The Standpoint of the Proletariat
.
. |
5 Thus man has become the measure of
all
(societal) things. The conceptual and
historical
foundation for this has been laid by
the
methodological problems of economics:
by
dissolving the fetishistic objects
into processes
that take place among men and are objectified
in concrete relations between them;
by deriving
the indissoluble fetishistic forms
from the
primary forms of human relations. At
the
conceptual level the structure of the
world
of men stands revealed as a system
of dynamically
changing relations in which the conflicts
between man and nature, man and man
(in the
class struggle, etc.) are fought out.
The
structure and the hierarchy of the
categories
are the index of the degree of clarity
to
which man has attained concerning the
foundations
of his existence in these relations,
i. e.
the degree of consciousness of himself.
At the same time this structure and
this
hierarchy are the central theme of
history.
History is no longer an enigmatic flux
to
which men and things are subjected.
It is
no longer a thing to be explained by
the
intervention of transcendental powers
or
made meaningful by reference to transcendental
values. History is, on the one hand,
the
product
(albeit the unconscious one) of man’s
own
activity, on the other hand it is the
succession
of those processes in which the forms
taken
by this activity and the relations
of man
to himself (to nature, to other men)
are
overthrown. So that if – as we emphasised
earlier on – the categories describing
the
structure of a social system are not
immediately
historical, i. e. if the empirical
succession
of historical events does not suffice
to
explain the origins of a particular
form
of thought or existence, then it can
be said
that despite this, or better, because
of
it, any such conceptual system will
describe
in its totality a definite stage in
the society
as a whole.
And the nature of history is precisely
that
every definition degenerates into an
illusion:
history is the history of the unceasing
overthrow
of the objective forms that shape the
life
of man. It is therefore not possible
to reach
an understanding of particular forms
by studying
their successive appearances in an
empirical
and historical manner. This is not
because
they transcend history, though this
is and
must be the bourgeois view with its
addiction
to thinking about isolated ‘facts’
in isolated
mental categories. The truth is rather
that
these particular forms are not immediately
connected with each other either by
their
simultaneity or by their consecutiveness.
What connects them is their place and
function
in the totality and by rejecting the
idea
of a ‘purely historical’ explanation
the
notion of history as a universal discipline
is brought nearer. When the problem
of connecting
isolated phenomena has become a problem
of
categories, by the same dialectical
process
every problem of categories becomes
transformed
into a historical problem. Though it
should
be stressed: it is transformed into
a problem
of universal history which now appears
–
more clearly than in our introductory
polemical
remarks – simultaneously as a problem
of
method and a problem of our knowledge
of
the present.
From this standpoint alone does history
really
become a history of mankind. For it
contains
nothing that does not lead back ultimately
to men and to the relations between
men.
It is because Feuerbach gave this new
direction
to philosophy that he was able to exercise
such a decisive influence on the origins
of historical materialism. However,
by transforming
philosophy into ‘anthropology’ he caused
man to become frozen in a fixed objectivity
and thus pushed both dialectics and
history
to one side. And precisely this is
the great
danger in every ‘humanism’ or anthropological
point of view.[51] For if man is made
the
measure of all things, and if with
the aid
of that assumption all transcendence
is to
be eliminated without man himself being
measured
against this criterion, without applying
the same ‘standard’ to himself or –
more
exactly – without making man himself
dialectical,
then man himself is made into an absolute
and he simply puts himself in the place
of
those transcendental forces he was
supposed
to explain, dissolve and systematically
replace.
At best, then, a dogmatic metaphysics
is
superseded by an equally dogmatic relativism.
This dogmatism arises because the failure
to make man dialectical is complemented
by
an equal failure to make, reality dialectical.
Hence relativism moves within an essentially
static world. As it cannot become conscious
of the immobility of the world and
the rigidity
of its own standpoint it inevitably
reverts
to the dogmatic position of those thinkers
who likewise offered to explain the
world
from premises they did not consciously
acknowledge
and which, therefore, they adopted
uncritically.
For it is one thing to relativise the
truth
about an individual or a species in
an ultimately
static world (masked though this stasis
may
be by an illusory movement like the
“eternal
recurrence of the same things” or the
biological
or morphological ‘organic’ succession
of
periods). And it is quite another matter
when the concrete, historical function
and
meaning of the various ‘truths’ is
revealed
within a unique, concretised historical
process.
Only in the former case can we accurately
speak of relativism. But in that case
it
inevitably becomes dogmatic. For it
is only
meaningful to speak of relativism where
an
‘absolute’ is in some sense assumed.
The
weakness and the half-heartedness of
such
‘daring thinkers’ as Nietzsche or Spengler
is that their relativism only abolishes
the
absolute in appearance.
For, from the standpoint of both logic
and
method, the ‘systematic location’ of
the
absolute is to be found just where
the apparent
movement stops. The absolute is nothing
but
the fixation of thought, it is the
projection
into myth of the intellectual failure
to
understand reality concretely as a
historical
process. Just as the relativists have
only
appeared to dissolve the world into
movement,
so too they have only appeared to exile
the
absolute from their systems. Every
‘biological’
relativism, etc., that turns its limits
into
‘eternal’ limits thereby involuntarily
reintroduces
the absolute, the ‘timeless’ principle
of
thought. And as long as the absolute
survives
in a system (even unconsciously) it
will
prove logically stronger than all attempts
at relativism. For it represents the
highest
principle of thought attainable in
an undialectical
universe, in a world of ossified things
and
a logical world of ossified concepts.
So
that here both logically and methodologically
Socrates must be in the right as against
the sophists, and logic and value theory
must be in the right as against pragmatism
and relativism.
What these relativists are doing is
to take
the present philosophy of man with
its social
and historical limits and to allow
these
to ossify into an ‘eternal’ limit of
a biological
or pragmatic sort. Actuated either
by doubt
or despair they thus stand revealed
as a
decadent version of the very rationalism
or religiosity they mean to oppose.
Hence
they may sometimes be a not unimportant
symptom
of the inner weakness of the society
which
produced the rationalism they are ‘combating’.
But they are significant only as symptoms.
It is always the culture they assail,
the
culture of the class that has not yet
been
broken, that embodies the authentic
spiritual
values.
Only the dialectics of history can
create
a radically new situation. This is
not only
because it relativises all limits,
or better,
because it puts them in a state of
flux.
Nor is it just because all those forms
of
existence that constitute the counterpart
of the absolute are dissolved into
processes
and viewed as concrete manifestations
of
history so that the absolute is not
so much
denied as endowed with its concrete
historical
shape and treated as an aspect of the
process
itself.
But, in addition to these factors,
it is
also true that the historical process
is
something unique and its dialectical
advances
and reverses are an incessant struggle
to
reach higher stages of the truth and
of the
(societal) self-knowledge of man. The
‘relativisation’
of truth in Hegel means that the higher
factor
is always the truth of the factor beneath
it in the system. This does not imply
the
destruction of ‘objective’ truth at
the lower
stages but only that it means something
different
as a result of being integrated in
a more
concrete and comprehensive totality.
