Marxism, a Virile “Ghost” - Part 2 (1933)

From the September 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1.

“Philosophers have only interpreted the world differently,” says Marx, “ but the point is to change it.”

It is well-known that in his early life Marx had taken a degree in Philosophy at one of the leading German universities. The Marx critic, whom we are now considering, attempts to find consolation for his declaration that “Marxism is dead" by an allusion to Marx’s early training in Philosophy. Thus he classifies Adam Smith and Karl Marx as having been “philosophers rather than scientists,” “deductive rather than inductive thinkers,” “metaphysicians before they were economists.” Strangely enough he finds a use for the materialist method, in that he traces all this to environmental influences. He says, Smith and Marx came from the two great homes of metaphysical thought, “Scotland and Germany.” We could prove, of course, that these countries have had no more than a ”fair” share of metaphysicians, but we will pass this with the lament that he ought to know better.

Volumes might easily be written to supply an adequate examination and reply to the observations set out above, but here only a brief analysis can be given in the limited space at our disposal.

In our last issue we outlined what constitutes the essence of modem materialist thought, for the present we propose to strike a somewhat retrospective note, thus to bring into bolder relief the materialism of Marx. We readily plead guilty to the assertion that Marx was a philosopher, but this fact must be booked on the credit side of the account, as a few references to what forms of thought have been embodied in philosophy will reveal. We make no apology for this, as our task is to try and arm our fellows against the attacks made upon Socialism by the hired “intelligentsia” of capitalism. And now about this philosopher business, since philosophy is in the picture.

Frederick Engels, with his usual keen insight into the core of any problem undertaken for consideration by him, has reminded us that the foundation of all philosophies is concerned with the relation between thinking and being. Tracing the roots of the question to lie, like religion, in the social status of savagery where ignorance of natural forces was predominant, then pursuing its development through the scholasticism of the Middle Ages when the question took the form—”What is at the beginning, spirit or nature?” until it resolved itself into the question—“Has God made the world or is the world from eternity?” Engels classifies the disputants to the question as forming two totally different schools of thought. Those who have placed the origin of spirit before that of nature are the idealists, whilst those who have taken nature as the source have formed the various schools of materialism. Here we must emphasise the point that the term idealism as expressed in philosophy bears no logical connection with moral or ethical concepts or theories concerning human conduct. Technically speaking, idealism represents the view of all natural phenomena which postulates “mind” as being primary to ‘‘matter.” Opponents of the materialist view seldom hesitate to import a moral signification into the controversy, but, such is, of course, a complete evasion of the position. Materialism can no more be disproved by this method than the falsity of Bishop Berkeley’s idealism was proved by Dr. Samuel Johnson kicking the stone to confute Berkeley’s insistence upon the non-reality of “matter.” Both idealism and materialism have to be considered from the point of view of their respective modes of interpreting natural phenomena, since both theories must necessarily be concerned therewith.

In the historical controversy between idealism and materialism, probably the ablest representative of the former school of thought, from the eighteenth century until to-day, was Bishop Berkeley. Anyhow, as far as this country is concerned. Berkeley set out in the early eighteenth century to combat the materialist tendencies as they were expressed in the leading thought of his age. He took his stand in postulating an idealist philosophy by an attempt to controvert the views of his philosophic predecessors, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, the earlier materialists. Hobbes had maintained that the source of human knowledge is based upon our sense perceptions of the outer world. Whilst Locke, in a more thoroughgoing manner, after vigorously disputing the alleged existence of “innate ideas,” i.e., ideas being in the human mind independent of and antecedent to experience, accepted the sensory origin of knowledge as formulated by Hobbes, but added a secondary factor to the process by which knowledge is ultimately acquired, namely, reflection. The idea that the real source of human knowledge comes from our sensations and reflections was a deadly blow to the conventional thought of the time. If positive knowledge originated in this way, what was to become of the “God”-planted ”tree of knowledge.” However, despite Hobbes* and Locke’s contribution to the science of understanding; they themselves were still hampered in thought by their acceptance of the theistic conception of a supreme power. Moreover, they regarded as beyond question the existence of “mind” and “matter” as ultimate tangible realities in the most limited sense of the terms. And this paved the way for the later idealistic philosophy of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Bishop Berkeley challenged the reality of “matter” by attacking Locke’s position. Locke had maintained that material bodies have two qualities—primary and secondary. The primary are those of weight, shape, extension in space, etc. The secondary are those of colour, temperature, taste, and so forth. The former are known by their actual existence in the external world. We think of them as being in themselves extended, resisting and mobile, but not in themselves as coloured, hot or cold, or having taste. These latter belong to our special sensations. We perceive both primary and secondary qualities in objects because there is a “substance” in which they inhere.

But, said Berkeley, I agree that material bodies exist in the outside world, and our knowledge of them is based upon sensation and reflection, but the distinction between primary and secondary qualities is wholly illusory. The primary qualities are equally as mental or sensuous as the secondary —temperature, taste, and so forth, and he attempted to prove this position by the contention that when we try to think of any material body apart from its attributes or properties, we have nothing left but an empty abstraction. Put into plain language, this means that the desk upon which I write can only be known by its colour, hardness, shape, extension in space, etc. Divested of these there is no “material substratum" left, such as Locke had intimated. “All the choir of heaven and the furniture of earth have not any substance outside the mind.” Thus ran the trend of thought in Berkeley's theory. When confronted with the problem as to what became of things when they were not being perceived, his philosophy is amazingly consistent to the end. Since the reality of things lay in their being perceived, when they are not so by us, they subsist in the mind of some “ Eternal Spirit.” The real world is therefore one of “ mind ” and its contents. “Matter” was rejected by Berkeley as “an unintelligible figment devoid of any sensuous or imaginative content. After this remarkable exhibition of skill in philosophical meandering, David Hume, the Scotch sceptic, subjected Berkeley's postulate of “mind” as the sole reality, to an analysis, and provided an equally devastating attack upon its alleged reality when considered apart from perception. Hence for the time being at least philosophy was in the state that nothing could be known for certain; scepticism reigned supreme. Even after the famous philospher-scientist, Immanuel Kant, had tackled the problem from a different standpoint, though making a valuable contribution in clarifying the problem, he got no further than declaring our knowledge of things to be strictly limited to their appearances alone, but what these “things in themselves” really are, we cannot know. To the mystical type of mind this “ un-knowability ” must almost have amounted to something worth worshipping. Anyhow, the thinker who, to a great extent, lifted the cloud of mysticism from speculative philosophy, was the German philosopher, Hegel. And admittedly it was his work within the realms of philosophy and history which had a profound influence upon the minds of the founders of modern Socialist thought, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. But in stating this we must make certain important reservations. Presumably our present Marx critic has this fact in mind when he describes Marx as a philosopher rather than a scientist, and as a “ metaphysician.” But Hegel was far from being a metaphysician in the technical sense. He was an idealist whose system and method differed profoundly from the subjective idealism of Berkeley and the “ phenomenal ” idealism of Kant. He dismissed the Kantian postulate concerning the unknowability of the “ thing in itself,” and declared “the universe is penetrable to thought.” The world of reality is made known to us by our practical correspondence with it. As the entities of the outer world answer to our mode of apprehending them and to our use of them, their existence apart from us is proven. Hegel's idealism consisted of a conception of an “absolute idea” or “mind” through which the universe was created with a view to the attainment of ultimate “ good ” and “ freedom” at the “final” stage of the evolutionary process. Hegel comprehended the principle of evolution in nature and history, and although his idealistic system of thought considerably marred a thorough grasp of the inner workings of natural and historical development, his revival of the “dialectic” method of enquiry and understanding furnished a method by which the evolutionary process in nature and history could be scientifically understood. He “freed history,” says Engels, “ from metaphysics—he had made it dialectic.”

“For the first time the whole world, natural, historical, intellectual, is represented as a process, i.e., as in constant motion, change, transformation, development; and the attempt is made to trace out the internal connection that makes a continuous whole of all this movement and development.” The contradictory feature of Hegelianism lay in his fixing, quite arbitrarily, a finality to the evolutionary process which was opposed to his dialectical method that ruled out “ finality ” in actual evolutionary processes. But this may be largely explained by the limited knowledge of his time. Nevertheless, his revival of the dialectical system of thought, as first enunciated by the thinkers of Ancient Greece (Heraclitus had said, “Nothing is, everything is becoming ”) proved a weapon in the hands of Marx, not merely , in the establishment of his philosophical and historical standpoint, but also to mark his departure from Hegel's idealism.

