Alasdair MacIntyre’s Marxist Theory In His Early Time

As an important part of pursuing virtue, MacIntyre’s long-term and profounded research on Marxism in his early time generated a special and complex theoretical transformation combining religious, ethical, social class situation and other factors. It covered not only a process of his approaching to Marxism, construction of humanism, and incertitude and estrangement of Marxism, but also his involvement in Christianity, New Left, and Trotskyism.Overall, MacIntyre’s Marxist thought went through four key stages. The first stage was from 1949 to 1956, before he participated in the New Left movement. At this stage, MacIntyre began to focus on Marxism. He tried to blend Marxism and Christianity in order to construct a universally accepted Marxist moral philosophy in Britain and got it published. He highlighted practical features of Marxism by taking the Christian and the Marx doctrine together into religious, which was the first step in the practice of constructing morality theory. He put capitalist economics criticism as another proof that Marxism was a theory about reality. It was recognized as a kind of prophecy, whose scientificity should be proved through political economics. Druing a period of rapid development after the second world war, capitalism and people’s living standards improved, which caused MacIntyre to believe that proletarian revolution lost the demand and requirement to overthrow the capitalist system. Thus, he realized his original intention of considering Marxism as a religion that to predict the future empirically basing on reality.The second stage was from 1956 to around 1960. The British New Left meant that the native Marxists hoped to construct the localization Marx theory, which provided excellent academic atmosphere for the discuss of socialist humanism. MacIntyre believed that the Marxism was perfecting by bourgeois culture, while the working class and the socialist intellectuals would gradually lose their revolution faith. He considered the Stalinism as a Meta-Marxism, that it should be a kind of theory both inheriting Marxism and explaining it. But the purpose that predicts the future based on the relationship between economic base and superstructure from reality was just forced it by this mechanical historical way. MacIntyre on the one hand, regarded the class struggle of Marxism as the synonym of moral revolution; on the other hand, he borrowed the conception of "desire" to construct his historical moral perspective. Actually, instead of opposing to class revolution at that time, Maclntyre still recognized it as a theoretical way to realize human nature.The third stage was from 1960 to the mid-1960s. In these several years, MacIntyre paid more attention on the study of social reality, showing a tendency to Trotskyism. He believed that although the welfare state policies significantly improved people’s living standards and lifestyles, and abolished economic oppression, it could not be concluded hastily that people already have had the access to liberty. To achieve human liberty, a kind of radical change must be conducted, abandoning capitalism and parliamentary democracy. However, due to the mass living in the society that need renovating, their choice was influenced by capital mode, and therefore cannot find a way to get out of it. So we should use the political movement instead of political theory to revolt. MacIntyre said that liberty should be a kind of revolution, for everyone should be fight for himself, which chould be maintained by the party’s rules by the minority. He appealed them to explain the society rules through theory, but not the view of welfare capitalism or self-wake. Whilest paid less and less attention on the working classThe fourth stage is from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s. In this period, he insisted on practical moral notion and abandoned Marx’s proletarian theory, which made him a widely known moral philosopher as people recognized. In this period Marxism and socialist movement was experiencing an unprecedented difficult situation in Britain, which caused MacIntyre to consider that the condition of working class, national idea and class rules disappeared and could not as a fight theory. He saw the weakness of Socialism from Lenin, Stalin, Lukacs, Marcuse, and Che Guevara, which caused him eventually abandoned Marx’s class revolution theory completely, and transferred to the Aristotelian practical moral system.It is one-sided to say that MacIntyre was a Marxist theorist or Trotskyist because he was a member of CPGB and his New Leftist and Trotskyist standpoint. When analyzing Marxist theory in his articles, his works on moral and religious should not be ignored. At that time, MacIntyre stuck in the judgment and weigh of the theories and positions of Christianity and Marxism and so on in order to find a carrier of his moral intention. Therefore, he was actually neither a true New Leftist intellectuals, nor a Trotskyists, let alone a British Marxist.MacIntyre’s Marxist research has three important characteristics:Firstly, all of his research was oriented to pursuing virtue, so his Marxist study was conducted on the basis of it; secondly, the historical background played an important role in MacIntyre’s attitude change to Marxism; thirdly, transformations happened in MacIntyre’s Marxism study were similar to generation change of British New Left. It is of great academic significance to rethink his thoughts development. Firstly, the early Marxist research is an important theoretical preparation for his ethics, so the mastery of the early development lays a solid foundation for us to fully comprehend his ethnic perspective. Secondly, MacIntyre’s Marxist research can help us further understand the development of the British New Left. Thirdly, this study helps to understand British Marxist characterof localization.