When
Marx makes dialectics the essence of
history,
the movement of thought also becomes
just
a part of the overall movement of history.
History becomes the history of the
objective
forms from which man’s environment
and inner
world are constructed and which he
strives
to master in thought, action and art,
etc.
(Whereas relativism always works with
rigid
and immutable objective forms.)
In the period of the “pre-history of
human
society” and of the struggles between
classes
the only possible function of truth
is to
establish the various possible attitudes
to an essentially uncomprehended world
in
accordance with man’s needs in the
struggle
to master his environment. Truth could
only
achieve an ‘objectivity’ relative to
the
standpoint of the individual classes
and
the objective realities corresponding
to
it. But as soon as mankind has clearly
understood
and hence restructured the foundations
of
its existence truth acquires a wholly
novel
aspect. When theory and practice are
united
it becomes possible to change reality
and
when this happens the absolute and
its ‘relativistic’
counterpart will have played their
historical
role for the last time. For as the
result
of these changes we shall see the disappearance
of that reality which the absolute
and the
relative expressed in like manner.
This process begins when the proletariat
becomes conscious of its own class
point
of view. Hence it is highly misleading
to
describe dialectical materialism as
‘relativism’.
For although they share a common premise:
man as the measure of all things, they
each
give it a different and even contradictory
interpretation. The beginning of a
‘materialist
anthropology’ in Feuerbach is in fact
only
a beginning and one that is in itself
capable
of a number of continuations. Marx
took up
Feuerbach’s suggestion and thought
it out
to its logical conclusion. In the process
he takes issue very sharply with Hegel:
“Hegel
makes of man a man of self-consciousness
instead of making self-consciousness
the
self-consciousness of man, i. e. of
real
man as he lives in the real world of
objects
by which he is conditioned.”[52]
Simultaneously, however, and this is
moreover
at the time when he was most under
the influence
of Feuerbach, he sees man historically
and
dialectically, and both are to be understood
in a double sense. (1) He never speaks
of
man in general, of an abstractly absolutised
man: he always thinks of him as a link
in
a concrete totality, in a society.
The latter
must be explained from the standpoint
of
man but only after man has himself
been integrated
in the concrete totality and has himself
been made truly concrete. (2) Man himself
is the objective foundation of the
historical
dialectic and the subject-object lying
at
its roots, and as such he is decisively
involved
in the dialectical process. To formulate
it in the initial abstract categories
of
dialectics: he both is and at the same
time
is not. Religion, Marx says, in the
Critique
of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, “is
the realisation
in fantasy of the essence of man because
the essence of man does not possess
any true
reality.”[53] And as this non-existent
man
is to be made the measure of all things,
the true demiurge of history, his non-being
must at once become the concrete and
historically
dialectical form of critical knowledge
of
the present in which man is necessarily
condemned
to non-existence. The negation of his
being
becomes concretised, then, in the understanding
of bourgeois society. At the same time
–
as we have already seen – the dialectics
of bourgeois society and the contradictions
of its abstract categories stand out
clearly
when measured against the nature of
man.
Following the criticism of Hegel’s
theory
of consciousness we have just quoted,
Marx
announces his own programme in these
terms:
“It must be shown how the state and
private
property, etc., transform men into
abstractions,
or that they are the products of abstract
man instead of being the reality of
individual,
concrete men.” And the fact that in
later
years Marx adhered to this view of
the abstract
non-existence of man can be seen from
the
well-known and oft-quoted words from
the
Preface to the Critique Political Economy
in which bourgeois society is described
as
the last manifestation of the “pre-history
of human society.”
It is here that Marx’s ‘humanism’ diverges
most sharply from all the movements
that
seem so similar to it at first glance.
Others
have often recognised and described
how capitalism
violates and destroys everything human.
I
need refer only to Carlyle’s Past and
Present
whose descriptive sections received
the approval
and in part the enthusiastic admiration
of
the young Engels. In such accounts
it is
shown, on the one hand, that it is
not possible
to be human in bourgeois society, and,
on
the other hand, that man as he exists
is
opposed without mediation – or what
amounts
to the same thing, through the mediations
of metaphysics and myth – to this non-existence
of the human (whether this is thought
of
as something in the past, the future
or merely
an imperative).
But this does no more than present
the problem
in a confused form and certainly does
not
point the way to a solution. The solution
can only be discovered by seeing these
two
aspects as they appear in the concrete
and
real process of capitalist development,
namely
inextricably bound up with one another:
i.
e. the categories of dialectics must
be applied
to man as the measure of all things
in a
manner that also includes simultaneously
a complete description of the economic
structure
of bourgeois society and a correct
knowledge
of the present. For otherwise, any
description
will inevitably succumb to the dilemmas
of
empiricism and utopianism, of voluntarism
and fatalism, even though it may give
an
accurate account of matters of detail.
At
best it will not advance beyond crude
facticity
on the one hand, while on the other
it will
confront the immanent course of history
with
alien and hence subjective and arbitrary
demands.
This is without exception the fate
that has
befallen all those systems that start
with
man as their premise and strive in
theory
to solve the problems of his existence
while
in practice they seek to liberate him
from
them. This duality can be seen in all
attempts
of the type of the Christianity of
the Gospels.
Society as it actually exists is left
unscathed.
It makes no difference whether this
takes
the form of “giving to Caesar the things
which are Caesar’s,” of Luther’s sanctification
of the powers that be, or of Tolstoy’s
“resist
not evil.” For as long as society,
as it
is, is to be declared sacrosanct it
is immaterial
with what emotional force or what metaphysical
and religious emphasis this is done.
What
is crucial is that reality as it seems
to
be should be thought of as something
man
cannot change and its unchangeability
should
have the force of a moral imperative.
There are two aspects of the utopian
counterpart
to this ontology. The first is seen
in God’s
annihilation of empirical reality in
the
Apocalypse, which can on occasion be
absent
(as with Tolstoy) without materially
affecting
the situation. The second lies in the
utopian
view of man as a ‘saint’ who can achieve
an inner mastery over the external
reality
that cannot be eliminated. As long
as such
a view survives with all its original
starkness
its claims to offer a ‘humanistic’
solution
to man’s problems are self-refuting.
For
it is forced to deny humanity to the
vast
majority of mankind and to exclude
them from
the ‘redemption’ which alone confers
meaning
upon a life which is meaningless on
the level
of empirical experience. In so doing
it reproduces
the inhumanity of class society on
a metaphysical
and religious plane, in the next world,
in
eternity – of course with the signs
reversed,
with altered criteria and with the
class
structure stood on its head. And the
most
elementary study of any monastic order
as
it advances from a community of ‘saints’
to the point where it becomes an economic
and political power at the side of
the ruling
class will make it abundantly clear
that
every relaxation of the utopian’s requirements
will mean an act of adaptation to the
society
of the day.
But the ‘revolutionary’ utopianism
of such
views cannot break out of the inner
limits
set to this undialectical ‘humanism’.
