Sartre, in his later work, attempts to bring his version of existentialism together with Marxism.
This attempt is offered in full in Critique of Dialectical Reason, Volume One: Theory of Practical Ensembles, and Volume Two: The Intelligibility of History, which is an unfinished work that was published posthumously. There Sartre responds to the criticisms directed at his version of existentialism and further develops Being and Nothingness in such a way that brings into each other existentialism and Marxism.
Where Existentialism and Marxism Seem Incompatible
Freedom is where Sartre’s existentialism and Marxism seem incompatible. For existentialism emerges from the assumption that human beings cannot be alienated from their own existential freedom. Sartre’s version of existentialism makes freedom radical and absolute by thinking it ontologically, that is, by finding its place in the being of humans as nothingness.
Marxists, on the other hand, especially the contemporaries of Sartre, view Marxism as a deterministic theorizing of the human being and history in its revolving around Marx’s notion of dialectical materialism.
Marx, according to this interpretation, sees humans as determined and wholly governed by the dialectical relation into which they find themselves placed together with the world. Humans are determined and wholly governed by being merely products of a specific historical process.
History, according to this interpretation, is where human beings are determined by matter and where matter is also shaped and re-shaped by humans through production.
In other words, production determines the way human beings are in the world in such a way that changes in production alter how humans are and therefore make available new ways of being.
According to Marx, changes in production bring with them new ways of being in the sense of social changes, the results of which are changes in the dominant “relations of production”, from which new ways of dominance and new forms of power and oppression appear in society.
Sartre agrees with and takes for granted this understanding of Marx’s theorizing of history. What he does not agree with, or what he sees as foreign to Marx’s views, is, however, the suggestion that this way of thinking history is deterministic and therefore makes impossible human freedom.
Sartre argues that because in Marx’s theorizing of history, production, and revolutions there is a constant emphasis on human consciousness, the possibility of human freedom is always implied and called upon, for Sartre links together human consciousness and human freedom.
This is why Sartre thinks that it is a misinterpretation of Marx to take his reading of history as a process only dominated by and wholly revolving around matter, from which the human being arises only as a material product.
Sartre says that this interpretation of Marx reduces humans, in their complexities and complex relations with the world, which is something already acknowledged by Marx, to being merely material products
This does not mean that Sartre denies that human beings are material in the sense that they have material bodies. The problem, for Sartre, is to reduce the complexity, which is referred to as a human being, only to its material body.
In this regard, Sartre refuses the term “dialectical materialism” and its reductionist implications in favor of “historical materialism” and says that “historical materialism” most fittingly conveys Marx’s theorizing and questioning.
Where Existentialism and Marxism Come Together
Sartre begins by first arguing that viewing Marxism as wholly materialistic and deterministic, in which there is no place for human freedom, is a misinterpretation of Marx’s theorizing.
For Sartre, in Marx’s theorizing, the possibility of human freedom is already always sustained. Although it is true that humans are part of the material world by the mere fact humans have bodies, no dialectical relation with the world could be established and maintained unless humans first distinguish themselves from matter by placing themselves over against matter in such a way that matter appears to them in each case as that of which they think and that toward which they orient themselves, thereby making themselves different from and distanced from matter. (What Sartre means by matter is instrumental: that which, at once, makes possible and resists praxis.)
What Sartre means should be read together with his understanding of the being of the “for-itself” and in light of his notion of consciousness. This means that consciousness, as a nothingness of being, needs matter so that it can first be that which it is: consciousness of something. Consciousness does not appear if matter disappears. But since consciousness is a negation, it negates matter, it is never within matter. Both are never one together and into each other.
This means that consciousness is always found transcending matter toward different possibilities of matter and different possible encounters with matter. Consciousness is in every case oriented toward the future and toward the future possibilities of matter.
This orientation toward the future does not exclude matter from the future, but rather opens the future up to different relations with matter. That is, consciousness is constantly in a relation to matter so that it could arise as consciousness of matter.
For Sartre, what is at issue is not whether we can get rid of this relation, but rather how this relation unfolds and is sustained as such. What is at issue is how to make this relation different and therefore open up different possibilities of human freedom.
In Being and Nothingness, Sartre speaks of the impossibility of a dialectical process within nature in the absence of consciousness. In the Critique, he argues further that consciousness is required in the historical dialectic — which is the process in which matter and humans come together and are developed and altered through each other — because such processes cannot only be reduced to their mechanical and blind dialectical elements.
It is true that history shapes the human being. It is true that the situation of the human being in the world is shaped by history. Yet humans also shape history in their practical responses to their historically-determined situation in the world.
In their practical responses to their own historical situations, humans project themselves toward a future situation and thus toward different possibilities of matter and its production. Such projections toward the future are themselves possible orientations toward further historical relations to matter.
It is true that the human being is a product of a dominant mode of production. It is true that modes of production produce the way in which the human being is in the world. Yet humans are the only products containing within themselves the understanding that they are products. Humans are constantly shaped by relations of production. Yet humans are the only construct that is able to perceive its own limits as that which is constantly being shaped.
In the Critique, Sartre says that Marx’s theorizing of history does not only emerge from and revolve around human consciousness and thereby human freedom, but realizes history as becoming conscious of itself.
How is there no place for human freedom in Marxism, which itself calls upon human beings to search for and make possible their political freedom? The constant calling upon humans to revolt indicates that an existential notion of freedom is already at work in Marxism, according to Sartre.
In other words, if humans are wholly determined in their being, according to the dominant reading of Marxism, then why is this calling upon them to search for and realize their freedom? In the Critique, Sartre says that political and economic oppression can render humans unfree, yet there always remains in their being an existential manner of being absolutely free.
Even if humans are made wholly unfree by being constantly oppressed, there remains within their being the possibility of genuine choosing and authentic deciding. There is a manner of being free that all oppression cannot come near to. Over against all possible practical oppression, this existential manner of being free is always in the being of the human being.
Existentialism Into Marxism
Resembling his account of the “look” in Being and Nothingness, which discusses how the Other objectifies oneself and thus leaves one unfree in the world and how one attempts to regain this lost freedom by turning the Other into an object, in the Critique, Sartre discusses how a specific social class can exploit another social class by turning its members into objects, leaving them unfree and alienated from each other and from the other social class.
That Sartre brings Being and Nothingness into the Critique indicates that he is making existentialism available to Marxism in such a way that allows Marxism to make use of existentialism in its attempts at making possible a specific society, a classless society.
It is Sartre’s view that existentialism can unfold within Marxism toward the harmonious society as it is thought in Marxism. Sartre sees that society as a future possibility. In its being a possibility, it might be lost, it might be rendered impossible by another future possibility, another way of being-for-others.