The Contemporary Marx

Citation preview

CONTEMPORARY MARX Essays on Humanist Communism

by Mihailo Markovitz'

European Socialist Thought series No 3 SPOKESMAN BOOKS

1974

Published by The Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation Ltd. Bertrand Russell House ,

I

U

mr I

for Spokesman Books

Printed in Great Britain by Bristol Typesetting

Barton Manor Bristol

Copyright

© Spokesman Books 1974

ISBN

o 85124 084 4-

Contents General Introduction to Series

vii

Foreword

ix

I Marx and Critical Scientific Thought II

III

I

Hegelian and Marxist Dialectic

17

Science and Ideology

4.2

IV Descriptive and Normative Conceptions of Human Nature

81

V

Ethics of a Critical Social Science

92

VI

Social Determinism and Freedom

I IO

Equality and Freedom

128

Man and his Natural Surroundings

[40

Violence and Human Self-Realisation

153

VII VIII IX

X The New Left and the Cultural Revolution XI

XII

173

Contradictions in States with Socialist Constitutions

195

Self-Management and Efficiency

208

General Introduction to the Series

Having passed through a veritable Dark Age, in which dogmatism and obscurantism held a world-wide predominance, and flourished alongside slnaIl~nlinded provinciality, socialist thought has, during the past two decades, undergone a veritable renaissance, affecting almost every major European country, East or West. The collapse of Stalinist orthodoxy has been accompanied by a renewal of radical thinking in some of the older social-democratic and communist parties, and the growth of several independent schools of young intellectuals who have been profoundly influenced by ideals of socialist humanism.

Unfortunately, much of the most audacious and relevant thinking in France, Italy, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Belgium and Germany has been kept out of reach in Britain by a combination of difficulties : commercial publishers have been conservative in taking on commit~ merits unless the authors in question have been glamorous, publicity-

attractive figures, all those works which have had a strong empirical base in the experience of a national l a b o r movement have tended to escape translation because it is widely assumed that the English-

speaking public is not interested in the detailed sociology of other European countries, and the specialist socialist publishing houses have been highly selective in their choice of doctrinal filters for a variety of reasons.

Extracts from the writings of such men as Mallet, Markovitz or Goldmann have been featured in the periodical press in Britain, and some of the specialist works of these authors have found respectable imprints. But not only have major works escaped translation : so too have numerous practical, polemical and agitational writings, some of which are of very great interest to all socialists. The object of this series is to begin to remedy some of these deficiencies- It is hoped to make available a, number of important V11

G E N E R A L INTRODUCTION TO THE S E R I E S

original works of analysis as well as some more directly propagandist essays which will assist the Labour Movements of the English spealiing world to understand their colleagues. But it is also hoped that the series may assist in widening the dialogue between socialists in East and West Europe, and emphasising the organic unity of their interests and concerns. Ken Coates, /974

viii

Foreword

As this book goes to press, its author is the centre of a wide-ranging controversy in his own country. Since Yugoslavia is rightly respected in the West as a pioneer of non-Stalinist forms of socialist development, and since many British socialists have looked with keen

enthusiasm towards the bold experiments in self-management which have been pioneered in that country, this controversy is both important and ominous. Self-management in economic life is inconceivable without the development of free critical discussion in academic and political life, so there is IIO intrinsic need for alarm about the outbreak of controversy among its proponents : but what makes this particular argument alarming is the weight of otlicial pressure which appears to have been brought to bear upon the author of this work and his distinguished colleagues, in order, it seems, to meet the challenge of their viewpoint, and resolve the argument, by suppression.

Mihailo Markovitz has been a staunch collaborator of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, and indeed two of the essays in this volume were originally prepared for the Foundation : one has

previously appeared in the Russell Centenary volume on Socialist Hum an ismf while the other was submitted to the Linz Seminar on Spheres of Influence in the Age of Imperialism2 which was organised to commemorate that Centenary. It was therefore considerably distressing to the members of the Foundation to learn that MarlioviO

was corning under fire in Belgrade, for advocating ideals which were not only very close indeed to its own, but which had previously been widely identified as being an integral part of Yugoslavia's inimitable contribution to world socialism. The Foundation had been involved in causes which attracted widespread support in Yugoslavia, m iot only on the plane of international politics.

always

Notably, both Bertrand Russell personally, and the Foundation as

ix

FOREWORD

a body, had given material assistance to the formation, in Britain, of the Institute for Workers' Control, which had always proudly identified itself with the experiments in self-management in Yugoslavia, and which has never failed to invite prominent spokesmen

of the Yugoslav Trade Unions and Self-Management Institutes to its major conferences. More, Bertrand Russell himself had long enjoyed a relationship of great confidence with President Tito, based on their joint endorsement of the ideas of positive neutralism, and their hopes that the third world could come together to assert

itself as a force for peace and social development, thus imposing a degree of rationality upon the superpowers, which might hopefully assist in their own evolution towards more humane patterns of social organisation. Indeed, there is much evidence that Tito himself saw Russell as something of a co-thinker, and this is reflected in the most generous obituary message which he sent to Edith Russell on her husband's death.3

In February 1974- Noam Chomsky and Robert Cohen submitted a brief on the situation in Yugoslavia to the New York Review of Books? It had been prepared by people who had followed events

extremely closely, and, as they said, there was every reason to believe it reliable. It made unhappy reading : 'Between 1949 and 1950, a new generation of young philosophers and social theorists, many of whom took active part in the liberation war (1941-1945), graduated and assumed teaching positions at the universities of Belgrade and Zagreb. They appeared on the scene during Yugoslavia's resistance to Stalin's attempts to dominate the country. They were mostly Marxists, but from the beginning

they opposed Stalinist dogmatism and emphasised freedom of research, humanism, openness to all the important achievements of

present-day science and culture. The years 1950-60 marked a decade of discussions on basic theoretical issues, organised by the Yugoslav Philosophical Association. The debates were quite free, several groups opposed one another on different grounds. By the end of this period they all realigned along two basic lines, the orthodox one which stayed within the traditional framework of dialectical materialism and which considered theory to be essentially a reflection of the objective social situation and material surround imniaeae and- thehuInanist one which ~_»

emphasised the anticipatory and critical character of theory, its X

FOREWORD

unity with praxis, and its great role in the process of humanisation of a given society. In 1960, at a conference in Bled, the humanist, praxis-orientated trend prevailed and subsequently became dominant in Yugoslav universities, journals, institutes. In 1962 Yugoslav society experienced its first postwar stagnation as a result of an unsuccessful attempt to make its currency convertible. At the biennial meeting of the Yugoslav philosophical association in Skopje, in November, 1962, the view was expressed for the first time that it is urgent to go beyond abstract theoretical discussion about the nature of man and knowledge, about alienation

and freedom, and a relation between philosophy and scienceand towards a more concrete, critical study of Yugoslav society,

guided by general humanist insights. .s In 1963 a series of conferences and discussions made an attempt to clarify some general social issues: the meaning of technology, of freedom and democracy, of social progress, of the role of culture in building a socialist society. In August, the Kordula Summer School was founded by Zagreb and Belgrade philosophers and sociologists, with the purpose of organising free international summer discussions on actual social issues. In 1964 the journal Praxis was founded by the same group. A new series of discussions ensued, this time about sensitive issues of Yugoslav society: the meaning and the perspectives of socialism, bureaucratic and authoritarian tendencies in the party and the state apparatus, the advantages and weaknesses of the existing

forms of self-management and the possibilities for their further development, the right of a minority to continue to defend its views

rather than conforming to the views of the majority. Most of these critical views and ideas seemed compatible with the liberal Programme of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (accepted at the Seventh Congress, 1958},5 but in reality were met

with intolerance by alarmed party leaders. The transition from criticism of Stalinism towards a concrete critical analysis of Yugo-

slav society led to an almost complete break of communication

between party officials and leading Marxist social and political philosophers. During the years from 1965-7, while preserving a far more elitist and authoritarian political system than a developed system of pan XI

FOREWORD

'Ln

ticipatory democracy could tolerate, the political leadership introduced an economic reform that was subsequently to fail : returning to a nineteenth-century model of a laissez»fa.ire economy, leaving the 'free the Yugoslav economy at the mercy of big foreign finns competition' of the international market, causing mass unemploywent and huge foreign debts, allowing speculation in real estate and a rapid increase of social differences, encouraging the growth of autarchic tendencies in the existing six republics of the Yugoslav federation-which later constituted a material basis for strong nationalist movements. Expression of critical views about these developments (themselves later

condemned

as

manifestations

of

"liberalism" and

"nationalism" by the party itself) was met by growing hostility by the party press. Critical philosophers and sociologists were branded 'abstract humanists', °utoplans', 'revisionists', 'anarcho~liberals', 'neoleftists', 'extreme leftists', finally, 'political opposition that aspires to political power."

In .June 1968, students of the University of Belgrade occupied all university buildings for seven days. They demanded abolition of bureaucratic privileges, further democratisation, solution of the problem of mass unemployment, reduction of social differences, university refornl. In one of his speeches during the crisis, Tito praised the students, endorsed all their demands, and declared he would resign if he failed to realise them. Later, when this grave political crisis was over, the political leader-

ship and Tito himself came to the conclusion that philosophers were responsible for it because through their lectures they had 'corrupted their students', 'poisoned them with wrong ideas', and thus produced the student movement. The party organisation at the Department

of Philosophy and Sociology in Belgrade was dissolved. For the first time, Tito expressed the demand that further corruption 'of students through their professors must be prevented', and that guilty professors must be ousted from the university. Between 1969 and 1972, growing pressure was exerted by the

Central Party leadership on lower-level political institutions to Lind a way' to eliminate the professors. But this was a difficult task.

Yugoslavia had developed a democratic organisation of education and culture. All decision-making power in matters of electing, re-

xii

FOREWORD

electing and promoting university professors was in the hands of the faculty councils-the autonomous, self-managing bodies composed of professors, assistants, and students themselves. The university law emphasised scholarly qualification as the sole criterion of election. It did not give political authorities any right to interfere. In the previous period, the officially declared policy of the League of Communists (LC) was that all theoretical controversies should be cleared up through discussion and free exchange of opinion.

Therefore the rather democratically-minded leadership of the LG in Serbia resisted the use of repressive measures against some of the

leading philosophers and sociologists of the country. They were, however, refused access to mass media and mass gatherings, and the possibilities for circulating their ideas became much more limited.

