Social philosophy? (2025)

Book Review from the December 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard 

 

A Social History of Analytic Philosophy. By Christoph Schuringa. Verso, 2025.

This book describes the social history of philosophers, not philosophy. It is an interesting, blow by blow account of Western philosophers and their schools, mainly around the turn of the 20th century. But it takes the position of philosophy, that the activity is valid – that there is such a thing as philosophy to be found. This is the most socially historical aspect of the book – that the author, a philosophy professor, must start by accepting uncritically that professing philosophy is a valid thing to do. As Upton Sinclair noted, ‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on not understanding it’.

In the Western tradition, a society of élite men, nominally confronting each other as equals beneath constitutional monarchs or in republics, felt capable of eyeballing God from their armchair or bathtub. Western philosophy is the sublime arrogance of thinking that one is one, and one can ‘know’ – that, for example, if all one has is sense perception, then all that exists is sense perception, rather than saying what a less privileged person might say, which is that you just don’t know and should instead just write down what you see as such. Just as the hand mill gives you feudalism and the steam mill industrial capitalism, so the ruling ideas of that epoch are echoes of the experience of elite life under these conditions.

This book contains much material that could be used for such a study of the social history of philosophy: but by taking philosophy seriously, it is not that study. Its relentless disdain of the Bloomsbury group, for example, is just gossip, while the real differences in background of this group, and Cambridge scholars, and Viennese scholars, and women trying to enter the debate, could have been measured against the social conditions of the various states in order to gain real insight. In short, to write this work adequately, one would first have to break with philosophy. Until this is done, all that remains is a discussion of events of the day, and a skeleton description of this philosophical history instead of the real animal.

In the last chapter (the book really needs a conclusion), Schuringa describes one of the most infamous encounters of Marxism with philosophy, that of G.A. Cohen’s Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence. In it can be seen everything that is wrong with using analytical philosophy to describe Marx’s work. The background of Cohen and the rest of the September group, and their encounters with Marxism: the group’s intellectual trajectory, under pressure of the universities they were in, their peers, publication, the development of the idea that ‘dialectics is bullshit’, and repudiation of Marxism; all would provide data for a fascinating case study, but receive a mere two pages. But this would be to question the validity of philosophical thought, which in the introduction Schuringa says he refuses to do. As such, it’s not clear with which Marxist tradition he is in line. Certainly not one that Marx could inhabit.

SJW

Blogger's Note:

Cohen’s Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence was reviewed in the August 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard.

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: Marx in error? (2005)

Letter to the Editors from the October 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marx in error?

Dear Editors,

I note that you, in the September issue, favourably quote part of Marx’s sixth Thesis on Ludwig Feuerbach:

“Feuerbach resolves the essence of religion into the essence of man. But the essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations”.

I would like to point out that Marx was in error on this point, and that in fact Feuerbach did not abstract from social relations. Here is the man himself:

“The natural viewpoint of man, the viewpoint of the distinction between I and thou, subject and object, is the true and absolute viewpoint; consequently, it is also the viewpoint of philosophy. The single man for himself possesses the essence of man neither in himself as a moral being nor in himself as a thinking being. The essence of man is contained only in the community and unity of man with man; it is a unity, however, which rests only on the reality of the distinction between I and thou. Solitude is finiteness and limitation; community is freedom and infinity. Man for himself is man (in the ordinary sense); man with man – the unity of I and thou – is God” (Principles of the Philosophy of the Future (1844), p 70-71)

A bit fluffy and abstract perhaps, but it is clear, just as it is clear in his Essence of Christianity, that his analysis was based upon social relations.

R. Cumming (by email)

Letters: More on Marx (2023)

Letters to the Editors from the August 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

More on Marx

Dear Editors

As a professional philosopher and a socialist I was interested to read the exchange between Brian Morris and SJW in the June Socialist Standard.

We cannot simply call Marx a philosopher, or indeed an economist or an historian. He made huge contributions to all three disciplines but more importantly he challenged their orthodoxies. He also had other things on his mind, such as fomenting a global revolution.

What shines through in all his work is a commitment to argumentation and evidence rather than just wishful thinking or arm waving. That commitment is echoed in the practice of current Marx commentators known as analytical Marxism (sometimes called by its practitioners non-bullshit Marxism). Whatever their failings politically, they too insist on logic and rigour in contrast to the flashy and obscurantist work of some other currently fashionable commentators.

An excellent example of analytical Marxism is G A Cohen’s book Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence (which I reviewed in the Socialist Standard in August 1979). In it Cohen provided a philosophical underpinning for Marx’s theory and considered what implications this had for when and how revolutionary change might occur.

I am not a card-carrying member of the non-bullshit Marxism group but I used the same analytical methodology in my book Karl Marx our Contemporary: Social Theory for a post-Leninist World (reviewed by Adam Buick in the Socialist Standard for October 1992). In it I argued that the welcome collapse of the East European regimes gave us a chance to assess Marx’s theories in their own right rather than through the distorting lens of Leninism. What emerges from that analysis is that Marx’s theories are remarkably close to the position of the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

Keith Graham 

Even more on Marx

Dear Editors

I thank SJW for his response my letter. Three reflections.

I was surprised to learn that Marx was a postmodern skeptic who repudiated all ‘isms’. I always thought that he (and his friend Engels) expressed and defended philosophical materialism as a metaphysic.

Contrary to SJW’s assertion, I am unable to read other people’s minds. I simply interpreted Marx as a philosophical (dialectical) materialist through a serious study of his life and works extending over fifty years.

I too am a ‘worker’ and have been so since the age of fifteen when I began work in an iron foundry. But this has no relevance at all to an understanding of Marx’s philosophical outlook. Equating philosophical materialism with ‘capitalist interests’ (whatever they may be) is hardly enlightening.

Brian Morris, 

Lewes

Freedom as non-domination (2025)

From the July 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The historical influence of republicanism upon socialist thinking has been somewhat obscured, though recent works such as William Clare Roberts’ Marx’s Inferno and Bruno Leipold’s Citizen Marx have done much to help bring this relation back into the light. What is distinctive about the republican tradition is its conception of freedom, which differs from the one most commonly used today. Republican ideas about freedom were picked up and adapted by early socialists.