“ My dialectic method,” says Marx, "is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life-process of the human brain, i.e., the process of thinking, which, under the name of ‘the idea' he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos of the real world, and the real world is only the external phenomenal form of ‘the idea.' With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and transformed into forms of thought." Thus have we an outline of the fundamental distinction between Hegel and Marx in philosophy. But the application of the dialectic to human society and its history shows an even more striking contrast between these two thinkers. With Hegel the modes of being and becoming in human history are to be explained by their “rationality.” “The real is rational, and the rational is real," declared Hegel. But they are only real and rational in turn so long as they are necessary. Every past phase in human history had at one time been rational and therefore real, but had become irrational and therefore unreal, consequently, had been swept aside to give place to still higher “rational" forms of human society. The ultimate development of all this “reality" and "rationality" Hegel saw in the “full development" of the Prussian State of his age. Here was to be found the final working out of “the idea"; its self-realisation having been immanent from the “inception” of the world’s life “history. Thus Hegel. But with Marx, however, all the self-imposed “rationality and reality" merely meant the material conditions of human society in their manifold operations being interpreted by an ideal abstraction made apart from their actual content. And an examination of those, material conditions was, to Marx, an essential condition before “rationality" or “reality” could be understood. Our critic says Marx was a “deductive thinker." Was he? A deductive thinker is one who takes something as proven before examination. A man takes the Bible, for instance, as true and then attempts to trace everything to harmonise with Biblical teachings; this man is a deductive thinker. Another man sets out by first enquiring as to whether the Bible is itself actually true; this man is an inductive thinker. Our critic’s assumption is that Marx set out with the conviction that capitalism was wrong before he had made an analysis, hence the entire criticism of capitalist society and the conclusions drawn therefrom are nothing more than Marx’s pre-conceived thought, the wish father to the thought, so to speak. But an analysis of Marx’s writings simply annihilates the suggestion.

Before ever Marx had formulated his materialist conception of history, and therefore before he had made an analysis of the economy of capitalist society, he had proved in actual practice what an inductive thinker he really was.

In 1842-3, as editor of the Rheinische Zeitung, he tells us how he was embarrassed at first when he had to discuss so-called material interests. Further, how on certain specific questions he was unable at the time to “hazard an independent judgment.” Therefore he gladly welcomed the opportunity, for reason we need not now dwell upon, “to retire to the study room” from public life. There are few thinkers to be found ready to make such a candid confession, and fewer still with minds so inductively inclined, as the nature of this confession indicates.

Within the confines of the study room Marx’s first task consisted of a study and analysis of Hegel’s work on the Philosophy of Law. After this he formulated his materialist conception of history. From a totally different standpoint, Marx was therefore able to explain man’s “knowing" by his “being," instead of, as heretofore, his “being" by his “knowing."

“It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence,” says Marx, “ but, on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness.”

This contains the kernel of Marxian thought. Human consciousness can only be related, in the final analysis, to its practical correspondence with the outer world in all its phases.

Philosophers may interpret the world differently, but “by acting upon nature outside himself and changing it, man simultaneously changes his own nature.” We await the first real attack on that position.

Robertus.

(To be concluded.)

Letter: Hegel and Marx (1957)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

To the Editorial Committee.

In a letter to the June Socialist Standard a correspondent who signs himself "History Sixth” puts forward the view that "Marx's philosophy is not more materialistic than Hegel's, and his theory of history not more materialistic than any attempt to account for the historical process by the means of empirical science." He concludes from this that Marxism is logically compatible with metaphysical or religious beliefs.

Because of another opinion he offers; i.e., it is a mistake to call Marx's theory the materialist conception of history, his remarks, quoted above, are ambiguously confusing. Surely to be consistent with such a view he should say not that Marx's philosophy is not more materialistic than Hegel's, but that it is not less metaphysical than Hegel's. Again, when he says Mare's theory of history is not more materialistic than the means of empirical science, we are given no clue as to what he means by the term materialistic as used in the context.

The view that Marx’s philosophy is no more materialistic than Hegel's has been put by G. D. H. Cole and others, but I would suggest to "History Sixth” that such a view shows a complete misunderstanding of both Marx and Hegel, and it was certainly not a view shared by Marx himself. Thus, in the second preface to Vol. I of Capital Marx says: “ My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but its direct opposite.” He adds: "Hegel transforms the life-process of the human brain under the name of the idea into an independent subject.” He concludes: “With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind and translated into forms of thought.”

Even on the question of philosophy, Marx and Hegel never spoke the same language. For Hegel the subject matter of philosophy was to discover a prime mover or first principle in the cosmic process. This first principle was a self-creating self-activating thought process; i.e., God, which proceeded on a higher spiral plane to achieve absolute self-consciousness. Thus, for Hegel, nature, ideas, and that includes the means of empirical science, were but aspects of an underlying and essentially religious reality. Hegel viewed philosophy then as a means of finding out what had happened in terms of a teleological necessity and to show that what has happened could only be what must happen. Men were then but the instruments of a dialectic process. The task of philosophy was not to change the world but to understand its appointed end. Hegel denied that his philosophy afforded any clues as to how the world could be changed. He said: "Philosophy comes too late to teach the world what it should be . . . The owl of Minerva begins its flight when the shades of twilight have already fallen.” Hegel's philosophy by its very nature excluded any empirical directive principle as to how the world should be changed.

Marx's views were utterly opposed to such conceptions. He said: "Philosophers have only interpreted the world, our job is to change it.” Indeed, Man's philosophy was not a philosophy in the accepted sense as was Hegel's. Marx was not interested in trying to discover ultimate truth. For him truths were always historical and relative. Metaphysical idealists and religionists hold and must hold that thought is creative. On the other hand, Marx, in line with his own theory, said thought was selective and the manner and scope of its selection was moulded by the material conditions of life. Metaphysical and theological concepts can then have no place in the Marxist scheme.

If Marx had a philosophy it could be best described in his own words as critical materialism as opposed to mechanistic materialism. He believed with Feurbach that critical materialism would mean the end of metaphysics and religion. Again, Marx regarded materialism as the only valid expression of scientific method. Thus, in a footnote on Page 368, Vol I of Capital, he refers to a particular method as the only materialistic and, therefore, the only scientific method.

Marx took the world that is man and his relations with nature as they are. Marx then embraced a thoroughgoing naturalism as opposed to the super-naturalism of Hegel and other religious thinkers. He believed that facts are not more real than they are found to be, and do not express some deeper underlying truth. It was because Marx collected his facts and organised the knowledge gained from them on the presupposition that he was dealing with a material world, that his theory can be empirically demonstrated. Because Hegel began with metaphysical as opposed to materialistic assumptions he could offer no empirical guide as to the course of history. He could only assure us that a cosmic self-consciousness would come to pass, but how it would do so he is silent. Even in a brief and sketchy analysis of Marx and Hegel, it can be shown that in outlook and method they were worlds apart

On the question of religion itself, Marx denied that there was some religious essence in man. Religion itself is a product of social life and it only arises when society has reached a certain stage of development in the division of labour. Like all other forms of culture, it can be critically analysed in a specific social situation, and like all other forms of activity it can be shown to change under the impact of changing conditions. While religion had historic justification in the productive rituals of the past, it serves no useful social purpose today.

Marx also denied that man was endowed with a natural religious sentiment, any more than he is naturally endowed with any other aspect of culture. A religious sense is not the outcome of a timeless abstraction, but the product of social consciousness and bound up with a certain stage of social development. To suppose then that any element of supernaturalism could find a place in Marxism is to invalidate the most basic assumptions of historical materialism. For that reason a belief in supernaturalism is incompatible with Marxism. I trust that these remarks might stimulate History Sixth into a reassessment of Marxism.

Ted Wilmott

"The Red Prussian" (1948)

Book Review from the March 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Red Prussian; the life and legend of Karl Marx 

by Leopold Schwarzschild

Much has been written on "What Marx really meant.” This book sets out to tell us what Marx really, was.

There is, however, a startling paradox in the author's presentation. According to Mr. Schwarzschild Marx is a defamer, intriguer and political.thug. A man of many passions but no parts, possessed by an unscrupulous lust for power.

It is with mild astonishment, therefore, that we learn from the preface that "The most important facts of our times all lead back to one man—Karl Marx.” This is followed by the shattering contention, "There is no doubt if Marx had never lived our whole life would have been different ”

One can only say even at the risk of debunking Marx further in the eyes of Mr. Schwarzschild that had Birth Control been fashionable enough at the time to have put Marx among "the missing” "our life” would have been much—very much, the same, a statement Marx would have sworn to by the hairs of his beard. The old "megalomaniac” even constructed a theory debunking for all time the notion that history is a fairy-tale of the "adventures" of great men and "heroes.”