Still, they were able to teach, to travel abroad, to have 30o--4-00 participants from various countries at the Summer School of Kordula, to publish the journals Praxis and Filosojija, and occasionally to publish a book or two. The time was used to develop a cluster of fairly sophisticated and

concrete theories about socialism and social revolution, integral self-management, the phenomenon of bureaueratism, humanisation of technology, democratic direction of economy and culture, the

problem of nationalism, and other matters. In the autuinn of 1972, Tito ousted the leader of the League of

Communists of Serbia, Marko Nikezié and a Ilulnber of his supporters. They were blamed for 'liberal' practices and for opposing the new party line. The main feature of this new line was the return to a strong, disciplined, centralised, 'monolithic', party that has the

right and power directly to control and manage the realisation of its policies. This called for complete ideological unity, consequently for a return to a crude form of ideological indoctrination, and for the abandonment of all the earlier sophisticated ideas of creating new socialist consciousness through dialogues or stniggles of opinion

and patient persuasion. The Faculty of Philosophy was now exposed to intense pressure. There were r u m o r s of 'enemies', 'foreign spies' on the teaching faculty, there were threats of stopping further financing, of closing the faculty. The faculty building was equipped with hidden microphones, some of which were found. The University Committee of the League of Gollllnunists drew* up a list of eight professors to be

FOREWORD

fired. Passports were confiscated from live of them. Portions of some of their recently published books were banned. Some collaborators of the journal Praxis were arrested and sentenced to jail. At that moment dozens of internationally known philosophers and social scientists from Scandinavia, USA, Germany, France, and other countries wrote letters to Tito and the rectors of the universities of Belgrade and Zagreb, expressing their concern about those repressive measures and the hope that they would be discon-

tinued in the interest of further free development of Yugoslav democratic socialism. Many philosophical associations, departments of philosophy, academies, international institutions devoted to human rights and civil liberties passed resolutions of concern and sent them to Yugoslavia.

This discreet expression of solidarity of the international intellectual community made a considerable impact o-n Yugoslav authorities, who were proud of their past international reputation and who, in the existing economic and foreign~political situation of the country, could not afford to disregard world public opinion.. They decided to take their time and to give repression a more democratic appearance. Slowly crushing the resistance of the Faculty of Philosophy without provoking too much international publicity required a series of steps. Some of these were easy, some were met with unexpected difficulties or even failed completely. I t was relatively easy to introduce certain important changes into existing university law. The law as now amended requires a university professor not only to have scholarly and moral qualifications,

but also to be politically acceptable. Political organisations now have the right to initiate a procedure in order to establish whether any individual university teacher meets political criteria. A third change was a general and vague limitation of the principle of self-management. While heretofore the vast majority of the members of the faculty councils had to be elected by the faculty and students themselves, now the law prescribed that the compose son of the council had to be determined through a 'self-managing agreement' between the faculty and its founder-the Republican Executive Council (i.e., the government of the given Federal

Republic.) The next step was to translate those legal changes into more

:dv

FOREWORD

specific and practical demands. The plan was first to specify political criteria for being a university professor in such a way that they could be applied to ousting the eight Belgrade professors, who

previously could not be removed, second to push the party organisation and the students' organisation into condemning their colleagues and teachers, third to compel the University of Belgrade to accept a sufficient number of outside voting members into the councils so as to enable political authorities to gain full control over

the decision-making process in the Faculty of Philosophy. These measures met with considerable resistance. When a text outlining criteria for the election of university professors was first proposed to the University Assembly in June, 1973, most speakers

objected strongly to it. They found certain criteria too rigid, for example the requirement that a university professor must accept Marxism and actively support the politics of the League of Comznunists in his lectures and in all his scholarly and public activity. But later the Rector of the University, most deans, and eventually the University Assembly succumbed to the pressure, and in November accepted the text of the criteria. Only the Faculty of Philosophy rejected it, and gave the following grounds, among others : it was unconstitutional because the existing constitution guarantees freedom of scientific work and cultural creation and forbids any kind of pressure on individuals to

declare what kind of beliefs they have, it was unacceptable because the vast majority of Belgrade University professors are not Marxists and are apolitical, it was discriminatory because it allows, by its vagueness, any conceivable kind of interpretation, and it was discriminatory also because these criteria were being imposed on the

University of Belgrade only, and not on any other Yugoslav university.

In May 19-73, the Belgrade University committee of the League of Communists sent an open letter to the party organisation of the Faculty of Philosophy, demanding the ouster of eight professors : Milhailo Markovitz, Ljubomir Tadio, Svetozar Stojanovié, Zaga Peso, Milady Zivotié, Dragoljub Micunovié, Nebojsa Popov, Triva

Indjié. After a series of meetings, attended by a large number of highenranking party officials who exerted great pressure on students and professors to conform to the demand, the party organisation of the Faculty of Philosophy nevertheless rejected the ouster demand. XV

FOREWORD

A few of the most active opponents were expelled from the party but when the party organisation of the faculty met again in November, it decided, again unanimously, that the eight professors should stay at the faculty. There was a complete conviction that a university professor cannot be fired for expressing critical views in his writings, especially taking into account that the party itself now was repeating many of the criticisms that were expressed by those same scholars several years ago.

In November, 1973, a university committee of the student organ isation made an attempt to force students of the Faculty of Philosophy into action against their professors, threatening them with possible violence if the faculty continued to resist. But the philosophy students refused to undertake anything of the sort and on the contrary, to everyone's surprise, organised a street demon

stration (although strictly forbidden in recent years, and in die past forcibly dispersed by the police). This time, students protested against repression in Greece and against the massacre in the University of Athens- There was no violence. The crucial issue during the last six months has been the corn position of the faculty councils. Self-management in the university meant that even in the institutions of special social importance, such as educational ones, only a small number of outside members were nominated by political authorities. Now the executive council (the government) of the Serbian Republic demanded that half the members of the faculty councils must be nominated from outside the university. Taking into account that students and administration must also be represented in the councils, this would give only one

sixth of the votes to both professors and assistants and would clearly replace self~managcment by compulsory management. By October, after initial resistance, the Rector of the University and all faculties except the Faculty of Philosophy succumbed to the

pressure. They were told that this new structure had been prescribed by the university law and therefore could not be a matter of debate. As a matter of fact the law only prescribed that the composition of the faculty councils had to be determined through a 'self-managing agreement' between the faculty and its founder (the Republic's executive council). The Faculty of Philosophy refused to sign the agreement because it was unconstitutional and incompatible with the principle of self-management, and because the very

xvi

FOREWORD

concept of agreement involves negotiation. The faculty asked the Constitutional Court to decide about the legitimacy of the imposed 'agreelnellt'. At the same time, the faculty also drew up a counterproposal. But there was no negotiation and communication was broken. An extremely abusive campaign was launched against the Faculty

of Philosophy through the party newspaper Komunist, as well as through the press, radio, and kg . The faculty was accused of opposing the introduction of eli-management at the university, of opposing the policy of the League of Communists, keeping a monopoly on education, and of opposing any influence from 'society', of asking help from foreign scholars and so on. At the same time the faculty was threatened with expulsion from the University of Belgrade, with refusal to finance its further activity or to employ its graduate students, and with eventual close-down.

Under growing pressure of this kind, the Faculty Council decided

on December 14., 1973, to authorise its Dean to sign the 'selfmanagement agreement'. The Faculty Council will now have half of its members nominated by political authorities. They will certainly be carefully selected from among leading political officials and disciplined members of

the League of Communists. They will surely pose the question of removing the eight professors from the Department of Philosophy

and Sociology as they do not meet the recently accepted political criteria.

This may still not be an easy task. According to law, assistants are re-elected every three years, associate professors and assistant professors every Five years-which means that legally one would

have to wait for the expiration of that period for each candidate. Full professors do not undergo the process of re-election at all (i.e. they have tenure), which means that two among the eight (Markovitz

and Tadio) cannot at this time legally be removed at all. Another important circumstance is also that the party organisa-

tion of the Faculty of Philosophy*-whose opinion counts when it comes to political evaluation-has never agreed to condemn, or endorse the elimination of, anyone from the group.

A relevant fact is that the threatened scholars enjoy a considerable reputation in the university and among otlilcr irate iectuais. The action against them is not popular and, despite great eiTorts, ..

xvii

...

FOREWORD

apparatus of the League of Communists was not able to find any well-known Yugoslav philosopher, sociologist, or political scientist to attack them.

The crucial questions are now, first, whether the outside meln» hers of the council will be disciplined enough by the government to perform according to their orders when they face their victims in the council; and second, whether some of the inner members of the council, professors from various other departments of the Faculty of

Philosophy, will yield to pressure and eventually vote for the firing of their colleagues. Neither development is inevitable, but both are possible. Without strong political pressure many outside members would--as in the past--not even attend the meetings, or would be passive or vote

with the rest. Thus everything will now depend on how brutal the effort will be and how far the political authorities will go in pressing the members of the council. Meanwhile, during the past six months several of the eight philosophers under attack have again been deprived of their passports. The degree of pressure will depend on whether the whole thing will pass in silence as a little episode in one of the world's many universities, or whether it will be understood for what it is : one of the last battles for survival of free, critical, progressive thought in the present-day socialist world, in a country which is still open to democratic development and where until recently it seemed to have

every chance to flourish. That is where the reaction of the international intellectual community may again play a decisive role. The whole political and economic position of Yugoslavia makes it sensitive to world public

opinion. By showing an interest in what is going on now in Yugoslav cultural life, by spreading the information, by raising the issue in . . international organisations, by expressing conliiwlm ` press or in letters to Tito (which, after the recent escalation, should r

-.

