2. The Relevant Parts of Buddhism

So let us turn to some of the core parts of Buddhism. These are the principles that the historical Buddha, Siddhārtha Gautama, enunciated in his very first talk after enlightenment. They are often referred to as the Four Noble Truths. (‘Noble’ in the sense of enobling. For a fuller discussion of these, see Siderits [Reference Siderits2007], ch. 2, and Carpenter [Reference Carpenter2014], ch. 2.) These lay out what we might think of as the human condition.

The First Noble Truth is that life is constantly beset with duḥkha. The Sanskrit word is standardly translated as suffering, but its compass is very much broader than this. It includes: suffering, pain, discontent, unsatisfactoriness, unhappiness, sorrow, affliction, anxiety, dissatisfaction, discomfort, anguish, stress, misery, and frustration. The thought is that everyone's life contains suffering (mental and physical), the infirmity of old age (if the person is lucky enough to get there), illness, the loss of loved ones, cherished possessions, and so on. Of course, the Buddha was not denying that good things happen, which make us happy, too; but these have an edge. The fear of losing them may induce anxiety; and, if and when we do lose them, we experience unhappiness and a sense of loss.

The Second Noble Truth is that duḥkha is caused by tṛṣna (pronounced trishna). This is sometimes translated as craving, though this is a most misleading translation. Better is attachment and aversion: the wanting of good things to continue, and bad things to go away. Of course, many things conspire to cause duḥkha: the death of a loved one, war, disease, cars and stock markets crashing. But, mostly, these things are not under our control. So it makes sense to single out the thing that is: the attitude we bring to bear on the slings and arrows of (sometimes not so) outrageous fortune.

Sometimes Buddhism is thought of as a pessimistic philosophy. It is not. If you understand the situation, you can do something about it. Thus, the Third Noble Truth points out a corollary of the second: removing the cause removes the effect: get rid of the tṛṣna, and you will get rid of the duḥkha.

The Fourth Noble Truth is a set of guidelines for practices one can undertake to help reshape one's mental attitude in the appropriate way. This is often called the Eightfold Noble Path, and it falls into three groups:

• • Cognitive: right view, right intention

• • Ethical: right speech, right action, right livelihood

• • Mental: right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration

I don't need to say much of these eight points here, except the first: right view.

According to Buddhism, a major cause of tṛṣna is the fact that we misunderstand the world in which we live (avidy $\bar a$, ignorance). We believe (even if this is self-deception) that things can go on for ever. But the world is not like this: we live in a world of impermanence (anitya). Everything in the stream of causation comes into existence when causes and conditions are ripe, and goes out of existence in the same way. All things will disappear sooner or later. Secondly, and even more importantly, each of us misunderstands our very nature, taking this to be some kind of substantial entity, some abiding self. This is false (an $\bar a$tman). More of this in a moment.

Before we pass on to Marxism, let me address a couple of possible misconceptions about Buddhism. It might be thought that Buddhism is very self-centred, since, given only what I have said so far, there is much about getting rid of one's own duḥkha, but nothing about that of others. This omits an important part of the picture, however. Compassion (karuṇ $\bar a$) has always been an important part of Buddhism. Indeed, it is promoted to the central ethical virtue in later (Mahāyāna) Buddhism. Why should one be compassionate? Part of the answer is that concern for others is a very good way of quieting the self-centredness that plays such a large role in trṣṇa. A more theoretical reason was offered by perhaps the greatest Buddhist ethicist, Śāntideva (8c, CE), in his Bodhic $\bar a$ry $\bar a$vat $\bar a$ra (VIII: 94, 95). (The text, whose name might be translated as Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life, contains many interesting discussions, including those of practices to make oneself more compassionate.) If duḥkha is bad, as Buddhism holds, it should be eliminated. It should be eliminated just because it is bad. Compare: Racism is bad, and so should be eliminated; and it makes no difference whether it is racism in my country or in someone else's.

