Quest for the Promised Land: Inequality Beyond the Material Realm
Tags: Philosophy, Marxism, Structuralism, Inequality

“I have seen how cruelly my people are being treated in Egypt; I have heard them cry out to be rescued from their slave drivers. I know all about their sufferings, 8 and so I have come down to rescue them from the Egyptians and to bring them out of Egypt to a spacious land, one which is rich and fertile and in which the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites now live. 9 I have indeed heard the cry of my people, and I see how the Egyptians are oppressing them. 10 Now I am sending you to the king of Egypt so that you can lead my people out of his country.” (Exodus 3: 7–10)

Transcending the status quo, revolting against the sinister monarch, perpetual effort to reach a better place; reflections of intrinsic human discontent. Moses’ noble calling to unshackle their people was indeed a futile effort; dying before reaching the land — Moses did not enjoy the freedom himself. Instead, was he just a schizophrenic barbarian that orchestrated everything in his head and lived inside his head? The constant struggle for a better world is partly real but partly self-constructed. This is why we may never reach a consensus on how to live. Everything is influenced by everything else. Perceiving a very small sliver of the great pulsating mass of reality– any single individual can only comprehend in terms of simplistic, limited causality. Only with our limited sense can we comprehend the world. Do we see everything as it is? Is everything in fact built upon material conditions? Was the sky always blue?

The sky was not always blue

The sky is blue. Surely there is no more rudimentary, irrefutable truth. Elementary as it may seem, this was not the case for the ancient Greeks. William Gladstone — a scholar who later became the Prime Minister of Great Britain was intrigued by the absence of the word ‘blue’ in Homer’s Odyssey. The poet described the ocean as ’wine-dark’ and other peculiar hues [1]. Unsatisfied with his findings, Gladstone went further to calculate the number of times each color is mentioned in the book. The result was futile, black was mentioned 200 times, white 100, red 15, while green and yellow were fewer than 10 [2]. This finding led to numerous attempts in understanding the ‘color-blindness’ of Achilles and crew. A philosopher and philologist by the name of Lazarus Geiger decided to jump into the wagon and notice something similar across different civilizations. He studied Icelandic sagas, the Koran, ancient Chinese, and an ancient Hebrew version of the bible. Still, the sky was not blue. The only civilization that has the word ‘blue’ in their lexicon was the Egyptians. This was attributed to their ability to produce blue dye as the iconic eyeshadow for the pharaoh. Another curious group of individuals was a group of MIT scientists — who found out that native Russian speakers do not have a single word for blue but instead have a word for light blue (goluboy) and dark blue (siniy). They are more well-versed in distinguishing different shades of blue compared to the English speaker. Back to Achilles and crew, the reason why they did not see the sky as blue is that they did not have the word for it.

The association between perception, reality and language has been long debated among philosophers. Saint Agustine of Hippo propagates that language consists of labels for concepts inhabiting the human mind. Edward Sapir postulates that the role of language in shaping our reality is indisputable [3]. This result was corroborated by Benjamin Whorf through his study of American Indian languages: He found that the linguistic structure was contrasting to the Indo-European counterpart [4]. Whorf postulates that the difference in linguistic structure implies a different perspective. The resulting so-called Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is that one’s reality is influenced and even shaped by one’s language. It implies that people who speak different languages have distinct perspectives. Sapir attempted to relate ideas proposed by Freud, Rivers, and Jung — making him a pioneer in the study of social-psychology science. Taking it to the extreme in sociology, Whorf argues that in the case of gender in English, there is no real categorization of gender except for “he”, “she”, and “it”. Names are unmarked for gender. However, an English speaker would easily distinguish whether they refer to any specific gender. This is what he refers to as “covert categories” [5]. An unsettling implication arises from this notion: if the language we speak determines the reality one conceives; the very existence of an objective world is contentious. Hence, this postulate grows into a principle of determinism — whether our language determines our view towards reality or influences it. How does one use this information to rethink longstanding ideas about society in the modern Western intellectual discourse?