Freedom from and freedom to

Introductions to political or social freedom often start with Isaiah Berlin’s essay Two Concepts of Liberty. This article will follow the convention and begin here, not because there is anything uniquely faultless about Berlin’s essay, but because it has become the paradigmatic statement of the modern view of liberty. Berlin distinguishes between two ways of thinking about freedom, which he labels ‘positive’ and ‘negative’. In secondary texts this distinction is sometimes explained as being the difference between ‘freedom to’ and ‘freedom from’, but this does not really capture two distinct concepts just two different ways of talking about the same thing – for example, the ‘freedom to’ enjoy a quiet space is also at the same time the ‘freedom from’ the interference of noisy neighbours.

While freedom in the negative sense can straightforwardly be understood as an absence of constraint or interference, Berlin’s positive freedom is a little harder to pin down. If we think of positive freedom as being about self-mastery of our internal life, we still have something that can be collapsed into negative freedom. The mastery of physiological compulsion can still be thought of as the overcoming of interference or constraints, and so a type of negative freedom. Instead of being about self-mastery we can think of positive freedom as being about self-realisation and self-perfection. Positive freedom can be understood as overcoming the constraints or barriers that obstruct us from the realisation of our own full potential. Only by living the most fulfilling version of ourselves do we become truly free. On this account, freedom is not an absence but an end-state or achievement. As summarised by Quentin Skinner in A Third Concept of Liberty:

‘… what underlies these theories of positive liberty is the belief that human nature has an essence, and that we are free if and only if we succeed in realising that essence in our lives. This enables us to see that there will be as many different interpretations of positive liberty as there are different views about the moral character of humankind. Suppose you accept the Christian view that the essence of our nature is religious, and thus that we attain our highest ends if and only if we consecrate our lives to God. Then you will believe that, in the words of Thomas Cranmer, the service of God “is perfect freedom”. Or suppose you accept the Aristotelian argument that man is a political animal, the argument restated as a theory of freedom by Hannah Arendt in Between Past and Future (1961). Then you will believe that, as Arendt maintains, “freedom . . . and politics coincide” and that “this freedom is primarily experienced in action”.’

Berlin, who was writing during the Cold War and in opposition to Stalinism, highlights how this positive conception of freedom could be open to abuse. It leaves itself open to paternalistic and authoritarian interpretations. If freedom amounts to the achievement of our true potential or real interests, the question arises as to what these ‘real’ interests really are. If real interests do not have to be something that an agent is conscious of then the coercive interference from a higher social power could be a way of forcing people to be free. Says Berlin:

‘… George Orwell is excellent on this. People say “I express your real wishes. You may think that you know what you want, but I, the Fuhrer, we the Party Central Committee, know you better than you know yourself, and provide you with what you would ask for if you recognised your “real” needs.’

This is not to say, as is sometimes claimed, that Berlin thought that every use of the concept of positive freedom was a concealed attempt at manipulation and that we should therefore only use the negative conception. His claim was that historically the positive conception had been misused more often and with more devastating results. The negative conception of freedom was also open to misuse:

‘…Negative liberty is twisted when I am told that liberty must be equal for the tigers and for the sheep and that this cannot be avoided even if it enables the former to eat the latter if coercion by the state is not to be used. Of course unlimited liberty for capitalists destroys the liberty of the workers, unlimited liberty for factory-owners or parents will allow children to be employed in the coal-mines. Certainly the weak must be protected against the strong, and liberty to that extent be curtailed. Negative liberty must be curtailed if positive liberty is to be sufficiently realised; there must be a balance between the two, about which no clear principles can be enunciated. Positive and negative liberty are both perfectly valid concepts, but it seems to me that historically more damage has been done by pseudo-positive than by pseudo-negative liberty in the modern world.’

Ancient Rome

Having a grasp of these two common ways of thinking about freedom we can now introduce a third conception, which is commonly referred to as ‘republican’ or ‘neo-roman’ freedom. This way of thinking about freedom has been bought back into the public consciousness largely thanks to the work of historian of ideas Quentin Skinner and the political philosopher Philip Pettit. It can be thought of as ‘freedom as non-domination’ or ‘freedom as independence’. This republican concept of freedom can be directly tracked back to the Digest of Roman law. Here it is stated that ‘the fundamental division within the law of persons is that all men and women are either free or are slaves’ and that ‘Slavery is an institution of the law of nations by which someone is, contrary to nature, subjected to the dominion of someone else’. From this we can get a definition of what it means to be a free person within a society. A free person is someone who is not under the dominion of anyone else and can act on their own accord. As Livy, the Roman historian who served as an inspiration for Machiavelli and other 16th century Florentine republicans, put it – to be free was ‘to be in your own power’ and not dependent on the will of anybody else.

The key difference between republican and negative freedom can be illustrated in this way: On the negative conception of freedom a slave who is not interfered with, and left to do as they please, is free. While on the republican conception what makes someone free is not the absence of interference but the absence of domination. Even though a slave may be left to go about as they please, at any point they could be interfered with according to the arbitrary whims of their master. The knowledge that arbitrary interference can be applied at any point is enough to be a restriction to liberty, behaviour and comment must continually be self-monitored so as to avoid the sanction of the master. On the republican account, freedom is a status relation within a society that makes it impossible to be the helpless victim of arbitrary interference. As Sidney wrote in his 1698 Discourses Concerning Government, ‘he is a slave who serves the best and gentlest man in the world, as well as he who serves the worst; and he does serve him if he must obey his commands, and depends upon his will.’

In the English Civil War, disputes between Crown and Parliament drew upon this language of dependency and dominion, drawing upon common-law texts which had their basis in the Roman Digest. The effect of Royal prerogative was that those living under the king were reduced to a state of servitude. This was not because of any actual or threatened interference, but because the continuation of rights and freedoms was dependent on the goodwill of the King, and this could be withdrawn at any point. It was this state of dependency, of being under the dominion of the King, that was the threat to freedom. When King Charles was executed, the charge was that he had ruled arbitrarily and so tyrannically. The Act that abolished the monarchy declared that the effect of prerogative had been ‘to oppress and impoverish and enslave the subject’.

