Communist Answer Martin\'s \"Four Subsidiary Philosophical Questions\"

¶ … communist answer Martin's "Four Subsidiary Philosophical Questions" -- ontological, epistemological, axiological, teleological questions? You find questions Chapter 1 Martin text, Presentation Module 1.

Communism: Four subsidiary philosophical questions

Although the 'four subsidiary philosophical questions' are often applied to religious systems of thinking, they can also be applied to secular worldviews such as Marxism. The ontological starting point of Marxism, or the question of 'who am I' is that every individual is fundamentally a material being, defined by his or her economic status. The world is divided into the 'haves' and the 'have-nots,' who are engaged in a perpetual struggle over the world's scarce resources. Although ideologies such as religion or nationalism may be used to mask the importance of economics, historical circumstances -- and therefore the nature of humanity -- are primarily defined by material possessions. People are defined by their class. Similarly, the epistemological questions of how does one 'know,' for example, how does one 'know' the difference between rationality and irrationality is defined by the question of who owns the means of production (the bourgeois) and who is alienated from the means of production (the proletariat).

The axiological question of what is good, or what is the truth, is answered by the contention that the dialectic of history, the eternal class struggle, must be ended. Good is defined as a state of social equality, where property is owned in common, and allocated based upon the needs of various individuals, not upon their arbitrary ownership of property or class status. The truth is that human beings must realize that they are living in a state of oppression (or are members of an oppressive class) and must fight to create a fundamentally equal society, which Marx defined as a dictatorship of the proletariat. A fundamental component of the Marxist conception of 'truth' is that religion is the so-called 'opiate of the people,' lulling them into a state of complacency about the inequalities they are living under with promises of the life to come. This is what is meant by the notion that communism is a vision of 'man without God' (Chambers 1987).