A) MARXISM

(Concept of Class)

It is important to recognize that Marx viewed the structure of society in relation to its major
classes, and the struggle between them as the engine of change in this structure. The structure
itself was a derivative of and ingredient in the struggle of classes. His was a conflict view of
modern (nineteenth century) society.

The key to understanding Marx is his class definition. A class is defined by the ownership of
property. Such ownership vests a person with the power to exclude others from the property and
to use it for personal purposes. In relation to property there are three great classes of society: the
bourgeoisie (who own the means of production such as machinery and factory buildings, and
whose source of income is profit), landowners (whose income is rent), and the proletariat (who
own their labor and sell it for a wage).

At first, the interests associated with land ownership and rent are different from those of the
bourgeoisie. But as society matures, capital (or the means of production) and land ownership
merge, as do the interests of landowners and bourgeoisie. Finally the relation of production, the
natural opposition between proletariat and bourgeoisie, determines all other activities.

The distribution of political power is determined by power over production (or the capital).
Capital confers political power, which the bourgeois class uses to legitimatize and protect their
property and consequent social relations. Class relations are political, and in the mature capitalist
society, the state's business is that of the bourgeoisie. Moreover, the intellectual basis of state
rule, the ideas justifying the use of state power and its distribution, are those of the ruling class.
The intellectual-social culture is merely a superstructure resting on the relation of production, on
ownership of the means of production.

Marx claimed that finally, the division between classes will widen and the condition of the
exploited worker will deteriorate so badly that social structure collapses: the class struggle is
transformed into a proletarian revolution. The workers' triumph will eliminate the basis of class
division in property through public ownership of the means of production. With the basis of
classes thus wiped away, a classless society will ensue (by definition), and since political power
to protect the bourgeoisie against the workers is unnecessary, political authority and the state will
wither away.

BASE AND SUPERSTRUCTURE

Base and superstructure designate the social relations of a historically determined society as a
total system in which the material relations represent the real base, the foundation of society, and
the political and ideological relations represent the superstructure, which rises upon the given
base and is determined by it. The base of a society is the totality of the historically determined
relations of production. The superstructure is the totality of the ideological relations, views, and
institutions; it includes law and the state, as well as morality, religion, philosophy, art, and the
political and legal forms of consciousness and the institutions corresponding to them. “In the
social production which people carry on,” Marx wrote, “they enter into relations that are defined,
indispensable, and independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a
definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations
of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real base, on which rise legal and
political superstructures and to which correspond defined forms of social consciousness” (K.
Marx and F. Engels, Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 13, pp. 6–7).

Also read: “KARL MARX: A CRITICAL PROFILE by Robert M. Seiler

(http://people.ucalgary.ca/~rseiler/marxpro.htm)

B) Social Darwinism:
 This theory states that individuals, groups, and people are subject to the same Darwinian
laws of natural selection as plants and animals. Social Darwinism was advocated by
Herbert Spencer and others in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and was used to
justify political conservatism, imperialism, and racism and to discourage intervention and
reform. (From: Online Oxford Dictionary)
 An early and now largely discredited view of social evolution emphasizing the
importance of "survival of the fittest" or struggle between individuals, groups, or
societies as the motor of development. Social Darwinism became widely popular and was
often used to justify existing inequalities. (The Social Science Dictionary)

C) Freudian Theories

The Theory of the Unconscious: Freud’s theory of the unconscious is highly deterministic—a
fact which, given the nature of nineteenth century science, should not be surprising. Freud was
arguably the first thinker to apply deterministic principles systematically to the sphere of the
mental, and to hold that the broad spectrum of human behavior is explicable only in terms of the
(usually hidden) mental processes or states which determine it. Thus, instead of treating the
behavior of the neurotic as being causally inexplicable—which had been the prevailing approach
for centuries—Freud insisted, on the contrary, on treating it as behavior for which it is
meaningful to seek an explanation by searching for causes in terms of the mental states of the
individual concerned. Hence the significance which he attributed to slips of the tongue or pen,
obsessive behavior and dreams—all, he held, are determined by hidden causes in the person’s
mind, and so they reveal in covert form what would otherwise not be known at all. This suggests
the view that freedom of the will is, if not completely an illusion, certainly more tightly
circumscribed than is commonly believed, for it follows from this that whenever we make a
choice we are governed by hidden mental processes of which we are unaware and over which we
have no control.
The postulate that there are such things as unconscious mental states at all is a direct function of
Freud’s determinism, his reasoning here being simply that the principle of causality requires that
such mental states should exist, for it is evident that there is frequently nothing in the conscious
mind which can be said to cause neurotic or other behavior. An ‘unconscious’ mental process or
event, for Freud, is not one which merely happens to be out of consciousness at a given time, but
is rather one which cannot, except through protracted psychoanalysis, be brought to the forefront
of consciousness. The postulation of such unconscious mental states entails, of course, that the
mind is not, and cannot be, either identified with consciousness, or an object of consciousness.
To employ a much-used analogy, it is rather structurally akin to an iceberg, the bulk of it lying
below the surface, exerting a dynamic and determining influence upon the part which is
amenable to direct inspection—the conscious mind.
(Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

