AMERICAN CULTURE

American Culture

American Culture

Ethics, religion and culture

Every nation has some cultural norms and value which are been practiced by all. America has a long history of cultural norms and behaviors and numbers of philosophers have written their views on them. Come of the theories are discussed below.

The concept of human nature articulated by Mariátegui included a blend of existential, pragmatist, and Marxist influences. It was best characterized by a rejection of Cartesian rationalism and positivism. He followed the Italian idealist philosopher Benedetto Croce in holding that, without a set of moral principles, specifically a principle condemning human exploitation, Marx's critique of capitalist economy would not make sense (albeit that Marx was not interested in developing a moral philosophy). Influenced by the French labour theorist Georges Sorel, Mariátegui argued that socialism had an ethical function, which was to create a 'morality of producers' in the process of struggling against capitalism. Therefore, Mariátegui was interested in articulating a work ethic based on socialist principles which would raise the moral consciousness of workers as they aimed to transform the exploitative conditions of class society.

Mariátegui departed from a 'scientific' dialectical materialist account of social change by representing the proletariat, or working class, as an affirmative rather than a negative, social and political force. In his early writings Mariátegui argued that the characteristic gesture of the bourgeoisie was to negate, while that of the working class was to affirm. He counter posed bourgeois nihilism and decadence with working class optimism and confidence. In the Hegelian version of the dialectic, negation (rather than affirmation) was the process which moved history forward. This led Marxism to emphasize revolution as the negation of a previously established political order. However, in his account of Peruvian history, Mariátegui argued for socialism on positive grounds. Peruvian capitalism was described as weak and unable to undo the power of the rural conservative sectors, which retarded economic development. Socialism was depicted as the one solution that would incorporate the benefits of capitalism (creativity, discipline, productiveness) while accommodating the communitarian interests of the indigenous population.

In the light of Mariátegui's portrayal of the workers and indigenous peasants as positive social forces, it could be argued that his concept of ethics, with its connection to socialism, was as close to Nietzsche's idea of a superior morality as to Marx's concept of social revolution. Mariátegui saw the advent of socialism as resulting from its own vigorous and undisputed success, not as a result of a class war. The work ethic he advocated contained a forceful and explicit rejection of what Nietzsche called a 'slave morality', a moral system which was reactive rather than self-initiated in its positing of moral principles and/or practices. Mariátegui also rejected the notion of a teleological end-state after the achievement of which history would end and all oppression would cease (Thompson, 2005). He declared that no revolution can foretell a subsequent revolution, despite the fact that seeds of political change may have been planted. Like William James, Mariátegui attributed to human beings a ...