Questioning the bases and superstructures

Central to Marxist tenets is the idea of a separation of society into the base (or substructure) and superstructure. The base includes the means of production and relations of production [6], while superstructure includes everything else that is not related to production — ideology, culture, and norms. Marx argues that the superstructure exists to defend the ruling class’s interests. Importantly, the superstructure is not an “ontological necessity” but it is necessary because “productive activity to which these bodies give rise generates certain social contradiction.” The function of a superstructure is to manage the division in the base in the interest of the elitists. Concretely, not all government institutions (school, court, even government-owned TV broadcasters) behave “superstructurally”, it is highly contingent on the aspect. For instance, the government act superstructurally when it bails out private banks following a collapse not when protecting the rights of a veteran. That being said, government only acts “superstructurally” when and only when they protect the “ruling-class” interests. Superstructure “reifies a range of political or ideological functions to an immovable ontological region, institution behaves superstructurally when and only when it acts in some way to support a dominant set of social relations.” (Eagleton, 2000). There exists one common misconception about this widely condemned idea, this being the hierarchical nature of the paradigm. There is nothing ominous by itself about that as every doctrine “implicitly holds that it is itself truer than its opposite, and this includes claims like “there is no truth”, or “nothing more important than anything else” (Eagleton, 2000).

Marx’s overarching assumption about his theory is “humans are material beings, and their social world should be understood as material in its actuality.” (Holt, 2015) In other words, material resources we produce dictates everything else in society. Marx proposed his idea as a response to Hegelian Idealism [8], which “holds that all the ideas one can have of oneself or the world are intrinsic to the structure of our minds”. Hegel was nonetheless an “objective idealist”, as he insisted that there was a knowable objective material world.

Charles Taylor summarized this nicely: “If the structure of the universe is as it is to be the embodiment/expression of Geist (a form of God), then Geist comes to self-awareness when this is recognized. Of course, this can only be recognized by ourselves, finite spirits, for we are the only vehicles of awareness” (Taylor, 2015). The fundamental intrinsic nature of anything is merely established in a close relationship, to other things to things outside itself. Everything exists concerning their total environment, not their immediate surroundings — a totality for beings related to the whole9. When we examine life on this earth it becomes apparent. Life on earth reflects the non-living world that has shaped it. The evolution of eyes in the Animal Kingdom occurred because there was light to harness [10]. Thus, understanding the living world requires the knowledge of contradictory totality. the opposite. Hegel propagates that society is a totality. Marx made use of this proposition to postulate that the working class is the contradiction of capitalism. What Marx proposes instead is a development of physical matter over time. In other words, the cause of the advancement of certain societies is the technological advances and environmental conditions not because our mind is organized to create such a society. In a sense, there is “a material connection of men with one another, which is determined by their needs and their mode of production, and which is as old as men themselves” (Marx, Engles, 1845).

As materialists, Marxists think that the universe of matter and energy is the only reality. Nonetheless, there exists a vagueness in the notion of sense-experience. A reality for each person might be different across individuals — as mentioned in previous paragraphs. David Hume said, “As to these impressions, which arise from the senses, their ultimate cause is in my opinion, perfectly inexplicable by human reason.” [11]

Adopting the views of Marx on inequality that is deeply rooted based on material conditions may lead to insufficiency when examining the truth of inequality, due to a rejection of the richness and diversity of man’s inner world — the one wherein different people, with different languages, may see different colors in the sky. How can we re-think this?

Post-Structuralism

One of the most radical critiques of Marxism was mounted by the Post-structuralist movement. Started as a literary movement, Post-structuralism was formally a challenge to its predecessor — Structuralism. Marxism was one of the branches of structuralist theory — it “reflects events which are explainable by structures, data, and other phenomena below the surface” (Guney, A., & Guney, K., 2008). Structuralism is a search for an “objective knowledge of their world” (Piaget, 1970:5–6) — a “structure of the text”. Conversely, Post-structuralists refute the possibility of such a structure. Structuralism seeks for a system of meaning while Post-structuralism questions the systematic thought (Mousley, 2000). Mousley argues that structuralism seeks to lay bare a text’s or language’s workings, but post-structuralism advances a sense of the text’s mystery [13]. Language is at the core of the differences between structuralism and post-structuralism. Put simply, Structuralism regards language more seriously than Post-structuralism [14].

Born in 1930, Jean Jacques Derrida was indeed one of the most influential thinkers in the first half of the 20th century. It would be beneficial to give a simple example of Poststructuralism and Derrida’s thoughts. Just like a film that wins an oscar might not be the best if everyone’s preference — Post-structuralists argue that there is no one literary interpretation. According to Post-structuralists, during reading a text there will be infinitely many forms of thoughts by the readers. That being said, we cannot deny or claim another’s feelings as false or true. According to Derrida, each element is true, namely ‘present’ which is related to something else (Derrida, 2016). That being said, no critic can claim to define ‘truth’ or one meaning from a given text.