Et.,

5.

have more resolute and sharp form than previous ones), scholars and intellectuals everywhere could help to relax the present grip of the Yugoslav leadership and induce it to live up somewhat better to its OWN] ideology of self-management and socialist democracy. All the repressive measures so far have not sufficed fully to isolate and suffocate Yugoslav philosophy. But this might well happen if the scholarly world will tolerate the further escalation of

xviii

FOREWORD

brutality and fear in a country that until not long ago has been an island of hope for many. To the of-Bcial attacks listed in this general account a number of others have since been joined. Early in 1974 the Yugoslav Embassy in New York circulated a statement by its cultural attach, Branko Novakovié, which repeated the most ill-informed and defamatory allegations of the accusations brought against the philosophers by

the Belgrade authorities. The English-language journal Socialist Thought and Practice, published in Belgrade, gave over more than twenty pages of its March 1974. issue to a multi-pronged attack under the general heading 'The Extreme Left--Actually the Right', in which Nikola FilipoviC, for instance, writes of 'the cou11ter-revolutionaries from the ranks of the humanistic inteIligentsia', while Franc Cengle writes of 'an anachronism' which must be 'removed,

to prevent it from doing great harm to the cause of communism." The Congress of the Yugoslav Communist Party, still awaited at the time of writing, was scheduled for late May 1974, and a round of international diplomacy was planned for President Tito at about the same time. Previous to these events, there had been a lull of several weeks in the public campaign against dissent, which could prove to have been a temporary u. It may be that the Congress could result in attempts to res matters finally8 Meanwhile, protests of scholars from all over the world have lOin pouring into

Belgrade. While earnestly hoping that these will not be needed, the

publishers are confident that this volume serves not only to advance the crucial arguments with which it is coneenied, but also to furnish proof, if proof be needed, that the Belgrade school is one of the

major creative achievements of European socialism, and is, as such, the property of a far wider world than that contained in the

frontiers of Yugoslavia alone.

II A note on translations Since the technical vocabulary of Hegelian thought is not always readily understood by contemporary readers, it may be helpful to offer some brief explanatory notes, taken from Martin Milligan's excellent translation of the Economic €-5' Philosophical Manuscripts of Karl Marx :9

xix

I.

FOREWORD

'Aufheben (past tense : auf hob, p.p. aufgehoben, noun : Aufhebung). Aufheben (literally "to raise up") has two opposed meanings in popular speech. (i) It can mean "to abolish", "to cancel", "to annul", "to do away wlth", etc. (11) I t can mean "to preserve Hegel, valuing the word just because of this double, negative and positive, meaning (see The Logic of Hegel tr. Wallace, 2nd ed., p. 180), uses it to describe the positive-negative action by which a

higher logical category or form of nature or spirit, in superseding a lower, both "annuls" it and "incorporates its truth." Unfortunately, there is no single English word with the same double meaning, except "sublate", a technical term adopted for the purpose by some translators of Hegel. . . .' Milligan goes on to distinguish between the double sense of the word, and its commonplace negative meaning. For the former he uses the translation 'supersede or "transcend" 1 for the latter,

'abolish' or 'annul'. 'Entaussern (pp. entaussert, noun : Entiiusserung.)

The ordinary dictionary meanings of entaussern are "to part wlth", "to renounce", "to cast Off", "to sell", "to alienate" (a right, or one's property). The last of these best expresses the sense

in which Marx uses this term. For "alienate" is the only English word which combines, in :much the same way as does entaussern,

the ideas of "losing" something which nevertheless remains in existence over-against one, of something passing from one's own into another's hands, as a result of one's own act, with the idea of "selling" something: that is to say, both "alienate" and

entaussern have, at least as one possible meaning, the idea of a sale, a transference of ownership, which is simultaneously a renunciation. At the same time, the word entaussexn has, more strongly than "aIlenate", the sense of "making external to oneself. . . ," '

xx

111 Acknowledgements A number of acknowledgements are necessary, since this book

was prepared in Nottingham while its author was either in Yugoslavia or travelling in a number of countries. The English texts of

these essays were mostly furnished by the author, but two of them have been translated by others* Stephen Bodington prepared the translation of 'Science and Ideology' from the French version which was originally published in Questions Actuelles d o Socialisme, No. 55, October/December 1959. 'The New Left and the Cultural

Revolution' was translated from the German by Ekkehard Kopp and was originally published by Praxis, Zagreb, Nos. 1 IN, 1971. A number of the other essays published in this book have previously appeared in other volumes or reviews. 'Mainz and Critical

Scientific Thought' in Praxis, Zagreb, Nos. 3j4., 1968, 'Ethics of a Critical Social Science' in the International Social Sciences journal

volume XXIV, No. 4, 1972, 'Social Determinism and Freedom' in Mind, Science and History, volume 2 of Contemporary Philosophic Thought: The International Philosophy Year Conferences at Brockport, I970, 'Violence and Human Self-Realisation' was one of the Essays on Socialist Humanism published by Spokesman Books

in 1972. 'Contradictions in States with Socialist Constitutions' was first given as a paper at the Bertrand Russell Centenary Symposium held at Linz, Austria in September 1972, and subsequently pub-

lished' in Spheres of Influence in the Age of Imperialism by Spokesman Books in 1973, 'Self-Management and Efficiency' was given

as a paper at the Kordula Summer Conference in September 1973. Finally, we must acknowledge the admirable work done by Colin Stoneman and Chris Farley in preparing the texts and reading the proofs. Ken Coates

xxi

NOTES

1.2.

Published by Spokesman Books in 1972. Published in a volume of the same name by The Spokesman January

en!

See The Spokesman No. 3 1970.

imam of February 7th, 1974. 3.4.5. The important early essay in this volume, Science and Ideology, was prepared at this time. 6. An abbreviated version off this paper appeared in the London journal The New Humanist, in March 1974. The same journal featured an open letter to President Tito, signed by Professors Ayer, Bronowski, Cranston, Crick, Darlington, Sargent Florence, Honderich, Leach,

Strawson, Wells, Williams, Wollheim, and Zeeman. Another letter to President Tito was organized by the Russell Foundation, and attracted signa-

tures from many people prominent in public and academic life in Great Britain. 7. The journal features articles on this theme by Muhanied Filipovié, Franjo Kozul, Fuad Muhié, .loco Marjanovié, Beseem Ibrahirnpasié and Arif Tanovié in addition to those mentioned. All are conspicuous by their vagueness on matters of substances None quote directly from the works they criticise, and all content themselves with generalised condemna8.

tions rather than specific charges. See Jonathan Steele: 'Losing Dissent' in The Guardian, 19th .January

9.

Published in Moscow by the Foreign Languages Publishing House in

1974--

Ig:6-I 4

xxii

I

Marx and Critical Scientc Thought

MARX

created a theory which is both scientific and critical.

However, in most interpretations and further developments of his thought one of these two essential characteristics has been system-

atically overlooked. Among those who speak in the name of Marx or consider themselves his intellectual followers some accept only his radical criticism of the society of his time, some lay emphasis only on his contribution to positive scientific knowledge about contemporary social structures and processes. To the former group belong, on the one hand, various apologists of post-capitalist society who develop Marxism as an ideology; on the other hand, those romantically-minded humanists who consider positive knowledge a form of intellectual subordination to the given social framework and who are ready to accept only the anthropological ideas of the young Marx.

To the latter group belong all those scientists who appreciate Marx's enormous contribution to modern social science, but who fail to realise that what fundamentally distinguishes Marx's views from Comte, Mill, Ricardo and other classical social scientists,

as well as from modern positivism, is his always present radical criticism both of existing theory and of existing forms of reality. The failure of most contemporary interpreters of Marx to grasp

one of the basic novelties of his doctrine has very deep roots in the intellectual climate of our time and can be explained only by taking into account some of the fundamental divisions and polarisations in contemporary theoretical thinking.

I The development

of science and philosophy in the twentieth

century has been decisively influenced by the .following three factors : I

THE C O N T E M P O R A R Y M A R X

(1) the accelerated growth of scientific knowledge which gave rise to a new technological revolution characterised by automation, use of huge new sources of energy and new exact methods of management ; (Q) discovery of the dark irrational side of human nature through psycho-analysis, anthropological investigations of primitive cultures, surrealism and other trends of modern arts, and above all, through unheard of mass eruptions of brutality from the beginning of World

War I until the present day; (3) the beginning of the process of destructuralisation of the existing forms of class society and the rapidly increasing role of ideology and politics. As a result of a rapid technological development and of an increasing division of work in modern industrial society the rationality of science has gradually been reduced to a narrow technological rationality of experts interested only in promoting and conveying

positive knowledge in a very special field. In an effort to free itself from the domination of theology and mythology, rnodcrn science has from its beginnings tended to get rid of unverifiable theoretical generalisations and value judgments. As a consequence, a spiritual vacuum was created which, under the given historical conditions, could be filled only by faith in power, faith in success in all various forms. This philosophy of success, this obsession with the clliciency of means, followed by an almost total lack of interest in the problem of rationality and humanity of goals, are the essential characteristics of the spiritual climate of contemporary industrial society. By now it has already become quite clear that while increasing power over nature, material wealth, and control over some blind forces of history have created new historical opportunities for human emancipation, the material form of positive science (industry) has neglected many essential human needs and has extended the

possibilities for manipulation of human beings. The universal penetration of technology into all forms of social life has been followed by the penetration of routine, uniformity, and inauthenticity. Growth of material wealth did not make men happier 3 data on suicide, alcoholism, mental illness, juvenile delinquency, etc., even indicate a positive correlation between the degree of technological development and social pathological phenomena. Obviously, positive science and technology set off unpredicted and uncontrollable social processes. The scientist who does not care about the broader social context of his inquiry loses every control over the 2

MARX AND CRITICAL

SCIENTIFIC

THOUGHT

product of his work. The history of the Creation and use of nuclear weapons is a drastic example. Another one is the abuse of science for ideological purposes. The most effective and, therefore, most dangerous propaganda is not one which is based on obvious untruths, but one which, for the rationalisation of the interests of

privileged social groups, uses partial truths established by science. Science would be helpless against such abuses if it were atomised, disintegrated, disinterested in the problems of wholes and neutral with regard to such general human values as emancipation, human solidarity, development, production according to the 'laws of beauty', disalienation, etc. However, the most influential philosophy in contemporary science

is positivism, according to which the sole function of science is to describe and explain what there is and, if at least some laws are known, to extrapolate what there might probably be. All evaluation

in terms of needs, feelings, ideals, ethical, aesthetic and other standards are considered basically irrational and, from the scientific point of view, pointless. The only function of science, then, is the investigation of the most adequate means for the ends which have

been laid down by others. In such a way science loses power to supersede the existing forms of historical reality and to project new, essentially different, more humane historical possibilities. By its indifference towards goals it only leads to an abstract growth of power, and to a better adjustment within a given framework of social life.

