25	FROM HEIDEGGER TO MARX

This may seem incredible, but if you work through Heidegger you can easily get to Marx. Heidegger’s forgetting of Being can be likened to Marx’s alienation and Lukács’s reification. In at least two ways: you can’t change anything by yourself, so to sort things out you have to make a revolution; and the forgetting of Being as Heidegger thinks it is what Marxism explains with the division of labor: you yourself don’t enjoy all the fruits of your labor, and a society is erected in which everything is commodified, including you as a worker.

When Heidegger says that there is not principally man but Being, and we reply, Being thinks itself in us, well, that’s Marx: there’s no use exerting yourself trying to be different if society doesn’t change. Marx imagines you can do it by taking the Winter Palace. Okay, but slow down. In order to take the Winter Palace, a quantity of conditions have to be realized, which it isn’t that far-fetched to call Heidegger’s Being. There needs to be a great transformation.

When we were young and the priests would tell us that making the revolution meant, above all, achieving self-renewal, what they obviously meant was: you can be authentic no matter what your life situation is—in fact, just be an onlooker and leave things as they are. Don’t bother with politics, with rich and poor; go to church and meditate and save your soul.

Well, sorry, my friends, but no. That won’t cut it.