Dialectical Materialism: A Historical and Systematic Survey of Philosophy in the Soviet Union [1 ed.] 0710022751, 9780710022752

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Dialectical Materialism A historical and systematic survey of philosophy in the Soviet Union

Gustav A. Wetter

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM

DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM A Historical and Systematic Survey of Philosophy in the Soviet Union

h GUSTAV A. WETTER TrandLated from the German by

PETER HEATH

FREDERICK A. PRAEGER, Publisher New York • London

Publisher 64 UNIVERSITY PLACE, NEW YORK 3, N.Y., 49 GREAT ORMOND STREET, LONDON W. C. 1, Frederick a.

PRAEGER,

U.S.A. ENGLAND

Published in the United States of America in 1958 by Frederick A. Pràeger, Ine., Publisher Third printing, 1963 This is a revised edition, translated with the author’s additions, of the book first published in the German language in 1952 by Herder Verlag, Vienna, as Der Dialektische Materialismus. All rights resei-ved © 1958 by Routledge 8c Kegan Paul Ltd. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 58-10116

Nihil obstat

ANDREAS MOORE, L.C.L. Censor deputai us

Imprimatur

►*< GEORGIUS L. CRAVEN Epüs. Sebastopolis Vie. Gen.

Westmonasterii, die 30a Junii 1958

Cum lieentia superiorum ordinis

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Contentò

ix

Preface

xii

Translator''s Note

PART ONE

I

Historical

The Philosophical Roots of Marxism

1 2 3 4

HEGEL THE ‘HEGELIAN LEFT’ LUDWIG FEUERBACH MARXISM AND POSITIVISM

II Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels 1 KARL MARX 2 FRIEDRICH ENGELS

III

Revolutionary Movements in Russia: The Origins of Russian Marxism

1 2 3

IV

ORIGINS: RUSSIAN NIHILISM NARODNICHESTVO RUSSIAN MARXISM

Philosophical Tendencies in Russian Marxism before the Revolution

3 4 7 10 15 17 17 41 58 59 62 68 73

1 THE PHILOSOPHICAL CONFLICT BETWEEN MARXISM AND NARODNICHESTVO

2 3

CRITICISM IN RUSSIAN MARXISM

4 5

BOGDANOV’S EMPIRIO-MONISM

73 83

THE ‘GOD-SEEKERS’ AND THE ‘GODBUILDERS’

PLEKHANOV V

90 92 100

vi

Contents V Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

110

1 LIFE AND PHILOSOPHICAL ACTIVITY

111

2

126

LENINISM

VI Philosophical Developments in the U.S.S.R. up to 1931

128

VII Mechanism

137

1 GENERAL CHARACTER OF MECHANISM

138

2 3

143 149

BUKHARIN axel’rod (ortodox)

VIII Menshevik Idealism

IX

154

1 GENERAL OUTLINES

155

2

DEBORIN

159

3 TROTSKY

166

Developments since 1931

175

1 CONSEQUENCES OF THE DECREE OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF 25TH JANUARY 1931

175

2 THE PHILOSOPHICAL INSTITUTE OF THE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

181

3

THE ‘PHILOSOPHICAL DISCUSSION’ OF

1947

4

FROM THE ‘PHILOSOPHICAL DISCUSSION’ TO THE DEATH OF STALIN

AND ITS AFTERMATH

X XI

183 189

Stalin as a Philosopher

209

Since the Death of Stalin

231

PART TWO The System of Soviet Philosophy

I

Conception of Philosophy

249

1 PHILOSOPHY AND THE SPECIAL SCIENCES

249

2 3 4 5

254 256 268

INDIVIDUAL PHILOSOPHICAL DISCIPLINES THE UNITY OF THEORY AND PRACTICE THE PARTISAN CHARACTER OF PHILOSOPHY

THE PHILOSOPHICAL ‘ATMOSPHERE’ IN THE U.S.S.R.

