice in order to initiate change revolutionary change for Marx and psychic change, for Freud.

Both Marx and Freud dismantled the notions of the autonomous moral agent and of transcendental systems of moral thought that dominated philosophical thought during the Enlightenment. It is precisely this belief that an individual s thoughts can transcend her lived experience that was shown to be delusory by both. Marx s critique of philosophical criticism emphasises that his system of thought is not supposed merely to negate and dismantle but, on the contrary, to provide the conditions in which man can fully realise his vast potential: his thought works to expand, not to contract, the range of human experience. In the Critique of Hegel s Philosophy of Right he writes Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower Thus the criticism of heaven turns into the criticism of earth the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics (p.244-45). The implication here is that critics like Feuerbach are not aware of the direction of their thought. Feuerbach s critique of religion would lead to a dismantling of the individual s belief systems but not of the lived experience of her oppression under capitalism. Reading Feuerbach, or indeed Hegel, she would merely continue to bear that chain without consolation . Criticism needs to shift its target to politics as such and to realise that the conviction that a change in ideas can have a direct impact on lived reality is false. This passage goes so far as to imply that such criticism may do more harm than it is worth. Such moralizing does not act on society but merely reflects certain impulses within it. Similarly Marx s critique of Kantian idealism aims to expose the political motivation behind Kant s prevailing idea that we can make moral decisions autonomously: Kant... separated this theoretical expression from the interests which it expressed he made the materially motivated determinations of the will of the French bourgeois into pure self-determinations of "free will (The German Ideology). Kant s theory cannot itself be considered pure as it was not separated from the economic interests of his day: it perpetuated the idea of freedom in order to convince the reader that she was free whilst she still remained in chains . It follows that the idea of a purely self-determining individual as detached from her society s political economy is little more than a delusion.

Freud likewise stresses this disconnect between the lived capabilities of man and the high-minded dictates of moral philosophers: `the cultural super-ego does not trouble itself enough about the facts of the mental constitution of human beings. It issues a command and does not ask whether it is possible for people to obey it... it assumes that a man`s ego is psychologically capable of anything that is required of it, that his ego has unlimited mastery over his id` (Civilization and its Discontents). Again, the implication here is that the demands of the intellectual cultural super-ego may do more damage than good, by reinforcing the individual s sense of her limitations within society. In this shared sense, Freud and Marx aim to dismantle tyrannical rule-making and interpretation. For Freud, this damaging tyranny of interpretation is found in both the cultural super-ego and in the dogma of the individual s super-ego, heightened by the introjection of aggressive impulses and the death-drive. Just as Marxist thought aims to overcome the individual s alienation from the sensuous activity of labor under capitalism, so too Freudian thought aims to reacquaint the individual with a similar kind of productive sensuality her sexuality and her drives in order that she can better understand the defence-systems that stand in the way of the healthy realization of her desires and ambitions. Theory and practice are indivisible for both Marx and Freud, reflected in the mix of theoretical and empirical method adopted by both. Marx s scientific analysis of history aims to identify the individual s unhappiness in relation to the exploitation of her labor. Freud bases his findings in the evidence gleaned from his case studies, and aims to identify the fundamental sources of unhappiness in the individual, so that these can be better understood and, at least partially, overcome. In this sense Marx s elaboration of his method at the opening of The German Ideology rings true for both thinkers: Its premises are men, not in any fantastic isolation and rigidity, but in their actual, empirically perceptible process of development under definite conditions .