As well as being central to the English revolution, these ideas would surface again a century later in the French and American revolutions. The central idea was that it was only possible to have individual freedom through being a citizen of a self-ruling republic. To live under the dependence of a monarch, or in the American case under a colonial power, is to be reduced to the status of a slave. This understanding of freedom as being a state of independence left some controversy as to the normative status of industrial production and wage labour in the early years of the American republic. Wage labour was seen as being a state of dependency and so a form of unfreedom which was degrading to the moral health of the nation. ‘Free labour’, either in the form of small-scale production where the producers also owned their means of production or that of independent homesteaders was seen as being more conducive to building a strong and resilient nation.

Freedom as emancipation

Reaction against revolutionary and democratic movements in France and America saw the development and spread of the idea of freedom as non-interference. This, together with the irresistible rise of international commerce with its permanent dependence on wage labour, saw a decline in republican ways of thinking about freedom by the late 18th century. The concept of negative freedom, in the form of voluntarist ideas about freedom of contract, was one that was more suitable for the needs of the capitalist class. Though republican ideas about freedom would continue to persist in the labour and nascent socialist movements.

‘Something of slavery still remains… something of freedom is yet to come’ wrote the labour republican Ira Steward in 1873. Early socialists would continue to use the language of ‘wage-slavery’, ‘self-emancipation’ and other tropes drawn from radical republican heritage.

But they did not just adopt republican ideas wholesale; they responded to and critiqued them. Republican language focussed on an undifferentiated ‘people’ as the basis for a self-governing republic, socialist language on the proletariat as the group-agent capable of changing society. The first English translation of Communist Manifesto was in a newspaper entitled The Red Republican, and here the difference between radical republican and socialist ideas can be seen in contrast side by side. Labour republicans, such as the Knights of Labor, sought to lessen the dependence of the working class through the development of workers co-ops, etc. Marx’s Capital can be understood as an intervention within the labour movement against the prominence of such ideas. Socialist critique argued that it was not enough for individual groups of workers to separately own their own enterprises, market competition would still present itself as a form of impersonal domination.

Understanding freedom as non-domination provides a rich foundation for criticising capitalist society. The formally ‘free’ contract that the wage labourer enters into turns out to be a one-way ticket into a relation of dependency. Employers impose the same kind of arbitrary interference upon workers as kings on their subjects. The importance of non-domination in the foundations of socialism is why it has to be a movement for collective self-emancipation and why authoritarian attempts to impose it on an unwilling or passive population would be doomed to failure. Rather than being the ‘real interests’ of the proletariat imposed by an authoritarian state, freedom as non-domination is a collective good. The extent to which it is achieved depends on the extent to which it has been secured for others.

DJP

Marxism and Inevitability – The Critics Criticised (1956)

From the March 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

“There’s a destiny that shapes our ends, rough hew them as we may.”

Is Marxism the prose Rubaiyat of economic fatalism? Many pseudo-Marxists have half believed it. Quite a few critics of Marxism—Eastman, Berlin, Popper, etc., have wholly asserted it. A host of sentimental liberals and political do-gooders have also chosen to see Marxism as a secularised version of—”and the good must come to pass.” For such critics Marxism is either a synonym for Kismet or a variation of “The Lord will provide.”

It is true that the Communist Manifesto states, “Capitalism is its own grave-digger; its fall and the victory of the proletariat are alike inevitable.” This has been taken up by opponents of Marxism and echoed and re-echoed down the corridor of the years as evidence of the fact that Marxism spells out fatalism with a capital f. Yet anything less like religious or philosophical quietism than the Communist Manifesto it would be hard to imagine. Not only do its pages breathe political activism but it ends with a stirring call to action—”Workers of the world unit,” utterly at variance with any predestined assumptions. It is not difficult, however, to tear a sentence from its context and make the author appear to say the opposite of what he actually meant.

Now this particular type of criticism of Marxism pivots on the word “inevitability.” If we are to believe the critics of Marx the term inevitability, especially as related to human society, is synonymous with fatalism or predestination—”The moving finger writes and having writ moves on.” Thus in the Marxist scheme of things, vide the critics, inevitability means that human wills are writ so small as to be virtually non-existent.

The word “inevitability” as used by the critics in reproaching Marx carries a stigma; the stigma being that human beings are but puppets in some vast cosmic process. But is that the only significance which can be given to the word? One of course does not deny that in a given context the word “inevitability” can be synonymous with fatalism. What one does deny is that in the Marxist context they mean the same thing.

Let us, to paraphrase Marx, consider the word “inevitability” a little more closely and see how its meaning varies with the context. Thus we say night, inevitably follows day. Do we imply by such a statement that fatalism or predestination of some kind is involved in the rotation of the earth on its axis? It can, we think, be agreed that the regular sequence of events connected with the solar system has nothing to do with fatalism or any other kind of supernaturalism. Some one might, of course, say “but is it not true that men are nevertheless powerless to control solar events?” Here it would seem that inevitability implies the powerlessness of men. But surely the answer is that such events being non-human have nothing to do with the powers possessed by socially organised men. Therefore the question of powerlessness on the part of humans in non-human processes does not arise. The power of human beings lies in the fact of their ability to understand and utilise natural phenomena to their social advantage.

Again the inevitable sequences of events which occur in the solar system are of inestimable advantage to humans during the course of their lives. It enables one to go to bed supremely confident that after a night’s sleep one will wake up and it is morning. And to feel assured that in making an appointment a week hence the solar sequence of things will not have been reversed. If solar events were so arbitrary that in the words of the song “when it’s night time in Italy it’s Wednesday over here” then life on this planet would be a matter of conjecture. If inevitability, then, entails some aspect of a regularised and sequential eternity one can only add—long live inevitability.

One can further expand the advantage which inevitability has for us humans. Thus if we know that “A” will always bring about “B” then the certainty of this knowledge gives us an assured basis for utilising it. Such knowledge not only gives us power to understand the world but the power to change it.

On the other hand, if events were so capricious that water raised to a certain temperature did not always produce steam, or in switching on an electric kettle the water got colder instead of hotter, then the organisation of knowledge consequent upon an inevitable sequence of things would be impossible.

It does not follow then that inevitability pre-supposes the powerlessness of humans. It can, in fact, imply the contrary. Thus, for example, if the Moscow Dynamos were to meet a scratch village eleven we could say the result would be inevitable. This would not be because of the inability of the scratch side to kick a ball but of the highly trained athletic power of the Dynamos.