274

vii 280

Contents The Theory of Matter

1 2 3 4

SPACE AND TIME

281 286 296 304

The Materialist Dialectic

310

MATERIALISM OR REALISM? THE LENINIST CONCEPT OF MATTER MATTER AND MOTION

1 STALIN’S

ACCOUNT

OF

THE

FIRST

TWO

‘PRINCIPAL FEATURES’ OF THE MARXIST DIALECTICAL METHOD

2

THE LAW OF THE TRANSITION FROM QUANTITY TO QUALITY

3

312 319

THE LAW OF THE UNITY AND STRUGGLE OF OPPOSITES

333

4 THE LAW OF THE NEGATION OF THE NEGATION

The Theory of Categories

1 2 3

APPEARANCE, ESSENCE AND LAW

4 5

POSSIBILITY AND ACTUALITY

CAUSALITY AND FINALITY

366 371 375

NECESSITY AND CONTINGENCY. THE PROBLEM OF FREEDOM FORM AND CONTENT

Dialectical Materialism and Modern Science

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

355

QUANTUM PHYSICS RELATIVITY THEORY MASS AND ENERGY CHEMISTRY COSMOGONY THE ORIGIN OF LIFE

381 396 402 405 406 416 424 432 436 442

THE ‘NEW CELL-THEORY’ OF O. B. LEPESHINSKAYA

451

8 THE ‘NEW THEORY OF INHERITANCE’. I. V. MICHURIN, T. D. LYSENKO

9

455

ANTHROPOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGY. I. P. PAVLOV

469

viii

Contents

VI The Dialectical Materialist Theory of Knowledge 488 1 THE PRIORITY OF MATTER OVER CONSCIOUS¬ NESS

490

2 the ‘copy-theory’

498

3

PRACTICE AS THE FOUNDATION OF KNOW¬

4

OBJECTIVE, RELATIVE AND ABSOLUTE TRUTH

LEDGE AND CRITERION OF TRUTH

VII Logic

507 512 51g

1 THE MATERIALIST DIALECTIC AS LOGIC AND AS THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE

2

THE CONTROVERSY OVER FORMAL LOGIC

3 INDIVIDUAL LOGICAL OPERATIONS

518

523 535

g

Conclusion

54

Bibliography

562

Index of Names

595

Index of Subjects

602

Preface

T

he present work is the outcome of a course of lectures originally

delivered by the author in the summer of 1945 at the Papal Oriental Institute in Rome, in which, as part of a more general survey of the history of Russian philosophy, he also had to deal with pre-revolutionary Russian Marxism, and with Soviet dialectical materialism. From these lectures there sprang the first version of this book, which was published in Italian late in 1947.1 It was fol¬ lowed in 1952 by a very extensively revised German edition, which had to be reissued, in unaltered form, in 1953 and 1956.2 The present English translation is based on the text of the fourth German edition, now in the press, which has again been very thoroughly revised and supplemented with new material. The doctrinal edifice of Soviet philosophy is divided into two parts: dialectical and historical materialism. The author has here had to confine himself to the first of these, namely, dialectical material¬ ism, including the philosophy of science; in effect to the properly philosophical portion, as the term ‘philosophy’ is understood in the West. Historical materialism, which in Soviet usage includes the theory of society, could not be dealt with as such. The problems of ethics, aesthetics and the philosophies of history and law are also assigned, under the Soviet scheme of things, to the field of historical materialism. There would certainly have been some justification for enlarging the scope of the accourit to some extent and bringing these subjects also within our purview, since in Western usage, at all events, they undoubtedly rank among the philosophical disciplines properly so called. The reason why this has not been done is that the author originally hoped later on to be able to follow up the volume on dialectical materialism with a second one on historical materialism, and because lack of both time and space have com¬ pelled him to this self-imposed restriction. 1 Gustav A. Wetter, S. J.: Il materialismo dialettico sovietico, Turin 1948. 2 Gustav A. Wetter: Der dialektische Materialismus. Seine Geschichte und sein System in der Sowjetunion, 1st edn., Vienna-Freiburg-i-B. 1952. ix