In succession, this leads Derrida to the concept of differance (with an “a”). This term amalgamates the meaning of “differ” and “defer”. It affirms, first, the priority of play and difference over presence and absence, and secondly, the necessity within difference of relation to presence, a presence always deferred (into the future or past) but constantly invoked (Callinicos, 1982). It is easy to draw a line between Derrida’s projects and Nietzsche and Levi-Strauss as providing an alternative to their objective idealism [19]. Derrida proclaims an abstract relationship between things — consisted of a reality that is truer than reality. Following Hegelian philosophy, Marx argues the requital between matter in relation — just like socialism is a contrast of capitalism. However, Derrida detaches the interrelation and the requital of matter as something different and more preliminary than the material realm. “In the absence of all signifieds, language takes on its kind of energy and creativity, quite apart from any subjective energy or creativity on the part of individual writers or readers.” [20] his perspective, the requital system is independent of human agency and instead centered around writing.

At the heart of Socialism is the prophecy that workers will end up revolting due to common realisation of suffering using reason. The short answer to that question is yes given the objectivity of experiences and reality. However, absent the centralized revolt due to common awakening is impossible due to differentiation in the concept of freedom within each being. What poststructuralism allows us to do is localised protests and small scale reforms, valuing subjectivity — realistically allowing the strive to the betterment of inequality.

Written by: Matthew William

Edited by: Miftah Rasheed Amir & Albert Ludi

Illustrated by: Rizki Fajar

1. MacDonald, F. (n.d.). There’s Evidence Humans Didn’t Actually See Blue Until Modern Times. Retrieved December 17, 2020, from https://www.sciencealert.com/humans-didn-t-see-the-colour-blue-until-modern-timesevidence-science

2. Loria, K. (2015, February 27). No one could describe the color ‘blue’ until modern times. Retrieved December 17, 2020, from https://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-blue-and-how-do-we-see-color-2015-2

3. Kay, P., & Kempton, W. (1984). What is the Sapir‐Whorf hypothesis?. American anthropologist, 86(1), 65–79.

4. Hussein, B. A. S. (2012). The sapir-whorf hypothesis today. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 2(3), 642–646.

5. Sharrock, W. W., & Anderson, D. C. (1981). Book Review: Language, Thought and Reality, Again. Sociology, 15(2), 287–293.

6. Cole, Nicki Lisa, Ph.D. (2020, August 28). Definition of Base and Superstructure. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/definition-of-base-and-superstructure-3026372

7. Eagleton, T. (2000). Base and superstructure revisited. New Literary History, 31(2), 231–240.

8. Holt, J. P. (2015). The social thought of Karl Marx. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications.

9. Taylor, C. (2015). Hegel and modern society. Cambridge University Press.

10. Jones, B. (2016, January 03). Evolution of Sight in the Animal Kingdom. Retrieved December 17, 2020, from https://webvision.med.utah.edu/2014/07/evolution-of-sight-in-the-animal-kingdom/

11. Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1965). The German Ideology (1845).

12. Sgarbi, M. (2012). Hume’s Source of the “Impression-Idea” Distinction. In Anales del Seminario de Historia de la Filosofía (Vol. 29, №2, pp. 561–576). Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

13. Guney, A., & Guney, K. (2008). A Brief Description of Jaques Derrida’s Deconstruction and Hermeneutics. New World Sciences Academy, 3(2), 219–225.

14. Mousley, A. (2000). Renaissance drama and contemporary literary theory. Macmillan.

15. Bertens, H. (2017). Literary theory: The basics. Routledge.

16. Derrida, J. (2016). Of grammatology. JHU Press.

17. Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1965). The German Ideology (1845).

18. Callinicos, A. (1982). Is there a future for Marxism?. Springer.

19. Ibid 45

20. Dews, P. (2007). Logics of disintegration: Post-structuralist thought and the claims of critical theory.

21. Ibid 13

22. Novack, G. (1978). Polemics in Marxist philosophy. New York: Monad Press

elaborate re: contradictory totality (bcs its a good point that shud be emphasized)