Articles

The Orient, Marxism, and Marginalism: A Stranger’s Notes

Vostok/Oriens '2018, №1

DOI: 10.7868/S0869190818010016

 
The bicentenary anniversary of Karl Marx (1818–1883), the famous philosopher and economist, gives a chance to re-examine his theory. Despite current intellectual Western and Russian mainstream denying the value of Marxism, China makes use of Marx’s legacy and achieves major economic advantages. Marxism as a theory of history and society, i.e. as historical materialism, obviously helps better understanding of current world trends. Current and most advanced technologies make people much more consumers of goods, than their producers. Automation and robotization force humans out of immediate production. The humans, therefore, lack their own nature as producers, or Homo faber, and turn marginal. Artificial intelligence seems much stronger than natural intelligence. Control over artificial intelligence seems highly unlikely. The marginal nature of the majority of the humans intensifies the searches for identity and clashes of various identities. Struggle for resources and polarisation of main international actors causes the dawn of the new global war. Marginalisation of the humankind signifies the transition to the new socio-economic formation, or marginalism. Religious and/or ethnic conflicts in Asia and Africa are caused by economic factor that is struggle for limited resources in certain places and times. Asian and African societies have their class structures. The ruling class in many of these countries is bureaucracy. The ruled is the class of citizens. These classes share the consumer nature and marginality but in a various degree. Bureaucracy is a non-producing class by definition. It is a totally, essentially consuming class. Its members may be marginal but not all of them. On the contrary, citizens include producers, not only consumers. But in general this class tends to form marginal. Its members-producers form a minority in the age of robotics and automation. Citizens-consumers tend to lack their internally human essence as producers and creators.

Keywords: automation, robotization, marginal, marginalisation, social classes, global war, alienation

Pages: С. 6–12