X

Preface

The present revised version of the book differs in the first place from previous editions of the German version in that the historical part has been carried up to the XXth Party Congress of the C.P.S.U. (February 1956). In the systematic part, the chief need was to take account of the changes wrought by the de-Stalinization campaign. These have consisted chiefly in a reversion from the Stalinist account of the theory of dialectic to that of Engels, and a corresponding rehabilitation of the law of the negation of the negation, together with the theory of categories and certain philosophical problems raised by modern science. The chapter on ‘Dialectical Materialism and Modern Science’ has therefore been completely rewritten and very much enlarged. The section on the ‘Unity of Theory and Prac¬ tice’ has also been rewritten almost in its entirety. In working over the remaining chapters, however, the author has been compelled by technical considerations of publishing to limit himself more severely, and to depart less extensively from the earlier text. It has therefore proved impossible to revise these portions as much as he himself would have wished. The author thinks it important to point out that he has had to limit himself to the Soviet account of dialectical materialism as the subject-matter of his inquiry. The first effect of this is to exclude the philosophical writings of Western communists, which take their in¬ spiration largely from Marx’s early writings. The latter are quite consciously and definitely set aside in Soviet philosophy. And— short of embarking on an endless task—it has also meant omitting the philosophical literature produced in the Russian zone of Ger¬ many, the satellite countries and Red China. Nor has it been feasible to enter here into the complex problem of Titoism. The treatment is divided into two sections: historical and system¬ atic. But the main emphasis falls on the latter. The historical chap¬ ters are really designed only to provide the necessary background for understanding of the systematic part, and make no sort of claim to consideration as an original historical inquiry into the philo¬ sophical development of Russian Marxism—still less into the origins of Marxist philosophy generally. The main object, in fact, has been to provide an ordered selection of documentary evidence sufficient for an intellectual show-down with Soviet communism. But if such a show-down is not to degener¬ ate into a futile babble of conflicting monologues, the first endeavour of both parties must be to understand the other. This calls, from the outset, for strict objectivity in presentation of the opposing view¬ point and readiness to acknowledge positive merits wherever they are to be found. One could wish, at this point, that the Soviet participants to the discussion had also adopted this attitude. There has, indeed, been a great deal of talk there recently of the need for

Preface

xi

more serious study of ‘bourgeois’ philosophy and science. But the object of this has been merely in order to ‘refute’ them more effec¬ tively; willingness to acknowledge their elements of truth and to learn from them can be found, at best, only in the scientific field, and this primarily on grounds of practical interest. This aim accounts for the predominantly expository character of the book. It also explains its tendency to a certain diffuseness for which the author craves indulgence. The essential features of Soviet philosophy could certainly have been quite fully set out in a far more concise fashion, as has been done by Bochénski in his excellent book.1 But owing to the Hegelian terminology of dialectical material¬ ism, a compressed account of this sort can easily leave the reader with an impression of something ‘deeper’ lurking beneath the indi¬ vidual formulae of this philosophy. Only on a more thorough examination of the philosophical attitudes and arguments pro¬ pounded in Soviet dialectical materialism does it become evident that this is not the case. More especially does the author believe that only a more detailed account can justify his opinion that in presentday Soviet philosophy there is very little left of real dialectics, and that it consists, rather, of a materialistic evolutionism, decked out in dialectical terminology. So far as the author has adopted a critical attitude, in the system¬ atic part, towards individual tenets of dialectical materialism, he has been guided in principle by the endeavour, not to set out from any preconceived philosophical position, but rather to criticize so far as possible from within. If, in spite of this, his criticism has often run in an almost compulsive fashion along Aristotelian and scholastic lines, he would again attribute this to the fact that owing to the above-mentioned disappearance of true dialectic from the conceptual scheme of Soviet dialectical materialism, the individual categories have again taken on the values they had in the pre-idealist scheme of things, which ultimately goes back to Aristotle, and hence that Soviet philosophy has come to share a common pattern of concepts with the Aristotelian and scholastic tradition—a situation to which we shall revert in more detail in the Conclusion. The author regrets that only after completing the text of this new version did he come into possession of the communist rejoinder to the first German edition of this book, which appeared recently in East Berlin,2 and that he has therefore been unable to deal with the counter-arguments it contains. He would also wish to beg the kind indulgence of the English11. M. Bochénski: Der sowjetrussische dialektische Materialismus (jDianiat), Beme-Munich 1950. * Georg Klaus: Jesuiten, Gott, Materie. Des Jesuitenpaters Wetter Revolte wider Vernunft und Wissenschaft, Berlin 1957.