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According to Freud, humanity's very movement into civilized society (and the child's analogous
instroduction to that society) require the repression of our primitive (but still very insistent)
desires. Indeed, for this reason, he argues in Civilization and Its Discontents that all of civilized
society is a substitute-formation, of sorts, for our atavistic instincts and drives. As he puts it in A
Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (First Lecture), "we believe that civilization is to a
large extent being constantly created anew, since each individual who makes a fresh entry into
human society repeats this sacrifice of instinctual satisfaction for the benefit of the whole
community". What happens instead, as he goes on to explain, is that those "primitive impulses,"
of which the sexual impulse is the strongest, are sublimated or "diverted" towards other goals
that are "socially higher and no longer sexual" . Our instincts and primitive impulses are thus
repressed... As he explains, "The prehistory into which the dream-work leads us back is of two
kinds—on the one hand, into the individual's prehistory, his childhood, and on the other, in so far
as each individual somehow recapitulates in an abbreviated form the entire development of the
human race, into phylogenetic prehistory too" (Introductory Lectures).

According to Freud, it is the insistent return of the repressed that can explain numerous
phenomena that are normally overlooked: not only our dreams but also what has come to be
called "Freudian slips" (what Freud himself called "parapraxes"). According to Freud, there is a
"psychology of errors"; that slip of the tongue or that slip of the pen, "which have been put aside
by the other sciences as being too unimportant" (Introductory Lectures), become for Freud the
clues to the secret functioning of the unconscious. Indeed, he likens his endeavor to "a detective
engaged in tracing a murder" (Introductory Lectures). The mentally unwell add to these clues
numerous other obsessions and mental symptoms.

To make sense of this dynamic, Freud proposed a depth-model for the functioning of the
mind, a model now so much a part of culture that it is difficult to appreciate just how
transformative this new way of thinking about the subject really was for the development of
civilization as a whole. Freud's model was also important because it argued that the difference
between the sane and the ill is only a matter of degree: "if you take up a theoretical point of
view..., you may quite well say that we are all ill—if you look at the matter from a theoretical
point of view and ignore this question of degree you can very well say that we are all ill, that is,
neurotic—since the preconditions for the formation of symptoms can also be observed in normal
people" (Introductory Lectures).

Freud began with the division, conscious/unconscious, to which he also sometimes added
the term, "preconscious"; he soon turned, however, to a tripartite version of that depth model (it
is worth noting that for a time psychoanalysis was referred to as "depth-psychology"):

Superego

Ego

Id
The id is the great reservoir of the libido, from which the ego seeks to distinguish itself through
various mechanisms of repression. Because of that repression, the id seeks alternative expression
for those impulses that we consider evil or excessively sexual, impulses that we often felt as
perfectly natural at an earlier or archaic stage and have since repressed. These repressed
memories are often translated, according to Freud, into "screen-memories" that the ego is then
able to remember: "the ego has the task of bringing the influence of the external world to bear
upon the id and its tendencies, and endeavors to substitute the reality-principle for the pleasure-
principle which reigns supreme in the id" ("Ego and the Id"). Whereas the ego is oriented
towards perceptions in the real world, the id is oriented towards internal instincts; whereas the
ego is associated with reason and sanity, the id belongs to the passions. The ego, however, is
never able fully to distinguish itself from the id, of which the ego is, in fact, a part, which is why
in his pictorial representation of the mind Freud does not provide a hard separation between the
ego and the id. The superego manifests itself as conscience and a sense of guilt.
(Purdue University, Online Resource)

Friedrich Nietzsche
First published Fri May 30, 1997; substantive revision Fri Apr 29, 2011

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) was a German philosopher of the late 19th century who
challenged the foundations of Christianity and traditional morality. He was interested in the
enhancement of individual and cultural health, and believed in life, creativity, power, and the
realities of the world we live in, rather than those situated in a world beyond. Central to his
philosophy is the idea of “life-affirmation,” which involves an honest questioning of all doctrines
that drain life's expansive energies, however socially prevalent those views might be. Often
referred to as one of the first existentialist philosophers along with Søren Kierkegaard (1813–
1855), Nietzsche's revitalizing philosophy has inspired leading figures in all walks of cultural
life, including dancers, poets, novelists, painters, psychologists, philosophers, sociologists and
social revolutionaries.
There are certain central concepts that it is essential to keep in mind about Nietzsche's
philosophy. He takes it for granted that the Enlightenment analysis of religion is correct, and that
religion is a comforting but limiting self-delusion. He infers that all values (including religious
values) are the creations of human beings and that therefore we are all responsible for creating
high values and living up to them. Yet these values need not be shared. He is a thorough
relativist, arguing that one person's virtue is another's vice.
(Sources are: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nietzsche/)

Albert Camus and The Myth of Sisyphus: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/camus/ (This link

provides a fairly comprehensive view on Camus’ take on the modern ‘absurd’ condition and the
myth of Sisyphus.)