Even
the Anabaptists and similar sects preserve
this duality. On the one hand, they
leave
the objective structure of man’s empirical
existence unimpaired (consumption communism),
while on the other hand they expect
that
reality will be changed by awakening
man’s
inwardness which, independent of his
concrete
historical life, has existed since
time immemorial
and must now be brought to life – perhaps
through the intervention of a transcendental
deity.
They, too, start from the assumption
of man
as he exists and an empirical world
whose
structure is unalterable. That this
is the
consequence of their historical situation
is self-evident, but needs no further
discussion
in this context. It was necessary to
emphasise
it only because it is no accident that
it
was the revolutionary religiosity of
the
sects that supplied the ideology for
capitalism
in its purest forms (in England and
America).
For the union of an inwardness, purified
to the point of total abstraction and
stripped
of all traces of flesh and blood, with
a
transcendental philosophy of history
does
indeed correspond to the basic ideological
structure of capitalism. It could even
be
maintained that the equally revolutionary
Calvinist union of an ethics in which
man
has to prove himself (interiorised
asceticism)
with a thorough-going transcendentalism
with
regard to the objective forces that
move
the world and control the fate of man
(deus
absconditus and predestination) contain
the
bourgeois reified consciousness with
its
things-in-themselves in a mythologised
but
yet quite pure state.[54] In the actively
revolutionary sects the elemental vigour
of a Thomas Münzer seems at first glance
to obscure the irreducible quality
and unsynthesised
amalgam of the empirical and the utopian.
But closer inspection of the way in
which
the religious and utopian premises
of the
theory concretely impinge upon Münzer’s
actions
will reveal the same ‘dark and empty
chasm’,
the same ‘hiatus irrationalis’ between
theory
and practice that is everywhere apparent
where a subjective and hence undialectical
utopia directly assaults historical
reality
with the intention of changing it.
Real actions
then appear – precisely in their objective,
revolutionary sense – wholly independent
of the religious utopia: the latter
can neither
lead them in any real sense, nor can
it offer
concrete objectives or concrete proposals
for their realisation.
When Ernst Bloch claims[55] that this
union
of religion with socio-economic revolution
points the way to a deepening of the
‘merely
economic’ outlook of historical materialism,
he fails to notice that his deepening
simply
by-passes the real depth of historical
materialism.
When he then conceives of economics
as a
concern with objective things to which
soul
and inwardness are to be opposed, he
overlooks
the fact that the real social revolution
can only mean the restructuring of
the real
and concrete life of man. He does not
see
that what is known as economics is
nothing
but the system of forms objectively
defining
this real life. The revolutionary sects
were
forced to evade this problem because
in their
historical situation such a restructuring
of life and even of the definition
of the
problem was objectively impossible.
But it
will not do to fasten upon their weakness,
their inability to discover the Archimedean
point from which the whole of reality
can
be overthrown, and their predicament
which
forces them to aim too high or too
low and
to see in these things a sign of greater
depth.
The individual can never become the
measure
of all things. For when the individual
confronts
objective reality he is faced by a
complex
of ready-made and unalterable objects
which
allow him only the subjective responses
of
recognition or rejection. Only the
class
can relate to the whole of reality
in a practical
revolutionary way. (The ‘species’ cannot
do this as it is no more than an individual
that has been mythologised and stylised
in
a spirit of contemplation.) And the
class,
too, can only manage it when it can
see through
the reified objectivity of the given
world
to the process that is also its own
fate.
For the individual, reification and
hence
determinism (determinism being the
idea that
things are necessarily connected) are
irremovable.
Every attempt to achieve ‘freedom’
from such
premises must fail, for ‘inner freedom’
presupposes
that the world cannot be changed. Hence,
too, the cleavage of the ego into ‘is’
and
‘ought’, into the intelligible and
the empirical
ego, is unable to serve as the foundation
for a dialectical process of becoming,
even
for the individual subject. The problem
of
the external world and with it the
structure
of the external world (of things) is
referred
to the category of the empirical ego.
Psychologically
and physiologically the latter is subject
to the same deterministic laws as apply
to
the external world in the narrow sense.
The
intelligible ego becomes a transcendental
idea (regardless of whether it is viewed
as a metaphysical existent or an ideal
to
be realised). It is of the essence
of this
idea that it should preclude a dialectical
interaction with the empirical components
of the ego and a fortiori the possibility
that the intelligible ego should recognise
itself in the empirical ego. The impact
of
such an idea upon the empirical reality
corresponding
to it produces the same riddle that
we described
earlier in the relationship between
‘is’
and ’ought’.
This discovery makes it quite clear
why all
such views must end in mysticism and
conceptual
mythologies. Mythologies are always
born
where two terminal points, or at least
two
stages in a movement, have to be regarded
as terminal points without its being
possible
to discover any concrete mediation
between
them and the movement. This is equally
true
of movements in the empirical world
and of
indirectly mediated movements of thought
designed to encompass the totality.
This
failure almost always has the appearance
of involving simultaneously the unbridgeable
distance between the movement and the
thing
moved, between movement and mover,
and between
mover and thing moved. But mythology
inevitably
adopts the structure of the problem
whose
opacity had been the cause of its own
birth.
This insight confirms once again the
value
of Feuerbach’s ‘anthropological’ criticism.
And thus there arises what at first
sight
seems to be the paradoxical situation
that
this projected, mythological world
seems
closer to consciousness than does the
immediate
reality. But the paradox dissolves
as soon
as we remind ourselves that we must
abandon
the standpoint of immediacy and solve
the
problem if immediate reality is to
be mastered
in truth. Whereas mythology is simply
the
reproduction in imagination of the
problem
in its insolubility. Thus immediacy
is merely
reinstated on a higher level. The desert
beyond God which, according to Master
Eckhart,
the soul must seek in order to find
the deity
is nearer to the isolated individual
soul
than is its concrete existence within
the
concrete totality of a human society
which
from this background must be indiscernible
even in its general outlines. Thus
for reified
man a robust causal determinism is
more accessible
than those mediations that could lead
him
out of his reified existence. But to
posit
the individual man as the measure of
all
things is to lead thought into the
labyrinths
of mythology.
Of course, ‘indeterminism’ does not
lead
to a way out of the difficulty for
the individual.
The indeterminism of the modern pragmatists
was in origin nothing but the acquisition
of that margin of ‘freedom’ that the
conflicting
claims and irrationality of the reified
laws
can offer the individual in capitalist
society.
It ultimately turns into a mystique
of intuition
which leaves the fatalism of the external
reified world even more intact than
before.
Jacobi had rebelled in the name of
‘humanism’
against the tyranny of the ‘law’ in
Kant
and Fichte, he demanded that “laws
should
be made for the sake of man, not man
for
the sake of the law.” But we can see
that
where Kant had left the established
order
untouched in the name of rationalism,
Jacobi
did no more than offer to glorify the
same
empirical, merely existing reality
in the
spirit of irrationalism.[56]
Even worse, having failed to perceive
that
man in his negative immediacy was a
moment
in a dialectical process, such a philosophy,
when consciously directed toward the
restructuring
of society, is forced to distort the
social
reality in order to discover the positive
side, man as he exists, in one of its
manifestations.