Second, it might be thought to follow from what I have said so far that to get rid of duḥkha all one has to do is change people's headspace, not their material conditions. This is not so either. If duḥkha is bad, then one should strive to eliminate any of its causes. It may be that working on tṛṣna is, in the end, the most robust way of doing this, but this is not all that can be done. We often do have the ability to eliminate, or at least lessen, some of the duḥkha of others, by changing their material circumstances. Moreover, eliminating tṛṣna is not easy; it is deeply ingrained in us. Eliminating it requires hard work and practice. This is not possible if one is in a war zone, worrying about where the next meal for one's children is coming from, fighting off disease, and so on. Of course one should do what is possible to change these things too.

3. The Relevant Parts of Marxism

So let us turn to the relevant parts of Marxism. These concern Marx’s analysis of the way that capitalism functions, and is to be found, of course, in Capital, especially Volume 1, and related works, such as the Grundrisse. (The literature on this is enormous. One might start with Robinson [Reference Robinson1942] and Mandel [Reference Mandel and Fowkes1976].)

Capitalism is a socio-economic formation driven by an objective dynamic. The fundamental player in this dynamic is capital itself, which is essentially wealth in search of more wealth. Of course, wealth does not come from nowhere. Capital must employ people to create more capital. Thus we have a social structure, that is, a set of relations, and the very rationale of those relations is to maximise capital. We see this in a very visible form in the modern business corporation: the telos of each is to increase its quantum of wealth by deriving as much profit as possible. A prime mechanism for this is competition. Enterprises which embody quanta of capital compete with each other to take over the other's capital, and so increase. Although what produces wealth is the people who work to do so, the increased wealth is not used for the benefit of people, just for making more wealth. In the process, people are manipulated, used and abused, in order to make more profit.

The uses and abuses, together with their consequences, include the following:

• • One way to make as much profit as possible is to pay workers as little as possible. If people own no capital, they must work for someone else. (They have no choice.) Capital can therefore take advantage of this position of weakness. In other words, it can exploit them. (Note that ‘exploitation’ has a technical sense in Marxist economics. I use it in the more familiar sense.) Capital can keep them in a position of relative poverty (relative, that is, to the actual value their labour produces).

• • One way to keep people in this position of weakness is to have a pool of unemployed. Capital then no longer needs any particular person. Their job may be filled by one of the unemployed. Hence, capitalism maintains a “reserve pool” of unemployed. That is, we have structural unemployment. Unemployed people are impoverished, not in a relative sense, but in an absolute sense. Such poverty, naturally, leads to crime.

• • Another way to maximise profit is to produce commodities as efficiently, and so as cheaply, as possible. A major way of achieving this is with the division of labour. People employed by capital will then spend their whole time doing essentially one thing. Such a practice ensures that one aspect of a persons’ abilities becomes highly developed, whilst the others atrophy. As people, then, they become deformed.

• • Moreover, capital can allow its workers no say in the way a business is run. For they would then do things that would damage profit (by requiring better working conditions and wages, greater health and safety conditions, etc). Since they have no say in this aspect of their life, they become alienated from it. Work is not life-affirming; it is nothing more than necessary to live.

• • The social relations of capitalism involve those who own/manage capital and those who are simply employed by it. Naturally, those in the first class are a lot richer than those in the second. Hence we have social inequality. In a capitalist ‘democratic’ structure, money means power. Hence we have political inequality. A majority of people are disempowered, relative to the few who have wealth. These will use their power, of course, to further the capital that they own/manage. The state, therefore, does not function in the interest of people, but of capital.

• • A quantum of capital must try to get people to buy its products, rather than those of a competitor. To do so, it uses the techniques of advertising (thought-manipulation) to create desires, most of which are entirely spurious. People are made to desire things for which there is no rational ground.

• • Of course, it is not in the interest of capital that people should understand how the system works. Capitalism therefore produces an ideology that deceives people, and covers this over. People are lead to believe that capitalism is natural, in their best interests, etc. The ideology is imposed on people's thinking by advertising, the mass media, statements made by politicians and ‘captains of industry’, etc. People are therefore made and kept deceived.

• • Capital acts in its own self-interest. Its ideology tells people that this is perfectly fine, and so legitimises selfishness. The knock-on effect of the economic relations is therefore dysfunctional social relations.