The very framework remains unchallenged. So behind this apparent neutrality and apparent absence of any value orientation one dis~ covers an implicit conservative orientation. Even a passive resistance

to the reduction of science to a mere servant of ideology and politics is acceptable to the ruling elites because pure, positive, disintegrated knowledge can always be interpreted and used in any profitable way : ultimately society would be devoid of its critical self-consciousness,

II Positivism and other variants of philosophical intellectualism, conformism, and utilitarianism are facing nowadays a strong opposition among all those philosophers, writers and artists who prefer 'the logic of heart' to 'the logic of reason', and who rebel against the

3

T H E GONTEMPORARY MARX

prospect of an impersonal, inauthentic lite in an affluent mass society of the future. They see clearly that power and material wealth in themselves do not help man to overcome his anxiety, loneliness, his perplexity, boredom, uprootedness, his spiritual and emotional poverty. New experiences in political life, modern art, and science indicate a general lack of order and stability in the world and the

presence of a basic human irrationality. Thus they have strengthened the feeling that after all the successes of the positive sciences and technology a fragile, unreasonable and suicidal society has emerged. As a reaction to the spirit of the Enlightenment (which had to some extent survived in the form of positivism) a powerful antiEnlightenment attitude is gaining ground among intellectuals. The

world does not make sense, there is no rational pattern by which the individual can hope to master it, no causal explanation which would allow him to predict the future. There is no determination and progress in history; all history of civilisation is only the history of grow-

ing human estrangement and self-deception. Human existence is absurd and utterly fragile. Confronted with a universe in which there is pure contingency, lacking any stable structure of his being, man lives a meaningless life full of dread, guilt, and despair. There are no reasons to believe that man is basically good, evil is a per~ manent possibility of his existence. Such an anti-positivist and anti-Enlightenment philosophy (which has been most consistently expressed in Lebensphilosophie and various forms of existentialism) is clearly a critical attitude, concerned with the problems of human individual existence. However, this kind of rebellion against the 'given' and the 'existing' tends to be as

immediate as possible and to avoid any mediation by positive knowledge and logic. The basic idea of this obviously anti-rationalist form of criticism is the following : to rely on empirical science already means to be caught up within the framework of the given present reality. On the other hand, as neither historical process nor human being has any definite structure preceding existence, all general knowledge is pointless. Nothing about the present can be inferred from the past, nor can the future be determined on the basis of the knowledge of the present. All possibilities are open. Freedom of projection is unlimited. This kind of romantic rebellious criticism is entirely powerless. Postulated absolute freedom is only freedom of thought; as already

4

MARX

AND CRITICAL SCIENTIFIC

THOUGHT

shown by Hegel in Phenomenologie des Geistes, it is the imagined freedom of a slave. Real criticism must start with the discovery of concrete practical forms of slavery, with the examination of human bonds and real practical possibilities of liberation. Without such concrete practical examination, which requires the use of all relevant social knowledge and application of the scientific method, criticism

is only an alienated form of disalienation.

III In a historical epoch of fundamental social transformation a theory which expresses the needs and acceptable programmes of

action of powerful social forces becomes one of the decisive historical

determining factors. The theory of Marx has been playing such a revolutionary role for the whole historical epoch of h ' "" ated l a b o r . It has been and still is the existing. theoretical basis for In is every contemporary form of active The critical thought of Marx is the fullest and historically the

most developed expression of human rationality. It contains, in a dialectically

superseded form, all the essential characteristics

of

ancient Greek theorist : a rational knowledge about the structure of the world by which man can change the world and determine his own life. Hegel's dialectical reason is already a really creative nega~ son of the Greek notion of ratio and theory o here the contradictions between static, rational thinking and irrational dynamics, between positive assertion and abstract negation have been superseded (aufgehoben). The theory and method of Marx is a decisive further

step in the process of totalisation and concretisation of the dialectical reason : it embraces not only change in general but also the specific human historical form of change : praxis. The dialectic of Marx

poses the question of rationality not only of an individual but also of society as a whole, not only rationality within a given closed system, but also of the very limits of the system as a whole, not only rationality of praxis as thinking but also of praxis as material activity, as mode of real life in space and time. There is dialectical reason in history only to the extent to which it creates a reasonable reality. This theoretico-practical conception of man and human history had not been further developed. by Ma1~sx's followers as a totality, but

5

THE CONTEMPORARY MARX

underwent a far-reaching disintegration into its component parts : various branches of social science, philosophical anthropology, dialectics, philosophy of history, the conception of proletarian revolution and socialism as a concrete programme of practical action, etc. Science without dialectic and humanist philosophy incorporated in its t e l s , in all its assumptions, criteria and methods of inquiry, underwent in socialist society a process analogous to the one in capitalism : it developed as partial, positive, expert knowledge which

informs about the given but does not seek to discover its essential inner limitations and to overcome it radically. The connection with philosophy remained doubly external : first, because it assimilates the principles of Marxism in a fixed, completed form as something given, obligatory, imposed by authority, abstract, tom out of context,

simplified, vulgarised, second, because these principles externally applied do not live the life of science, are not subject to the process of normal critical testing, re-examining, revising, but become dogmas

of a fixed doctrine. That is why la/Iarxist philosophy became increasingly more abstract, powerless, conservative. That part of it which pretended to be a Weltanschauzmg looked more and more like a boring, old» fashioned, primitive Nate rphilosopkie, and the other part which was supposed to express the general principles for the interpretation of social phenomena and revolutionary action assumed increasingly the character of pragmatic apologetic which was expected to serve as a foundation of ideology and for the justification of past and present policies. This temporary degeneration is the consequence of several important circumstances :

-of the fact that the theory of Marx became official ideological doctrine of victorious l a b o r movements , -of the unexpected success of revolutions just in the under~ developed countries of East Europe and Asia where, in addition to socialist objectives the tasks of a previous primitive accumulation, industrialisation, urbanisation have to be accomplished , ---of the necessity, in such conditions, to give priority to accelerated technological development, to establish a centralised system and to impose an authoritarian structure on all thinking and social behavior. Thus a return to Marx and a reinterpretation of his thought is

6

MARX AND CRITICAL SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT

needed in order to restore and to further develop a critical method of Marx's theoretical thinking.

IV The essential theoretical and methodological novelty of Marx's conception of science is constituted by the following features : First, by moving in the process of research from unanalysed given

concrete phenomena (such as population, wealth, etc.) towards abstract universals (such as commodity, l a b o r , money, capital, surplus-value, etc.) and from them back towards (this time) analysed ernpirico-theoretical concreteness, Marx succeeds in overcoming the traditional dualism between the empirical and the rational (specula-» five) approach. There is no doubt that he makes great efforts in order to support each of his contentions by as ample evidence as possible. All his major works were preceded by years of studying data, establishing facts. But, in sharp contrast to empiricism, Marx's science neither begins with brute facts nor remains satisfied with

simple inductive generalisations from them. His real starting position is a philosophical vision and a thorough critical study of all preceding relevant special knowledge. Initial evidence is only a necessary component of the background against which he builds up a whole network of abstract scientific concepts endowed with an impressive explanatory power. This elaboration of a new conceptual apparatus (new not so much in the sense of introducing new terminology as in the sense of giving new meanings to already existing terms) is the most important and most creative part of Marx's scientific work.

Second, according to Marx, science should not be primarily concerned with the description of details and explanation of isolated phenomena but with the study of whole structures, of social situa-

tions taken in their totality. That is why Marx's new science does not know about any sharp division into branches and disciplines. Das Kajaitaf belongs not only to economic science, but also to socio-

logy, law, political science, history, and philosophy. However, although the category of totality plays such an overwhelming role in the

methodology of Marx, this is not a purely synthetic approach. Marx knew that any attempt to grasp totalities directly without analytical mediation leads to myth and ideology. Therefore, a necessary phase

7

T H E CONTEMPORARY

MARX

of his method is the analysis of initial directly grasped wholes into their components, which in the final stages of inquiry have to be brought back into various relations with other components and con-

ceived only as moments within a complex structure. Third, some variants of contemporary aspects of social formations, and structuralism which pays attention only to their synchronic aspects are degenerated, one-sided developments of certain essential moments of Marx's method. However, in Ma1'x's new science these moments are inseparable. A totality cannot be fully understood without taking into account its previous development and the place it has in history. A socio-economic system becomes a meaningful structure only as a crystallisation of the past forms of human practice and with respect to historically possible futures. On the other hand, what is historically possible cannot be grasped without taking into account determinant structural characteristics of the whole given situation. Marx has discovered self-destructive forces within the very structure of the capitalist system, without establishing the law of decreasing average rate of profit and other laws of capitalist economy, he would not have been able to establish the real historical possibility of the

disappearance of capitalist society. But on the other hand, had he not had a profound sense of history, had he approached capitalist society in the same ahistorical way as Smith, Ricardo and other bourgeois political economists--as the permanent natural structure of human society-he would hardly have been able to look for and End out all those structural features which determine both relative stability and ultimate transformation of the whole system. Fourth, a true sense of history implies a critical component not only with respect to all rival theories but also with respect to the

examined society. Marx's dialectics is essentially a method of critique and of revolutionary practice. He himself had expressed this fundamental characteristic of his method by saying that dialectics arouses the anger and horror of the bourgeoisie because it introduces into the positive understanding of the existing state the understanding of its negation, involving its necessary destruction, because it conceives every existing form in its change, therefore as something in transi-

tion, because it does not let anything impose upon it, and because it is fundamentally critical and revolutionary.1 This thought was expressed much earlier in 'Theses on Feuerbach' : the basic weakness of traditional materialism was construing reality only as object, not

8

M A R X A N D CRITICAL S C I E N T I F I C THOUGHT

as praxis. This praxis is critical and revolutionary. Thus man is not just the product of social conditions, but the being who can change these conditions. He lives in a world full of contradictions, but he can resolve and practically remove them. The main objective of

philosophical criticism should be the 'real essence' of man ; however, this essence is not something historical and unchangeable but the totality of social relationship. In short, what really matters is not just explanation but the change of the world. What must follow from such activistic assumptions is a new conception of the function of science. According to this conception, science does not only provide positive knowledge but also develops critical self-consciousness.

