Karl Marx

Wilber's View

Marx is Wilber's central case study in reductionism from the political left, the mirror image of the New Age elevationism Wilber criticizes elsewhere. Wilber credits Marxism with real, partial truth: it correctly grounds the noosphere (mind, culture) in the physiosphere (matter, bodily survival, social labor) — recognizing that everyone, regardless of race, creed, or nationality, has to secure bodily survival, which makes social labor a genuinely universal, worldcentric fact about human beings. That, Wilber says, is why Marxism became history's only truly global mass movement. But Wilber's charge is that Marxism doesn't stop at grounding the noosphere in the physiosphere — it reduces the noosphere to the physiosphere, collapsing everything about mind, culture, and spirit into economic exchange. He treats this as a "lowest common denominator" reductionism structurally identical to the one deep ecology commits with the biosphere, and argues the reduction was severe enough that a "reductionistic thrust" like this had to convert itself into a substitute religious mythology (hence, in Wilber's account, the mythic-imperial character of twentieth-century Marxist states) in order to sustain its own totalizing claims. The "enduring concern" Wilber salvages from Marx — equitable material-economic distribution — survives the critique even where "his particular solutions" don't.

In Sex, Ecology, Spirituality

"The enduring concern of Marx, even if we reject his particular solutions"

A planetary culture will in effect have to deal with equitable material-economic distribution in the physiosphere (the enduring concern of Marx, even if we reject his particular solutions), and it will have to deal with sustainable ecological distribution in the biosphere (the enduring contribution of the Greens).

— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 5

"It reduced the noosphere to the physiosphere"

In a nutshell, that movement did not just ground the noosphere in the physiosphere (which is vitally important because of compound individuality); it reduced the noosphere to the physiosphere, such an egregious reduction that it took evolution less than a mere century to begin to erase that mistake in earnest. This reductionistic thrust of Marxism, because it could find no support in the real Kosmos, had to be converted into a religious mythology, and thus had to press its vision in an imperialistic fashion.

— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 5

"The Greens are in essentially the same predicament as the Marxists"

For the Greens are in essentially the same predicament as the Marxists—both of them are reducing higher levels to lower levels simply because of the undisputed fact that the lower is indeed more fundamental… Where the Marxists tended to reduce all concerns to the material exchanges of the physiosphere, the Greens tend to reduce all concerns to the ecological exchanges of the biosphere.

— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 5

"We see it in Marx: rationality … will overcome egocentric and ethnocentric class divisions"

We see it in Marx: rationality, as a worldcentric mode of cognition, will, with its economic developments, overcome egocentric and ethnocentric class divisions and usher in a true communion of equally free subjects.

— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 8

"For Marx, a classless society in which alienation … would be healed"

For Marx, a classless society in which alienation of labor and produce would be healed in shared mutual care.

— Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, ch. 3

See Also

• flatland — the reduction-to-the-Right-Hand pathology Wilber treats Marxist materialism as one variety of
• dominator-vs-growth-hierarchy — the distinction underlying Wilber's diagnosis of Marxism's slide into "mythic-imperial" empire
• holarchy — the "ground but don't reduce" principle Wilber says Marxism violates