Xll

Preface

speaking reader for having been virtually unable to take account of the exceptional wealth of English literature on the subject. But he hopes, by his treatment of original works in Russian, to have rendered a service even to the English-speaking student which may somewhat mitigate this defect. Finally, he would like at this point to express his heart-felt thanks to all who have assisted him in the preparation of this English edition and more especially the translator, Mr. Peter Heath of Edinburgh, for his able and devoted collaboration, in a lengthy and troublesome task. Rome, November 1957

Translator’s Note

Russian spellings have been ‘anglicized’ throughout, with the

usual anomalies and exceptions for well-known names, foreign authors, etc. I am grateful to Mr. Dennis Ward, of KditiWiA f^r " Z "/V Jvieman, tor the loan of books; and to Mrs. F. Broadie, for her skill and endurance in typing the manuscript. P. L. H.

PART ONE

Historical

CHAPTER

I

The Philosophical Roots of Marxism

M

arxism, according to Lenin, is derived from three main

sources: ‘The doctrine of Marx ... is the legitimate successor of the best that was created by humanity in the nineteenth century in the shape of German philosophy, English political economy and French socialism.’* 1 The economic and political sources mentioned above cannot be dealt with here. But in order to give a complete picture of the develop¬ ment of Soviet philosophy it will be worth while to enter at least briefly into the philosophical background of Marxism; the more so, since both Lenin and Stalin, as well as Marx and Engels, are contin¬ ually referring to the ‘materialistic inversion’ of the Hegelian dialectic. Marxism has prided itself from the beginning on its ancestry in classical German philosophy. ‘We German socialists’, says Engels, ‘are proud of the fact that we are derived, not only from St. Simon, Fourier and Owen, but also from Kant, Fichte and Hegel.’2 ‘The German working-class movement is the inheritor of German classical philosophy.’3 1V. I. Lenin: Tri istochnika i tri sostavnykh chasti marxizma (Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism), in Sochineniya (Works), issued by the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute under the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U.(B), XIX4, pp. 3 f. (Translated in V. I. Lenin: Selected Works, Moscow 1936-9, XI, p. 3; cited hereafter as LSW.) 2 F. Engels: Die Entwicklung des Sozialismus von der Utopie zur Wissen¬ schaft (Socialism: Utopian and Scientific), 4th edn., Berlin 1891, p. 5. (Preface to 1st German edition 1882; translated in Karl Marx: Selected Works, Moscow 1942,1, p. 137.) 3 F. Engels: Ludwig Feuerbach und der Ausgang der klassischen deutschen 3 '

4

The Philosophical Roots of Marxism

An inheritor too, not only in the sense that the founders of Marxist theory were to some extent influenced by this philosophy, but also because German socialism constitutes a direct continuation of the philosophy of the great German masters. The age of merely specula¬ tive theoretical philosophy is presumed to have ended, and a new era to have begun, in which its task is not merely to interpret the world, but also to change it. Of all the great German philosophers, neither Kant, Fichte nor Schelling has had so great an influence on Marxism as Hegel.

1. HEGEL

The philosophy of Hegel is the most complete realization of the romantic urge to incorporate all departments of life and culture into a unitary scheme. Fichte and Schelling had already made the first moves towards deriving everything from a single ultimate principle. Fichte’s first principle was the Ego, Schelling’s the Absolute, con¬ ceived as a principle of absolute indifference, which is the source of all diversity and multiplicity. But the Absolute as a principle of indifference cannot explain the diversity which is supposed to proceed from it. Hegel therefore en¬ deavoured so to frame the concept of the Absolute that the basis of multiplicity should already be contained in it. In the nature of the Absolute itself a pattern would be thereby revealed, such that the multiplicity observable in Nature and history would become intelli¬ gible as a mere expression and development of this pattern itself. Hegel therefore conceived the Absolute as a concrete Idea, as a concept unfolding by virtue of its own internal development. All concrete determinations are merely moments and phases undergone by the Absolute in its own process of self-development. The means whereby the Absolute differentiates itself through its own internal activity is the celebrated Hegelian dialectic. In Hegel’s sense of the term, dialectic is a process in which a starting-point is negated, thereby setting up a second position opposed to it. This second position is in turn negated, i.e., by negation of the negation, so as to reach a third position representing a synthesis of the two preceding, in which both are ‘transcended’, i.e., abolished and at the same time preserved on a higher lever of being. This third phase then figures in turn as the first step in a new dialectical process, lead¬ ing to a new synthesis, and so on. As against the interpretations of Hegelianism current in the Philosophie (Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philo¬ sophy), Stuttgart 1888, p. 68. (Translated in Marx-Engels: Selected Works Moscow 1951, II, p. 364; cited hereafter as MESW.)