In support of this we may cite as a
typical
illustration the well-known passage
in Lassalle’s
Bastiat-Schulze: “There is no social
way
that leads out of this social situation.
The vain efforts of things to behave
like
human beings can be seen in the English
strikes
whose melancholy outcome is familiar
enough.
The only way out for the workers is
to be
found in that sphere within which they
can
still be human beings, i. e. in the
state.
Hence the instinctive but infinite
hatred
which the liberal bourgeoisie bears
the concept
of the state in its every manifestation.”[57]
It is not our concern here to pillory
Lassalle
for his material and historical misconceptions.
But it is important to establish that
the
abstract and absolute separation of
the state
from the economy and the rigid division
between
man as thing on the one hand and man
as man
on the other, is not without consequences.
(1) It is responsible for the birth
of a
fatalism that cannot escape from immediate
empirical facticity (we should think
here
of Lassalle’s Iron Law of Wages). And
(2)
the ‘idea’ of the state is divorced
from
the development of capitalism and is
credited
with a completely utopian function,
wholly
alien to its concrete character. And
this
means that every path leading to a
change
in this reality is systematically blocked.
Already the mechanical separation between
economics and politics precludes any
really
effective action encompassing society
in
its totality, for this itself is based
on
the mutual interaction of both these
factors.
For a fatalism in economics would prohibit
any thorough-going economic measure,
while
a state utopianism would either await
a miracle
or else pursue a policy of adventurist
illusions.
This disintegration of a dialectical,
practical
unity into an inorganic aggregate of
the
empirical and the utopian, a clinging
to
the ‘facts’ (in their untranscended
immediacy)
and a faith in illusions as alien to
the
past as to the present is characteristic
in increasing measure of the development
of social democracy. We have only to
consider
it in the light of our systematic analysis
of reification in order to establish
that
such a posture conceals a total capitulation
before the bourgeoisie – and this notwithstanding
the apparent ‘socialism’ of its policies.
For it is wholly within the class interests
of the bourgeoisie to separate the
individual
spheres of society from one another
and to
fragment the existence of men correspondingly.
Above all we find, justified in different
terms but essential to social democracy
nevertheless,
this very dualism of economic fatalism
and
ethical utopianism as applied to the
‘human’
functions of the state. It means inevitably
that the proletariat will be drawn
on to
the territory of the bourgeoisie and
naturally
the bourgeoisie will maintain its superiority.[58]
The danger to which the proletariat
has been
exposed since its appearance on the
historical
stage was that it might remain imprisoned
in its immediacy together with the
bourgeoisie.
With the growth of social democracy
this
threat acquired a real political organisation
which artificially cancels out the
mediations
so laboriously won and forces the proletariat
back into its immediate existence where
it
is merely a component of capitalist
society
and not at the same time the motor
that drives
it to its doom and destruction. Thus
the
proletariat submits to the ‘laws’ of
bourgeois
society either in a spirit of supine
fatalism
(e. g. towards the natural laws of
production)
or else in a spirit of ‘moral’ affirmation
(the state as an ideal, a cultural
positive).
It is doubtless true that these ‘laws’
are
part of an objective dialectic inaccessible
to the reified consciousness and as
such
lead to the downfall of capitalism.[59]
But
as long as capitalism survives, such
a view
of society corresponds to the elementary
class interests of the bourgeoisie.
It derives
every practical advantage from revealing
aspects of the structure of immediate
existence
(regardless of how many insoluble problems
may be concealed behind these abstract
reflected
forms) while veiling the overall unified
dialectical structure.
On this territory, social democracy
must
inevitably remain in the weaker position.
This is not just because it renounces
of
its own free will the historical mission
of the proletariat to point to the
way out
of the problems of capitalism that
the bourgeoisie
cannot solve; nor is it because it
looks
on fatalistically as the ‘laws’ of
capitalism
drift towards the abyss. But social
democracy
must concede defeat on every particular
issue
also. For when confronted by the overwhelming
resources of knowledge, culture and
routine
which the bourgeoisie undoubtedly possesses
and will continue to possess as long
as it
remains the ruling class, the only
effective
superiority of the proletariat, its
only
decisive weapon is its ability to see
the
social totality as a concrete historical
totality; to see the reified forms
as processes
between men; to see the immanent meaning
of history that only appears negatively
in
the contradictions of abstract forms,
to
raise its positive side to consciousness
and to put it into practice. With the
ideology
of social democracy the proletariat
falls
victim to all the antinomics of reification
that we have hitherto analysed in such
detail.
The important role increasingly played
in
this ideology by ‘man’ as a value,
an ideal,
an imperative, accompanied, of course,
by
a growing ‘insight’ into the necessity
and
logic of the actual economic process,
is
only one symptom of this relapse into
the
reified immediacy of the bourgeoisie.
For
the unmediated juxtaposition of natural
laws
and imperatives is the logical expression
of immediate societal existence in
bourgeois
society.
6 Reification is, then, the necessary,
immediate
reality of every person living in capitalist
society. It can be overcome only by
constant
and constantly renewed efforts to disrupt
the reified structure of existence
by concretely
relating to the concretely manifested
contradictions
of the total development, by becoming
conscious
of the immanent meanings of these contradictions
for the total development. But it must
be
emphasised that (1) the structure can
be
disrupted only if the immanent contradictions
of the process are made conscious.
Only when
the consciousness of the proletariat
is able
to point out the road along which the
dialectics
of history is objectively impelled,
but which
it cannot travel unaided, will the
consciousness
of the proletariat awaken to a consciousness
of the process, and only then will
the proletariat
become the identical subject-object
of history
whose praxis will change reality. If
the
proletariat fails to take this step
the contradiction
will remain unresolved and will be
reproduced
by the dialectical mechanics of history
at
a higher level, in an altered form
and with
increased intensity. It is in this
that the
objective necessity of history consists.
The deed of the proletariat can never
be
more than to take the next step[60]
in the
process. Whether it is ‘decisive’ or
‘episodic’
depends on the concrete circumstances,
but
in this context, where we are concerned
with
our knowledge of the structure, it
does not
much matter as we are talking about
an unbroken
process of such disruptions.
(2) Inseparable from this is the fact
that
the relation to totality does not need
to
become explicit, the plenitude of the
totality
does not need to be consciously integrated
into the motives and objects of action.
What
is crucial is that there should be
an aspiration
towards totality, that action should
serve
the purpose, described above, in the
totality
of the process. Of course, with the
mounting
capitalist socialisation of society
it becomes
increasingly possible and hence necessary
to integrate the content of each specific
event into the totality of contents.[61]
(World economics and world politics
are much
more immediate forms of existence today
than
they were in Marx’s time.) However,
this
does not in the least contradict what
we
have maintained here, namely that the
decisive
actions can involve an – apparently
– trivial
matter. For here we can see in operation
the truth that in the dialectical totality
the individual elements incorporate
the structure
of the whole. This was made clear on
the
level of theory by the fact that e.
g. it
was possible to gain an understanding
of
the whole of bourgeois society from
its commodity
structure. We now see the same state
of affairs
in practice, when the fate of a whole
process
of development can depend on a decision
in
an – apparently – trivial matter.