The case for the prosecution rests on excerpts and quotes mostly of Marx's and Engels' views and personal assessment of their associates. The source is the complete Marx-Engels correspondence.

It adds very little in essentials to what is known on the matter. That Marx's personal opinions were often excoriating and unjustified is ancient knowledge. That his personal opinions were often harsh but justified by subsequent events is neither ancient nor modern knowledge to Mr. Schwarzschild. Marx could even be conciliatory to views other than his own as his relations with the various sections of the First International amply testify.

Mr. Schwarzschild, indicting Marx before the bar of history as the arch-evil-maker of all time, cannot admit of any concession, or charity. He is out to get his man.

For the same reason the objective basis of Marx’s disputes with his contemporaries—disputes, over important and often decisive doctrinal differences—are no part of Mr. Schwarzschild’s evidence.

For that reason again we learn nothing of Marx's real criticism of Bruno Bauer's mystical belief in the creative power of ideas; of: his real dispute with Arnold Ruge over the nature and function of the State, or his withering analysis of the reactionary doctrines of Moses Hess’s "True Socialism”; of Proudhon’s petty bourgeois theories or Bakunin’s eclectic Anarchism.

Mr. Schwarzschild is merely concerned to use on the surface of this cauldron of simmering controversy the ladle of malice and scoop up the froth of personal remarks and chit-chat—used by all sides, incidentally—and present this froth as the essence of Marxism.

That all this is not even a part of Marxism is perhaps the most ironical commentary one can make on this book.

Marx, of course, did not affirm that morality was a bourgeois inhibition. He did deny, however, that there was some superior ethical judgment to which conflicting class-interests could be referred and successfully settled. For Marx the preaching of an abstract ethical ideal in a class dominated society was dangerous utopianism. It was against such "Utopians” that he directed his sharpest criticism.

Hegel is dealt with in a summary and largely flippant fashion. The author apparently knows nothing of the social and economic background which made Hegel such a force and compelled for a period all German philosophy and culture to stand within his shadow.

Marx is made out to be merely a slavish disciple of Hegel. It is, of course, a common-place among Marxist students that the differences between Marx and Hegel were in some aspects more emphatic than that which they had in common. The publisher's blurb informs us that the author took a degree. We might assume that it was not in Philosophy.

Risking the fact that the author's lack of knowledge of Marxism may tend to become monotonous in recounting, we are compelled to say Marx never held the view that man was a mere mechanical by-product of some mysterious ineluctable "economic process.” Consciousness—not the abstract consciousness of Hegel, but the historically class-conditioned consciousness of human beings—is central to Marx's doctrines.

Marx did not say human instincts and emotions must of necessity have an economic origin. He would have utterly repudiated the statement.

Marx did not say (vide the author) History makes men; he said the opposite, Men make History. He even said “ History possesses no riches; it fights no fight.” He added, History is nothing more than the activity of man—real living man—in pursuit of his ends. That this human activity is conditioned by the objective productive relations in which man as social groups find themselves is an interpretation of history which can be empirically established. Even academic sociologists who are not “Marxists” accept this interpretation as the most fruitful one. But as the author infers, Dr. Marx fluked his degree all these academic gentlemen might have done the same.

Finally Marx did not say what Mr. Schwarzschild says, that economics was the exclusive factor in history. The author in his zealous search through the Marx-Engels correspondence could have read Engel’s letter to Bloch on the part ideological factors play in Marx's theory. That, however, was not the sort of thing Mr. Schwarzschild was looking for.

Mr. Schwarzschild indulges in the fashionable practice of biographers by seeming to read Marx’s secret thoughts in imaginary soliloquies and conversations. The absurdities supposedly uttered by Marx in this manner are, of course, the exclusive copyright of Mr. Schwarzschild. His interpretation of Marx's theory is not the Historical Materialism of Marx but the some what hysterical romanticism of Mr. Schwarzchild.

His criticism of Marx’s economic doctrines is even below the conventional stereotyped “refutations.” Unable to refute Marx’s analysis that the objective source of profit is unpaid labour he falls back on such contentions that a source of profit is buying houses and selling them at three times their value. He is utterly unable to grasp the fact that labour is required to produce houses and therefore the basis of profit must be the element of unpaid labour contained in producing them.

He does not pursue the fascinating possibilities of this economic discovery by showing in disproof of Marx that the great increases in the wealth of present society and the vast accumulation of capital can be explained perhaps on the hypothesis of buying houses and selling them at three times their price.

He also assures us that profits are made by trading, i.e. the act of buying and selling. Here he confuses the production of profit with its realization. If labour is to be considered a source of profit then Mr. Schwarzchild’s viewpoint is that it is the dead labour of constant capital—the costs of running machines and worked up material—to which we must look. Apparently it is only living labour—the application of human labour power itself—which is denied this profit-making function.

He even tells us that many of the causes of profit-making are immaterial ones. For such a statement he offers not the slightest evidence—not even “immaterial” evidence. ’

Present-day, monopolistic, control-ridden society is referred to as a liberal capitalist system based upon thee free-play of forces. This is not the statement of John Bright a century ago but the considered opinion of a journalist called Mr. Schwarzschild in this year of grace 1948.

The author says that no economist has accepted the economics of Marx. The reason being, of course, self-evident. We wonder if even the present apologists for capitalism would accept the economics of Mr. Schwarzschild.

Mr. Schwarzschild contends that Marx refused to give a blueprint of future socialist society because it would have revealed a Super Prussian State. That Socialism cannot be a sum of ready-made proscriptions but the historic product of the living concrete conditions developing in Capitalist Society is the one thing which marks off Scientific Socialism from the utopian brands. Such a remark revealingly shows that Mr. Schwarzschild’s knowledge of Scientific Socialism could be amply accommodated with a suitable margin on the back of a postage-stamp. Incidentally, when Marx showed that Socialism must inevitably mean the establishment of a classless society the author simply says that Marx was lying.

It is rather amusing to reflect that the capitalist press, each in their different ways, have largely demolished Mr. Schwarzschild’s contentions. It is equally amusing to note that in their contradictory assessment of Marxism they also contradict each other. Thus the journal Truth comments not unfavourably on the author’s contention that “Bismark was a champion of human liberty against the soul-destroying tyranny of Marx.” The liberal Manchester Guardian review agrees with Mr. Schwarzschild’s personal assessment of Marx but disagrees with the liberal Mr. Schwarzschild’s estimate of Bismark bv stating that like Marx “Bismark had the same repellent qualities even more intensely.” The Economist's reviewer thought that the author’s tendency to exaggerate the triumphs of Liberalism contained some startling inaccuracies. He believed, however, that Marxist science is but a painful attempt to justify Marx’s dogmatic pronouncements before 1848. Mr. Crankshaw in the Observer holds, however, that “Marx’s philosophic contribution is badly under-rated by Mr. Schwarzschild” and says “here in the midst of the 20th century Dr. Marx and his dialectic very much is.” In spite of Mr. Crankshaw’s assertion that a man of lesser talent than Mr. Schwarzschild could have disposed of Marx’s theory of surplus-value Mr. George Malcolm in the most objective of the reviews in the Evening Standard regards Capital as one of the most potent books in the world. The ineffable Frank Owen in the Mail commenting on the Red Prussian asks “was Marx a great genius or monster fraud?” and never really answers it. Mr. Harold Nicholson in the Daily Telegraph “cannot believe that a man who earned the unflagging devotion of his wife and Engels could have been quite the monster Mr. Schwarzschild portrays.” Finally the Manchester Guardian's summing up that the hook “is not the last word on one who is, after all, a great historic figure” expresses the more or less general viewpoint of most of those quoted.

All of which must be most disconcerting to an author who sets out to prove that Marx was a cross between an educated half-wit and an Al Capone.

Anybody with the barest knowledge of Marxism can read it with tolerant amusement. But the book is 16s. and that is a lot to pay for amusement, even these days. If it is merely relaxation the reader wants then “Itma” or “ Dick Barton ” is much more entertaining and wholesome.

Ted Wilmott

A Bourgeois on Marxism. (1940)

From the March 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The fundamental fallacy of Marxism is the dogmatic assumption that men live by bread alone, and that ‘democracy’ can be expressed in terms of an enforced economic equality.”