Now the working class in Capitalist society constitute not only the bulk of the population but are a highly trained productive class. Potentially they are the most powerful social group and the only section capable of basically transforming existing social conditions. When Marx spoke of social inevitability he was not as vulgar critics such as Eastman and Isaiah Berlin contend, postulating mysterious agencies beyond the control of humans, but had in mind the latent powers resident in the working class.

Marxists recognise, however, that inevitability has a twofold character; one of denial as well as one of affirmation. From one aspect it can be considered as a restraint on human power. From another, a source of possibilities and opportunities. Thus Capitalism through its social productive agencies constitutes a fetter on the free and fullest use of human skills and productive resources; just as the ownership of these productive resources by a class gives them power over the lives of others and inhibits their free development. Only in a classless society can human activity be equal, creative and shared.

If then extant society gives rise to certain social consequences inseparable from its existence, i.e. if “A” always affects “B” then, in order to eliminate “B” we must get rid of “A.” It is this recognition of the “must” which makes possible our decision to achieve the “ought.” Because the pressures and conflicts of Capitalism are permanent, powerful and pervasive, it becomes not a matter of preoccupation for the few but the concern of the many. If “A” is then a necessary condition for “B” this itself promotes the idea and need of getting rid of the cause. To say that in a system such as Capitalism which generates the consequences of its existence as a continuous and cumulative process men will never, never be able to correctly diagnose their social ills is to condemn them to a moronic level utterly out of keeping with their own history.

The Marxist concept of inevitability links the negative and positive aspect of the social situation and reveals the driving force of social change.

Socialists do not deny human will and choice. What they say is that if men are to raise themselves to a truly human stature this exploitative set-up where magic and myth, charlatanism and violence are agencies through which social problems are mediated, must go and the choice can only be a social arrangement of free and equal access to social wealth. Given the means the choice is inevitable.

Among the critics of Marx, and they are numerous, are those who fail to grasp the aspects of affirmation and denial in the concept of inevitability. For them social laws are another name for pre-determinism or an animistic notion of causality. They regard society, if they can commit themselves to such an organised notion, as a laissez-faire arrangement which can be altered and re-altered like a meccano set. Having no social charts or compass they remain as “free” as a cockle boat in mid-ocean.

There is also irony in the criticism of Marxism which asserts that not only is Marx’s inevitability, fatalism, but Socialism is utterly impossible. To the Marxist “aye” they can only counter with an everlasting “nay.” Their inevitability is shot through and through with fatalism, a sublime belief that inscrutable agencies control men and make it impossible for them to master a world.

Such critics can be shown on analysis to be supporters of the “eternal status quo.” For that reason their misunderstanding of Marxism is perhaps—inevitable.

Ted Wilmott

Letter: Philosophical debate (2023)

Letter to the Editors from the June 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors

There is a world beyond the senses, SJW informs us (May Socialist Standard) (true!) but ‘we are only ever speaking of our experience of it’. This is pure empiricism, the phenomenalism of Kant, the logical positivists (Mach, Carnap) and the phenomenologists (Husserl, Heidegger, Derrida et al) Karl Marx was not a phenomenalist but a dialectical materialist who embraced a ratio-empiricist epistemology (a critical realism or science) that sought to understand the reality of the material world (including capitalism) by going beyond immediate experience of appearances (phenomena). Nobody has ever experienced a dinosaur, or photosynthesis.

Brian Morris, 

Lewes

PS. In my Anthropology and Dialectical Naturalism (Black Rose 2022) I defend philosophical materialism as a metaphysic against its current detractors, especially the postmodernists and phenomenalists like Latour.

SJW writes: 

Marx was a skeptic by confession – his motto was ‘Doubt everything’. He was ‘no Marxist’, but criticised the entire edifice of philosophy that defends the brutal experience of private property with bewildering flights of fancy. The ‘Marxists’ that followed bewailed the fact that Marx did not leave them a philosophy. Engels and Kautsky provided their thoughts as substitute, and the entire edifice of dialectical and other materialisms is based on their works and later the likes of Lukacs and Bukharin. It is my argument that dialectical materialism and other ‘isms’ sometimes mangle the position that Marx took. I don’t claim to know Marx’s mind, as Brian Morris does, or to install him in the pantheon of capitalist thinkers: only to think clearly, as a worker in capitalism, and come to similar conclusions to Marx in the present day. We should expect to do our own thinking, as workers, simple yet profoundly different from capitalist teachings, being more daring than complex.

Aspects of Marxism – Some Critics Criticised (1956)

From the April 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

Critics of Marx rarely agree as to actually what they disagree about in respect of his doctrines. Take for example two recent critics J. Plamenatz, Fellow of Nuffield College and R. N. Carew Hunt. J. Plamenatz in his book German Marxism and Russian Communism, does not even grant historical materialism the status of an hypothesis let alone a theory of social development, (pp 172/3.) Although unmindful of this he tells us later, “historical materialism is an hypothesis much better forgotten while those who support it have nothing more to say in its favour than what the Marxists have said.”

On the other hand R. N. Carew Hunt in his work The Theory and Practise of Communism says (p. 42), “The economic factor for all social institutions and particularly for their historical development has exercised a profound influence and all modern writers are indebted to him (Marx) even if they do not know it.” He adds, “any return to pre-Marxist social theory is impossible.”

There is also a difference of emphasis in their respective evaluation of Marxian economics. Thus J. Plamenatz (p.113), same book, says “Marx’s analysis of Capitalism, though seldom free from obscurity sometimes illogical and often mistaken is nevertheless impressive,” on the other hand, R. N. Carew Hunt in The Theory and Practise of Communism (p. 61), quotes with apparent approval Keynes’s dictum, “Capital is an obsolete text book . . . not only scientifically erroneous but without interest or application for the modern world.”

So among critics of Marx, “yer pays yer money and yer takes yer choice,” a choice so wide and varied as to constitute an embarrassment rather than an exercise of the critical faculties. Thus for the price of one book you may gather that Marx was a mental, even if mistaken, giant. Another book may present him as a sort of intellectual pigmy—on stilts. You can also learn that he was a kind of humanitarian watchdog or from an opposite angle that he is the “big bad wolf” of the class struggle concept. He has even been called the father of sociology, a title which R. N. Carew Hunt says he well deserves. On the other hand he has been regarded by many acid critics, of whom J. Plamenatz might be included, as a victim of Hegelian dyspepsia which kept repeating all through his writings. If the reader has perused a number of books criticising Marx and is a little confused and dissatisfied then he can try asking the publishers for his money back or take to reading Marx himself. What a pity Marx could not, in reply to “What did Marx really mean, by the critics” have penned “What do the critics really mean by Marx.”

