Spinoza And The Intrinsic Nature Of Marx's Thought

Contemporary Marxism since Althusser has been profoundly reinterpreting Spinoza. What accompany this in practice are the revolutionary storms in the 60s and 70s and their dissipation, the collapse of the socialist camp and the maturity of global capital-ism. In theory, Deleuze, also a radical thinker, originally portrayed a Spinoza full of vitality; the Straussian school explored with great influence Spinoza's esoteric teach-ings; many ecologists value Spinoza's concept of nature. As Hardt and Negri have published the Empire trilogy, the resurrection of Spinoza is becoming increasingly significant.This thesis studies Spinoza's and Marx's thoughts of immanence, with Kant's and Hegel's respective understandings of immanence as the main theoretical opponents. For Kant, the relation between immanence and transcendence is the same as that be-tween theory and practice, knowledge and belief. Through immanence alone, we can-not understand how it is possible for us to be involved with things in themselves but only reduce freedom, which we always have, to necessity and rationality. Hegel is right to point out that transcendence is not the beyond of immanence but a moment of the self-development of immanence. Dialectic is characterized by immanent critique and immanent transcendence. From the perspective of political economy, the Kantian understanding accords with mercantilism, while Hegel grasps the logic of incessant self-revolutionizing of capitalism. Revolution theories in Marx and Marxism advance Hegel's dialectic.There is no dialectic in Spinoza, who insists on mere immanence:there exists no un-moved mover outside the mutual relations of all things, and God's power is no other than natural forces. Spinoza differs from mechanical materialists in that he does not consider the order of things constant, much less consider reason able to grasp this or-der thoroughly. The paradox is that Spinoza, though fully aware of the limitation of reason, never appeals to transcendent things or immanent transcendence but attempts to radically eliminate irrationality from theory. To think irrationality is, in Althusser's words, a theoreticist mistake and escapes practice in the name of practice.The first chapter of this thesis depicts Spinoza's materialism. The first section is de-structive. It investigates the progress from Theological-Political Treatise to Political Treatise and discusses how Spinoza rejects the transcendent semblance of the state and war. The second chapter analyzes Spinoza's theory of knowledge and exhibits how to think ideas and systems of ideas in a materialist way. The second chapter ar- gues that Spinoza can barely think revolution due to the lack of dialectic, and Hegel can provide theoretical weapons for revolution. Spinoza's concept of substance con-fronts Hegel's historical teleology in the first section, and the struggle in the second section is between Spinoza's concept of mode and Hegel's concept of civil society. Marx and Marxism occur variously in both chapters.The third chapter analyzes Marx's two important couples of concepts:ideology and relations of production, and political revolution and social evolution. Both couples are paradoxical. Marx, though fully aware of the independence and originality of ideolo-gies, insists on analyzing relations of production and necessary contradictions of capi-talism in a rational and accurate way. As a firm advocate of revolution, Marx believes that the class society will end with the dictatorship of the proletariat and the self-elimination of the proletariat, and hence social revolutions will no longer be political revolutions. Spinoza's thought of immanence can allow us to think the complexity of these concepts.Revolution must be understood as dialectical immanent transcendence and perhaps even as Kantian transcendence. For Marx, however, the true significance of revolu-tions does not lie in immediate gains. Only through revolutions can we eliminate transcendent fantasies, learn to attend to our own material interests, and attempt to obtain the power of administrating production collectively.