It should be noted that the "father of Russian Marxism,"
Georg Plekhanov, was a noted Spinoza scholar, who
once characterized the philosopher as "Marx without
a beard."
Spinoza became a bone of contention in the
late 1920s when the debate between dialecticians
and mechanists raged within Soviet philosophy.
Abram Deborin, who was a protege of Plekhanov,
and leader of the dialecticians, shared his mentor's
admiration of Spinoza. And he followed his mentor,
too, in holding Spinoza to have
been a materialist and a dialectician.
For Deborin, as for Plekhanov, dialectical
materialism was a kind of Spinozism.
For that very reason, many of the mechanists
were dismissive of Spinoza, who they percieved
to have been an idealist metaphysician. On
the other hand, one notable mechanist,
L.I. Akselrod (Ortodoks), who like her opponent,
Deborin, was both a professional philosopher
and protege of Plekhanov, held Spinoza in
high regard. However, she interpreted Spinoza
to have been a kind of mechanistic materialist.
See her paper, "Spinoza and Materialism"
http://www.sovlit.org/lia/Texts/LIA_Spinoza1925.pdf
Both French Marxism and French postmodernism
turned their attention towards Spinoza, beginning
in the 1960s. Louis Althusser in such writings
as *For Marx* and *Reading Capital*, suggested
that we should regard Spinoza rather than Hegel
as the true precursor of Marx.
On Mon, 31 Jul 2006 22:55:33 -0400 "robert montgomery"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> After forwarding Cornel West's op ed piece on Spinoza from the Boston
> Globe I sent as post-script a response by an Ultramontane ( Pre-
> Vatican Council) Roman Catholic priest criticizing both West and
> Spinoza. I thought that Father Hennessy's letter had the merit of
> showing that the organic intellectuals of the Right understand quite
> well the danger to reactionary thought in all its forms that Spinoza
> continues to pose. Besides ranting about introducing critical
> readings of biblical texts and undermining religious belief,
> Hennessy
> condemns Spinoza for birthing the Enlightenment, the French
> Revolution
> and modern secular godlessness in all its modernist forms (curious
> that he left out Marxism). As a Spinoza lover, I've always found it
> ironic how quickly liberals -- including Cornel West-- will rush to
> claim Spinoza's mantle on tolerance, while ignoring the materialist
> monism that underlies it. If, as Habermas says, the project of the
> Enlightenment is unfinished, it's because the bourgeoisie is
> incapable of historically realizing its emancipatory, universalist
> and
> rationalist program in action, while its liberal philosophers are
> incapable of sustaining it in thought. Hennessy may be a laughable
> crank (presumably the reason you thought I was sending spam or some
> such), but he's spot on I think, in the credit that he bestows on
> Spinoza.
> Bob Montgomery
>
>
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