After this, one might be faintly surprised to learn that R. N. Carew Hunt regards Capital as a very great book and one of the most important ever written (p. 62). As to why it is a great book the author is vagueness itself. Mr. Carew Hunt cannot, however, praise without faint damns. Marx, it seemed, on his intellectual voyage did not quite know where he was going, consequently he lost his bearings and by accident discovered something. Just like Columbus who, having lost his route to India, chanced upon the New World. Mr. Carew Hunt also offers a curious clue as to why he thinks Capital is a very great book. He quotes Mr. Edmund Wilson to the effect that the principles of “capital” “are derived solely from the laws of human selfishness which are as unfailing as the laws of gravitation.”

This is nonsense. How could Marx hold that man in changing the world change themselves and yet believe at the same time in a fixed pattern of human behaviour based on laws of human selfishness expressed as self interest? Indeed for Marx individual motives whether selfish or otherwise, are too complex and obscure even for the individual himself to adequately understand; too fluctuating and tending to cancel each other out, to offer a reliable index to social change. Only the resultant effect of the behaviour of individuals under given objective conditions can be studied and correlated with key factors of the social environment in order to reveal the historical significance of human activity. Even to say that individuals have an interest in self-preservation does not mean a biological adaption to “Nature red in tooth and claw” or a series of sudden impulses and desires actuated by urgent immediacy. Like other interests, self-preservation operates through a complex, socially mediated environment. While it may serve to make individuals highly responsive to social pressures and changes it cannot explain the historically specific activities and interests of men. The key to understanding such activities and interests is not to be located in fixations like self-preservation or self interest but in the social structure and class character of the society in which men live.

The concept of self interest as a social dynamic belongs not to Marx but Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarianism which sought to give a corporate expression for private interests and pleasure in the maxim of “The greatest happiness of the greatest number.” Such a view served, however, as an apology for Capitalist society because it disregarded the fact that Capitalism was a system based on exploitation and chose to believe that there was some common utility to which all human interests and welfare could be equated and that the existing social relations are the most advantageous and commonly useful to all.

Utilitarianism may be said to be the official social theory of bourgeois society. Its content is essentially anti-social. Its view is an atomistic one. While individuals may jostle with each other in the mutually advantageous hurly-burly of every day life they nevertheless remain self-sufficient units, indivisible and impenetrable. As Marx pointed out, on this theory the egotistic individual is the abstract ideal of bourgeois society. It was John Stuart Mill who gave Utilitarianism an extra coat of humanitarian gloss. While the Fabians with one or two characteristic touches incorporated it into their political philosophy. It has also passed into current economic culture where, according to certain marginal productivity economists, a “natural law” tends to give capital what capital creates, and to labour what labour creates. So every unit of production, we are assured, exploits every other unit and à la Bentham a good time is had by all.

Such a theory of individualism fails to see the unbreakable social links which bind man to man. Just as it failed to see that it was the complex myriad interrelationships of the division of labour which gave individuals their status and privilege, and not their own unaided merit. Marx himself did not deny the role of the individual in society. What he denied was the alleged “rights of individuals” as expressed in a social philosophy. He revealed that Capitalism was a society which brought about a social alienation but. less than any other man, would he have attributed this to some inflexible behaviour, in the form of self-interest as universal and pervasive as the law of gravitation. Indeed, it was Marx’s peculiar contribution to our intellectual inheritance to reveal this alienation as the outcome of the separation of the vast majority from their instruments of production, and the conversion of their productive energies into a commodity. The anti-social consequences of Capitalist society, where the law of value constitutes the real planning authority, has its font, not in the hearts and minds of men, but in the character of the social organisation in which they live.

For Marx the future of man pointed, not to a mythical harmony established by the competitive free play of self interest, but to the social control of all those agencies necessary for man’s well being. Class divided society, Marx thought, impoverished the real content of individuality, only Socialised humanity, he believed, would change the form and enrich the nature of human personality and make it a social value accessible to all. Nor, as is alleged, do Marxists explain specific ideas as facile rationalisations of an underlying motive of self interest. It recognises ideas as powerful agencies through which men conduct their social struggles, and in which they often sincerely believe. Marxists do not underestimate the role of ideas in history. They refuse, however, to accept ideas at their face value. Ideas, they contend, can only be significantly understood by revealing their integral connection with men’s interests and needs. That is why historical ideas cannot be severed from material interests. Historical materialism thus explains, better than any other theory, why in the course of history some ideas have succeeded and others failed. Why some have been accepted and others rejected. For Marxists, ideas are not powers within themselves; they only become effective as instruments of social change when they are tied to powerful historic class needs. Behind the conflict of social ideals there is always a conflict of group economic interests.

Men have many interests, none of which can be isolated from each other, but if we want to know which interest has predominated in the course of history, then analysis shows it is class economic interests which have been crucial in modifying or revolutionising the social situation.

History, Marxists claim, is not the story of individuals with fixed pattern behaviours, but the record of the economic conflict of social classes and, with it, the rise of some and decline of others. Because an individual cannot think or act on his own behalf it is only in and through these social classes that his social outlook, traditions, and allegiances, are moulded. From this it follows that a dominant social group will systematise its ideas and attitudes in seeking to preserve the social situation which serves their needs. Just as other groups in accordance with their aims and interests will seek to modify, or radically alter, existing conditions. Each ruling group proclaims, however, that it speaks, not for itself but on behalf of the community.

Social classes have no reference to an abstract economic man pursuing the path of self interest, but grew out of the development of socially organised production If the investigation of history starts with men’s needs it can be shown that these needs are socially produced and therefore socially mediated. From these needs there develops the sub-division of labour which in turn brings about different and various vocational activities and productive functions. It is from this historical productive structure that individuals acquired status and privilege, which crystallised into social classes.