Hegel

5

Soviet Union and commonly met with in Marxist literature, it must be emphasized that this dialectical process is not considered by Hegel to be in any sense merely a method by which we think.1 As can be seen from the presence of a dialectical pattern in the Absolute itself, it is definitely taken to be a genuine process in reality as well. With these preliminaries we may now attempt a brief sketch of the Hegelian system. In the first place, Hegel sets before us in his Logic the self-develop¬ ment of the Absolute, its self-determination by means of the predi¬ cates or ‘categories’, beginning with the most general and at the same time the emptiest, pure Being. From this primary category the selfdetermination of the Absolute proceeds by way of its negation (.Nonbeing), to the first synthesis (Becoming) which represents the identity of Being and Non-Being. The Absolute thereby acquires a deter¬ mination which then becomes the starting-point for a new dialectical step forward. In this way the Absolute gradually enriches itself through ever higher degrees of determinacy, until it finally reaches the highest phase of its dialectical development, in which it realizes itself as Absolute Idea. At this stage the Absolute embraces and includes the entire process whereby it realizes and determines itself under the lower categories. One must beware, however, of thinking of this process as^a temporal one. It is merely an unfolding of what is simultaneously present in reality, an unveiling of the inner struc¬ ture of the Absolute itself, as it exists ‘prior to the creation of Nature and finite Spirit’. The Logic therefore shows us the Absolute as it is in itself, prior to the creation of the world, Nature and finite Spirit, and independent of these. The second part of the Hegelian system consists of the Philosophy of Nature which depicts the Idea in its self-external aspect, as otherness. But the Idea thus outwardly embodied in Nature retains a tendency to revert to its own original unity. We therefore perceive in Nature an ascent towards an ever-higher unity, inter¬ connection and inwardness. The mechanical, the physical and the organic represent stages whereby the Idea in Nature endeavours to regain this unity. Eventually the Idea attains this goal, returning from its outer embodiment in Nature back into itself, and this returning-in-uponitself constitutes Spirit. Hence the third part follows, the Philosophy of Spirit, which Hegel again sets forth in three stages. The first consists of the doctrine of subjective (individual) Spirit, in which Hegel deals with psychology and anthropology. In the 1 M. A. Leonov, for example, complains that ‘In Hegel the laws of the dialectic are not derived from Nature and history, but rather imposed upon the latter as laws of thought’. Ocherk dialekticheskogo materializma (Outline of Dialectical Materialism), Moscow 1948, p. 94.

6

The Philosophical Roots of Marxism

second phase of his philosophy of Spirit he develops his doctrine of the objective (universal) Spirit, which finds expression in law, morality and ultimately in their synthesis, ethical life. The highest realization of this ethical life is discerned by Hegel in the State, and more particularly in the Prussian monarchy of his own day. This doctrine of the objective Spirit is closely connected with his philo¬ sophy of history, which has exercised great influence on more recent philosophy. The culmination of Hegel’s system is to be found in the doctrine of Absolute Spirit. The objective universal Spirit does not yet represent the highest stage attainable by the Idea in the course of its return to itself, since the universal Spirit is not conscious of itself. This occurs only in the synthesis of objective and subjective (indi¬ vidual) Spirit which gives rise to Absolute Spirit. At this level Spirit exists not merely ‘in-itself’, but also ‘for-itself’: it attains full selfpossession. It arrives at this self-knowledge, moreover, in three different ways : in Art it contemplates its own nature intuitively; in Religion it represents this nature by means of imagery; and in Philosophy it finally achieves an adequate grasp of this nature by means of the concept. Hence there arise three complementary dis¬ ciplines: aesthetics, the philosophy of religion and the history of philosophy. Religion and philosophy, according to Hegel, have the same con¬ tent; the difference lies merely in their mode of expressing it. In religion it takes the form of imagery and historical circumstance; in philosophy, of the concept. Philosophy is the highest stage in the development of Spirit since in it the Spirit gains access to itself in a manner adequate to itself, namely in the form of the concept. Since Hegel considers philosophy and religion to have the same content, he makes it his business to offer a philosophical interpreta¬ tion of Christian dogma; a rationalistic interpretation, naturally, directed against those who would separate knowledge and faith, whether in the name of clerical orthodoxy or rationalistic enlighten¬ ment. The philosophy of Hegel is of great significance for Marxism, two of its features in particular exercising a powerful attraction on Marxist thinkers. The first of these is its revolutionary dialectical method, the advance beyond negation to the negation of the nega¬ tion: it is this which constitutes the internal dynamic of the Hegelian system, whereby everything appears to be continually on the move, in process of becoming, and nowhere comes to a stop. But there is also its immense power of synthesis, whereby the whole range of human knowledge is apprehended in all its living unity. This is what Lenin had in mind in describing Hegel’s scheme, for all its mysticism and empty pedantry, as a ‘work of genius’: ‘the idea of a world-

