WHAT IS HINDUISM?
Hinduism and ‘Scientific Socialism’
“I am a Socialist.”
Swami VivekanandaThe Marxist philosophy of ‘scientific socialism’ is
usually thought of as a form of crude, materialist
philosophy, as suggested by terms such as ‘dialectical
materialism’ and ‘historical materialism’. That Marx’s
understanding of both ‘materialism’ and ‘science’ was in
fact completely at odds with that of modern materialist
science was made clear in his Theses on Feuerbach, where he
writes:
“The chief defect of all previous materialism ... is that the
object, actuality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the
form of the object of perception, but not as sensuous human
activity ... not subjectively.”
The most basic scientific ‘fact’ of all – ignored in all
modern sciences – is not the existence of a universe of
perceptual objects, but an immediate subjective and
sensuous awareness of such a universe. Since we only know
of the existence of a universe, or of anything that exists,
including ourselves, through an awareness of existing, it
follows that awareness is – in principle – a more primordial
reality than any possible thing or being that we are aware