So wrote Mr. Wickham Steed, ex-Editor of The Times, in an article on “Liberty and Property” (Reynolds’s News, 4/2/40) But he did not tell us where this assumption is to be gathered from Marx’s theories. Yet, judging by the number of times similar things have been said of Marxism, we feel that the old dictum—repetition is the mother of study—comes well within what has been described as man’s infinite capacity for telling lies. Repeat a thing over and over again, and what may be a myth will easily be accepted as established fact. It is well within the bounds of probability that Mr. Steed, and many another critic of Marxism, really knows different. If they are the well informed men they are supposed to be, they are unlikely to believe in the validity of their criticisms. It is far more probable that they feel an instinctive reaction to the suggestion of the break-up of the system from which they materially benefit. Anyway, the charge that Marxism implies our living by bread alone comes as a strange one from those who will defend a system which has contrived to reduce the mode of living of the actual producers of “bread” to little more than work, bread and bed. Maybe, because Marxism insists that the basis of all human society is economic, the above criticism derives its cause from that source. If this be the case, the objection to Marxism will have to be extended to all biological theory as well, for we humans are not alone in the animal kingdom in requiring the food supply as a primary condition of existence. But to put the widest interpretation on Mr. Steed’s statement, let us take it for granted that he concedes this fact. He might reasonably insist that man has long since shed his animality in that men are much more than biological organisms, that we have a widely different and more complex mode of being than that of the lower animals. Our question will still remain, where does Marxism deny such obvious facts ? There is only one answer that can be reasonably given—nowhere. Marxism, it should be understood, takes men as they are, for good or for bad, with all attributes of humanity, and seeks to explain the movements of human society in the past, with a view to laying a sound foundation for it in the future.

The whole of Marx’s theories led to the determination to secure a form of human society in which the great mass of mankind would be finally removed from a “bread alone” subsistence. Marx perceived that the economic foundation of society must be the primal factor for adjustment in the reconstruction of human social life on a Socialist basis. With this accomplished, the entire mode of living of humanity would follow from that foundation. It would prove, we think, an impossible task to find any great worker in the field of social science who realised more than Marx that human life is composed of a great number of things above those of economic considerations.

But Mr. Steed’s objections are based on the Marxian negation of private property. He says— “that without a modicum of private property neither personal freedom nor democratic government is possible.” But how much property it takes to make a “modicum” Mr. Steed does not say. What he does say, however, is that he realises that freedom is not absolute but relative. But what he may not realise so readily is that this relativity of freedom is largely conditioned by the strivings of men to stretch their personal freedom to an absolute.

Had men, or groups of men, gone about guided by nothing other than their own personal self-interest, it is certain that mankind could never have built up such vast and complex social communities we know in modern times; in fact, they could never have reached civilisation at all.

Human passions and desires need organisation and restraints if we are to live in any form of social system. Vico, “the father of the philosophy of history,” made an important contribution to human thought when he suggested that men’s vices rather than their virtues are the impelling forces which aid towards social union. As Vico puts it—

“Legislation takes man as he is to make of him a being adapted for human society. From ferocity, avarice and ambition—these three vices which lead men astray—it derives the army, commerce and the court, that is to say, the strength, wealth and knowledge of republics, and these great vices, capable of destroying the human race, create social felicity.”

The philosopher, Hegel, said something similar when he observed—

“One thinks he is saying something great if one says that mankind is by nature good, but it is forgotten one says something far greater in the words, ‘man is by nature evil’.”

The full significance of all this, we are compelled to believe, will be missed by our bourgeois critics of Marxism. Whilst neither Vico nor Hegel regarded vices and virtues from the conventional and traditional standpoint, they perceived that the make-up of human society is necessitated by the all-compelling need to curb human action from instinctive passions and desires. The question arises, what is the foundational factor upon which all human society turns ?

To the Marxist, the quest for the wherewithal to live, plus the means and methods of producing such, gives rise to the formation of all social relationships, including the vices and virtues of men and their concepts of freedom, justice and equality, their religions and their philosophies.

For the millionth time let it be stated that Marxism is no doctrine of economic determinism or fatalism. It is men, whole men, men with all their human characteristics, who make history from their action and reaction with their material surroundings. Hence arose our private property condition of society. But its rise did not bring a greater all round freedom. What it did accomplish was freedom for some and slavery for others: it gave us class struggles.

The expansion of private property brought in its trail the bond slavery of ancient times, the serfdom of the middle ages, and the wage-slavery of modern society.

The all-important point to notice is that throughout all these historic social changes, it is the few who have experienced freedom in proportion to their greater control of private property in the means of life.

Given the condition that the means of living are privately owned, it follows as a matter of course that economic subjection must result. Economic freedom must be the basis of all freedom. Whilst no Marxist denies that private property has effected a progressive influence in social development, the fact emerges that every advance in human society has seen a greater division between those who have property in the means of living and those who have not.

The Marxian sees that we have reached a stage n social development where this property condition has become a hindrance to real social progress. Not only do we experience poverty amidst plenty, but the character of present-day property ownership acts as a handicap against the greater volume of wealth we could produce were the productive forces freed from private ownership and control.

The Marxian proposes that such private property shall cease. If a real economic equality is to prevail, only social control of the world’s resources through Socialism can secure its success. There is no half-way house from the Marxian standpoint.

But what of Mr. Steed’s “modicum” of property? If he means that we may own our clothes, our furniture, our musical instruments, our drawings and paintings, together with many other things which human need and culture determine, then he need have no fears. Marxism does not include such property in its objectives. What the Marxian objects to is private property in those things which society as a whole needs, such as the land, mines, mills, railways, ships, and all other productive and distributive forces of social importance. Outside of these agencies of wealth production property confers no power of human exploitation, no power of economic and social subjection of the many by the few.

When Mr. Steed speaks of “democracy” being “expressed in terms of an enforced economic equality,” he must have in view, not the democratic aims of Marxism, but totalitarianism, which is a totally different matter.

His conception of democracy seems to extend no further than the limited form in which it is expressed to-day.

To Mr. Steed and most of the bourgeoisie, the democracy they fear will lapse with the triumph of Marxism is the form which permits the wage-slave to vote for his slavery, and to “voice” his demands, provided, of course, he does not demand too much from those who live by his exploitation.

As Marxians we appreciate even this limited form of democracy; it is of important value to our purpose. But our claim is that the highest democracy can only be attained when the basic condition of human society precludes the possibility of human exploitation through property ownership.

We would draw the attention of Mr. Steed to the following pronouncement of the founders of Marxism, namely, Marx and Engels :—”In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” This does not sound as though Marxism was intended as a denial of all democratic principles. But lest it be suggested that the above reference from Marx is nothing more than a form of words, sentiments which may fail to find material expression under Socialism, let us point out that, in the measure that the means of living are made the common property of the whole of the people, to that extent is the primal condition set to pave the way to the greatest freedom mankind can experience.

Robert Reynolds

Historical Materialism (1970)

From the June 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

The credit for the elaboration of contemporary materialism undoubtedly belongs to Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. The economic aspects of historical materialism, together with the system of views concerning the problem, the method, and the categories of political economy for these we are indebted to Marx and Engels. What had previously been achieved in this field can be regarded as preparatory. Before Marx finalised his views, materials, often abundant and valuable had been collected, but these had not been systematised, and consequently had not been valued or used as they should have been.

The basic question of philosophy is the relation between ideas and things. The treatment of this question divides philosophers into two main contending schools—the Idealist and the Materialist. The Idealist school states that ideas are primary, and that matter is secondary; that the material world as known to the senses is illusory; that mind alone is real. The point of view of the materialist is directly opposite. The materialist contends that matter is primary and ideas are secondary; that mind is a function of matter (the brain) and that ideas are a reflection of material things.

Marx arrived at the materialist viewpoint quite early in his career, but he lifted it to a higher plane by combining it with the dialectical method of Hegel. The dialectic was not new—in fact it was known to the ancient Greeks— but Hegel, by his universal application of it, had given it a new significance.

The dialectic method used by Marx is the system by which he enquired into, and traced the connection and the series of joints and links that make up the process of historical evolution; by which he investigated one stage succeeds another in the development of society.

Marx in these investigations used the dialectical method in a different way to Hegel. Hegel was an idealist, and to him the process of evolution was the outward manifestation of the growth of the absolute Idea, which developed according to its own laws. To Marx, on the other hand, the ideal is nothing other than the material when it has been transposed and translated in the brain. The dialectical method of thought is a reflection of the dialectical process in material life. By combining the dialectical method with materialism and applying it to the problem of social change, Marx produced an entirely new concept of the historical process: the Materialist Conception of History. Previously historians had in nearly every case explained changes in social life and institutions in terms of growth of ideas. These ideas frequently became personified in great men and history was usually regarded as being the story of the activities of these great men. Where and how ideas originated was a question in the main ignored by historians. To Marx, ideas were a mental reflection of material things. To him, therefore, changes in social life were not to be explained by changes in ideas, but conversely changed in ideas were to be explained by changes in social life.