Hence (3) when judging whether an action
is right or wrong it is essential to
relate
it to its function in the total process.
Proletarian thought is practical thought
and as such is strongly pragmatic.
“The proof
of the pudding is in the eating,” Engels
says, providing an idiomatic gloss
on Marx’s
second Thesis on Feuerbach: “The question
whether human thinking can pretend
to objective
truth is not a theoretical but a practical
question. Man must prove the truth,
i. e.
the reality and power, the ‘this-sidedness’
of his thinking in practice. The dispute
over the reality or non-reality of
thinking
that is isolated from practice is a
purely
scholastic question.” This pudding,
however,
is the making of the proletariat into
a class:
the process by which its class consciousness
becomes real in practice. This gives
a more
concrete form to the proposition that
the
proletariat is the identical subject-object
of the historical process, i. e. the
first
subject in history that is (objectively)
capable of an adequate social consciousness.
It turns out that the contradictions
in which
the antagonisms of the mechanics of
history
are expressed are only capable of an
objective
social solution in practice if the
solution
is at the same time a new, practically-won
consciousness on the part of the proletariat.[62]
Whether an action is functionally right
or
wrong is decided ultimately by the
evolution
of proletarian class consciousness.
The eminently practical nature of this
consciousness
is to be seen (4) in that an adequate,
correct
consciousness means a change in its
own objects,
and in the first instance, in itself.
In
Section II of this essay we discussed
Kant’s
view of the ontological proof of God’s
existence,
of the problem of existence and thought,
and we quoted his very logical argument
to
the effect that if existence were a
true
predicate, then “I could not say that
precisely
the object of my concept exists.” Kant
was
being very consistent when he denied
this.
At the same time it is clear that from
the
standpoint of the proletariat the empirically
given reality of the objects does dissolve
into processes and tendencies; this
process
is no single, unrepeatable tearing
of the
veil that masks the process but the
unbroken
alternation of ossification, contradiction
and movement; and thus the proletariat
represents
the true reality, namely the tendencies
of
history awakening into consciousness.
We
must therefore conclude that Kant’s
seemingly
paradoxical statement is a precise
description
of what actually follows from every
functionally
correct action of the proletariat.
This insight alone puts us in a position
to see through the last vestiges of
the reification
of consciousness and its intellectual
form,
the problem of the thing-in-itself.
Even
Friedrich Engels has put the matter
in a
form that may easily give rise to misunderstandings.
In his account of what separates Marx
and
himself from the school of Hegel, he
says:
“We comprehend the concepts in our
heads
once more materialistically – as reflections
of real things instead of regarding
the real
things as reflections of this or that
stage
of the absolute concept.”[63]
But this leaves a question to be asked
and
Engels not only asks it but also answers
it on the following page quite in agreement
with us. There he says: “that the world
is
not to be comprehended as a complex
of ready-made
things, but as a complex of processes.”
But
if there are no things, what is ‘reflected’
in thought? We cannot hope to offer
even
an outline of the history of the ‘reflection
theory’ even though we could only unravel
the full implications of this problem
with
its aid. In the theory of ‘reflection’
we
find the theoretical embodiment of
the duality
of thought and existence, consciousness
and
reality, that is so intractable to
the reified
consciousness. And from that point
of view
it is immaterial whether things are
to be
regarded as reflections of concepts
or whether
concepts are reflections of things.
In both
cases the duality is firmly established.
Kant’s grandiose and very cogent attempt
to overcome this duality by logic,
his theory
of the synthetic function of consciousness
in the creation of the domain of theory
could
not arrive at any philosophical solution
to the question. For his duality was
merely
banished from logic to reappear in
perpetuity
in the form of the duality of phenomenon
and the thing-in-itself. And in these
terms
it remained an insoluble philosophical
problem.
The later history of his theory shows
how
very unsatisfactory his solution was.
To
see Kant’s epistemology as scepticism
and
agnosticism is of course a misunderstanding.
But it is one that has at least one
root
in the theory itself – not, be it admitted,
in the logic but in the relation between
the logic and the metaphysics, in the
relation
between thought and existence.
It must be clearly understood that
every
contemplative stance and thus every
kind
of ‘pure thought’ that must undertake
the
task of knowing an object outside itself
raises the problem of subjectivity
and objectivity.
The object of thought (as something
outside)
becomes something alien to the subject.
This
raises the problem of whether thought
corresponds
to the object! The ‘purer’ the cognitive
character of thought becomes and the
more
‘critical’ thought is, the more vast
and
impassable does the abyss appear that
yawns
between the ‘subjective’ mode of thought
and the objectivity of the (existing)
object.
Now it is possible – as with Kant –
to view
the object of thought as something
‘created’
by the forms of thought. But this does
not
suffice to solve the problem of existence,
and Kant, by removing it from the sphere’
of epistemology, creates this philosophical
situation for himself: even his excogitated
objects must correspond to some ‘reality’
or other. But this reality is treated
as
a thing-in-itself and placed outside
the
realm of that which can be known by
the ‘critical’
mind. It is with respect to this reality
(which is the authentic, the metaphysical
reality for Kant, as his ethics shows)
that
his position remains one of scepticism
and
agnosticism. This remains true however
unsceptical
was the solution he found for epistemological
objectivity and the immanent theory
of truth.
It is, therefore, no accident that
it is
from Kant that the various agnostic
trends
have taken their cue (one has only
to think
of Maimon or Schopenhauer). It is even
less
of an accident that Kant himself was
responsible
for the reintroduction into philosophy
of
the principle that is most violently
opposed
to his own synthetic principle of ‘creation’
(Erzeugung), namely the Platonic theory
of
ideas. For this theory is the most
extreme
attempt to rescue the objectivity of
thought
and its correspondence with its object,
without
having to resort to empirical and material
reality to find a criterion for the
correspondence.
Now it is evident that every consistent
elaboration
of the theory of ideas requires a principle
that both links thought with the objects
of the world of ideas and also connects
these
with the objects of the empirical world
(recollection,
intellectual intuition, etc.). But
this in
turn leads the theory of thought to
transcend
the limits of thought itself: and it
becomes
psychology, metaphysics or the history
of
philosophy. Thus instead of a solution
to
the problem we are left with complexities
that have been doubled or tripled.
And the
problem remains without a solution.
For the
insight that a correspondence or relationship
of ‘reflection’ cannot in principle
be established
between heterogeneous objects is precisely
the driving force behind every view
of the
type of the Platonic theory of ideas.
This.
undertakes to prove that the same ultimate
essence forms the core of the objects
of
thought as well as of thought itself.
