whts the difference between rousseau and marx?????????

Rousseau saw a fundamental divide between society and human nature. Rousseau contended that man was neither inherently good nor bad when in the state of nature (the state of all other animals, and the condition humankind was in before the creation of civilization and society), but is corrupted by society.

In Rousseau’s philosophy, society’s negative influence on men centers on its transformation of amour de soi, a positive self-love, into amour-propre, or pride. Amour de soi represents the instinctive human desire for self-preservation, combined with the human power of reason. In contrast, amour-propre is artificial and forces man to compare himself to others, thus creating unwarranted fear and allowing men to take pleasure in the pain or weakness of others.

Perhaps Rousseau’s most important work is The Social Contract, which outlines the basis for a legitimate political order. Published in 1762, it became one of the most influential works of political philosophy in the Western tradition. It developed some of the ideas mentioned in an earlier work, the article Economie Politique, featured in Diderot’s Encyclopédie. The treatise begins with the dramatic opening lines, “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. One man thinks himself the master of others, but remains more of a slave than they are.” Rousseau claimed that the state of nature was a primitive condition without law or morality, which human beings left for the benefits and necessity of cooperation. As society developed, division of labour and private property required the human race to adopt institutions of law. In the degenerate phase of society, man is prone to be in frequent competition with his fellow men while at the same time becoming increasingly dependent on them. This double pressure threatens both his survival and his freedom. According to Rousseau, by joining together through the social contract and abandoning their claims of natural right, individuals can both preserve themselves and remain free. This is because submission to the authority of the general will of the people as a whole guarantees individuals against being subordinated to the wills of others and also ensures that they obey themselves because they are, collectively, the authors of the law.

Rousseau was one of the first modern writers to seriously attack the institution of private property, and therefore is sometimes considered a forebear of modern socialism and communism (see Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx, though Marx rarely mentions Rousseau in his writings). Rousseau also questioned the assumption that majority will is always correct. He argued that the goal of government should be to secure freedom, equality, and justice for all within the state, regardless of the will of the majority (see democracy).

Marx addressed a wide range of political as well as social issues; he is most famous for his analysis of history, summed up in the opening line of the Communist Manifesto (1848): “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”. Marx believed that capitalism will be displaced by communism – a classless society after a transitional period called Dictatorship of the Proletariat

Marxists use the phrase “existence precedes consciousness.” — social context takes precedence over innate behavior;

Marx began with a Hegelian notion of alienation but developed a more materialist conception. For Marx, the possibility that one may give up ownership of one’s own labor — one’s capacity to transform the world — is tantamount to being alienated from one’s own nature; it is a spiritual loss. Marx described this loss in terms of commodity fetishism, in which the things that people produce, commodities, appear to have a life and movement of their own to which humans and their behavior merely adapt. This disguises the fact that the exchange and circulation of commodities really are the product and reflection of social relationships among people.

Commodity fetishism is an example of what Engels called false consciousness, which is closely related to the understanding of ideology. By ideology they meant ideas that reflect the interests of a particular class at a particular time in history, but which are presented as universal and eternal. Marx and Engels’ point was not only that such beliefs are at best half-truths; they serve an important political function. Put another way, the control that one class exercises over the means of production includes not only the production of food or manufactured goods; it includes the production of ideas as well (this provides one possible explanation for why members of a subordinate class may hold ideas contrary to their own interests). Thus, while such ideas may be false, they also reveal in coded form some truth about political relations.

A reading of these two works by Rousseau and Marx in rapid succession gives the impression, initially, that there is little in common between the thought expressed in each. Rousseau’s work, stylistically more literary, is a response to condition in a Europe which was very different from the Europe of Marx 80 years later. He seeks a solution to the evils of society in terms of a metaphysical abstraction that bears many of the absolutist characteristics of the societies that he condemns. Marx, on the other hand, ostensibly eschews abstractions and deals with empirical realities, both in diagnosing the disease of society and in pronouncing the inevitable cure. A concept such as the ‘general will’ is rejected by Marx as a meaningless abstraction developed only as a vehicle for the ‘ruling ideas of a ruling class’ at a particular moment in history. Rousseau, basically pessimistic, can imagine his idea society occurring only in a limited set of circumstances, if at all. The optimism of Marx finds expression in the inevitability of the communist society on a world-wide basis.

Marx And Rousseau

Among the many: Marx saw the structure of reality in economic-productive relations, Rousseau didn’t.

Consider, however that Marx was an attentive reader of Rousseau.

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An interesting point to drive home is the fundamental concepts of private property that each man held. While not the same, the basis of each man’s beliefs on private property descended from a more negative view of private property (and has been called Nietzsche’ian).(1) While running parallel to a degree, they do diverge quite a bit when you reflect on their concepts of metaphysics and religion(2). You can then point to the similarities and divergence in their ideas of the ideal society. I don’t believe Rousseau held the same ideal of utopianism that Marx held in their similar social theories.

Marx was taller and had facial hair.