In the introduction to his Critique of Political Economy, Marx wrote:

  I was led by my studies to the conclusion that legal relations as well as forms of the state could neither be understood by themselves, nor explained by the so-called general process of the human mind, but that they are rooted in the material conditions of life.

The material conditions of life include man’s environment and his physical nature. Changes in the physical environment and in man’s own physical nature are hardly perceptible so they cannot explain historical changes. From the physical point of view both the world and man are much the same as they were two hundred years ago. Yet during the last two centuries changes have taken place which have changed man’s social life. The most important condition of life is the social production of the means of satisfying man’s needs. The method of producing the means of life (food, clothes, housing etc.) does change often very rapidly, and this, Marx considered to be the cause of changes in the structure of society generally.

In order to carry on production man has to enter into social relations, that is, to co-operate with his fellows.

The social relations—the relations between men and economic classes of men—existing at a given time correspond to a definite stage in the development of the means of production.

The means of production consist of the tools, machines, all kinds of transport. methods of organisation, discoveries of science used in production. The primitive technique of ancient times had corresponding to it the social relations of slave and slave owner, patrician and pleb; feudal technique, the relations of serf and feudal lord, handicraftsman and merchant; while present day capitalist technique has corresponding to it the social relations of wage worker and capitalist.

Marx called the social relations and the productive technique to which they correspond the economic foundations of society. Upon this rests the legal political, moral, religious, ethical, artistic, in a word, the ideological superstructure. There is a different ideology, for slavery, feudalism, and capitalism.

As technique develops, social relations change and the ideas and institutions resting upon this economic foundation are correspondingly transformed. Though changes in society are brought about by the evolution of the technical basis, social development is not a mechanical process. It works through human beings organised in classes.

At a certain stage in their development the technical forces of production come into conflict with the existing social relations. The interest of the ruling class determine that they should endeavour to keep in existence the prevailing state of things, and that they should attempt to prevent the full development of the productive forces. The interest of the subject class, on the other hand, lies in the direction of changing the existing state of things, of revolutionising society, and of allowing development of the productive forces.

Then comes the period of social revolution, when men consciously identify themselves with the interest of the class to which they belong, and when they consciously struggle to further those interests. If the struggle results in a victory for the lower class, as in the French Revolution, the reactionary ruling class is stripped of power; the state machine and all other institutions are transformed to serve the needs of the new ruling class; and the productive forces are freed from the obstacles placed in the way of their development. For a time economic development proceeds rapidly producing new classes, new social relations, and new ideas. Ultimately the time again comes when the technical forces for production come into conflict with the social relations. The new ruling class, once revolutionary, now becomes reactionary. Again a social revolution is at hand.

Since the days of Marx it has become the normal procedure for the historians to direct attention to the economic factors in history. Many and various ‘economic interpretations of history’ have been offered for popular consumption and very frequently the materialist conception of history is confused with these economic interpretations. Marx, as an historian, not only drew attention to the economic basis upon which society rests, but also recognised the struggle of classes as the vehicle by which society moved from stage to stage. “The history of hitherto existing society has been the history of class struggles," wrote Marx and Engels on the first page of the Communist Manifesto and in the following pages is given the description of the struggles of the capitalist class against its opponents, and its subsequent rise to power.

The modern capitalist class had its origins in the town burghers of the Middle Ages. Mediaeval society was in the main a society of self-sufficient districts, the manorial villages, but with the rise of towns trade and industry developed. This undermined the position of the peasants and their overlords, the feudal aristocracy. The feudal lords struggled to retain their privileges, which enabled them to tax and in numerous ways to place burdens on the urban population. The town burghers, sometimes in alliance with the King, as in England, were able to break the power of the feudal lords and to remove the regulations, taxes and other barriers that hampered the extension of economic activity.

The discovery of new sea-routes and of the ‘new world’ enormously increased the wealth, size and political importance of the new and growing capitalist class and by the end of the 17th century in England, in France 100 years later, and in Russia during this century, they were able to defeat the last remnants of feudalism. The English revolution in its two phases of the Puritan revolution 1641-1660 and the Whig (or ‘Glorious’) revolution of 1688-1690. and following it the French Revolution of 1789 resulted in a victory for the capitalist class of that period. The Russian Revolution of 1905-1917 has resulted in the rise of capitalism in a form suited to the history and economic development of that country.

The opening of new markets in the period following the English revolution created a demand for an increasing production of goods. Methods of production were continuously improved until finally, with the introduction of steam-driven machinery at the beginning of the 19th century, they were completely revolutionised. This revolution in productive methods caused a revolution in productive relations. From the old bourgeoisie there grew a new class of industrial capitalists and from the domestic workers and peasants there grew a new class of factory workers, the industrial working class. This class chained to the new machinery, exploited and oppressed by the capitalist class, began to struggle for emancipation. The class struggle had reached a new stage and a new phase of history had commenced.

The origin of the workers’ struggle is economic. The workers strive to maintain and improve their standard of life, but this struggle itself assumes a political form. With the aid of political enactments and of the police or, when necessary the armed forces, the state enters the struggle as the protector of the property interests of the capitalists and the workers find themselves not only fighting employers but also the capitalist state. When, with the development of large-scale modern industry, the small labour dispute is displaced by disputes of much larger dimensions, the state more and more openly shows itself to be the executive committee of the ruling class. Among workers there must grow the realisation that economic problems can be solved only by their conquest of political power and the overthrowing of capitalist property relations.

Previous revolutions have placed a minority of society in a position to exploit the majority. The next revolution, the Socialist revolution, is a revolution of a majority as the working class constitutes the bulk of the population in modern society, and can achieve its purpose only by the ending of class- divided society and the ending of all exploitation of man by man. With the ending of all property rights in the means of production, that is the establishment of a new form of society, class conflicts will cease.

The way is prepared for the new progress in which man will replace the blind way of economic forces, by the conscious direction of economically free men—Socialism.

Bob Ambridge

Marx and Materialism (2012)

From the July 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

If Marx had a philosophy it could be best described in his own words as critical materialism as opposed to mechanistic materialism. He believed with Feuerbach that critical materialism would mean the end of metaphysics and religion. Again, Marx regarded materialism as the only valid expression of scientific method. Thus, in a footnote on Page 368, Vol. I of Capital, he refers to a particular method as the only materialistic and, therefore, the only scientific method.

Marx took the world that is man and his relations with nature as they are. Marx then embraced a thoroughgoing naturalism as opposed to the super-naturalism of Hegel and other religious thinkers. He believed that facts are not more real than they are found to be, and do not express some deeper underlying truth. It was because Marx collected his facts and organised the knowledge gained from them on the presupposition that he was dealing with a material world, that his theory can be empirically demonstrated. Because Hegel began with metaphysical as opposed to materialistic assumptions he could offer no empirical guide as to the course of history. He could only assure us that a cosmic self-consciousness would come to pass, but how it would do so he is silent. Even in a brief and sketchy analysis of Marx and Hegel, it can be shown that in outlook and method they were worlds apart.

On the question of religion itself, Marx denied that there was some religious essence in man. Religion itself is a product of social life and it only arises when society has reached a certain stage of development in the division of labour. Like all other forms of culture, it can be critically analysed in a specific social situation, and like all other forms of activity it can be shown to change under the impact of changing conditions. While religion had historic justification in the productive rituals of the past, it serves no useful social purpose today.

Marx also denied that man was endowed with a natural religious sentiment, any more than he is naturally endowed with any other aspect of culture. A religious sense is not the outcome of a timeless abstraction, but the product of social consciousness and bound up with a certain stage of social development. To suppose then that any element of supernaturalism could find a place in Marxism is to invalidate the most basic assumptions of historical materialism. For that reason a belief in super-naturalism is incompatible with Marxism.

From the Socialist Standard, July 1957

Marx (2012)

Book Review from the July 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Karl Marx. By Paul Thomas, Reaktion Books, 2012

This is a concise, though not always easy to read, exploration of Marx’s life and writing. It can be usefully compared and contrasted with Francis Wheen’s best-seller Karl Marx (1999), which is more accessible but less reliable. Biographies of Marx these days have to declare where they stand on Marx’s alleged illegitimate son. The sole source for this allegation is a typewritten letter supposedly written by the estranged wife of Karl Kautsky. It is claimed that it was written in 1898 but was only made public, in mysterious circumstances, in 1962. Wheen is in no doubt that the allegation is true because, he says, the circumstantial evidence supports it. Thomas on the other hand, after weighing up the evidence, concludes that the allegation sits somewhere between ‘strains credibility’ and ‘stinks to high heaven’.

