Karl Marx
– Relied on findings of Newton and Darwin for constructing his cosmology, though he rejected the latter’s law of natural selection. Besides the theories of Plato, he was influenced by the medieval heretics, Niklas Storch, Thomas More, Campanella, Winstanley, Vesras, Fontenelle, Meslier, Morelly, Diderot and Deschamps in his views on marriage, family, religion and private property.
– The idea of economic interpretation of politics, linkage of the state with class interests and property system coming and out through a long line of heritage from Aristotle to Machiavelli, Locke and James Medis were his arsenals for substantiating his verdict against capitalism.
– Marx genius transformed ideas. Nothing on which he worked was left in its original form. Though economics, sociology, political theory, history and philosophy are all used in his sweeping analysis, he synthesised all these disciplines into his own basic thought-structure. English utilitarianism, French socialist thought and the beginning of German radicalism were suitably incorporated into his basic framework.
– Marx, in his zeal to change the world instead of merely interpreting it, he allowed himself, as far as the solutions were concerned, to be completely preoccupied with the then current maladies of the industrialised West dominated by the inhuman capitalists and the anachronistic church, and tried to generalise his conclusions which were partly valid in the immediate context.
– Though Marxism ultimately pleads for the full development of every individual, it negates, in the immediate context, the individuality of men. In practice, equality is turned into equivalence. Individual citizens are components of the state-apparatus. Individual relations between husbands and wives, and between parent and children are to be destroyed. Children need not know their parents, and should be brought up by the state. The individual, family, marriage and the familial rearing of children should not exist.
Deendayal:
– Realisation of unity in the midst of diversity, on the rock-like basis of Advaita Darshana: Understanding of complementarity between the material and the non- material; comprehension of truth along the line of Syad-Vada the art of dealing with immediate human problems in the light of the eternal universal laws; these, among other things, are some of the contributions of Hinduism which could have added valuable dimensions to Marxian thought and probably altered it beyond recognition.
– According to Marx, life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness is deter- mined by life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contary, their social being that determines their consciousness. Panditji, on the other hand, believed that while life or social being and consciousness act and react upon each other, it is consciousness that is more decisive. Integralism and consequent stress on development of consciousness distinguish his approach from that of Marx.
– The Hindu culture conceives of progress of man as simultaneous progress of the body, mind, intellect and soul. It places before us the ideal of the fourfold responsibilities of catering to the needs of body, mind intellect and soul with a view to achieving, the integrated progress of man. The fourfold Purushartha i.e., Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha, in an integrated way, constitute the ultimate goal of individual life.
Both these thinkers were humanists of the first order, though their humanism assumed apparently different forms on account of differences in their mental backgrounds, sources of inspiration and contemporary world situations.