Hegel
gives an apt description of the basic
philosophical
theme of the theory of recollection
from
this standpoint when he says that it
provides
a myth of man’s fundamental situation:
“in
him lies the truth and the only problem
is
to make it conscious.”[64] But how
to prove
this identity in thought and existence
of
the ultimate substance? – above all
when
it has been shown that they are completely
heterogeneous in the way in which they
present
themselves to the intuitive, contemplative
mind? It becomes necessary to invoke
metaphysics
and with the aid of its overt or concealed
mythical mediations thought and existence
can once again be reunited. And this
despite
the fact that their separation is not
merely
the starting-point of ‘pure’ thought
but
also a factor that constantly informs
it
whether it likes it or not.
The situation is not improved in the
slightest
when the mythology is turned on its
head
and thought is deduced from empirical
material
reality. Rickert once described materialism
as an inverted Platonism. And he was
right
in so doing. As long as thought and
existence
persist in their old, rigid opposition,
as
long as their own structure and the
structure
of their interconnections remain unchanged,
then the view that thought is a product
of
the brain and hence must correspond
to the
objects of the empirical world is just
such
a mythology as those of recollection
and
the world of Platonic ideas. It is
a mythology
for it is incapable of explaining the
specific
problems that arise here by reference
to
this principle. It is forced to leave
them
unsolved, to solve them with the ‘old’
methods
and to reinstate the mythology as a
key to
the whole unanalysed complex.[65] But
as
will already be clear, it is not possible
to eliminate the distinction by means
of
an infinite progression. For that produces
either a pseudo-solution or else the
theory
of reflection simply reappears in a
different
guise.[66]
Historical thought perceives the correspondence
of thought and existence in their –
immediate.
but no more than immediate – rigid,
reified
structure. This is precisely the point
at,
which non-dialectical thought is confronted
by this insoluble problem. From the
fact
of this rigid confrontation it follows
(1)
that thought and (empirical) existence
cannot
reflect each other, but also (2) that
the
criterion of correct thought can only
be
found in the realm of reflection. As
long
as man adopts a stance of intuition
and contemplation
he can only relate to his own thought
and
to the objects of the empirical world
in
an immediate way. He accepts both as
ready-made
– produced by historical reality. As
he wishes
only to know the world and not to change
it he is forced to accept both the
empirical,
material rigidity of existence and
the logical
rigidity of concepts as unchangeable.
His
mythological analyses are not concerned
with
the concrete origins of this rigidity
nor
with the real factors inherent in them
that
could lead to its elimination. They
are concerned
solely to discover how the unchanged
nature
of these data could be conjoined whilst
leaving
them unchanged and how to explain them
as
such.
The solution proposed by Marx in his
Theses
on Feuerbach is to transform philosophy
into
praxis. But, as we have seen, this
praxis
has its objective and structural preconditions
and complement in the view that reality
is
a “complex of processes.” That is to
say,
in the view that the movements of history
represent the true reality; not indeed
a
transcendental one, but at all events
a higher
one than that of the rigid, reified
facts
of the empirical world, from which
they arise.
For the reflection theory this means
that
thought and consciousness are orientated
towards reality but, at the same time,
the
criterion of truth is provided by relevance
to reality. This reality is by no means
identical
with empirical existence. This reality
is
not, it becomes.
The process of Becoming is to be understood
in a twofold sense. (1) In this Becoming,
in this tendency, in this process the
true
nature of the object is revealed. This
is
meant in the sense that – as in the
case
of the instances we have cited and
which
could easily be multiplied – the transformation
of things into a process provides a
concrete
solution to all the concrete problems
created
by the paradoxes of existent objects.
The
recognition that one cannot step into
the
same river twice is just an extreme
way of
highlighting the unbridgeable abyss
between
concept and reality. It does nothing
to increase
our concrete knowledge of the river.
In contrast with this, the recognition
that
capital as a process can only be accumulated.
or rather accumulating, capital, provides
the positive, concrete solution to
a whole
host of positive, concrete problems
of method
and of substance connected with capital.
Hence only by overcoming the – theoretical
– duality of philosophy and special
discipline,
of methodology and factual knowledge
can
the way be found by which to annul
the duality
of thought and existence. Every attempt
to
overcome the duality dialectically
in logic,
in a system of thought stripped of
every
concrete relation to existence, is
doomed
to failure. (And we may observe that
despite
many other opposing tendencies in his
work,
Hegel’s philosophy was of this type.)
For
every pure logic is Platonic: it is
thought
released from existence and hence ossified.
Only by conceiving of thought as a
form of
reality, as a factor in the total process
can philosophy overcome its own rigidity
dialectically and take on the quality
of
Becoming.[67]
(2) Becoming is also the mediation
between
past and future. But it is the mediation
between the concrete, i. e. historical
past,
and the equally concrete, i. e. historical
future. When the concrete here and
now dissolves
into a process it is no longer a continuous,
intangible moment, immediacy slipping
away;[68]
it is the focus of the deepest and
most widely
ramified mediation, the focus of decision
and of the birth of the new. As long
as man
concentrates his interest contemplatively
upon the past or future, both ossify
into
an alien existence. And between the
subject
and the object lies the unbridgeable
“pernicious
chasm” of the present. Man must be
able to
comprehend the present as a becoming.
He
can do this by seeing in it the tendencies
out of whose dialectical opposition
he can
make the future. Only when he does
this will
the present be a process of becoming,
that
belongs to him. Only he who is willing
and
whose mission it is to create the future
can see the present in its concrete
truth.
As Hegel says: “Truth is not to treat
objects
as alien.”[69]
But when the truth of becoming is the
future
that is to be created but has not yet
been
born, when it is the new that resides
in
the tendencies that (with our conscious
aid)
will be realised, then the question
whether
thought is a reflection appears quite
senseless.
It is true that reality is the criterion
for the correctness of thought. But
reality
is not, it becomes – and to become
the participation
of thought is needed. We see here the
fulfilment
of the programme of classical philosophy:
the principle of genesis means in fact
that
dogmatism is overcome (above all in
its most
important historical incarnation: the
Platonic
theory of reflection). But only concrete
(historical) becoming can perform the
function
of such a genesis. And consciousness
(the
practical class consciousness of the
proletariat)
is a necessary, indispensable, integral
part
of that process of becoming.
Thus thought and existence are not
identical
in the sense that they ‘correspond’
to each
other, or ‘reflect’ each other, that
they
‘run parallel’ to each other or ‘coincide’
with each other (all expressions that
conceal
a rigid duality). Their identity is
that
they are aspects of one and the same
real
historical and dialectical process.
What
is ‘reflected’ in the consciousness
of the
proletariat is the new positive reality
arising
out of the dialectical contradictions
of
capitalism. And this is by no means
the invention
of the proletariat, nor was it ‘created’
out of the void. It is rather the inevitable
consequence of the process in its totality;
one which changed from being an abstract
possibility to a concrete reality only
after
it had become part of the consciousness
of
the proletariat and had been made practical
by it. And this is no mere formal transformation.
For a possibility to be realised, for
a tendency
to become actual, what is required
is that
the objective components of a society
should
be transformed; their functions must
be changed
and with them the structure and content
of
every individual object.
But it must never be forgotten: only
the
practical class consciousness of the
proletariat
possesses this ability to transform
things.