It does not only describe and explain the

historical situation but also evaluates it and shows the way out. It does not only discover laws and establish what are the possibilities

and probabilities of the future, it also indicates which possibilities best correspond to certain basic human needs. Thus critical scientific thought does not remain satisfied by showing how man can best adjust to the prevailing trends of a situation and to the whole social framework, it expresses a higher-level idea of rationality by show-

ing how man can change the whole framework and adapt it to himself. Two examples should suffice to illustrate this conception of critical science. In his economic writings Marx thoroughly examined the struc-

tural and functional characteristics of capitalist society. He did that in an objective way in accordance with all requirements of the scientific method of his time. But a critical anthropological stand-

point is always present, this is the standpoint of man as 'generic being', as a potentially free, creative, rational social being. From the

point of view of what man already could be : how he already could live in a highly productive and integrated industrialised society, Marx shows how utterly limited and crippled man is in a system in which he is reduced to his l a b o r portent and his l a b o r power is being bought as a thing, regarded not as a creative power, but as merely a quantity of energy which can be efficiently objectified and sold in the market with a good profit. The message of Marx's theory is not that the worker could better adjust to the situation by demanding a higher price for his l a b o r power, in so far as his labour power is a mere commodity, he already receives the equivalent for it. The

9

THE CONTEMPORARY

MARX

implication of Marx's theory is that the worker should reject the status of a thing, of a commodity, and change the whole social

framework in which his l a b o r is so alienated. Another example. In his criticism of Hegelian philosophy of law, Man: pointed out that the general interest of a human community could not be constituted by the abstract conception of an ideal, rational state. So far as in 'civil society' there is bellum omnium contra ornnes and each individual and social group pursues only one or the other particular interest, the general interest of a truly human

community has not yet been constituted. The Hegelian state, construed as a moment of objective spirit, exists only in abstract thought. What exists in reality is alienated political power beside and above

all other individual and particular interests. The form of this alienated political power, which treats society as the simple object of its activity, is the state with its bureaucracy. Now, Marx's explanation of the nature of professional politics, state and bureaucracy does not lead to the conclusion that man could be freer if he merely makes the state more democratic or increases control over bureaucracy. Without disregarding the temporary importance of such modifica-

tions, Marx opens up the prospects of a radical human emancipation by altogether abolishing the state and political bureaucracy as forms of social organisation. This, according to Marx, is possible if organised l a b o r , the only class whose ultimate interests coincide with those of mankind as a whole, practically removes the economic and political monopoly of any particular social group. The atomised, disintegrated world of the owners of commodities would, in such a way, he superseded by an integrated community of producers. The

state would be replaced by the organs of self-management, i.e., by institutions composed of the true representatives of the people who have been elected by a general free vote, who are immediately responsible to and replaceable by their electors, and who do not enjoy any privileges for the duties they perform.

V

The nature of the key concepts in Marx's anthropology and philosophy of history best shows the character of his theoretical thought. These concepts are not only descriptive and explanatory but also value-laden and critical. 10

MARX A N D CRITICAL S C I E N T I F I C

THOUGHT

Thus Marx's criticism of fetishism of commodities in Das Kapital can be understood only under his assumption of a truly human ,broduction in which man a f f i r m s himself and another man in a double

way : --by objectifying his individuality and experiencing his personality as an objective, sensate power J -by an immediate awareness that by his activity and by the use of his product a need of another human being would be satisfied 5

-by mediating between the other man and generic human being : his activity has become a part of the other human being and has enriched and complemented it , -this mediation allows Indri to imniediatcly atlinn and fulfil his own true generic being? Alienated l a b o r is l a b o r which lacks these qualities.

In a similar way the concepts of social man, human needs, history,

freedom, state, capital, communism, etc. always imply a distinction between actual and possible, between factual and ideal. Social man is not just the individual who lives together with other individuals, or who simply conforms to the given norms of a society. Such a person can be very far from reaching the level of a social being. On the other hand, a person may be compelled to live in isolation and still profoundly need the other person and carry in his language, thinking, and feeling all essential characteristics of human generic being.

In this sense Marx distinguishes, for example, between man who regards woman as 'prey and the handmaid of connnunal lust', 'who

is infinitely degraded in such an existence for himself', and man

whose 'natural behaviour towards woman has become human' and 'whose needs have become human needs'. This 'most natural immediate and necessary relationship' shows to what extent man 'is in his individual existence at the same time a social being'.3 Furthermore, history is not just a series of events in time-it presupposes supersession of 'the realm of necessity' and full emancipation of man. That is why Marx sometimes labeled history of our

time as 'prehistory Freedom never meant for Marx only choice among several possibilities or 'the right to do and perform anything that does not harm others'. Freedom in Marx"s sense is ability of self-determination and of rationality controlling blind to-rces of nature and history. 'All II 8

THE CONTEMPORARY

MARX

emancipation is restoration of the human world and the relationships of men thelnselves'.* The State is not just any social organisation which directs social processes and takes care of order and stability of the society. The typical feature of the State, according to Marx, is its coercive character as an instrument of the ruling class. The State is institutionalised alienated power. Therefore Marx very definitely held the view that the l a b o r movement must abolish the institution of the

State very soon after a successful revolution and replace it by associations of workers. Capital is not only objectified, stored-up l a b o r in the form of money or any particular commodity. It is the objectified l a b o r which at the given level of material production appropriates the surplus value. The objective form of capital conceals and mystifies a social relationship beyond it, the object mediates between those who produce and those who ruleThere is no doubt that both in early and mature writings the concept of communism does not only express a possible future social state, but contains also an evaluation of that society. In the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts there are even three diferent descriptions and evaluations : I : 'crude communism' in which 'the domination of material property looms so large that it aims to destroy everything that is incapable of being possessed by everyone as private property'; 2 : communism 'a) still political in nature, b) with the abolition of the state, yet still incomplete and influenced by private property, that is by alienation of man', 3 : communism 'as positive abolition of private property, of human self-alienation'.5 But

even when Marx in The German Ideology denies that communism is 'an ideal to which reality will have to adjust', he says, 'we call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of afilairs'." Here the adjective 'real' clearly is a value term. Therefore any attempt to determine the nature of Marx's scientific thought should lead to the conclusion that it is both a knowledge and a vision of the future. As knowledge, it is vastly different from the idea of knowledge of any variant of empiricist philosophy because, among other things, for Marx our future project determines

the sense of everything in the present and the past, and this preliminary vision of the future is more the expression of a revolt than a mere extrapolation of the present trends established in an em12

M A R X AND CRITICAL S G I E N T I F I C THOUGHT

pirical way. And yet, no matter how bold and passionate was this vision of the future, it is not merely an arbitrary dream or a utopian hope. The future is not a logical inference from the present situation, it is not the result of a prediction made according to the 1nethodo~ logical standards of empirical science, neither is it divorced from the present and the past. At the beginning of the inquiry it is a relatively a priori projection (based more on preceding theory than on em-

pirical data). But, when at the end of the inquiry it is shown that the preliminary vision by all available evidence about actual trends is the present reality, then a posteriori, this vision of the future becomes part of a meaningful knowledge. This dialectic of the future and the present, of the possible and

the actual, of philosophy and of science, of value and fact, of a priori and a posteriori, of criticism and description is perhaps the essential methodological contribution of Marx to contemporary science-one which so far has not sufficiently been taken into account even by the followers of Mara; themselves.

VI In order to clarify and further elaborate the contention about the critical character of Marx's scientific thought the following further qualifications should be made. I : Criticism is present in all Marx's works at all stages of his

intellectual development. To distinguish sharply between a valueladen humanist utopia of the young Marx and value-free scientific strueturahsrn of the mature Marx would be a grave error indicating

a superficial study of his work. To be sure, there are some important differences in methodology, in richness, and concreteness of the conceptual apparatus used, in the extent to which theory is supported by empirical evidence. However, the fundamental critical position

is the same. There is often only a change of vocabulary or substitution of specific teens applicable to capitalistic society for general terms applicable to society in general. For example, what Marx calls

'alienated l a b o r ' in his early writings (kg. in Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts) will be expressed in Capital by 'the world of commodities'. Or, in his criticism of Hegel's philosophy of rights Marx says that 'the abolition of bureaucracy will be possible when general interest becomes a reality' and 'particular interest really

Is

THE CONTEMPORARY

MARX

becomes a general interest'. In Capital and in his analysis of the experience of the Paris Commune, Marx is much more concrete and explicit; associated producers will do away with the State and take control over the exchange with nature into their own hands. 2 : Maridst criticism is radical although not destructive in a nihilistic sense. Without understanding the I-Iegelian concept aufheben the nature of this criticism can hardly be grasped.*

In spite of the differences between Hegel's and Marx's method,

the idea of dialectical negation contains both a moment of discontinuity and of continuity : the former in so far as the given cannot be accepted as it is (as truth in Hegel's logic, as satisfactory human reality in Marx's interpretation of history), the latter in so far as a component of the given must be conserved as the basis for further development-it is only the inner limitation which has to be overcome.

Most Marxists are not quite clear about the nature of Marxist criticism-which is not surprising taking into account how few have tried to interpret Marx in the context of the whole intellectual

tradition to which he belongs. However, a good deal of misunderstanding is of ideological character. Thus in order to develop a militant optimism or to express a natural revolt against tendencies to a market economy in underdeveloped socialist countries, some Marxists tend to underestimate the importance of those forms of civilisation, of political democracy, of educational, and of welfare institutions which have been developed in western industrial society. Man: took into account the possibility of such a primitive negation of private property and called it "crude" and 'unreilective' corn-

rnunism, which 'negates the personality of man in every sphere', 'sets up universal envy and leveling down', 'negates in an abstract way the whole world of culture and civilisation', and regresses to

'unnatural simplicity of the poor and

artless individual who has

not only not surpassed private property but has not yet even attained to it'.* Thus, there can hardly be any doubt that for Marx a true negation of class society and alienated l a b o r is possible only at a

high level of historical development. * Editor's footnote: Mar tin Milligan, in his notes on Hegelian terminology which are incorporated in his translation of the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (Lawrence and Wis fart, 1968) has given a careful account of this and other Hegelian tcnns. See Foreword, pp ix to xx.,

14

M A R X A N D CRITICAL S C I E N T I F I C THOUGHT

Such a negation presupposes an abundance of material goods, various civilised patterns of human behavior (which arise in the process of disappearance of scarcity), and, most important of all, it presupposes an individual who, among other things, has overcome at

least the elementary, rudest forms of greed for material objects. While in this respect some Marxists appear as radical critics who fail to realise that certain features of advanced capitalism are necessary conditions for any higher level forms of society, they may", on the other hand, in some other essential respects, make the impression of mere reformers who remain quite satisfied with certain initial changes and who too soon become predominately interested in preserving the status quo instead of persisting in their revolutionary

role and striving for further and deeper structural changes. What present-day socialism oilers as the practical solution of the fundamental problems of alienated l a b o r and political alienation is a far cry from a really radical criticism, from real supersession of alienation in capitalist society. Thus the essential source of exploitation and of all other aspects of economic alienation lies in the rule of obj ectified, stored-up l a b o r over living l a b o r The social group which disposes of stored-up l a b o r is able to appropriate the surplus value. The specific historical form of this structure in Marx's time was the disposal of capital on the grounds of private ownership of the means of production however, private property is not the cause but the eiliect of alienated l a b o r . Abolition of the private ownership of the means of production is only abolition of one possible specific form of the rule of dead labour over living l a b o r . The general structure remains if there is any other social group such as, for example, bureaucracy,

-

which retains a monopoly of decision-making concerning the dis~ portal of accumulated and objectified labour. Therefore, only such criticism might be considered radical and truly revolutionary which puts a definitive end to exploitation and which aims at creating conditions in which associated producers themselves will dispose of the products of their l a b o r .

