Soviet Spinoza

1
Andrey Maidansky, Aleksanteri Institute Visiting
Fellow, 2012
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Spinozas substance isthe metaphysically
disguised nature as separated from man (Die
helige Familie, 1845).
Karl Marx
Georgy Plekhanov So in your opinion old
Spinoza was right in saying that thought and
extension were nothing but two attributes of one
and the same substance? Of course, answered
Engels, old Spinoza was quite right.
The modern materialism is nothing other than
more or less self-aware Spinozism. The
materialism of Marx and Engels was a kind of
Spinozism.
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Mechanists vs. Dialecticians (the 1920s)
Lubov Akselrod Spinoza transferred his
religious feeling onto the world order. What an
absurdity it is to assert that, in Spinoza,
Substance is matter. Spinozas teaching, in
its basic principles, appears to be a motionless
and irreparable parallelism.
If Plekhanov offered to revise Spinoza in the
materialistic spirit, then Abram Deborin tried
to provethat Spinoza actually was a materialist,
disguised himself in the theological clothes.
Marxism is a Neo-Spinozism of the XX
century (Ivan Luppol).
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Vasily Sokolov vs. Evald Ilyenkov(since the
1950s)
Spinoza is a convinced materialist with a most
strong aspiration for dialectics. Thought is
only a property, a predicate, an attribute of
body. Res cogitans (thinking thing)
thinking body.
Spinoza was unable to advance theconsistently
materialistical point ofview on Nature.
Pantheistic form of Spinozas materialism is
an effect of insufficient maturityof the
bourgeois ideology.
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FATALISM
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FREEDOM
Valentin Asmus Spinoza himself decidedly
rejected all fatalistic interpretations of his
doctrine. This teaching is imbued not with
metaphysical abstractness, but with the leaving
breath of practice and activity.
To be free means to act reasonably (ex ratione
agere), i.e. to do those things which follow
from the necessity of our nature, considered in
itself alone. (Ethica IV, propositio 59,
demonstratio)
Spinozism is the philosophy of Action, from head
to toe.
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The more active is man, the more external
counteracting things are involved in his
activity, subjecting him to reciprocal effects
of them, the higher is degree of his freedom.
(Evald Ilyenkov). Freedom is acting in
accordance with the universal laws of Nature.
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Cultural Historical School in psychology
Using the human, cultural means to regulate its
own behaviour, man makes it free. The degree of
our freedom is characterised by the power and
extent of the internal, immanent determination of
human activity.
Lev Vygotsky We cannot help but note that we
have come to the same understanding of freedom
and dominance over self as Spinoza developed in
his Ethics.
To revive Spinozism in Marxist psychology (L.S.
Vygotsky).
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Political life
is a clash of active affects and passions,
confrontation of forces of solidarity and
hostility.
Tractatus politicus Insofar as they are
assailed by anger, envy, or any affects of
hatred, people are, by nature, enemies.
Ethica All should so agree in all things that
the Minds and Bodies of all would compose, as
it were, one Mind and one Body.
Empedokles Cosmos is moved by Love and Strife
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Spinoza as Marx without a beard
Lubov Akselrod Spinoza builds all his state
legislation proceeding from the material
interests... If to translate it into the Marxist
language, it means that legal awareness of the
individual is determined by economic being .
Isaak Razumovsky Let us translate the ideas of
Spinoza into the language of historical
materialism. And we get the elements of the
teaching about adaptation of the social man to
external environment and to work tools the
elements of theory about thingish and commodity
fetishism finally, the elements of the realistic
teaching of Marx about the tasks which emerge and
is posed only when the material conditions of
their implementation become mature .
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Spinoza vs. Marx

• Spinoza looks at society mainly through the eyes
  of a psychologist, and Marx through the eyes of
  an economist.
• Social life, for Spinoza, is a struggle of
  affects, while for Marx, it is a struggle
  between classes, or material interests.
• Spinoza completely abstracts from class
  distinctions.He analyses two oppositions
  rulers vs. people, and crowd vs. philosophers.
• In Spinoza there is no cornerstone of the
  materialist understanding of history, the
  concept of labour.And the very concept of
  history is not fully crystallised.

Achilles heel of Spinozism is an abstract man,
considered outside the historical process
(Valentin Asmus).
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Qui bono?
Mechanists Dialecticians Spinoza
expressed the class interests of the bourgeoisie.
Anatoly Lunacharsky Materialism and rationalism
are two main principles of the bourgeois world,
having founded the brilliant embodiment in
Spinozas system. But the bourgeoisie dared not
drive these principles to their logical
conclusion. Spinoza remained in solitude he
appeared to be practically an outcast of his
class. Proletariat was, thus, destined to master
and develop the revolutionary ideas of Spinoza.
Spinoza as a weapon of the proletariat
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Vasily Sokolov Denying the Calvinist morality
of accumulation, Spinoza evolves the passively
moralising critique of contemporary bourgeois
society.
Evald Ilyenkov Ethics is a codeof moral
axiomatics of working class, and in no way of the
class of dealers, hucksters and bankers. Hence
its sincere democratic character.