Every contemplative, purely cognitive
stance
leads ultimately to a divided relationship
to its object. Simply to transplant
the structure
we have discerned here into any stance
other
than that of proletarian action – for
only
the class can be practical in its relation
to the total process – would mean the
creation
of a new conceptual mythology and a
regression
to the standpoint of classical philosophy
refuted by Marx. For every purely cognitive
stance bears the stigma of immediacy.
That
is to say, it never ceases to be confronted
by a whole series of ready-made objects
that
cannot be dissolved into processes.
Its dialectical
nature can survive only in the tendency
towards
praxis and in its orientation towards
the
actions of the proletariat. It can
survive
only if it remains critically aware
of its
own tendency to immediacy inherent
in every
non-practical stance and if it constantly
strives to explain critically the mediations,
the relations to the totality as a
process,
to the actions of the proletariat as
a class.
The practical character of the thought
of
the proletariat is born and becomes
real
as the result of an equally dialectical
process.
In this thought self-criticism is more
than
the self-criticism of its object, i.
e. the
self-criticism of bourgeois society.
It is
also a critical awareness of how much
of
its own practical nature has really
become
manifest, which stage of the genuinely
practicable
is objectively possible and how much
of what
is objectively possible has been made
real.
For it is evident that however clearly
we
may have grasped the fact that society
consists
of processes, however thoroughly we
may have
unmasked the fiction of its rigid reification,
this does not mean that we are able
to annul
the ‘reality’ of this fiction in capitalist
society in practice. The moments in
which
this insight can really be converted
into
practice are determined by developments
in
society. Thus proletarian thought is
in the
first place merely a theory of praxis
which
only gradually (and indeed often spasmodically)
transforms itself into a practical
theory
that overturns the real world. The
individual
stages of this process cannot be sketched
in here. They alone would be able to
show
how proletarian class consciousness
evolves
dialectically (i. e. how the proletariat
becomes a class). Only then would it
be possible
to throw light on the intimate dialectical
process of interaction between the
socio-historical
situation and the class consciousness
of
the proletariat. Only then would the
statement
that the proletariat is the identical
subject-object
of the history of society become truly
concrete.[70]
Even the proletariat can only overcome
reification
as long as it is oriented towards practice.
And this means that there can be no
single
act that will eliminate reification
in all
its forms at one blow; it means that
there
will be a whole host of objects that
at least
in appearance remain more or less unaffected
by the process. This is true in the
first
instance of nature. But it is also
illuminating
to observe how a whole set of social
phenomena
become dialecticised by a different
path
than the one we have traced out to
show the
nature of the dialectics of history
and the
process by which the barriers of reification
can be shattered. We have observed,
for instance,
how certain works of art are extraordinarily
sensitive to the qualitative nature
of dialectical
changes without their becoming conscious
of the antagonisms which they lay bare
and
to which they give artistic form.
At the same time we observed other
societal
phenomena which contain inner antagonisms
but only in an abstract form, i. e.
their
inner contradictions are merely the
secondary
effects of the inner contradictions
of other,
more primary phenomena. This means
that these
last contradictions can only become
visible
if mediated by the former and can only
become
dialectical when they do. (This is
true of
interest as opposed to profit.) It
would
be necessary to set forth the whole
system
of these qualitative gradations in
the dialectical
character of the different kinds of
phenomena
before we should be in a position to
arrive
at the concrete totality of the categories
with which alone true knowledge of
the present
is possible. The hierarchy of these
categories
would determine at the same time the
point
where system and history meet, thus
fulfilling
Marx’s postulate (already cited) concerning
the categories that “their sequence
is determined
by the relations they have to each
other
in modern bourgeois society.”
In every consciously dialectical system
of
thought, however, any sequence is itself
dialectical – not only for Hegel, but
also
as early as Proclus. Moreover, the
dialectical
deduction of categories cannot possibly
involve
a simple juxtaposition or even the
succession
of identical forms. Indeed, if the
method
is not to degenerate into a rigid schematicism
even identical formal patterns must
not be
allowed to function in a repetitively
mechanical
way (thus, the famous triad: thesis,
antithesis
and synthesis). When the dialectical
method
becomes rigid, as happens frequently
in Hegel,
to say nothing of his followers, the
only
control device and the only protection
is
the concrete historical method of Marx.
But
it is vital that we should draw all
the conclusions
possible from this situation. Hegel
himself
distinguishes between negative and
positive
dialectics.” By positive dialectics
he understands
the growth of a particular content,
the elucidation
of a concrete totality. In the process,
however,
we find that he almost always advances
from
the determinants of reflection to the
positive
dialectics even though his conception
of
nature, for example, as “otherness,”
as the
idea in a state of “being external
to itself”
directly precludes a positive dialectics.
(It is here that we can find one of
the theoretical
sources for the frequently artificial
constructs
of his philosophy of nature.) Nevertheless,
Hegel does perceive clearly at times
that
the dialectics of nature can never
become
anything more exalted than a dialectics
of
movement witnessed by the detached
observer,
as the subject cannot be integrated
into
the dialectical process, at least not
at
the stage reached hitherto. Thus he
emphasises
that Zeno’s antinomies reached the
same level
as those of Kant,[73] with the implication
that it is not possible to go any higher.
From this we deduce the necessity of
separating
the merely objective dialectics of
nature
from those of society. For in the dialectics
of society the subject is included
in the
reciprocal relation in which theory
and practice
become dialectical with reference to
one
another. (It goes without saying that
the
growth of knowledge about nature is
a social
phenomenon and therefore to be included
in
the second dialectical type.) Moreover,
if
the dialectical method is to be consolidated
concretely it is essential that the
different
types of dialectics should be set out
in
concrete fashion. It would then become
clear
that the Hegelian distinction between
positive
and negative dialectics as well as
the different
levels of intuition, representation
and concept
[Anschauung, Vorstellung, Begriff]
– (a terminology
that need not be adhered to) are only
some
of the possible types of distinction
to be
drawn. For the others the economic
works
of Marx provide abundant material for
a clearly
elaborated analysis of structures.
However,
even to outline a typology of these
dialectical
forms would be well beyond the scope
of this
study.
Still more important than these systematic
distinctions is the fact that even
the objects
in the very centre of the dialectical
process
can only slough off their reified form
after
a laborious process. A process in which
the
seizure of power by the proletariat
and even
the organisation of the state and the
economy
on socialist lines are only stages.
They
are, of course, extremely important
stages,
but they do not mean that the ultimate
objective
has been achieved. And it even appears
as
if the decisive crisis-period of capitalism
may be characterised by the tendency
to intensify
reification, to bring it to a head.
Roughly
in the sense in which Lassalle wrote
to Marx:
“Hegel used to say in his old age that
directly
before the emergence of something qualitatively
new, the old state of affairs gathers
itself
up into its original, purely general,
essence,
into its simple totality, transcending
and
absorbing back into itself all those
marked
differences and peculiarities which
it evinced
when it was still viable.”[74] On the
other
hand, Bukharin, too, is right when
he observes
that in the age of the dissolution
of capitalism,
the fetishistic categories collapse
and it
becomes necessary to have recourse
to the
‘natural form’ underlying them.[75]
The contradiction
between these two views is, however,
only
apparent. For the contradiction has
two aspects:
on the one hand, there is the increasing
undermining of the forms of reification
–
one might describe it as the cracking
of
the crust because of the inner emptiness
– their growing inability to do justice
to
the phenomena, even as isolated phenomena,
even as the objects of reflection and
calculation.