The ‘Hegelian Left*

7

embracing, universal, living interconnection of all things one with another’.1 What Marxism could not tolerate, however, was Hegel’s idealism, and the reactionary, anti-dialectical tendency of his system in pre¬ senting itself as the summit of philosophical development, and the Prussian monarchy as the final incarnation of the Spirit. This con¬ servatism of outlook leads Stalin to interpret Hegelianism as a philosophy of aristocratic reaction against the French Revolution.2 For Soviet philosophy, the effect of Hegel’s idealism upon his dialectic is to violate every single one of the ‘principal features’ of dialectic laid down by Stalin himself. The real connections in the world are supplanted by intellectual fabrications; an ascending order of development occurs, for Hegel, in the realm of Spirit only, and not in Nature; the transition from quantity to quality, in Hegel’s sense, refers, not to the concrete historical development of the world, but only to the concept of quality as a logical category; and objective contradictions in reality are likewise transformed by him into merely logical contradictions between concepts.3 For these reasons, Marxism has set itself all along to preserve what is ‘valuable’ in Hegel, namely the dialectical method, while replacing idealism by materialism, and so transforming the ‘idealist dialectic’ into a ‘materialist’ one. In thereby ‘turning Hegel upside down’, however, Marxism retains not only an immediate fink with Hegel, but also an indirect one, by way of Feuerbach and the ‘Hegelian Left’.

2. THE ‘HEGELIAN LEFT’4

Soon after Hegel’s death in 1831 his disciples split into two groups. The rift occurred chiefly in the field of philosophy of religion. The ‘Right’ remained more or less loyal to the traditional outlook ex¬ pressed in the doctrines of the Churches; but there was also a ‘Left’ consisting of those who supported the liberal opposition to Prussian absolutism, and made use of Hegelianism as a weapon against it. The ‘Hegelian Left’, led by David Strauss, Bruno Bauer, Ludwig 1 V. I. Lenin: Filosofskie tetradi (Philosophical Notebooks), Moscow 1947, p. 121; German edition, W. I. Lenin: Aus dem philosophischen Nachlass. Exzerpte und Randglossen, Berlin 1949, p. 64. (Cited hereafter as FT, the German page numbers in brackets.) 2 Cf. M. A. Leonov: Op. cit., p. 89. 3 Ibid., pp. 94 ff. 4 For this and the following sections, see Auguste Cornu: Karl Marx. L'homme et Voeuvre. De Vhégélianisme au matérialisme historique (1818 bis 1845), Paris 1934; Karl Lowith: Von Hegeibis Nietzsche, Zürich-New York 1941; Wilhelm Windelband: Die Geschichte der neueren Philosophie, II, Leipzig 1922.