Naturally, these negative consequences of capitalism impact those who own/manage capital less than those who are merely employed by it. However, the former are in the thrall of capital no less than the latter. Indeed, there is a much greater tendency amongst this class for people's personalities to be deformed by greed and a disregard for the humanity of others, simply because these capacities are exercised on a daily basis. Of course, this may well be denied by people in this class. They may be just as much deceived by the ideology of capitalism as anyone else.

4. The Self

In discussions of ethics and politics, the question of what it is to be human (to be a person—I shall use these phrases interchangeably) is usually not far below the surface. And so it is here. Now, it might well be thought that the Buddhist and Marxist notions of this matter are different—so different as to render Buddhist thinking and Marxist thinking incompatible. That is not so. Let us see why.

The issue is a complex one. It is complex on the Buddhist side, since different schools of Buddhism hold somewhat different views on the matter; it is complex on the Marxist side since what Marx says—or at least, what he chooses to emphasize—changes throughout the corpus of his work. However, let me try to keep things as simple as possible.

Let us start with the Buddhist side. The first thing here is to distinguish between a person and a self (as Buddhists use that word; note that the word ‘self’ in English often refers to the person—as in ‘he saw himself in the mirror’, ‘she was very self-centred’—not the self of ātman). A person is a psycho-biological entity. A self ($\bar a$tman) is a part of that entity which exists while the person exists, is constant, and defines the person as that very person. All Buddhists hold that there is no such thing. A person is complex of biological and psychological parts in a constant state of flux and change. For comparison, think of your car. Its parts are put together, interact with each other and with the environment. Some wear out and are replaced; and eventually the parts fall apart. There is no one part that must remain constant to make it that very car: even the registration plates can change if you move state. You are like that.

What, then, “holds these parts together” as a single thing? First, a whole bunch of causal processes. The parts of my body/mind interact with each other more intimately than those parts interact with the parts of your body/mind. Secondly, and in virtue of these interactions, it makes sense to think of a person as a single thing, that is, to conceptualise it as a unity. Conception, then, plays a central role. For Buddhist thinking, the same is, in fact, true of all partite objects; but in the case of a person (as opposed to, e.g., a car), there is a self-conception. The human organism constructs a narrative of itself. It conceptualises itself in a certain way; standardly, part of that narrative is the possession of a self. That, however, is a narrative fiction. (See, further, Priest [Reference Priest201+].)

Matters take another twist when we move to later Buddhism, and especially to Madhyamaka (one of the two kinds of Indian Mahāyāna). The central metaphysical concept of this is ś $\bar u$nyat $\bar a$ (emptiness). All things are held to be empty of intrinsic nature (svabh $\bar a$va). That is, each thing is what it is only in relation to other things, notably its parts, causes and effects, and the way it is conceptualised. In particular, then, the identity of a person is constituted by their locus in a certain set of relations of these kinds. (See, further, Priest [Reference Priest2014], chs. 11, 12.)

Let us now turn to Marx. First, Marx was, of course, a materialist and anti-Christian. Hence he had no truck with the soul. This is the Western equivalent of the Indian ātman. Buddhism and Marxism, then agree on the non-existence of such a thing.

But what is it to be human for Marx? In his early writings, and especially in the Paris Manuscripts, Marx endorses a notion of species being (Gattungswesen). To be human is to possess this. What species being is, is never clearly spelled out. However, first of all, it clearly has a biological component. People have to eat, be clothed, housed—and so have to work—to live. They are subject to all the causal, biological and physical, laws involved in these things. Secondly, species being clearly has a social component as well. People can be truly human only in as much as they are part of a community. Their social engagements are just as constitutive of their being as their biology.

Mention of species being is absent from Marx’ later writing; but much attention is paid in these to the nature of society, which is partly constitutive of it. In particular, Marx comes to see this in structural terms. (As emphasised—perhaps over-emphasised—by Althusser.) That is, it is constituted by a network of relations. Thus, in the Grundrisse we have (Nicolaus [Reference Nicolaus1973], p. 265):

Capitalists, workers, etc., are what they are in virtue of their locus in a set of such relations.

