There are significant differences between liberal tradition and Marxist tradition are as follows:
Liberalism assumes a relatively fixed and rounded off conception of human nature.
Human nature, in this conception, is endowed with rationality and agency as integral to it. Marxism, on the other hand, sees human nature as a historical product. It is shaped in the vortex of the social relations it is located in while it, in turn, shapes those very social relations. While Marxism does not deny human rationality and agency, it argues that they are circumscribed by and have to take into account prevailing social relations.
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Given its emphasis on agency, the Liberal tradition often tends to make freedom and equality metaphysical conditions of human existence and they precede legal and political order. Since Marxists believe these human agencies to be hedged in by the prevailing social relations, they tend to appreciate necessity and the factors that qualify, shape and direct human choices. They formulate conditions and strategies to expand the space for freedom and equality.
Marxists subscribe to a theory of history, which argues that societies go through both quantitative and qualitative changes. The former involves growth in productive forces and corresponding political, legal and cultural changes. The latter denotes transformation of prevailing social, political and cultural arrangements that uphold such relations.
Generally, Liberals do not take the historical antecedents of social agents seriously, except hypothetically, to enable them and the society and state they live in to highlight certain characteristics of human beings as Hobbes or Locke do prior to the formulation of the social contract.
Liberalism tends to give more foreplay to the human mind to construe reality. Marxism tends to demarcate the sphere of objective reality from the subjective appropriation of the same. Further, it accords primacy to the former over the latter. However, Marxism agrees that ideas, when they become practices or take possession of the hearts and minds of the people, could become independent actors.
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There is a marked distinction in the concepts and categories that Marxism deploys for social analysis and advocacy relative to what Liberalism does. For Liberalism, concept and categories such as ‘human’ rights and freedoms, civil society, representation, separation of powers, public opinion, justice and equality are central to its discourse. Marxism, however, has its framework in a body of concepts such as classes and class struggle, modes of production, production relations and productive forces, base and superstructure, surplus appropriation, state, revolution and transitions.
Marxism lays stress on social classes as basic units of a society. It does not wholly undermine the individual agency, but a historical role is ascribed to social classes. By and large, Liberalism privileges the individual rational agent and invests him or her with the capacity to, make autonomous decisions and pursue a life of his/ her own.
Marxism draws attention to the processes underway in a class divided society, which stunts and distorts human life and deprives human beings from exploring the rich potentialities or their life. Generally, Liberals confine human beings to a limited sphere of shared aspirations and leaves them to determine the kind of human being they wish to be by employing their freedoms.
By and large, Marxism tends to provide a comprehensive explanation of the course of human affairs and man’s relation to nature compared to Liberalism. Marxism is not other worldly. It makes the world inform our ends and purposes. It, however, need not exclude certain spiritual pursuits as it envisages a rich constitution of the self by freely determining subjects.
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While there are persuasive strands of thought within Liberalism that confine human striving to this world, it is much more open to wards accommodating the transcendental and otherworldly strivings of human beings. Liberals easily leave greater space for spiritual and other worldly pursuits.
Marxism subscribes to a state of affairs where there is no exploitation and where a rich constitution of the self goes hand in with the decomposition of the community.
Its theory of history considers the course of class struggle in a capitalist society as oriented towards such an end. Liberalism while upholding various kinds of equalities attempts to balance them with freedom of choice. It is disposed to reform the existing society than to strive after a society founded on non-exploitation and non-oppression.
Community was not central to the Liberal imagination. However, in the wake of the rise of communitarianism as a distinctive body of thought, Liberals are attempting to reach out to community in a big way.
Marxists have a well formulated and passionate conception of revolutionary transformation. Liberals tend to make the present human condition as eternal and permanent and if they subscribe to political radicalism, it is narrowly circumscribed as a last resort. For Marxists, revolutionary transformation is placed on the agenda by the turn social relations take, while for the Liberals it is a moral act in defense of rights and justice.
Marxists and Liberals differ on the conception, role and necessity of the state. Liberals tend to accept the state as an unavoidable evil. Its denial begets greater harm than its sufferance. Marxists see the state as an historical product arising in the wake of the irresolvable class antagonisms in society. Clamming to represent the society, it lords over the society and ensures the interests of the dominant classes.
They argue that the state will wither away with the dissolution of class conflicts and class relations.
Liberalism has enjoyed a close kinship with capitalism historically. Certain versions of Liberalism such as classical liberalism are closely intertwined with the early phases of the development of capitalism. Some of the tends of Liberalism such as freedom of trade and occupation and equality before law can be effectively employed to argue a case for capitalism. By its appeal to general human conditions and shared citizenship, it tends to ignore class relations and thereby, let class dominance to prevail.
Although Liberalism could be distanced from capitalism, it has not succeeded in doing so, at least so far, as the kind of rights it avows tend to defend private rights over productive resources. Marxism, of course, is committed to the overthrow of capitalism and sees most of the evils of modern society as due to its association with capitalism.
There is also a major difference between the different versions of Marxism in relation to the Liberal versions. Many of the later versions of the Marxist tradition considered themselves as the authentic bearers of the legacies of their founding fathers. Leninism claimed to be the exclusive bearer of the legacies of Marx and Engels. Similarly, Maoism declared itself as the inheritor of the legacy of Marx, Engels and Lenin. The subsequent Liberal versions rarely claim themselves as the authentic voices of the preceding versions. They claim a philosophical and moral affinity, but not faithful continuity.
The different versions of Marxism are deeply stamped by the thought of a specific thinker compared to the Liberal versions. Therefore, distinct versions of Marxism often go under the name of their distinguished proponent. In the Marxist tradition, although the later versions claimed an exclusive legacy of the tradition for themselves, they infact, became increasingly exclusive. Such exclusiveness combined with the claim that it represented the authentic tradition, led to internecine conflicts among the claimants.
The Liberal tradition, however, allowed greater deal of internal differences and conflicts. The triumph of one did not bring forth the elimination of the other. The Marxist versions, inspite of their claim to represent the whole, became confined while Liberal versions without necessarily claiming themselves as the ‘true’ or ‘authentic’ bearers of the tradition, were able to reach out to the larger tradition.