In Thomas’s book there is picture of the philosopher Hegel, whom Marx, the accompanying caption claims, ‘stood on his head’. Marx actually claimed that he found Hegel’s philosophy to be already standing on its head and that he stood him ‘right side up’. In Hegel’s philosophy the real world results from the unfolding of ideas, whereas for Marx ideas arise from and interact within a specific material context. There is no discussion of Marx’s dialectic in the book, from which we must assume it is of no importance. Wheen, by contrast, repeats the common misconception that Marx’s dialectic is a form of logical syllogism: thesis, antithesis and synthesis. But this is precisely the kind of idealism which Marx had rejected after he had stood the Hegelian philosophy of his youth ‘right side up’. It is the understanding of material circumstances, particularly the economics of capitalism, which provides the ‘guiding thread’ for comprehending the world around us.

Both Thomas and Wheen argue that Marx’s legacy is still relevant today. It can also be argued that Marx’s ideas have never been put into practice, and an example of this is suggested by Thomas’s book. At the end of the Franco-Prussian War, in 1871, the Paris Commune was formed. The Commune was an improvised organisation of Parisian workers set up to run and defend Paris. The French army brutally suppressed the Commune and slaughtered at least 20,000 of the Communards. Marx had no input into the creation or running of the Commune and the Commune took nothing from Marx. Afterwards he did write The Civil War in France in defence of the Commune, and from this the press claimed (mistakenly) that Marx was the mastermind or strategist behind the Commune, conferring on him the title ‘red terror Doctor’. Marx for the first time became notorious – but for an event which owed absolutely nothing to him. So apart from the evidence of his own writings, there are historical grounds for arguing that Marx’s legacy has been misunderstood and unrealised.

Lew Higgins

‘Antigone’ by Sophocles at the National Theatre (2012)

Theatre Review from the September 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Greek tragedy Antigone by Sophocles was recently staged at the National Theatre in London, starring Christopher Eccleston as Creon and Jodie Whitaker as Antigone, the character Hegel described as “the heavenly Antigone, the most magnificent figure”. This production opens with a tableaux modelled on the photograph of President Obama and aides watching the live video feed of the killing of Bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011.

Antigone, the woman of personal courage confronting state oppression has been a source of inspiration for dramatists. For Brecht she was the symbol of popular resistance to the horrors of Nazism. For ‘The Living Theatre’ founder, Judith Malina, Antigone “speaks with an ancient voice that is present wherever there is a willingness to speak against conventional strictures and punitive laws and to invoke the boundless human potential”.

Athenian audiences in the Hellenic Enlightenment would have adopted a more nuanced approach to Antigone, one that was based on the society they were living in.  Marx and Engels identified Ancient Greece as a society based on slavery, where agriculture was still developing, the ‘polis‘ (city state) and private property had appeared, and a ruling class was based on land and slave ownership.

In 5th century BC Athens, a form of ‘democracy’ had developed with a franchise that extended only to male citizens (with no say for slaves and other non-citizens). Athens was run by Boards of Jurors (who were salaried, chosen by lottery, and subject to scrutiny and de-selection), and the Council of 500 (chosen by lottery and examination with restricted tenure). Neither were organs of representative government. The source of direct democracy was in the People’s Assembly where any citizen could vote and speak. The Assembly met 40 days a year, had a quorum of 6,000 and drafted all major legislation.

Antigone, as an individual set against the tyranny of the state in the person of Creon, was appreciated by Athenian audiences because only 70 years before there had been authoritarianism. The play’s major themes can be seen as divine/natural law against man-made/state law or private/family life versus public life/citizenship.

JH Bradley in Hegel’s Theory of Tragedy saw the dialectical conflicts in the ethical views represented by Antigone and Creon.  Hegel in Phenomenology of Spirit sees sibling fidelity and the sister-brother relationship (“mutually self-affirming free individualities”) as the strongest possible relationship for a woman within circumscribed family life. In Athens women did not have the vote; they were legally dependent on men, and in the case of Antigone her male guardian is also Creon. Athenian audiences would appreciate the depth of her rebellion not only against the state but also against a man. Hegel identified gender politics, and that patriarchy creates “an enemy within its own gates”. Hegel adores Antigone and believes her to be nobler than Creon.

Sophocles does not have the gods save Antigone, and in Tiresias’s prophecy there is no praise for Antigone. Creon loses his wife, and his ward Antigone, but it is the loss of his son that is the patriarchal tragedy.  For Sophocles and Athenian audiences it is the hubris of Creon which causes this tragedy.

Steve Clayton

Marxism — The Philosophy of Action (1936)

Book Review from the June 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Dialectics, The Logic of Marxism,” by T. A. Jackson (Lawrence & Wishart) 10/6

Marx in his early days was a profound student of philosophy, and proclaimed himself a follower of “that mighty thinker" Hegel, whose system of philosophy had as its central principle the dialectal conception of the universe. This conception is that everything, including human thought, reveals itself as in a process of being and becoming. But, to cut a long story short, how the being and becoming was effected in human thought and social relationships was a question upon which Marx took leave of Hegel, turning the latter's “dialectic right side up.” Where Hegel thought the motion of all things to work through the unfolding of an “Idea,” being and becoming from God-knows-where, Marx saw the movements of human society to arise from the action and interaction of man and external nature. There is, therefore, no “Idea” in the Hegelian sense, there are only ideas, and common, human ones at that. Marx applied the criterion of practice to philosophical speculation —“the question whether objective truth can be attributed to (attained by) human thinking is not a question of theory, but a practical question. In practice, man must prove the truth, i.e., the reality and power, the 'this sidedness' of his thinking. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking which is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question.” (Marx.)

Reducing this to common phraseology, it means: “The proof of the pudding is in the eating.”

Now we of the Socialist Party of Great Britain have always insisted that the teachings of Marx and Engels provide an indispensable foundation for working-class Socialist activity. The theories of Marx have been stated and re-stated by us almost ad nauseam, as well as ad infinitum. We have battled for the recognition of Marxism amidst abuse and misrepresentation, not to mention the boycott of silence concerning our existence maintained by the pseudo-Socialist, Communist “revolutionist,” and everything “elsist” Press. But as Marx so aptly observed: “Time is the room of human development.” The theories for which we have worked are now being studied and discussed with increasing vitality.

The causes leading to this need not detain us here to discuss. Suffice it to mention that it is a remarkable tribute to Marx and Engels that their theories are interpreted in the light of, not only the age in which they were written, but more forcibly in connection with the happenings of to-day. The volume before us is a “weighty” addition to the various works on Marxism which have appeared in the last few years. In this case it is by one who claims to be an "out and out Marxist,” who tells us his work is “an attempt to clear the ground for a better and fuller appreciation of that which gives Marxism its living unity, namely, the Dialectal Materialist Method.” But for whose benefit, may we enquire, is this attempt made to unravel the method of Marx?

The worker-student who comes fresh into the field of Marxian thought will find in this volume a veritable maze of terminology to drive him into bewilderment. In about 650 pages there are literally hundreds of quotations from the flower of the world's intellects. Besides this there are innumerable phrases appearing in inverted commas and brackets, whilst the exclamation marks are as pronounced as tombstones in a graveyard. From this aspect alone any would-be student might easily be persuaded to adopt the advice which Mr. Jackson cites from Heine: "If you who read become tired of the stupid stuff herein, just think what a dreary time I must have had in writing it. I would recommend you, on the whole, once in a while to skip half a dozen leaves, for in that way you will arrive much sooner at the end.”

Of course all this is what Mr, Jackson would call "swank.” He wants people to read his book and for that reason alone should have concentrated upon making it "readable.” Obviously, if Marxism is to become a weapon in the struggle for working-class emancipation, it should be stated in a way that is within the grasp of those who have need of it. But one easily gathers from this book that Mr. Jackson has been little animated by the need of the enlightenment of "untutored workers.” Rather does he seem to have contrived his effort in the spirit of the ever so clever boy who is ever so eager "to tell the class all about it.”

His habitual use of long-winded, involved and even flashy statements, together with his readiness to knock lumps (spots seem not to be big enough) off all and sundry, will hamper any student who may mistake this book for an easy guide to Marxism.

Much of what Mr. Jackson has written here is comprehensible only to those who have had the opportunity of years and years of study, and into the bargain have been free from necessity of earning their daily bread under capitalist supervision in the workshop.