The Buddhist and Marxist views, then, have notable similarities. Both reject the existence of a self/soul; both see being human as being involved in causal processes and natural laws; and both move towards thinking of people in purely structural terms. The difference between them is that Buddhism emphasises the importance of (self-)conception in what it is to be a person. This is largely absent in Marx. Marx, on the other hand, emphasises the essentially social nature of people. This is largely absent from Buddhism. Of course, these two things are not inconsistent with each other. Indeed, they can be seen as complementing each other, each contributing to a more rounded picture.

5. Filling Out the Buddhist Picture

In the previous section, we have already seen how Buddhist and Marxist ideas can be thought of as complementing each other. Let us now turn to ways in which Buddhist ethics and Marxist political philosophy can be seen as complementing each other. Let us start by seeing how Marxism fills out the Buddhist picture.

Buddhism locates the cause of duḥkha in tṛṣna—desire, if you like. But it says nothing about the social factors which create this. Marxism says a lot about these in the present context. Advertising is a prime source of tṛṣna. It creates dissatisfaction with what a person already has, and a never-ending series of desires to have other things.

Next, Buddhism claims that people misunderstand the world in which they live. It says much about the natural word, but little about the social world. Marxism shows how, by the ideology of capitalism, people are engineered to misunderstand the nature of the social world in which they live as well—in Marxist terms, how they are subject to mystification.

In particular, people are taught to see everything as a commodity (commodification)—as something to be bought and sold. This includes people, giving rise to their dehumanisation. We do not behave compassionately because we do not see people as human, but as an unemployment statistic, an illegal immigrant, a human resource surplus to requirement, etc. Buddhism, as noted, is a philosophy of compassion; but the Buddha could have had no idea of the forces that capitalism can bring to bear to undercut this.

Again, Buddhism claims that people are, in a certain sense, conceptual constructions. But concepts are social, so people construct themselves in terms of social categories. Under capitalism, people are taught to think of themselves in terms of its categories: I'm a truck driver; I'm doing ok. I'm an executive; I'm much better than him. I'm unemployed, so not a valuable person. People are not taught to see themselves as simple human beings, interacting with other simple human beings, who need to cooperate with each other so that all may flourish. Again the Buddha could have had no idea of the perniciousness of the kind of self-conception engendered by capitalism.

Finally, the ideology of capitalism takes society to be constituted by social atoms, individuals with independent rights and interests, who vie with others in the pursuit of these—though they may come together to form a state in order to keep their collective affairs ordered. Marx correctly rejected this picture. People are essentially social. No one could live at all for the first five years of their life if it were not for the help of others. Nor does this dependence disappear later. Each person can flourish only if the community in which they live, and so its members, also flourishes.Footnote ³ This fact provides a reason to be concerned with the well-being of others. In other words, Marxism adds to the Buddhist imperative of compassion, providing yet another reason for it.

6. Filling Out the Marxist Picture

So let us turn to how the Buddhist picture may fill out the Marxist picture.

Let us start with the most obvious thing. You don't have to be a Buddhist to see the sad effects of capitalism. The litany of things I rehearsed in Section 3 makes this clear. The concern of capitalism is not the well-being of people; it is the making of profit. More: people are damaged, both physically and mentally, in the process. But why, exactly, is that bad? Buddhism answers that question. It locates capitalism in an overarching perspective of the human condition and its duḥkha.

Matters do not stop there, though. Marxism tells us that capitalist ideology legitimises selfishness, that is, acting solely in self-interest. But self-interest makes sense only if we conceptualise individuals as social atoms, which can be conceptualised as having rights/interests, etc., independently of others. Marxism, as just noted, rejects this as a piece of social ontology. Buddhism—at least Madhyamaka Buddhism—locates this in a much bigger picture of ontology, simpliciter. Everything is what it is only in relation to other things. The notion of self-interest is then based not just on a political illusion, but on a metaphysical illusion.