8

The Philosophical Roots of Marxism

Feuerbach, Max Stirner and Karl Marx, pointed to the contra¬ diction between Hegel’s revolutionary method and the conservatism of his system. It arises from the fact that the dialectical method in¬ volves a continual progress, a ceaseless development, for which no specific state of affairs can be laid down in advance as an ultimate conclusion. The principle of dialectical progress implies that every reality is thereby already in process of losing the character of logical necessity it possesses at that moment. At any subsequent moment it is no longer rational and appears destined to give place to a new reality.1 But this dialectical character of Hegel’s method is at variance with his system, which differs entirely in recognizing a particular state of affairs as final (in politics, the Prussian State, in philosophy, Hegelianism itself). The left-wing Hegelians simply took over the revolutionary method, and turned it into a philosophy of action. For Bruno Bauer this action consisted in philosophical criticism: its task is to ensure that the irrational element is eliminated from the historical unfolding / of reahty. As Reinhard Lauth has recently shown, there were two Slavs in particular, in the ranks of the Young Hegelians, who played an altogether critical part in the intellectual development of the youth¬ ful Marx. Lauth regards this as one of the decisive reasons why Marx’s doctrine should have proved so particularly influential in the Slavonic East.2 The first of these two, Count August von Cieszkowski, found the answer to the general perplexity which had overtaken the minds of Hegel’s disciples after the master’s death. If the Absolute Spirit has attained to self-awareness in Hegel’s philosophy, what is there left for post-Hegelian philosophy still to do? In his book Prolegomena to Historiosophy, Cieszkowski bases history upon the triad of feeling (antiquity), thought (the period of internalization, inaugurated by Christ and terminated by Hegel), and will. In future reality is to be transformed by will, by action. ‘Practical philosophy, or more properly speaking the philosophy of practice—the most concrete possible influence of the latter on life and social relationships, the emergency of truth in concrete activity— such is the future destiny of philosophy in general.’3 7*

This watchword of concrete action now led the Young Hegelians 1 Cf F. Engels: Ludwig Feuerbach, etc., pp. 6 f. (MESW, II, pp. 327 f.). 2 R- Lauth: Einflüsse slawischer Denker auf die Genese der Marxschen Weltanschauung, in Orientale Christiana Periodica, Voi. XXI, Nos. 3-4 Rome 1955, pp. 399-450.

n

X

3 A^-VOiL.Cieszkowski; Prolegomena zur Historiosophie, Berlin JS38,' p. 129; quoted in A. Cornu: Op. dt., p. 82, n. 19.

The ‘Hegelian Left’

9

into the field of political and social activity, the Hegelian philosophy being transformed in the process into a political and social doctrine. Jo begin with, however, the campaign against the ‘Right’ and political absolutism was opened, not in the political field, but in that of the philosophy of religion, with an attack on the churches and on Christian doctrine. Only later was the struggle against the churches, which were held to be the main pillars of absolutism, extended into a struggle against the Prussian monarchy as well. In addition to Arnold Ruge, one of the leading figures in this struggle was the Russian, Mikhail Bakunin. He is the other Slav among the Young Hegelians whom Lauth regards as having exercised a decisive influence on Marx’s mental development. In his wellknown article Reaction in Germany, in the Deutsche Jahrbücher, he attempted to provide a theoretical foundation for the implacable hostility shown by the Hegelian Left, not only towards the churches, but increasingly also towards the Prussian State. Thesis and anti¬ thesis can only achieve reconciliation in synthesis in so far as the thesis remains capable of forming an organic synthetic whole with the antithesis. But as regards the opposition of freedom and unfree¬ dom,This is at present no longer the case. Hence the thesis must now be simply destroyed by the antithesis. Bakunin then seeks to justify this primacy of - the negafive^bver the positive by way of a philo¬ sophical deduction, and ends his article with the fiery summons: ‘Let us put our trust, therefore, in the eternal spirit, who shatters and destroys only because he is the unfathomable and eternally ,f creative source of all life. The desire to destroy is itself a creative !j desire.’1 i For Bakunin, therefore, the dialectic has a quite different groundplan from the Hegelian one: the opposites are no longer reconciled in the synthesis -instead, the thesis is destroyed by the antithesis; the latter is thereby lifted at the same time to a higher qualitative level and becomes the general starting-point for the formation of an entirely new reality, which Bakunin took to be embodied in democracy: ‘The victory of democracy will be not merely a quantitative change . . . , but a transformation of quality—a new, living and genuine apocalypse, a new heaven and a new earth, a young and splendid world, in which all present discords will be resolved in a harmonious unity.’2 1 M- Bakunin: Reaktion in Deutschland, in Deutsche Jahrbücher, Voi. 17, 21st Oct. 1842, p. 1002; quoted in D. Chizhevsky: Hegel bei den Slaven, Reichenberg 1934, p. 203. 2 M. Bakunin: Op. cit., p. 986.

'