We cannot hesitate to offer the following example from among many which could be given of what we have said above. Mr. Jackson is explaining Hegel's phrase “Negation of negation,” and this is what we get : "The Hegelian method was 'pelmanised' for its followers in the 'sacramental formula' (as Marx called it): 'Negation of negation.' Both Marx and Engels used the phrase—it was an instance of their ‘coquetting with Hegelian terminology'—with telling effect. Since the phrase is a scandal and abomination to all bourgeoisdom to this day, and is made a chief count in the indictment against Marx by several of his recent critics, we may profitably give it a little attention.

  "Terrifying though this phrase may sound, mystifying to the last degree as it becomes in the hands of an idealist, this formula is none the less capable of a simple and, what is more, an illuminating explanation. Light begins to break through the mystery as soon as it is seen (a) that it summarises the conclusion of a logical operation; (b) that it is preceded by a process whose formula is in turn that of Spinoza, ‘All determination is Negation.'
  "What does this phrase mean? What it says: that all distinguishing of things in thought is a de-term-ination, a setting of limits to that which, the thing is. Or, otherwise stated, all distinguishing of things is an act of mentally separating a thing from that which it is not. Thus all 'determination,' which is particularisation, consists in 'negating’ or breaking up an undifferentiated generalisation. Furthermore, the process of discriminating one particular thing from a general mass is simultaneously a process of distinguishing the counter-particularity of that from which it is distinguished. Hence (and it is here that Hegel’s real contribution begins, all the foregoing being common to him and his predecessors)—hence a full comprehension of the thing involves comprehending it simultaneously in two opposite ways, namely, as distinct from and, at the same time, as one with that from which it is distinguished. Hence all logic consists in the performance with due circumspection of this operation of negating unity by resolving it into multiplicity (analysis) and re-creating it by distinguishing the unity persisting in the multiplicity (synthesis)."

One may gather from this why it was suggested that the study of philosophy is like looking in a dark room for a black cat that isn't there. The writings of Marx and Engels are in every way as clear as crystal compared with the above abracadabra.

However, having had our say so far, let us take Mr. Jackson as he is, as Cromwell preferred it, "Warts and all.” In tracing the rise and development of Marxism he well takes as his starting point an examination of Marx's theses on the philosophy of Feuerbach, which we have reproduced from time to time in these columns. All students of Marx should avail themselves of a study of these theses, since they indicate and illuminate the passage through which Marx passed from Hegelianism on to the philosophy of Feuerbach and thence to Marx. Mr. Jackson illuminates the fundamental distinctions between the older materialism of Hobbes and Locke, etc., the idealisms of Berkeley and Kant, which culminated in Hegel, and the materialism of the Marxian school of thought. If we allow for the drawbacks referred to previously, Mr. Jackson does this part of his work exceedingly well, and particularly so where he deals with the “ Objective Roots of Religion." Marx laid it down that “the criticism of religion is the beginning of all criticism," but as Mr. Jackson ably points out, although the “beginning,” it was by no means the end. In turn the criticism of religion involves a criticism of the legal-political-moral superstructure of human society as this arises from society’s economic foundations. Many passages from the writings of Marx and Engels are given in support of this thesis. But even here, Mr. Jackson cannot restrain his kink for “scalping,” and thus mars an otherwise excellent chapter by a piece of deliberate distortion. He quotes from Casey’s booklet, “Method in Thinking," the following: 

  “If we separate from men and things all thoughts of goodness, power, intelligence, perfection, life and such like, and add them together to form one thought of complete superiority in all matters, this thought is God. When we realise that thought is real and just as objective as anything else we have here!! the explanation!!! of why God is a real and very powerful influence!!! . . . If understanding were more general we should not have the silly quarrel between theists who take God on faith and the atheists who deny God also on faith!!! and agnostics who say they do not know one way or the other. . . .
   “The idea of God is built up just like any other idea, and therefore we can understand God! ! ! and consequently we are able to explain Him. . . . ”

The italics and exclamation marks are all Mr. Jackson’s, who describes Casey’s statement as an attitude of “facing-both-ways-at-once.” But Casey’s meaning is obvious, whatever one may think of his method of presentation. He does not mean what Mr. Jackson would have us believe, as the statement which follows on from where Mr. Jackson left him “ high and dry,” shows.

Says Casey: 

  "If after that any man wants to worship such a God it will be his own fault. Merely to deny God gets us no further, but to explain him is the best way, so far as serious argument is concerned, of clearing up all the nonsense associated with Him. We say nonsense, but it is not nonsense to those who trade on the faith in God, and in the name of God force their authority on their fellow-men, sometimes in sincere belief and sometimes with the utmost hypocrisy.” 

We cannot think that Jackson is unaware of the fact that Casey is dealing with "God” as a concept, and not as an objective reality, independently existing outside the human mind. We suggest Mr. Jackson should hesitate next time he thinks of the "facing-both-ways” charge. When Mr. Jackson was speaking recently at a Church Hall at Hornsey on the subject of ” Communism and Christianity,” he stated that “it was surely criminal to emphasise the disagreements of Communists and Christians when people all over the world clamoured for goodwill.” "The common enemy is Fascism.” (Hornsey Journal, February 21st, 1936.) Is this not facing-both-ways, or is it a variation of Low’s two-headed ass?

However, when dealing with "The Dialectic of Revolution,” Mr. Jackson exposes himself as being no more than an idolator of the Russian Bolshevik regime. He likewise exposes the fact that the mere possession of the dialectal concept is no guarantee that the correct standpoint is taken by the dialectarian. Whatever the Bolsheviks have done, or are doing, or are likely to do in the future, Mr. Jackson perceives in their activity the working out of the Dialectal Materialism of Marx. But he flattens himself out in the task of substantiation. He says, “That which was victorious in Russia in November, 1917, was neither a local nor a national force—but the revolutionary force of the world proletariat, which broke through the bourgeois defences just exactly at that point, because in that section the defences of the world-bourgeoisie were weakest.” (Page 397.)

The revolutionary force of the world proletariat! As Jackson must realise, unless he, like most "Communists,” sees the revolution everywhere, here and now in 1936 the revolutionary force of the world’s working-class is practically negligible. How much more so was it in 1917? Those who bitterly remember the wartime days will recall the almost complete absence of any serious sign of activity to stop the war, let alone commence the social revolution. In Russia alone was there any serious indication to call a halt to the slaughter, and mixed up in that movement to end the war were the Bolsheviks. The “Revolution” came, the Bolsheviks came, but no Socialism. Not even the intense longing and hoping of Lenin for the revolt of the world’s proletariat had any effect. The forces making for “Socialism” were actually subdued in Russia, firstly by the economic backwardness of that country and next by the capture of power by the very people who had been screaming "Socialism.” The Bolshevik Government from its inception, and in order to maintain its dictatorship throughout, had to toe the line to capitalism. Stalin in one of his recent utterances flatly repudiated the notion of the Bolshevik interest in world revolution after 19 years of his party’s rule.

The essential moves for Socialist revolution, which is totally different from a mere uprising to end a war, or dethrone a government, or what not, will take place when the workers understand and desire Socialism. And this Mr. Jackson evidently realises. He contends against the notion that it was Marx’s theory that the idea of Socialism would arise “automatically in the heads of each and every individual proletarian," and says further that "for the idea to arise in the first place, and to become general in the second place, an objective social reality must exist from which the idea has arisen. There must exist, and be felt to exist, a social problem for which a solution must be found—and it is under the promptings of the urgency of the problem as well as their cogency and applicability to the needs viewed in the light of practical everyday reality, that ideas spread and develop into 'forms of public opinion.' " Exactly, Mr. Jackson; but no such form of public opinion existed to any serious degree in the vast expanse of Russia in 1917 with Socialism as its objective. There are many other points made by Mr. Jackson about Russia, which we have refuted over and over again.

In concluding this review we repeat that, with those who are immersed in dialectics, and mistake the Marxian Dialectic for a sort of logic-chopping apparatus for the “use of smart men only," there lies a source of danger to Socialist activity. The concepts of the unity of theory and practice and the unity of opposites might pass muster anywhere and in anything, but to square with the realisation of Socialism it will not do to take one step forward in Socialist theory and two steps backward, not to mention a whole flight, into capitalist practice as Lenin and the Bolsheviks have done. There are numerous other points we should like to have dealt with arising from this provocative, entertaining, polemical, philosophical, historical and generally sociological essay, but we must drop our pen for the present. To all students of Marx we suggest that they sample this.work, but only after they have first studied Marx and Engels.

Robert Reynolds

P.S.—As I concluded this article, the news was broadcast that Russia desires a naval pact with Great Britain. The dialectic scores again.

