The Challenge Of Marx's To The Tradition Of Western Political Thought

Towering over the work of Hannah Arendt is the figure of Karl Marx. During the reflective process towards Stalin's totalitarianism, Arendt begins to focus on the ideas of Marx, and examines the relationship between Marx and the tradition of western Political thought. The paper analyses based on the social background of Arendt's political philosophy, theoretical origin and the causes of turning to the study of Marx, choosing the Arendt's critical analysis of Marx's political philosophy as the main concern.Arendt starts to dicuss the challenge of Marx's towards the tradition of western Political thought. She first define a relationship position between Marx and the western political tradition overall. She believes Marx's political philosophy that originated from the tradition of western Political thought, adapts to the needs of the times and challenged the tradition of western Political thought. However, Marx uses the traditional areas to subvert the traditional so that the subversion of the traditional with the lack of thoroughness. Although Marx envisioned the future of society and very similar to the classical Greek city-states, he did not truly return to the previous period's political tradition of Plato. Arendt focus on three propositions which uphold Marx's political philosophy—"labor created man himself, "Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one" and "the man who domain others can not expected to get freedom". then she analyses Marx's political philosophy from the three aspects:the concept of labor, the theory of violent revolutionary and freedom of view. In view of the labor, Arendt believes that Marx, like other philosophers in the past, did not distinguish between labor and work, thus he failed to transcend the traditional framework of western political thought. Starting from this point, Arendt brings forward her theory of the human conditions:labor, work and action. Marx treats labor as the most basic activity of human being, and argues that establishing the communist society based on public ownership from the contradiction between the social large-scale production and the private property. so he subverted the traditional political philosophy that is building on the separating between personal realm and public field. While Hannah Arendt argued that labor will always be in personal realm, only the actions in the public field is the free movement of people that can reflect the essence of the man; As far as the threat of violence in modern society towards human being, Arendt criticizes the ideas of Marx's violent revolution and believes that it does not transcend the tradition that considered the politics as the working, she regard the speech as the main communication tool for legitimacy in the public field; Through the analysis towards Marx's theory of freedom, Arendt points out that, Since Marx tend to abolish private property, remove personal domain, so his freedom realm is only a Utopia fantasy, She sought the basis of capitalist private ownership, revitalize and revive the public sphere of the ancient city-state and regress to the political idea before Plato.Even though Arendt has many misrepresents and critiques towards Marx's political philosophy, but Marx's political philosophy has been a role of frame of reference during the formation of Arendt's political philosophy, her interpretation give us hints to explore the new turning points for enhancing Marx's political philosophy in the new historical environment. Her criticism to totalitarianism, the prevailing of western consumerism in the 20th century, criticism to political apathy as well as the appealing to active participation of the citizen in public political life, all of these have a certain rationality and reference value for us.