Because human history is social history the motives of the single “self” are never determining factors in social development. Since the passing of primitive society history has been class history and the behaviour of individuals, class conditioned. Moreover, men are born into a set of class relations independent of their individual wills, i.e., as master or slave, lord or serf, Capitalist or wage worker, which limit their scope and action. The scope and action of members of a class are even more significantly limited by the overall and constant pressure of their existing needs resulting from economic conditions, the outcome of which results in a common pi and activity. Because the common economic activity which members of a class engage in produces an aggregate effect, it does not follow that such activity is reducible to the individual behaviour of members of that class. The motives actuating an individual might not be primarily economic, but his consideration and conduct are moulded by the interests of the group to which he belongs, and without whose support little could be effected. Class interests and the opposition between class interests centre around the ownership of the productive resources.

Because variations in individual motives are compensated for in any large aggregate activity, it produces a net effect different from the anticipated end result of each individual action. By correlating this average behaviour with crucial factors in a given social environment we are able to give a significant account of the society in which we live.

Marx never sought to make the individual the sole responsible agent for the society of which he is a part. This did not prevent him from protesting against the anti-social consequences of the class ownership of the productive resources and the anti-social nature of the class behaviour associated with it. While he never held the Rousseau belief which saw man as an essentially noble animal he never wavered from the view that the vast majority were capable of transforming the dehumanised character of extant society into something truly human. Far from believing in an invariant pattern of human behaviour, he proclaimed, “all history is a modification of human nature.” Mr. Carew Hunt’s attempt to foist on Marx the notion of an abstract economic man is laughable. He is typical of a long line of critics who have not read Marx so much as to have read what others have read into him.

Ted Wilmott

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

What is human nature? (1999)

Book Review from the June 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marxism and Human Nature. By Sean Sayers. Routledge. 1998.

There are two ways of answering the objection that “you can’t change human nature”. One is to say “oh yes you can” and to point to how humans have been different in different times and in different places. The other is to say “we don’t need to change human nature; it is only human behaviour that needs to change” and to point to how humans’ behaviour has been determined by the sort of society they live in and has varied with this while their biological make-up has remained unchanged.

Marx, who came to socialism via philosophy, adopted the first approach. We in the Socialist Party, with the benefit of the findings of biological and anthropological research since Marx’s day, have adopted the second. Not that the two are incompatible. Both refer to the same facts and draw the same conclusion—that an unchanging human nature is not a barrier to socialism working—but what is meant by “human nature” is different.

In the one case it is the traditional philosophical idea of “what underlies and determines human behaviour” (and in German the term is “human essence” rather than “human nature”). In the other a distinction is drawn between “human nature” as the biological, or natural, make-up of humans and “human behaviour” as the way humans behave, with the former underlying but not determining the latter, with in fact a key part of humans’ biological make-up being precisely the capacity to adapt to a wide variety of behaviour patterns.

Even though Marx gave its content a historical and so changing character, the philosophical definition he inherited still has some problems even with this amendment. How do you describe the features of human nature in this sense? How can you tell what it is at any particular time in human history? In what sense can it be said to determine human behaviour? Is it in fact any different from human behaviour? Why use (in English) the term “nature” when what is being referred to is not natural in the sense of being determined by nature but is admittedly socially-determined?

Sayers ignores, not to say rejects, the contribution that science has made to the question of human nature. He only mentions two anthropologists: the title (Man Makes Himself) of a book he likes by V. Gordon Childe and Marshall Sahlins and his Stone Age Economics. In fact he doesn’t really give any clear definition of what he means by “human nature”; you have to gather from the text that he means something like “human needs and powers”. But this is so vague that it leaves the door open to all sorts of unsubstantiated and unsubstantiatable speculations as to what human nature might be.

Sayers’s contribution to this debate (which anyone can join in) is to lay down that the need to be employed is now a part of human nature. We don’t think this is quite what Marx had in mind. After all, it would mean that his key demand for the abolition of the wages system would go against human nature.

Adam Buick

Post-Structuralism and Post-Postmodernism (1999)

Book Review from the April 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

An Introductory Guide to Post-Structuralism and Post-Postmodernism by Madan Sarup. Manchester, Wheatsheaf.

The postmodernist view is that grand “narratives” like Marxism have failed and are no longer an adequate way of looking at or making sense of the world. That what is more relevant is to break down the big picture (the grand narrative) into a series of smaller, discrete pictures (little narratives); to deconstruct and de-layer the “whole structure” and thereby find out how meaning is put together. One can liken this to a puzzle which is purposely made up of a number of individual pieces that assembled together make a whole picture. It is from the whole picture that we usually make sense of the individual isolated parts. When put together (connected) a meaningful picture is formed.

Amongst some postmodernists the view is that in the deconstructed puzzle each individual piece, or each random construction of smaller pieces of the puzzle occupy a philosophical terrain of their own, have meanings that can be construed without recourse to the bigger picture. If this is so we arrive at a place where the grand narrative is at an end and all that is left is “playing with the pieces” (Jean Baudrillard). This appears unduly pessimistic and without hope of a way forward. Fortunately there are people like Madan Sarup on the scene to counter this view.

Madan Sarup makes some interesting comments in his introduction. He says that “the controversy over postmodernism is one example of class struggle at the cultural and political level. On the political level postmodernism is an attack on Marxism . . . about the validity of Marxism and its belief in progress” as many postmodernists declare that progress is a myth. He goes on to state that the “project of modernity (which postmodernists attack) is one with that of the Enlightenment and that Marxism is a child of the Enlightenment”.

In a passage that comments on the Marxist position, he states that, “a characteristic of human beings is that they make a distinction between the ‘real’ and the ‘ideal'”. By the real he means an awareness of the present situation, and by the ideal, some notion of what life, the world, could be like. Human beings, he continues, “have a sense of what is possible in the future and they have the hope that tomorrow will be better than today. Marxists not only have this hope, this orientation towards the future, but they try to understand the world, to develop a critical consciousness of it, and try to develop strategies for changing it. Of course, they realise that progress is uneven, not unilinear; because of the nature of contradiction there are inevitably negative aspects, sad reversals and painful losses. Marxists struggle for a better future for all, but they know that this does not mean that progress is guaranteed or that the process of the dialectic will lead to the Perfect”. He believes that it is important for people to support the Enlightenment project because education is closely connected with the notion of a change of consciousness and that gaining a wider, deeper understanding of the world represents a change for the better. And this, in turn, implies some belief in a worthwhile future—something the postmodernists seem sceptical about.

