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In writing abiut Jean-Paul Sartre’s attempt at reconciling Marxism with his own existentialism (substack.com/home/post/…), I noted:

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Sartre viewed orthodox Marxism as wrongheaded because of its determinism.in that regards, while Sartre was very much an atheist, he was a believer in what my friend Tom Clark would call the “little gods” associated with contra- causal free will, or as Clark would describe it:

“The naturalist view is therefore directly at odds with the widespread culturally- transmitted assumption in the West that human agents have supernatural souls with contra-causal free will. Souls are causally privileged over their surroundings, little first causes, little gods: each of us has the power to have done otherwise in the exact situation in which we didn’t do otherwise. Since this assumption expresses itself in our concepts of blame, credit, responsibility, self-worth and deservingness, to challenge it has all sorts of ramifications, personal, social and political.” (naturalism.org/philosop…).

While Tom Clark is not a Marxist, his naturalistic views concerning determinism and human agency are close to the views accepted by most orthodox Marxists.

Dec 29
at
2:08 PM

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