More on Tolerance: Putting Words in Marx’ Mouth
IN a previous post I argued that the concept of “tolerance”, despite its obvious usefulness, is nothing more than a transition idea that we need to surpass in order to build more stable foundations for a truly globalized, multicultural and plural world. As I mentioned back then, the social equilibrium built around the idea of tolerance is weak by nature and can easily brake (if it hasn’t already). Here I want to dig deeper in the subject by borrowing — and interpreting in a personal way — some arguments from Karl Marx and applying them to our current situation.
The lessons of Marx’ critique on tolerance are nowadays more pertinent than ever and help us understand, from a philosophical perspective, the limitations of Political Liberalism. I don’t pretend to argue that Marx was a postmodern nor that his critique was elaborated from a postmodern perspective; I simply pretend to use some of the arguments he used in other contexts and with other objectives to defend my own thesis of the overcoming of tolerance and to familiarize my readers with the notion of “emancipation”.
In On the Jewish question Marx elaborates a demolishing critique of the ideas of Bruno Bauer — a contemporary philosopher of Marx — in reference to the problem of Jews’ freedom to profess their religion in Germany, an eminently catholic State in 1844, time at which the controversy between both authors took place. During those years German Jews arrogated for the right to be “politically emancipated”, namely, the right to be treated equally in political terms in spite of their differences of cult with the ruling Christian majority. The answer that Bauer gave to this issue was that in Germany nobody was emancipated politically (not even Catholics) since the German State was itself religious, and so religion needed to be abolished and the German State needed to be transformed into a secular one.
Marx’ critique to Bauer points-out that achieving political emancipation by eradicating religion from the political sphere would only relocate it as a private issue. To stress his point, Marx uses the example of the United States of America. According to Marx, the United States was a politically emancipated society because “the State ceased to adopt a theological attitude towards religion and it behaves towards religion as a state — i.e., politically.”[1] What Marx realized (and the historical example of the United States was key in this realization) was that political emancipation can in fact coexist with religion, something that Bruno Bauer wasn’t able to understand. For Bauer, the abolition of religion was a necessary precondition for political emancipation. On the other hand, Marx observed that political emancipation was achievable through Political Liberalism, meaning, through a separation of the political sphere and the private sphere of men: “the State as a State emancipates itself from religion by emancipating itself from the State religion — that is to say, by the state as a State not professing any religion, but, on the contrary, asserting itself as a State.”[2]
Political emancipation not only doesn’t need the abolition of religion but on the contrary, it sets the preconditions for religion to flourish thanks to the establishment of tolerance vis-à-vis the private life of men. Once again, Marx noticed this phenomenon in the concrete example of the United States, a country that despite being politically emancipated was also “pre-eminently the country of religiosity, as Beaumont, Tocqueville, and the Englishman Hamilton unanimously assure us.”[3]
For Marx, political emancipation was not enough. It’s true that in liberal societies we achieve political freedom as citizens but what Marx brilliantly saw was that at the same time we remain slaved to our own superstitions; superstitions that now bloom freely in our private life, safeguarded fearlessly by everyone’s right to be tolerated. In the words of the German philosopher, “the limits of political emancipation are evident at once from the fact that the State can free itself from a restriction without man being really free from this restriction, that the state can be a free state without man being a free man.”[4] With political emancipation and tolerance we gained the right to be treated as citizens, as equal participants of the rights set in place by the sovereign State. As citizens, our social status, race, sex and religious beliefs don’t count, the only thing that matters is that we accept the terms of the social contract and respect the law. However, in order to obtain this political freedom, we need to dissect the life of men between its immaterial political existence and its real life, “all the preconditions of this egoistic life continue to exist in civil society outside the sphere of the State, but as qualities of civil society.”[5]
Marx’s attack to the notion of political emancipation is still as pertinent today as it was before, as the notion of tolerance we deal with is, in its core, the same one we have since the Enlightenment but applied to a broader scope of human activities other than religion. The contradiction detected by Marx in the notion of religious tolerance remains intact in our modern democratic societies: sexual inclinations, prejudices, moral convictions and everything else that constitutes our world-view, is declared a non-political difference and therefore must be tolerated as long as the bearer complies with his civil duties. The problem is then displaced from the public arena to the private arena, where, for instance, hate and rejection to homosexuals, blacks and atheists remains unquestioned as long as I keep it to myself and comply with my citizen duties.