Another example. If the state, as such, is historically a form of alienated political power, the abolition of the bourgeois state is only the important step in the process of disalienation of politics. This

step, according to Marx, (and Lenin in State and Revolution) must be followed by a transitional period of the gradual withering away

15

THE CONTEMPORARY

MARX

of any coercive state apparatus. Unless such an apparatus is replaced by an entirely different social organisation all the symptoms of political alienation, __._ as apathy distrust, lust for power, need for charismatic leaders and for ideological rationalisation, use of all the available techniques for manipulating masses, and so on, will be

reproduced. In so far as in man there is a profound Faustian need to rebel against any permanent historically determined limitation in nature, society and in himself, he will strive to supersede practically such limits, to develop further his human world and his own nature. Such an activistic attitude towards the world will always need philosophical and scientific thought boldly and radically critical of

existing reality.

NOTES

1.2.3.

Marx, Capital, Aftei-word to the second German edition. Man:-Engels, Gesamtausgabe, I, Bd. 3, S. 54.6. Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (Marx'.s Concept

Erich Fromm, New York 1961, p.

of

Man) by

126-127.

4. Marx, On the Jewish Question, 'Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society' ed. by Lloyd Easton. Marx, Economic' and Philosophical .Manuscripts (Op. cit.) p. 127.

5.6.

Marx, Gorman Ideology, 'Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society' (Op. cit.), p. 4.26. Marx, Economic and Philosophical H/fanusaripts (Op. cit.] p. 125. 7.8. Marx-Engels Archives, Moscow 1933, S. 68.

16

II

Hegelian and Marxist Dialectic

THE

ambiguous character of the dialectic has been best expressed

by Marx in the Postscript to his Second edition o f Capital : 'In its Inystified form the dialectic has become a German fashion because it appears to be able to justify reality. In its rational form it arouses the anger and horror of the bourgeoisie and its doctrinaire spokesman because it is not satisfied with a positive understanding of the existing state of affairs, and also introduces an understanding

of its negation, of its necessary doom, because it conceived each existing form as a process, therefore as something transient, because it cannot bear to have anybody as a tutor, and because it is essentially critical and revolutionary." The great disadvantage of the dialectic is the fact that it has

too Often been developed 'in a mystified apologetic form'. Two cases are especially worth mentioning. l himself, who has contributed more than any other philosopher to a systematic and

explicit elaboration of the dialectic, critical analysis of the whole history of human thought, to the affirmation of a generic, historical approach to all phenomena - has at the same time created the most monumental apology of all time. Once his philosophy II.

was construed as the self-consciousness of the Absolute Reason, it followed that the present was entirely the function of the past and devoid of any real future. It also followed that the only conceivable

rationality of individuals and social groups consisted in their conscious subordination to the logical pattern of his system. Another mystification of dialectics took place among those followers of Marx who reduced it to a set of general 'laws' and then began to rationalise whatever looked irrational by simply subsuming it under those laws. The fact is, however, that Mara; conceived and used the dialectic as a method of radical critical thinking and of revolutionary history-making. But he

17

never made explicit the

THE CONTEMPORARY

MARX

principles of his method. In order to dig them out of the whole structure of Capital, the Gfundrisse and other writings and to use them in a creative way at least three requirements had to be satisfied : (I) it was necessary to have a comparable theoretical culture and especially to know thoroughly Hegel's Logic and Phenomenology of Mind; (2) it was necessary to be genuinely interested in 'relentless criticism of all easting conditions', relentless in the sense of not being afraid of its findings and just as little afraid

of the conflict with the powers that be ,1 (3) and it was necessary to be able not only to apply the principles of the method as o priori,

fixed rules but to develop them in the process of their application. It turned out to be very difficult to satisfy all these conditions. As a consequence the literature on dialectics was in most cases either incompetent, or a mere display of scholarly erudition, or a routine reproduction of certain ready-made schemes of inquiry. Many contemporary Marxists who do not wish to fall into any of these categories avoid writing on dialectic. But this again indicates a certain impotence of thought. The list of difficulties that one has to face in order to develop the dialectic is not yet exhausted. In addition to the type of 'critic' and the type of 'apologist' there is also, among contemporary intellectuals, the type of 'neutral expert' who is interested solely in positive knowledge. He will reject the 'mystical Tomi' of dialectic. But he will also tum his back on its 'rational forln'. He will realise that Marxian dialectical criticism assumes certain universal humanist values and he will refuse to be committed, in order to preserve 'objectivity' and the 'ethical neutrality' of his research. But he will fail to realise :

(1) that an apparently neutral expert ends up sewing the alienated power and pursuing its particular values, (2) that the very concept of objectivity implies not only certain cognitive requirements but

also a number of universal ethical values." Thus the real problem is not whether or not value assump sons may be tolerated in social theory, but whether they will be universal or particular and whether

they will be smuggled in or consciously, critically accepted. If from preceding considerations it follows that discussing dialectic is a meaningful task, this task might be analysed into the following four questions '

(1) What are the general features of dialectic that distinguish it from other philosophical :methods P

18

HEGELIAN

AND M A R X I S T DIALEGTIC

(2) What are the novelties of Hegel's and Marx's dialectic with respect to the historical tradition 'P

(3) What is the relation between I-Iegc1's and Marx's dialectic? (4) What are the basic dialectical categories and how do they differ in Hegel and Marx?

(I) THE GENERAL DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS OF THE DIALECTIC In spite of all the differences between Hegel's and Marx's philosophy, dialectic in both forms can be clearly distinguished from any other philosophical method. Firstly, in its difference from a piece-meal, analytic approach J

dialectic tends to embrace the

"I

r

.

1

v

r

1

d problem

belongs. According to Hegel only the whole may be true; particular moments of totality can only be partially, incompletely true. For Marx who does not see the task of theory in merely understanding the world but also in chang mM the making of history involves

radical changes and only changes of a whole system-of the totality of conditions under which man is condemned to live

may be con-

sidered radical.

Secondly, in its difference from a static, synchronic, predominantly structural approach ; dialectic strongly emphasises the dynamic,

diachronic, historical dimensions of phenomena. The history of knowledge, of" mind, according to Hegel, is not something external, dispensable, different from its present form. The order of historical stages is the same as the order of particular moments of a present given system. Therefore the study of the history of an object is the

study of that object itself. The emphasis in Marx is different but the opposition to a static way of thinking is even stronger. Not only does the study of the genesis of an object allow us to understand its

present logical structure, it also throws light on the question of its future, and contributes to our understanding of the possibilities of its subsequent change.

Thirdly, in its difference from philosophical methods that orient one to explain phenomena primarily or exclusively by external,

objective, heterogenic factors; dialectical explanations of the mechanism of change in both Hegel and Marx tend to indicate the crucial importance of autonomy, of self-movement, of self-deterIniriation- This follows from the fact that neither Hegel nor B/Iarx

19

T H E C O N T E M P O R A R Y MARX

ever deal with purely objective, purely material processes. Becoming, according to Hegel, is an activity of free thought, and while it has objective character, independent of human consciousness, it takes

place within an all-embracing Subject, an absolute Self, which never requires any external stimulus to begin and to continue to develop. According to Marx's social theory, many social processes as a matter 'independent

of fact, assume relied form and are governed by laws which are blind, external, forces of human will. However, these processes are not specific for human history, they resemble the

course of events in nature. Specifically human activity involves selfdetermination. Fourtfdy, in its difference from philosophical methods that lay stress on positive knowledge, on acquiring a reliable insight into given reality, dialectic is a method of critical thinking that points out the essential limitations of the given and the possibilities of overcoming them. In Hegel, critique deals with concepts : it reveals that each one of them has a limited content and represents a partial truth only.

Thus each category involves its own negation and emergence of a new, richer, more concrete concept. This new concept being determinate, is also, in its turn, limited and has to be transcended. 'In this way," says Hegel in the Introduction to his Science of Logic, 'a system of concepts has to be built up and completed in the course of a pure, incessant movement, free from any outside interference' In Marx critique deals with forms of social life : it demystifies economic structures, political institutions, ideological superstructures

that arrest further development ; it shows the practical way of transcending them.

(2) THE ESSENTIAL NOVELTY OF I-IEGEL'S AND MARX'S DIALECTIC The term 'dialectic' was applied in several different senses during the history of philosophy. Each of these diverse, unrelated ideas found its place within Hegel's conception. Most important among them are the following : (a) The Heraclitean idea of the world as a self-made, everlasting fire that kindles and goes out with regularity, a flux involving eternal struggle, with the coming into being and passing away of all 20

HEGELIAN

A N D M A R X I S T DIALECTIG

things. Such a dynamic vision of the universe constitutes the ontological basis of I-Iegel's dialectic. (b) Zeno's method of refutation of his opponent's views by deriving contradictory concl usions from them. A later example of this 'negative' dialectic was Kant's demonstration that the application of

the categories of reason beyond the bounds of phenomena and possible experience leads to paradoxes. (c) The art of arguing (dialektike techno) and reaching truth through the critical examination of reasons put forward for opposite views.