Next, capitalism engenders a particular power-structure, with those who own or manage capital exerting great power over those who merely work for it. Power can be used—and usually is—to oppress;Footnote ⁴ and this power structure certainly is. Marxism is, of course, well aware of this. But there are other, and equally pernicious, power structures which Marxism has largely ignored, notably those of race and gender. (A major exception is Engels' The Origin of the Family, which offers a reduction of gender power-structure to class power-structure.) Now, Buddhism rejected class structure, in the form of the Indian caste system. And in one of the sūtras where the Buddha does so, the V $\bar a$seṭṭha Sutta, he also rejects the importance of race and gender.Footnote ⁵ The Four Noble Truths make such distinctions of no moral significance. (Can there be ethics in which this is not the case? Of course. Merely consider Aristotle on woman and slaves. See e.g., Book 1 of the Politics.) The Buddhist view can correct a short-sightedness in Marxism.Footnote ⁶

Finally, Marxism famously notes that how people think is not a constant, since it can be changed by socio-economic practice. Buddhism adds to this, pointing out that how a person thinks of themself is a narrative construction. Such a construction can be changed; and it can be changed so that a person comes to think of themself as not driven by self-interest, but by compassion, and so in a way essentially inimical to capitalism.

I am sure that there are probably other ways in which our two pictures complement and reinforce each other, but that will do for the present.

7. So Where does this Take Us?

In the previous sections, I have explained certain Buddhist and Marxist views. I have not tried to defend them.Footnote ⁷ That would require much more space than I have here. But by way of conclusion, let us simply assume that the views are largely correct, and ask where this takes us.

These views, as we have seen, tell us something about the unhappy “human condition” in which we find ourselves in the capitalist world at the start of the 21st Century. A consequence of both is that we should work to destroy the illusions on which capitalism is based, together with their pernicious effects—and so the destruction of the capitalist economic structure itself.

Marx, of course, predicted the imminent demise of capitalism. In this, he was wrong. Why, is an interesting question. Arguably, an important part of the explanation is the fact that global capitalism has been able to find cheap sources of labour in the “developing” countries of the world. But whatever the explanation, capitalism will end. The economic system of the year 2000 is nothing like that of 1000; it would be naive to suppose that the economic system of 3000 (assuming that the human race manages to get there) will be anything like that of 2000.Footnote ⁸

So we need to work towards a better socio-economic system. A system of humanity, compassion, tolerance, and cooperation; where wealth is used to provide the basic needs of health, education, etc, for all; where there is equality of class, race, and gender; where social decisions are not made by a minority of vested interests. In short, to a society where suffering, though it may not be eliminated, is at least minimised—and certainly not brought upon us by our own actions.

Of course, the most important question is: how? Neither Buddhism nor Marxism offers a magic bullet to achieve the end. Neither do I have a substantial answer to the question. But here, at least, are some preliminary thoughts.

History has taught us some important lessons, and so alerted us to many traps along our path. Arguably, one of the most important lessons that history has taught us is a simple one: power tends to corrupt. It feeds the ego; people who have it want to retain it and—usually—get more of it. Those who have power, then, even if they sought it for the most altruistic of reasons, soon come to exercise it to feed the beast. Change, and the power structures which this requires, must therefore be bottom-up.

Relatedly, contemporary social life requires the solution to many coordination problems, especially in the realm of economic production, distribution, and consumption. What is produced? In what way is this to be distributed? How are these decisions to be made? It is necessary to figure out how these problems may be solved in a bottom-up fashion.

Another thing that is important, as both Buddhism and Marxism stress, is that people fundamentally misunderstand the world in which they live. So education is of central importance—not the sort of “education” that simply pushes some capitalist ideology, or the ideology of some other power structure; but education that allows us to see the world aright.

A further part of the story must surely be the construction of appropriate social structures. Human dispositions to behaviour are very malleable. Penal incarceration is well known actually to promote anti-social behaviour; on the other side, working with groups who help those with particular needs promotes a more benevolent attitude. We need to develop social structures (and the practices which go with them) which promote the human tendencies to compassion and cooperation, and inhibit the tendencies to aggression and dysfunctional competition.

Even given these sketchy thoughts, one thing is clear. What is required are political practices absent from traditional monastic Buddhist orders; and which also differ in many ways from those of traditional Marxists. As I noted at the start, Buddhism has always laid stress on personal practice; Marxism has always laid stress on social (economic) practice. But the personal and the social interact dialectically. (The matter is part of a much larger issue of the relationship between what Marx called the base and the superstructure—again, an issue much too large to go into here.) Successful action requires both.Footnote ⁹