This sense of caution is carried through in the collaborative, inter-subjective methods expounded by both. In a further rejection of the kind of autonomous individual moral agent expounded by Kantian thinking, both Marx and Freud stressed that inter-subjectivity is the stuff of consciousness. For Freud, intellectual exchange and the erotics of collaboration (whether this be with friend, lover or analyst) drive us forward passion for the other is the medium of our development. It is only through dependence in this sense that we can survive our appetites, not through my individual submission to abstract moral laws. In this sense psychoanalysis promotes a kind of plurality through the dignity it affords to individual biography: this rests on a recognition that there are many types of human and that one moral law will not fit all. Psychoanalysis stresses the importance of dialogue and exchange as a means of checking dogma and as a way of entering into progression through continual collaboration with others. As Ernest Wallwork writes: Part of what it means for something to be a good human being, Freud assumes, is that it is found in activity. The subjective experience of love, for example, is not sufficient the value is partly in the relation in loving the other and being loved in return . Again, we can see that the emphasis on subjective rational moral deduction expounded by Kantian ethics is refuted on this view. This sense of an active process which perhaps finds its roots in Hegel is equally central to Marx s conception of history.

However Freud would clearly passionately refute Marx s teleological view of communism as the utopian goal of history. Freud held that the progression of society at large resulted in increasing unhappiness in the individual, as antagonisms always prevail where restrictions are placed on the individual s desire: the price we pay for our advance in civilization is a loss of happiness through the heightening of the sense of guilt because conscience arises through the suppression of an aggressive impulse . We are essentially antagonistic and aggressive, not communal, and society necessarily suppresses this in order to survive. This essential contradiction between the two is captured in Freud s Latin quip homo homini lupus (man is a wolf to man) as opposed to the essential view of man attributed by critics to Marx, homo faber (man the maker). Freud explicitly writes that we cannot master our natural resources in the way that Marx envisioned. In fact, we cannot even master ourselves to a very great extent: We shall never completely master nature and our bodily organism itself a part of nature, will always remain a transient structure with a limited capacity for adaptation and achievement . In a specific refutation of the Marxist view of human nature, Freud writes a real change in the relations of human beings to possessions would be of more help in this direction [toward the cessation of conflict] than any ethical demands but the recognition of this fact among socialists has been obscured and made useless for practical purposes by a fresh idealistic misconception of human nature . Freud, then, agreed with the Marxist idea that a shift in the material reality in our relationship to objects under economics would be of greater consequence than ethical demands an explicit statement of their shared disdain for the lofty demands of moral philosophy as incoherent with reality but does not agree with Marx s idealism. For Freud, only in psychoanalytic space can the individual truly come to understand the antagonisms that originate inside of her and her own contingent familial history. This is not to deny that the individual would greatly benefit by a profound social change in our relationship to labor and property, but stresses that liberation must also take place in the psyche through inter-subjective collaboration and exchange on a more intimate level than that of shared work in the communist society.

Nevertheless, Marx and Freud both profoundly reject the mind-body dualism characteristic of traditional philosophical thought. Both Marxist and psychoanalytic ways of thinking urge the individual s engagement with the processes of her own nature as human being. If it can be said that psychoanalysis never lets go it can clearly also be said that Marxism never lets go : once one begins to think in Marxist or psychoanalytic terms, it is hard to perceive moral demands in the same way: rather one begins to continually deconstruct the claims made by such thinking in order to assess in whose interests such claims are made, and the extent of the possibility of the enactment of moral demands in light of human limitation. Both approaches to intellectual thought are humbling and demystifying in this sense, and aim to dismantle tyrannical expression. For both, progress cannot be achieved without an embracing of something distinctly human: the motivating drives, for Freud need and sensuous activity for Marx. In the analysis of both of these thinkers - neither of whom can be described as `moralists` but whose writing has profound implications for moral thought - there is a tension between perceiving their ways of thought as on the one hand expansive and liberating, and on the other constraining and pervasive. This is the consequence of both Freud and Marx s means of encompassing all of human experience within their theories of human nature and the unconscious, and their shared desire to turn theory into practice. The practice of psychoanalysis still flourishes today despite the implicit suppression of its methods by state healthcare in the UK. Likewise, despite the association of Marx with the disasters of the Soviet Union, Marxist thinking is still central to economic analysis, made evident by the resurgence of Marxist criticism in light of the 2008 global economic crash. In practice, then, Freud and Marx s followers continue to operate beneath the moral surface of society, in spaces that allow critique and deconstruction of the dogma of popular moralistic, controlling discourse.