(d) A method of classification and definition of general concepts, consisting in laying down some general form of that which is the

object of inquiry and then building up the concepts of a number of species that mediate between one general form and many of its

particular instances. This method presupposes a critique of muddled concepts and common sense platitudes. (e) As according to Plato general forms (ideas) constitute a time~ less, intelligible realm to which the human immortal soul also belonged in the past-all learning is remembering, reconstructing of an antecedent ideal order. his idea of transition from the potential to the actual, of the building up of knowledge as the explicit formulation of what implicitly is already there--is of great importance in Hegel's philosophy. (f) Aristotle's view of dialectic as reasoning starting with only

probable (instead of indubitable) premises is inherent in Hegel's conception of a non-formal logic operating with incompletely

true

thoughts-

(g) The principle of coin ciden tia oppositorutn (unity of opposites) in the philosophy of n.cholas of Cuse. (h) Jacob Boehme's insight that something may be known only through contrast with its opposite : light and darkness, goodness and anger, divine and diabolic etc. (i) Splnoza's idea of a substance which is cause Jai, i.e. selfdetermined. Also the idea that all determination involves a negation.

(j) Fichte's method of building up a whole philosophy starting

with one postulated principle, consciousness of a Self ( I s ) then proceeding in trials of a thesis, antithesis and synthesis (i.e. a simple assertion, and its abstract negation building up a whole in which the two are

ref

ha red).

21

THE C O N T E M P O R A R Y M A R X

(k) Schelling's idea of a universal totality uniting all oppositesin nature, in knowledge and in human (artistic) activity. These dialectical ideas clearly had only partial character: they referred only to some particular procedures of inquiry or to some

particular characteristics of being. They have all been incorporated . concept of dialectic as the very nature of the world's process. In Hegel's hands dialectic has become an all embracing universal

w e »

5

system : every valuable preceding philosophical idea was given a place in this system as a particular stage of development, as a moment of truth conceptually related to all other moments, being either the necessary outcome of others or one of the necessary conditions for their emergence. Dialectic thus becomes a science, which in Hegel's terminology means a universal, self-developed knowledge of the world's process in its inherent necessity- Hegel's idea of science embraces both the

speculative moment (in so far as it goes beyond the limits of empirical knowledge) and the positive moment (in so far as it constitutes a real encyclopedia of factual knowledge of his time). Dialectic, thus conceived, is a great synthesis, it tends to resolve many basic traditional conflicts and to bridge many gulfs in the thinking of Hegel's predecessors. Object and subject, matter and mind, being and thought are no longer considered separate entities. The substance of the world is Spirit, a transcendental subject that for itself moves freely, but precisely in this way realities the inner necessity of its 'an sick', of its inherent t e l s . Thus for the first time a dynamic, activist monism became possible. After centuries of static structuralism (since Plato) and descriptive historicism (since Thucydides) Hegel achieved the great intellectual breakthrough by showing how all structural features are changeable and all historical processes structured. Pure philosophy seemed completed. However, a little more than one decade after Hegel's death the very idea of pure philosophy was radically challenged. l\flarx has shown that this idea presupposed unbearable dichotomies between thought and action, theory and praxis, the life of reason and the rationality of actual life. As a consequence many traditional conflicts were resolved in human consciousness only. The essential novelty of Marx's dialectic is its practical-critical orientation. In Hegel man was reduced to self-consciousness, but

22

HEGELIAN A N D

MARXIST

DIALECTIC

here he is conceived as a being of praxis, of free, creative, sensuous activity capable of physically changing the world according to human projects- Man-produced, historical reality will be the subject-

matter of all meaningful inquiry and all theory. History in Hegel took place only in the past. In Marx, history is the incessant production of both human surroundings and of man himself. The idea of critique is, consequently, much more concrete, radical, relevant to life. In Hegel, critique is purely spiritual, turned towards

the past, reduced to the discovery of inner limits in concepts underlying the world's structure. Marx pointed out3* that because the whole critique takes place in pure thought, its result will be only knowledge-identification of self-consciousness with initial structure of the Objective Spirit. The objective of Marx's critique, on the other hand, is to resolve contradictions and transcend existing forms of alienation in concrete historical reality, not merely in thought.

(3) THE RELATION BETWEEN HEGEL'S AND MARX'S DIALECTIC In contemporary philosophy there are both tendencies to minimise and to overstress the differences between Hegel and Marx. To the first group belong : Marcuse's attempt (in Reason and Revolution) to read Hegel in a Marxian way, Bloch's interpretation of Marx as a basically Hegelian thinker, and a very widespread inclination to reduce the difference between Hegel and Marx to the one of philosophical starting point (idealism versus materialism). Marcuse was led to the overemphasis of the revolutionary aspect

of Hegel's work by the very nature of his task, by the very nature of the question he asked. Already in an early work4 on Hegel, Marcuse asked a question, the answer to which must have one-sidedly thrown

light on what really is progressive in Hegel's philosophy : the historic city of his thought. Marcuse's thesis was that HcgeI's ontology was based on the notion of life. But life, as well as Elie world pmiluesf by life, is historical-that is how life in Hegel becomes the Spirit. The idea of Spirit comes close to Marx, as Marcuse, under the influence of Dilthey, tends to identify spiritual being with the historical process of self-consciousness. Therefore he concludes his

work with Dilthey's phrase 'Der Geist i t aber in Geschichtliches W6S6I1>-5

23

THE C O N T E M P O R A R Y

MARX

Reason and Revolution was written nine 'years later with the purpose of reviving 'a mental faculty which is in danger of being obliterated : the power of negative thinking'." In this context there was not much need to discuss more conservative dimensions of Hegel's philosophy, and so, on the whole, Hegel sounds pretty much like Marx. Transcendental idealism evaporates and one is able to read that, according to Hegel, 'the true being does not reside beyond this world, but exists only in the dialectical process that perpetuates

it. No Final goal exists outside this process that might mark a salvation of the world'." 'The universal law of history is, in I-Iegel's formulation, not simply progress to freedom but, progress in the self-consciousrress of freedom." 'A set of historical tendencies becomes a law

.

. Actual subjects of history are those individuals whose acts 'spring from personal interests but in their case these become identical with the universal interest and the latter far transcends the interest of any particular group : they forge and administer the progress of history. It is not easy to see how this interpretation can be made compatible with the very basic Hegelian assumption of the Absolute Spirit, which is eternal and changeless, which resides precisely beyond this, human world, which allows freedom only within the framework of its logical structure, the categories of Which are only if man comprehends and acts on them' .

logically and historically prior to any individual or universal human interest. Ernst Bloch, on the other hand, occasionally interprets Marx in the Hegelian way. The last section 'Dialectic and hope' of his book Subject-Object" may be taken as an illustration. There Bloch invites us to action, but not to a merely negative one, a coup, an abstract spontaneity, but to 'a liberation of that which is already there, which has arrived'. He charactcrises this kind of activity, in a

typically Hegelian way, as ' a return to the native land, in which all the Nothingness in the world will be abolished' and all the obstacles to the Totality removed'. Then he says that 'the discovery of the future in the Past is philosophy of history, therefore history of philosophy' . . 'The real can become rational and the rational can be realised'--such is the phenomenology of true activity . and so on." Many passages in Bloch and some in Lukacsu are instances of an eschatological Hegelian style of interpretation of history, which

.

. .

lays down a definite end of history and conceives this end as an

24

(L

HEGELIAN AND M A R X I S T DIAUEGTIG

Priori rational pattern, that in some mysterious way exists 'in itself' before it becomes actualised. Another very simplistic solution of the problem is the view that both Hegelian and Marxian dialectic have the same content but are expressed in two different philosophical languages : idealistic and materialistic ones. Marx himself is partly responsible for this view, for example by saying in his 1873 preface to the second edition of Capital : 'In Hegel's writing dialectic stands on its head. You must

turn it right way up again if you want to discover the rational kernel that is hidden away within the wrappings of mystification.312 One gets the impression from this that there are no structural differences between the two forms of dialectic, and that simply turI1-

ing Hegel's dialectic 'the right way up' suffices to produce the

Marxian one. This is indeed the way Engels proceeded in his work on the 'dialectic of nature'. In one of the most important fragments, entitled 'Dialectic', written probably around 1879, Engels enumerated three basic 'laws of dialectic' : (I) the law of the transition of quantity into quality, (2) the law of the unity of opposites, (3) the

law of the negation of negation. He gives the credit to Hegel for having developed all those three laws 'but in his idealistic way, exclusively as laws of thought In Engels' view they must be derived from nature and history. Therefore he sets out to show, by giving various instances from mechanics, biology and chemistry, that they

are true laws of the development of nature." During the last century this approach was adopted by most 'dialectical rnatcrialists', who hardly even noticed that the method they had developed did not have much in common either with Hegelian or Marxian dialectics. Two features especially make this 'materialist reading of the

Hegelian dialectic' quite unlike the method of Capital and bring it close to both pre-Marxian materialism and later positivism : first,

the idea of 'the laws'-of nature in themselves; second, the idea of dialectic as a body of quite general knowledge which refers to something merely given, and the truth of which may be established by a

simple piling up of the facts compatible with it. Certainly Marx did not deny the existence of nature 'in itself', but as early as the 1845 Theses on Feuerbach he came to the conclusion that it was the error (of all hitherto easting materialism) to conceive reality independently of 'human sensuous activity, or practice'.14- Consequently dialectics is not concerned about how things just are but about how

25

THE CONTEMPORARY MARX

things may be Produced, superseded, and further developed by man. Dialectic is not mere knowledge, a 'methodology', but a critique of both knowledge and reality. Those dogmatic followers of Marx who needed precisely the

former and not the latter realised the advantage of cutting off their version of dialectic from Hegel completely. Thus under Stalin the view emerged that there is nothing in common between Hegelian and Marxian dialectic the whole of German classical philosophy was nothing but 'an aristocratic reaction to the French revolution'.

According to Stalin's assistant minister of higher education, Svetlov, the Hegelian dialectic was merely 'a scholastic manipulation with pure categories.515 This was clearly a complete rejection of the

philosophical testament of Lenin, who, in one of his last articles ('On the importance of a militant rnarxism'-1922), advised all con-

tributors to the new journal Under the Banner of Marxism to undertake a systematic study of Hegel's dialectic from a materialistic point of view, and to make out of their journal a sort of club of 'the materialist friends of I-Iege1's dialectic.51** A more recent and far more sophisticated attempt to construe the Hegelian and Marxian dialectics as completely disparate has taken place in Louis Althusser's Marxian structuralism. In his book For. Marx he has stressed the difiL*erence between the problems dealt with, in corresponding ideological fields, and in the social structures rcfieeted in these two forms of dialectic.