Marx concedes — and I agree with him — that political emancipation is an important step in human development; “Political emancipation is, of course, a big step forward. True, it is not the final form of human emancipation in general, but it is the final form of human emancipation within the hitherto existing world order.”[6] Nevertheless, this emancipation falls short as it produces a dislocation between political freedom and private alienation; in Marx words “political emancipation is the reduction of man, on the one hand, to a member of civil society, to an egoistic, independent individual, and, on the other hand, to a citizen, a juridical person.”[7]
In a previous post I mentioned how John Rawls’ version of Political Liberalism divides men between their public and private lives in order to establish a pacific multicultural society. This dissection was identified by Marx even before Political Liberalism reached the elaborated philosophical development we have in Rawls’ version; according to Marx: “where the political state has attained its true development, man — not only in thought, in consciousness, but in reality, in life — leads a twofold life, a heavenly and an earthly life: life in the political community, in which he considers himself a communal being, and life in civil society, in which he acts as a private individual, regards other men as a means, degrades himself into a means, and becomes the plaything of alien powers.”[8]
How can it be explained that Political Liberalism produces politically free men that are at the same time slaves? Marx saw the answer to this question when he noted that Bruno Bauer confused political emancipation with human emancipation (same as Political Liberalism does today). Bauer identified freedom with political freedom and he “does not investigate the relation of political emancipation to human emancipation and, therefore, puts forward conditions which can be explained only by uncritical confusion of political emancipation with general human emancipation.” Marx saw in the North American society a politically emancipated society that thanks to tolerance enabled religious freedom, and what we see today is the same structure but one where tolerance keeps expanding to every aspect of human life constituting and fortifying what we know as “freedom of conscience.” But Marx wasn’t impressed for the same reason we shouldn’t be: political emancipation and subsequent freedom of conscience is not the last step in the journey for human freedom. In simple terms, freedom of conscience, full liberty to do and believe what I want as long as I comply with the institutional framework of society, is at the same time a “carte-blanche” to remain slaved to my own beliefs. Where Political Liberalism theorists saw the ultimate degree of freedom, as I am free to do and believe what I want, Marx saw nothing more than alienation as we secure our private right to hold on to our beliefs without even discussing them. What Marx saw then is what we, postmoderns, still see; to be free is more than securing our right to believe.
The current solidification of the concept of tolerance as the cornerstone of our social order is, despite its practicality, a capitulation to any possibility of reaching a higher level of emancipation, a real human emancipation as Marx calls it. Men gain their political freedom at the expense of a perpetual alienation of their private life. There, men are tied up to their own world-view; they are slaved to it as they perceive it as true (in a metaphysical sense of the word), as if it was part of their own essence. In this sense, Political Liberalism has a modern conception of men: the man they talk about is one that has not yet acquired an interpretative consciousness of life, or in other words, is not yet a postmodern man. The man for whom Rawls is trying to establish a peaceful multicultural society is one that has not managed to emancipate itself from its own beliefs, forcing philosophy to create a secure place where he can hold its metaphysical beliefs. The combination of political freedom and tolerance guarantees this space that we call “freedom of conscience” where we can freely slave ourselves to our own beliefs without even needing to discuss them with others. Hence the biggest paradox of our time was born: where we thought we had achieved the highest level of freedom we only secured beliefs a place to slave us.
[1] Marx, 1987:467
[2] Marx, 1987, 468
[3] Marx, 1987:467
[4] Marx, 1987:468
[5] Marx 1987:470
[6] Marx, 1987:471
[7] Marx 1987:470
[8] Marx, 1987:470
