A Marxist Transhumanism?

Abstract

ranshumanism is a philosophical, cultural and political revolutionary movement. It proposes a radical trans- formation of the human being and the society in which it develops. Transhumanism is revolutionary on a philosophical level because it collects ontological traditions of the past that posed this transformation, from British Marxist and non-Marxist left-wing thinkers of the 19th and 20th centuries to Soviet and Russian cosmism. But going further back one can find proto- transhumanist proposals from Christian theologians and Enlightenment philosophers. And it is revolutionary at a political level because it can be traced back to proto-transhumanist ideas in political revolutionaries of the past. The revolutionary doctrine par excellence of the 19th and 20th centuries is Marxism. Marxism also influenced certain transhumanists authors, although there are no transhumanist movements that claimed to be Marxist themselves, because none of them put into question capital as the basic social relation of capitalism. In the texts of Marx, Engels and Lenin there can be found proto-transhumanist ideas. Philosophical connections between Marxism and transhumanism are numerous. But beyond this, in this article we suggest that it is possible to develop a Marxist transhumanism movement that exceeds the actual individualistic and pro-capitalist prism on transhumanism. Also, we suggest transhumanism can serve to revitalize Marxist materialism in this 21st century and for the future. Marxist transhumanism would comply with the definition of communism of Marx and Engels, and it could even be said that Marxism is, essentially, transhumanist in its foundations, even when it defines posthumans as New Men, or Men Made In Property. And it could even be said that transhumanism is, in essence, Marxist. In this article, we present a historical cartography of inherent class relations in techno-scientific development and try to show the ideological impact that these relations made on transhumanists. We describe actual transhumanism as transcapitalism, and analyze its theoretical influences, proposing a theoretical itinerary for Marxist transhumanism, from Marx to more contemporary authors that would pave its political and philosophical roots. In addition, we define transcapitalism as BTA-Politics – biopolitics, thanatopolitics and anatomopolitics – in the sense of Michel Foucault. Finally, we propose that it is precisely the inherent contradictions of current Transcapitalism that set the paths for the construction of Marxist transhumanism.