Who’s afraid of dialectics? (2019)

From the February 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the many reasons for the misinterpretation of Marx’s writings has its origins in the misunderstanding of his method. His mode of investigation was entirely dialectical. To many of his subsequent readers down the years this has made his work relatively inaccessible.

At the beginning of the twentieth century the analytical school of philosophy had almost entirely eclipsed the dialectical tradition because of the analytical school’s association with the ‘scientific method’. The dialectics of the so-called continental philosophical school were thus confined to the analysis of the ‘humanities’ if they were used at all. When the analytical method was used to create the separate disciplines of economics, politics, history and sociology etc., (something entirely alien to the holistic dialectical approach) its conclusions were, unsurprisingly, very different from those of Marx. Sometimes this was due to the ideological bias of the individuals involved but more usually it was because the nature of the method defines the results. Some have thought that the analytical method easily disposes itself to defending the status quo and so is inadequate for use in radical and revolutionary discourse. It has been conjectured that the empirical analytical approach is optimal for the study of the natural sciences and that the dialectical method is superior in cultural analysis. Liberated from its present arcane and semi-mystical status dialectics can resolve this false duality and become a common-sense approach to understanding the world and our place in it.

When many first attempt an understanding of the dialectical method they can be intimidated by what seems to be an investigation into an esoteric and alien intellectual tradition. But it can be a surprising revelation that this was, in part, how they had thought of the world long before reading a word of Marx or Hegel. The most obvious example of an ‘innate dialectic’ is the ease with which some can associate and locate their lives within the bigger political picture. The individual’s concerns, joys and sufferings can be understood alongside the identical emotions of fellow beings within, as is quickly discovered, not just a familial, local or even regional context but that of the human condition itself. The self is understood within an historical context that has inherited a social condition, a language and a set of values (together with the very concepts used to understand it all) from those who had gone before. Of course the dialectical philosophers had systematised these universal experiences into a coherent methodology which has accumulated, as all philosophical discourses do, a series of concepts and phrases that can seem very remote from everyday life. But at its heart it seeks to find a language that can simulate and thus render understandable the phenomena of the real world.

Language and ideas
Language is an abstraction of utterance and gesture. It seeks primarily to facilitate communication about the experience of existence. It is important to always remember that thought uses ideas (abstract representations of perception and experience) to create concepts (mental reconstructions of relationships between ideas) and as such they attempt to represent the objective world that we find ourselves within and are not those things in themselves. Language is so seductive that once it becomes inducted into thought itself it can be mistaken for that which it represents (idealism). We speak here of the Marxian version of the dialectical method which is used in the service of materialism rather than the idealism of Hegel (Marx famously subverted the Hegelian method) but the philosophical technique is fundamentally the same. The foremost discovery of any dialectical analysis is that any abstract (idea and concept) is in the process of change. This reflects the fact that all of the constituents of the world are becoming something other than they appear to be at any given time. Everything has to be understood in terms of what it once was, what it is now and what it will become. To study anything in isolation from this dynamic is misleading and ultimately futile. This continual change is due to not just external factors but also to the internal structure of the abstract concerned. This is what dialecticians call internal relations. The method seeks to comprehend four relationships between the elements within the idea (phenomena under consideration): identity and difference, the interpenetration of opposites, the transition from quantity to quality and the tension created by internal contradictions. These processes are universal and so reflect the whole within its parts but, as we shall see, the very distinction between ‘whole’ and ‘part’ quickly becomes philosophically redundant and is only retained as an expository expedient.

Let’s use the humble apple as a subject for a dialectical analysis. The colour, shape, taste and texture combine to define ‘an apple’. These qualities are in turn dependent on a process that has changed the fruit and brought it to ripeness. In dialectical terms we see the development of the apple in both its difference from other fruits as well as its connection with them as part of the definition of being a fruit. We see in the ripening the interpenetration of opposites in terms of sourness transforming into sweetness. The development from a single cell to a combination of many as it grows is an example of quantity becoming a quality and finally the continuation of the processes of ripening, if the apple is left unpicked, will cause it to rot and die and this represents an internal contradiction. The perspective or vantage point from which the apple is perceived will also emphasise or diminish aspects of this development. The owner of an apple orchard will see the apples purely as having commercial value and will seek to maximise this by selective breeding and pest control etc. The consumer and/or producer of the apple will be purely interested in what it represents in terms of taste, price and wages. The tree’s fruit exists to pass on its genetic code as widely and as efficiently as nature will allow. These three perspectives may operate in parallel but each can obviously act against the interest of the others. In terms of what dialecticians call an extension of generality we know that the apple is dependent on the tree and that the tree is dependent on the sun and that much of life itself is dependent on solar energy etc. In this way a thorough understanding of an apple has the potential to give you an understanding of everything.

Obviously the mind cannot embrace the universe as a whole so we are forced to abstract it into component parts to intellectually digest it at all; but this is always done with the aim of reconstructing the phenomena as representing the whole. With this in mind we are free to choose a point of view that we feel will be most revealing – rather than being restricted in our perspective by ideological conditioning. Marx was always aware that he had to explain his method and conclusions within a non-dialectical intellectual context. The dialectical method has come a long way since its origins of ‘thesis, antithesis and synthesis’ in the Ancient Greek discipline of rhetoric. It has been said that trying to comprehend the world without the aid of dialectics is like trying to board a moving train whilst blindfolded. Dialectics is a method we can use to investigate the past, present and the future.

Marx’s method
Of all of the dialectical tools available Marx considered the investigation of ‘internal contradictions’ to be the most productive when studying history. Unlike most historians Marx analyses history backwards – he seeks out the elements in the past that are preconditions for the present. This is because, as already stated, every concept of the present is rooted in the past and possesses potential for the future. The money in your purse (present) has its origins in the development of an exchange economy (past) and as such is extremely unlikely to remain in your purse for long (future). The preconditions for the development of capitalism were both economic and political – Marx was never purely an economic determinist as he is so often portrayed. One of the necessary preconditions for capitalism was the economic power of the merchants, capitalist farmers and financiers whose wealth enabled them to replace the feudal lords as the ruling class which in turn accelerated the economic exploitation of coal and iron that instigated the subsequent industrial revolution. In other words the merchant adventurers, pirates and slavers who flourished under monarchical rule (Elizabeth I and James I) were the very people who would help to overthrow it; late feudalism had nurtured the elements of its own destruction (internal contradiction). Industrial technology facilitated social production which produced one of the famous instances of ‘the negation of the negation’ (when change seems to end up where it starts) because it severed the link between producer and owner (an earlier form of property) and substituted it with the ownership of the producer’s labour power as well as his product (property as capital) – one form of private property had replaced another.

What, then, can be seen as the preconditions for the future within capitalism? If we look for the most obvious example of an internal contradiction within the contemporary world one stands out above all others, possibly the greatest in all of human history, and it is this individual (or state) ownership of the products of social production. That the majority are only allowed to produce for the profit of a tiny minority is as economically irrational in the twenty first century as was the political power and wealth of the aristocracy in seventeenth century England. The political recognition of this fact by the majority (the working class) necessitates its end. Just as social production had superseded the individual craftsmanship of the past so will social ownership (socialism) replace individual acquisition in the future. Dialectically we can then look back from this future to the present to seek out the preconditions for socialism within capitalism. We have achieved the necessary level of production and what we need is revolutionary socialist consciousness which, from the vantage point we have imagined from the future, necessitates the rejection of any reform or political compromise with capitalism. Of course we speak of the future in terms of the probabilities offered by the present but this is no crystal ball gazing because, as has been said, the use of the process of projection and regression is implicit in the conception of anything whether we are conscious of doing so or not. A pile of bricks is never just ‘a pile of bricks’; we interpret it either as the remnants of a building or as the potential for a new building; a baby is not just a baby but is hopefully the result of joy and a potential adult. Dialectics can help you understand the probable quality and value of either – a Taj Mahal or an Adolph Hitler.

Given what has been outlined here it becomes obvious why dialectical materialism is feared and derided by those who would have us believe that capitalism represents the best of all possible worlds. The fear is instinctive (ideological) because few ever really attempt to understand it. As Marx said: the ruling ideas are those of the ruling class – a world where everything is frozen in time (we were just as violent and greedy in the past as we are now and the future will be no different) and where the only possible form of knowledge illustrates dead matter imprisoned in its present form and devoid of any inner dynamic that will change it (bourgeois economics and pseudo-science). Marx chose the vantage point of the working class because he understood that only they can create fundamental progress. History chooses a class to exhibit the potential for change; all it has to do is recognise the power that human development has given it. The theory of internal relations (dialectics) stands as the primary theory that can tell us when and how human agency can bring about a revolutionary political transition. Dialectics are fun.

Wez