Thus he comes to the conclusion that they have completely different structures. As typical Hegelian categories, he presents : negation, the negation of the negation, the unity of opposites, tran-

scendence (Aufhebung), the transition of quantity into quality, con-

tradiction and so on. These, he maintains, either did not take place in Marx or have diElerent meanings. Therefore Althusser holds that Marx neither simply turns Hegelian dialectic right way up, nor transcends it in the Hegelian sense of Au3'hebtm.g; he demystifies it, literally abolishes it, destroys the illusion contained in it and turns back to reality." The element of truth in Althusser's position is the fact that the two dialectics are structurally different and that their basic cate Tories do not have the same meaning- It is also true that they have been created in response to different social and cultural needs, as intellectual tools of different historical aspirations.

26

H E G E L I A N A N D M A R X I S T DIALECTIC

But all this does not exclude an element of continuity between them. Ideas are not solely determined by the social conditions of their time but also by earlier ideas, or by ideas transferred from different ideological fields, and diligent socio-economic contexts. To deny this means to stick stubbornly to a very vulgarised interpretation of la/Iarx's 'materialist conception of history' (the 'basesuperstructure' model), and to fail utterly in giving an adequate account of ideological developments in the Twentieth Century." In the very theoretical foundations of Althusser's position there are ideas which are surely not mere reHections of the social and economic conditions of France of his time but have been borrowed by various authors in various times. Some of them are not only antiHegelian but also anti-Marxian. Such are, for example, the conccp~

son of a whole as an isolated Gestalt rather than as a phase of history, an over-static idea of structure, Bachelards' idea of an epistemological gap or 'coupure episternologique', and the view of negation as a 'destruction of illusion and return to reality'. On the other hand, a more detailed examination of Marxian basic dialectical concepts in the next section will show that it is simply not true that 'in the mature Marx's works there is no more

than a trace of specifically Hegelian categories Contrary to all those authors who one-sidedly lay emphasis on either discontinuity or continuity between basic notions of Hegelian and Marxian dialectic I shall try to show, as concretely as possible, how the latter really transcend the former.

(4) THE BASIG NOTIONS OF HEGELIAN AND MARXIAN DIALEGTIC

Both Hegel and Marx were concerned with the problem of the rationality of the world and the way this rationality emerges. They both assume that there was a potential for this rationality, that in the past history there has always been a discrepancy between this

potential and the actual existence of the world. They both call this situation a state of alienation, a state in which a given entity (be it the Absolute Spirit or the proletariat) fails to be what it could be, in which it is not 'for itself' and 'for others' what it really is 'in itself', i.e. a possibility which is not yet conscious of itself. The whole of history is, then, a process of self-realisation, and this in a double sense : first, because there was from the beginning a potential 'self'

27

THE C O N T E M P O R A R Y

MARX

to be actualised : second, because there will be no need for any external factor to account for rnoveanent : time and again it will be set in train by inner contradictions arising out of the limited condition of each existent form. This is the most general pattern of the dialectical process which is common in both great thinkers. All differences stem from the fact that they asked entirely different kinds of basic questions and had entirely different philosophical assumptions.

Hegel's question was : What is the rational structure of the universe and how does consciousness come to reveal it? His basic assumptions were : (I) The universe is the objectification of an Absolute Reason.

(2) A fully developed human consciousness is identical with this Absolute Reason. But it travels a long way before it reaches that

stage; it is quite poor and abstract at the very beginning (at the stage of 'sense-certainty')19 and very rich and concrete at the end (at the level of 'Absolute Knowledge').20 This process can also be described as the progress of the Absolute Spirit toward its selfconsciousness. (3) Absolute knowledge has been reached by human consciousness in the philosophical science of Hegel himself. Marx's basic question was : what is irrational in the given world and how may it be changed through human praxis? His basic assumptions were : (I) The world is a historical being, that is, the product of man acting on antecedent natural surroundings. (Q) Man has certain specifically human potential capacities and dispositions for action. Historical progress is constituted by a transi-

tion from a state in which these capacities and dispositions have been

wnuuul

¢»allllliIs states in which they will be more fully actualised from alienation to praxis.

(3) There

is

no limit to this process. The abolition of existing

forms of alienation constitutes only the end of the present historical epoch (of 'prehistory', of 'class-society?) and the beginning of true history.

This difference in orientation and in basic philosophical assumptions will profoundly affect all basic dialectical categories in Hegel and Marx, such as : totality, mediation, self-development and transcendence ('Au;'hebung'). 28

HEGELIAN

AND M A R X I S T

:DIALECTIC

(1) Totality in the I-Iegelian dialectic is a universal timeless entity which embraces all particular forms of reality, and stages of development and in relation to which any individual event obtains its significance." Totality for Mara; is human history, within which there are more particular wholes such as : the historical situation in one definite epoch, one definite mode of production, the ensemble of social relations in one historical moment etc. In both cases the

principle holds 'The true is the whole'. In both cases a study of a mere detail, of a fragment, of a partial aspect may be of value only as a stage of inquiry and should be considered an incomplete intel-

lectual product that requires integration within a broader framework. In both cases a narrow theoretical horizon, a systematically one~sided approach to a problem, a limited regional, national, racial, religious, class, epochal point of view yields results that must be superseded from a universal standpoint. So far there is clearly a moment of continuity between Hegelian and Marxian dialectic. But the following diHlerences are quite essential. Hegelian totality is spiritual, and in a double sense, first, as a World spirit (We ltgei5t} which is 'in itself', not yet conscious of itself, not yet known by man, second, as the Idea, Self-consciousness that

has reached the level of Absolute Knowledge. The former is quite mystical from Marx's point of view and must be considered a redundant philosophical substitute for 'God' (the expression which Hegel, as a matter of fact, uses as the synonym for 'World Spirit', or "Reason" or 'Thought' or 'Notion'). For Marx there is nothing spiritual in the world preceding the appearance of man and outside human consciousness. The only structure that is antecedent and

given in itself is Nature. But from the recognition of a certain unknown regularity of natural processes it does not follow either that this regularity is an expression of some Superhuman a .Priori Reason or that this regularity already involves all future possibilities of the world.

The totality at the end of history, the Idea, may be conceived as a product of human culture, as a fully developed human selfconsciousness. From ii/Iarx's standpoint totality in this sense is less obscure but equally unreal. Human consciousness is permanently

growing, creative, open for real novelties. It is not simply identification with some antecedent structure which cannot progress beyond a certain point in history.

29

THE CONTEMPORARY

MARX

The Marxian concept of totality is more narrow in so far as it is reduced to human history, but is much broader in so far as it embraces not only the spiritual dimension of a historical situation (its culture, its consciousness, its ideological rationalisation) but also its more basic and more objective dimensions (its productive forces,

relations of production, political institutions, laws, patterns of everyday social life).

The Hegelian and the Marxian notions of totality differ also in so far as the former is absolute, unchangeable," and systematic, whereas the latter escapes any of these characterisations. Instead of

a fixed entity one should rather speak about a process of totalisation which takes place whenever a genuinely rational human being at-

tempts to solve a problem. The process of totalisation involves three essential moments : (a) the ontological : embracing a structure of all relevant objective phenomena, disregarding any boundaries of the professional division of l a b o r , any customary political or cultural limits.

(b) the epistemological ' taking into account an a Priori body of knowledge about that structure. This a priori is a posteriori with respect to preceding intellectual history, it is not transcendental or

fixed, and will be tested and superseded during the process of inquiry. (c) the axiological z bringing to consciousness the basic practical need of inquiry. In the process of totalisation particular private needs and interests have to be subordinated to the universal end of human self-realisation and bringing human activity to the level of praxis. (2) Mediation. What makes a totality possible in both Hegelian and Marxian dialectic is mediation. Both analytical and phenomenological method involve the assumption that, through a certain procedure of reduction (epohé in Husserl, translation into a more

precise language in Russell, early Wittgenstein or Gar rap), one could reach the immediately given entities (essences--eidos-in Husserl, atoms of experience-sense data- in analytical philosophers). Dialectical procedure, on the contrary, starts from apparently immedi-

ate entities: sensation, perception, common sense evidence, and shows that pure immediacy is an illusion, that everything is mediated and develops through mediation. Which means : (a) everything

is

what it is in relation to something else; any property of an

30

HEGELIAN

A N D. M A R X I S T

DIALECTIC

object involves a relation toward another object, outside of this relation it is without any content, it is meaningless. (b) No matter how immediate an object might look it contains another in itself; a closer examination will discover that it is polarised into opposite moments which negate each other. (co Any two entities which, taken in their immediacy, seecrn to exclude each other are in fact determined through each other, one does not make sense without the other. Mediation is thus (a) revealing the essence of an immediate

being, (b) polarisation of an apparently simple, self-identical thing, (c) unification of opposites. A very clear illustration of mediation may be found in the first chapter of Hegel's Phenomenology

of Mind, on 'Sense-certainty'.

Our knowledge of the immediate of what is given 'not altering anything in it as it is presented before us and keeping mere apprehension free from conceptual comprehension appears to be the richest, the tiniest, the I n s t authentic knowledge'. But 'when we look closely we realise that this knowledge is not merely immediate, merely is in

sense-certainty, but is at the same time mediated Simple immediacy of 'this' breaks up into two 'thises', one is I, another is object. I have the certainty through the other-the object, and the object exists in certainty through the I. At First the object seems to be immediate, essential reality because it exists Per se and is 'quite indifferent to whether it is known or not." However as soon as we ask what is the meaning of that object we begin to mediate it. No matter how we try to characterise it we use expressions of language, and even the seemingly most concrete terms such as "Now" and 'I-Iere' are universals. They cover different possible experiences and

each of them is definite only in so far as it denies the other : nighttime is not noon~tisne, a tree is not a house etc. 'The This is shown thus again to he mediated simplicity, in other words, to be universality.J2°"

I-Iegel's explanation of the category of essence in his Logic is

another clear ease of mediation in a sense which is also acceptable for l\'Iarz