On the other hand, we find the quantitative
increase of the forms of reification,
their
empty extension to cover the whole
surface
of manifest phenomena. And the fact
that
these two aspects together are in conflict
provides the key signature to the decline
of bourgeois society.
As the antagonism becomes more acute
two
possibilities open up for the proletariat.
It is given the opportunity to substitute
its own positive contents for the emptied
and bursting husks. But also it is
exposed
to the danger that for a time at least
it
might adapt itself ideologically to
conform
to these, the emptiest and most decadent
forms of bourgeois culture.
History is at its least automatic when
it
is the consciousness of the proletariat
that
is at issue. The truth that the old
intuitive,
mechanistic materialism could not grasp
turns
out to be doubly true for the proletariat,
namely that it can be transformed and
liberated
only by its own actions, and that “the
educator
must himself be educated.” The objective
economic evolution could do no more
than
create the position of the proletariat
in
the production process. It was this
position
that determined its point of view.
But the
objective evolution could only give
the proletariat
the opportunity and the necessity to
change
society. Any transformation can only
come
about as the product of the – free
– action
of the proletariat itself.
NOTES
51. Modern pragmatism provides a model illustration
of this.
52. Nachlass II (The Holy Family, chap. 8), p. 304.
53. Nachlass I, p. 384. (Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right
in Bottomore, Early Writings, p. 43.) The
italics are mine.
54. On this point, see Max Weber’s essays in
Vol. I of his Sociology of Religion.
Whether
we accept his causal interpretation
or not
is irrelevant to a judgement of his
factual
material. On the connection between
Calvinism
and capitalism, see also Engels’ remarks
in Ober historischen Materialismus, Neue Zeit XI, 1. p. 43. The same structure
of ethics and existence is still active
in
the Kantian system. Cf. e.g. the passage
in the Critique of Practical Reason, p. 120, which sounds wholly in line with
Franklin’s acquisitive Calvinist ethics.
An analysis of the profound similarities
would lead us too far away from our
theme.
55. Thomas Münzer, pp. 73 et seq.
56. Werke III, pp. 37-8. Except that there is
also an echo of the nostalgia – here
of no
importance – for natural social formations.
Cf. Hegel’s methodologically correct
negative
criticisms in Glauben und Wissen, Werke I, pp. 105 et seq. His positive conclusions,
of course, amount to much the same
thing.
57. Lassalle, Werke, Cassirer Verlag, V, pp.
275-6. The extent to which Lassalle,
by exalting
a notion of the state founded in natural
law, moves on to the terrain of the
bourgeoisie,
can be seen not only in the development
of
particular theories of natural law
that have
deduced the impropriety of every organised
movement of the proletariat from the
very
idea of ‘freedom’ and the ‘dignity
of man’.
(Cf. e.g. Max Weber, Wirkschaft und Gesellschaft, p. 497, on American natural law.) But also
C. Hugo, the cynical founder of the
historical
school of law arrives at a similar
theoretical
construction – though he does so in
order
to prove the opposite of Lassalle –
viz.
the view that it is possible to devise
certain
rights that transform men into a commodity
without negating their ‘human dignity’
in
other spheres. Naturrecht, § 144.
58. Cf. the essay “Class Consciousness.”
59. These views can be found in an undiluted
form in Kautsky’s latest programmatic
statement.
One need not go beyond the rigid, mechanical
separation of politics and economics
to see
that he is treading the same mistaken
path
as Lassalle. His conception of democracy
is too familiar to require a fresh
analysis
here. And as for his economic fatalism,
it
is symptomatic that even where Kautsky
admits
that it is impossible to make concrete
predictions
about the economic phenomenon of crises
it
remains self-evident for him that the
course
of events will unfold according to
the laws
of the capitalist economy, p. 57.
60. Lenin’s achievement is that he rediscovered
this side of Marxism that points the
way
to an understanding of its practical core. His constantly reiterated warning to
seize the ‘next link’ in the chain
with all
one’s might, that link on which the
fate
of the totality depends in that one
moment,
his dismissal of all utopian demands,
i.e.
his ‘relativism’ and his ‘Realpolitik’:
all
these things are nothing less than
the practical
realisation of the young Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach.
61. It must now be self-evident that totality
is a problem of category and in particular
a problem of revolutionary action.
It is
obvious that we cannot regard a method
as
authentically totalising if it deals
with
‘all problems’ in a substantive manner
(which
is, of course, an impossibility) while
remaining
contemplative. This is to be referred
above
all to the social-democratic treatment
of
history in which a plethora of material
is
designed constantly to divert attention
from
social action.
62. Cf. the essay “Towards a Methodology of
the Problem of Organisation.”
63. Feuerbach and the End of Classical German
Philosophy, S.W. II, p. 350.
64. Hegel, Werke XI, p. 160.
65. This rejection of the metaphysical import
of bourgeois materialism does not affect
our historical evaluation of it: it
was the
ideological form of the bourgeois revolution,
and as such it remains of practical relevance as long as the bourgeois revolution remains
relevant (including its relevance as
an aspect
of the proletarian revolution). On
this point,
see my essays on “Moleschott,” “Feuerbach”
and “Atheism” in the Rote Fahne, Berlin; and above all Lenin’s comprehensive
essay “Under the Banner of Marxism,”
The
Communist International, 1922, No.
21.
66. Lask has very logically introduced a distinction
between an antecedent and subsequent
region
[‘vorbildlich’ and ‘nachbildlich’] (Die Lehre vom Urteil.) This does indeed enable him to eliminate
pure Platonism, the reflective duality
of
idea and reality – in the spirit of
criticism
– but it then experiences a logical
resurrection.
67. Purely logical and systematic studies simply
refer to the historical point at which
we
find ourselves: they signify our temporary
inability to grasp and represent the
totality
of categoric problems as the problems
of
a historical reality in the process
of revolutionising
itself.
68. Cf. on this point Hegel’s Phenomenology, especially Werke II, pp. 73 et seq., where this problem receives its profoundest
analysis. See also Ernst Bloch’s theory
of
the “opacity of the lived moment” and
his
theory of “knowledge that has not yet
become
conscious.”
69. Hegel, Werke XII, p. 207.
70. On the relationship between a theory of
praxis to a practical theory, see the
interesting
essay by Josef Révai in Kommunismus 1, Nos. 46-9, “The Problem of Tactics,”
even though I am not in agreement with
all
his conclusions.
71. Encyclopädie, §16.
72. Ibid., § 192.
73. Hegel, Werke XIII, pp. 299 et seq.
74. Letter dated 12 December, 1851. Ed. G. Mayer,
p. 41.
75. Bukharin, Ökonomie der Transformationsperiode, pp. 50-1.
|