Kevin Parkin

Intellectual Impostures (1999)

Book Review from the April 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Intellectual Impostures by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, Profile Books, £9.99 1998

The late Nineteenth Century witnessed the rise of Irrationalism. Philosophers rebelled against what they saw as the rigidities of positivist determinism and retreated into subjective idealism. Henri Bergson personified this movement; Hans Vaihinger’s book, The Philosophy of As If, reflected its Humpty-Dumpty logic: the world, according to this book, might be anything that one imagines it to be; one scientific hypothesis is just as good as any other. This rebellion against the scientific outlook of the Enlightenment culminated in more than an academic fad. The Fascists and Nazis of the 1930s rejoiced in their contempt for rational explanations. It was a crude contempt: books were burned; scientists who failed to conform to the mythology of the tyrant state were dismissed from their posts; to be an honest scientist became a reason for exile. It is a lesson of this century’s madness that we forget at our extreme cost. 

These days the scientific outlook is again being exiled, perhaps more by economic than political pressures. Increasingly, scientists are required to prostitute themselves to the commercial activities of germ warfare, genetically adulterated foods and apologism for ecological vandalism. Theoretical science has been slowly driven from the universities by the new crusaders of Postmodernism. But to call them crusaders is to attribute an energy to a listless and intellectually indolent movement of academics who, far from advocating something, are mainly concerned to deride commitment to anything. At their most risible the “philosophers” of the new Irrationalism are transparently bogus producers of mumbo-jumbo, able to convince only the dumbest of Americans of their wisdom by pronouncing their follies in strong French accents, using made-up words. Derrida’s book on Marx was the epitome of such utter nonsense.

It is high time that the fakes were exposed. Sokal and Bricmont’s Intellectual Impostures is a work of meticulous, relentless destruction of the charlatanism of postmodernist writers who have sought to pepper their ramblings with pseudo-scientific formulae. Sokal and Bricmont are physicists and materialists. With detailed references to the works of writers ranging from Lacan and Kristeva to Latour and Baudrillard they demonstrate the ways in which these theorists have used scientific language—specifically, mathematics—without understanding it. Indeed, in several cases they may not have read the works they cite. This is in keeping with the postmodern outlook, which holds in contempt a relationship between the text and its meaning. Althusser, an earlier prophet of the nouveaux charlatans, wrote a book telling people how to read Marx’s Capital; writing years later, after being certified as a lunatic, he confessed that he had not actually read much of Marx.

Sokal and Bricmont’s impressive volume needs to be read to be appreciated. It is a valuable work of scholarship—for, sometimes the task of scholars is to expose intellectual sloppiness and fraud. There is a particularly stimulating chapter on the relationship between so-called postmodernism (a hopelessly ill-defined term) and chaos theory. There is scope, perhaps, for future writers to produce a book explaining the connection between chaos theory and the economic anarchy of late twentieth-century capitalism.

The best books on postmodernism so far have been David Harvey’s The Condition of Postmodernity and Terry Eagleton’s Postmodernism. This is a welcome addition to the literature in defence of the materialist conception in the face of the anti-humanist philistinism of our age.

Steve Coleman

More nonsense on Marx (1944)

Book Review from the February 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard 

To the Finland Station, by Edmund Wilson (Secker A Warburg.)

Of the making of books on Karl Marx there is no end! It has become almost a business. And yet, despite this deluge of books, there is seldom anything worth reading. Few, indeed, of these pretentious authors have done more than skim through Marx's work, and their learned observations, in the main, are based on a study of the simplified and more readable “versions" of certain alleged authorities. When Marx’s works first appeared they were ignored by capitalist circles, but later on, when this silence could no longer be preserved without some embarrassment, they vented upon him all the calumny and abuse of which they were capable. Since then he has been made to suffer from every possible kind of misrepresentation. Thanks to the efforts of Labour socialites and "left-wing" literary gentlemen, Karl Marx has become almost persona grata to the “cultured" section of the capitalists. He is no longer abused; he is even praised. Edmund Wilson in his book, “To the Finland Station," is most certainly generous with his compliments, but one feels that praise given to Marx by people who do not understand or distort bis work means absolutely nothing. As a serious effort in exposition of Marxist ideas this book is utterly useless. One does not really know whether Mr. Wilson is trying to write a novel, a badly jumbled biography, or a study of scientific interest. Seemingly he attempts everything, and succeeds at nothing. He does not even trouble to make his own Aunt Sallies; he borrows them from Max Eastman. In fact, the whole book is nothing more than an elaborate piece of bluff. Here are some of the chapter headings: “Karl Marx: Prometheus and Lucifer," "Karl Marx Decides to Change the .World," “Myth of the Dialectic," "Karl Marx: Poet of Commodities and Dictator of the Proletariat." . . . Could Tod Slaughter do better?

Throughout the whole book there is a subtle and insinuating disparagement of Mark, his character and his work. On page 165 there is a particularly vicious sentence: "nor was he able to refrain for long from reminding self-educated thinkers who had lifted themselves out of the lower classes, as Proudhon and Weitling had done, that they were not doctors of philosophy like himself. . . ."

On page 311 he says, with reference to "Das Capital": "Thus, in attacking the industrial system, he is at the same time declaring his own tribulations, calling the heavens— that is, history—to witness that he is a just man wronged, and damning the hypocritical scoundrel who compels others to slave and suffer for him. . . ." There follows a string of purple quotations from various works for the purpose of proving that Marx’s criticisms of capitalist society were inspired by ill-health, poverty and carbuncles.

Says Mr. Wilson, "If we isolate the images in Marx— which are so powerful and vivid in themselves that they can sometimes persuade us to forget his lack of realistic observation and almost produce the illusion of a visible and tangible experience—if we isolate and examine these images, we can see through to the inner obsessions at the heart of the world vision of Marx." (Page 312.)

But further back, on page 151, when he feels like giving Marx a pat on the back, he remarks, “he had a character that could not be sidetracked by the threats or baits of bourgeois society."

