Emergentism Marxism

Originated in around 1970s, critical realism resulted from the Roy Bhaskar’s defense for the position of realism between philosophy of science and social science. It is always descirbed so far as a movement, which attacts much attention from the Left camp including many Marxists. Critical realism is methodologically against the theorizing method of inference, among which the necessity to devise a closed system would be easy to produce series of dubitable and anti-intuitive inference, and presupposes a kind of impoverished ontology. Therefore, critical realism advocates causal method of interpretation and emergentism ontology based on stratification. It focuses on the possibility of transforming the inquiry of ontology to the aspects of social nature. Emergence itself often refers to a complex phenomenon and mechanism, whose foudation of methodology and ontology make it explain the performance of natural and social system, exactly to this extent that it can be combined with Marxism.This dissertation starts with exploration of various ideas of emergence both in philosophy and science, so as to find the mothodological and ontological basis of emergence that could be used to disclose the social phenomenon. Then the interface between critical realism and Marxism would be decided and the joints of these two sides should be sought out. The interface will be demonstrated by two levels. First, both can be seen as ontology with the same philsophical property; second, the relations between them consist of the mutual influence and independence to each other. I approach to constructing emergentism Marxism from two perspectives. For one side, critical realism is interpreted as a tradition of philosophy of science, and critism to the classical empiricism. Meanwhile, I will explain the world structurally and stratificationally and discuss the emergence in realism context. It is proposed that an individual gains its new qualities or properties due to the intervention of special social relations, instead of storing its own ability and power, which are not just the products of the aggregation of interaction, but the emergent property of social orgnization. On the other hand, dialectics works as the bridge between critical realism and Marxism and the development dialectics from Hegel to classical Marxism is discussed, and another pair of ontological materialism as well. It is hold that the possible relation between critical realism and Marxism means former part could be reformed funamentally by means of conceptual analysis of dialectical materialism from the eyes of classical Marxism, while Marxism would also benefit from critical realism. Thus, the core concepts like stratification, emergence and root have become ontology of facts. In Creaven’s words, it is not as replacing depth realism with dialectical materialism or the reverse direction, rather the combination of the best factors of both sides, from which a new theory would result.I argue that the theoretical effects of emergentism Marxism could be summarized from different levels. Firstly, the dispute between Marxist and realist could be properly dissolved, which concerntrates on the status of Marxism as realist science. Second, emergentism Marxism as a social theory of realism can provide a possible solution to the long and continuing debate between structure and agency, voluntarism and determinism. Third, emergentism Marxism as a new theory has more flexible tension by joining the key factors of critical realism and Marxism. However, Marxism in the political field could be considered during constructing the new theory since the classical marxism is originated from the specific political struggles.