So this man who could not be sidetracked by the baits of bourgeois society, who surrendered the rewards of a comfortable career in the law courts or the universities to keep his intellectual freedom, this man is also declaring his own tribulations to high heavens in a scientific work on political economy! It would have been more appropriate if Mr. Wilson, instead of making fantastic excursions into the realms of psychology, got down to the hard job (for him) of examining the objective import of Marx's writings. Whatever physiological or psychological reasons may explain a man's work, they cannot invalidate his ideas. Mr. Wilson admits this, nevertheless he spends many pages (half the book probably) on futile and boring "psycho analysis."

He keeps producing time-worn criticisms of Marxian theories, all of which have been thoroughly gone into by Engels, Hyndman and others, with the triumphant mien of a conjurer who is going to bring a couple of lions out of his hat. His method is to give these anti-Marxist criticisms in detail, but he takes good care not to give a full and comprehensive Marxist refutation. What he really does is to provide an unopposed platform for anti-Marxist critics, and he does it with the pose of an earnest and impartial seeker of the truth.

It is easy to see that Mr. Wilson has a rather untidy mind. There are too many bits and pieces flying round bis book. He starts on one subject and then drifts on to another before the first one is settled. The impression one gets of the book as a whole is a picture of complete mental chaos.

Mr. Wilson is so naive that it is sometimes astonishing. In the chapter, Marx—Poet of Commodities, he says : “On the one hand. Marx is telling yon in Das Capital that a certain historic development, indispensable for the progress of the race, could only have been carried out by capitalism; and, on the other hand, he is filling you with fury against the wickedness of the people who performed it.” (P. 293.)

To begin with, Marx did not set out to fill his readers with "fury" at the “wickedness" of the capitalists. He regarded them as a product of social evolution. Nor were they more "wicked" than the workers were more "good.” Quite obviously, they can only live one way, the capitalist way—on the profits made by exploiting the workers. It is true that Marx described the poverty of the workers with lavish detail, but he did this in order to establish the existance of their poverty as a FACT. In answer to the men who said that capitalism could be reformed in the interests of the working class, he showed that with every advance in industry there must be a relative deterioration in the workers' position. The real point at issue is not so much that the workers are poor, but that they have to keep poor as long as capitalism exists.

For example, Mr. Wilson says (page 321): "Here in the United States, our social groupings are mainly based on money, and the money is always changing hands so rapidly that the class lines cannot get cut very deep.”

What piffling rubbish! In America, the concentration of wealth is simply staggering. How the Morgans, Rockefellers and Mellons must be trembling at the fear of losing their money! . . . Yes, it is true that money changes hands, but it very seldom gets into the hands of workers in any quantity. Indeed, why shouldn't Marx stress the hopelessness of working-class life if Mr. Wilson himself is seemingly oblivious?

Elsewhere, in dealing with Value, he says (page 296): "Thus the value that was supposed to be derived from labour appeared as a purely abstract conception which had nothing to do with prices and relative profits, and which indeed exhibited a character almost mystical inasmuch as it was an essence inhering only in farm and factory labour. ... In order to prove that this value of labour had any objective reality, it would have been necessary to show that the total profit realised at a given moment was equal to that part of the combined prices on the market of the total amount of goods produced which was appropriated by the manufacturer after he had paid his workers—a calculation that Marx never attempted."

Really, he might just as well have invited Marx to stand on his head or climb the Eiffel Tower. It would have proved just as much. What the manufacturer appropriates after he has paid his workers represents only a portion of the value of the goods. Some of the surplus value finds its way to merchants, agents, exporters, etc.

As Mr. Wilson appears to understand little or nothing about Value, a simple lesson might do him some good. Commodities, as we know, are goods produced for sale at various and varying prices. The question that Marx set out to solve was, what determines the rate or proportion in which they exchange? He showed how their value is determined by the socially necessary labour embodied in their production.

We can see that commodities, whatever the different uses they perform, have one very important quality in common— labour. Labour, therefore, is their common denominator. But sooner than admit that labour is the source of value, the economists point to demand as the determinant of value. Marx showed that the interplay of supply and demand merely causes prices to fluctuate, and that these fluctuations eventually cancel one another. The point about which the price of an article turns is not determined by supply and demand, but by its value. This value is not altered by supply and demand, though the price is: therefore price and value do hot always correspond—things may sell above or below their value. Even when goods sell permanently above their value or permanently below, labour-time is still the governing factor, as the capitalists show by their efforts to keep reducing it. Looking at the matter more closely, we can see that it is value that exercises a powerful influence upon demand. It is no mere whim which induces a hard-headed capitalist to part with £2,000 in exchange for a Rolls Royce car when he could buy a Ford car for a £100.

Whatever the subject he handles, whether economics, philosopby or history, Mr. Wilson betrays the same slip shod thinking. He is evidently convinced that the people who read his book are not likely to study Karl Marx for themselves. In a hundred and forty-nine pages on Lenin and Trotsky he tells you as much useful information about the Russian Revolution as you could learn from any popular Labour journal.

It would be difficult to give a systematised criticism of such a ribald mish-mash, but here are certain passages which effectively illustrate Mr. Wilson's abysmal ignorance of the subject he is trying to handle:—

Marx was incapable of imagining democracy . . . (p. 324).

. . . the government which Marx imagined for the welfare and elevation of mankind—though he sometimes spoke of democratic institutions inside the new dominant class—was an exclusive and relentless class despotism directed by high-minded big-wigs who had been able to rise above the classes, such as Engels and himself (p. 325).

He was closer than ho could ever have imagined to the imperialistic Germany he detested (p. 197).

Mr. Wilson seems very fond of using the word "imagine.” He, too, can imagine things

He is almost desperate in his effort to give the impression that Marx and Engels failed to reply adequately to their critics, but, strange to say, he nowhere exerts himself to prove why and how they failed. He says on page 337: "It is ironic and characteristic that Engels should in the end have been left holding the bag, as we say, for the two most questionable features of Marxism: the Dialectic and the Labour Theory of Value."

Well, we have been also holding the bag for quite a time, and, what's more, we are prepared to defend the contents against Mr. Wilson whenever he feels more qualified to touch them.

An insight into Mr. Wilson's mentality can be gathered by his remark on page 209: "In any case, there is no question at all that Marx's antipathy to writing for money was bound up with almost maniacal idealism."

Kaye.