The Marxist Doctrine
Marxism is the system of Marx's views and teachings. Marx
was the genius who continued and consummated the three main ideological
currents of the 19th century, as represented by the three most advanced
countries of mankind: classical German philosophy, classical English political
economy, and French socialism combined with French revolutionary doctrines
in general. Acknowledged even by his opponents, the remarkable consistency
and integrity of Marx's views, whose totality constitutes modern materialism
and modern scientific socialism, as the theory and programme of the working-class
movement in all the civilized countries of the world, make it incumbent
on us to present a brief outline of his world-conception in general, prior
to giving an exposition of the principal content of Marxism, namely, Marx's
economic doctrine.
PHILOSOPHICAL MATERIALISM
Beginning with the years 1844-45, when his views took shape, Marx was a
materialist and especially a follower of Ludwig Feuerbach, whose weak point
he subsequently saw only in his materialism being insufficiently consistent
and comprehensive. To Marx, Feuerbach's historic and "epoch-making" significance
lay in his having resolutely broken with Hegel's idealism and in his proclamation
of materialism, which already "in the 18th century, particularly French
materialism, was not only a struggle against the existing political institutions
and against... religion and theology, but also... against all metaphysics"
(in the sense of "drunken speculation" as distinct from "sober philosophy").
(The Holy Family, in Literarischer Nachlass)
"To Hegel... ," wrote Marx, "the process of thinking, which, under
the name of 'the Idea', he even transforms into an independent subject,
is the demiurgos (the creator, the maker) of the real world.... With me,
on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected
by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought." (Capital,
Vol. I, Afterward to the Second Edition)
In full conformity with this materialist philosophy of Marx's, and expounding
it, Frederick Engels wrote in Anti-Duhring (read by Marx in the
manuscript):
"The real unity of the world consists in its materiality, and this
is proved... by a long and wearisome development of philosophy and natural
science....
"Motion is the mode of existence of matter. Never anywhere has
there been matter without motion, or motion without matter, nor can there
be.... Bit if the... question is raised: what thought and consciousness
really are, and where they come from; it becomes apparent that they are
products of the human brain and that main himself is a product of Nature,
which has developed in and along with its environment; hence it is self-evident
that the products of the human brain, being in the last analysis also products
of Nature, do not contradict the rest of Nature's interconnections but
are in correspondence with them....
"Hegel was an idealist, that is to say, the thoughts within his
mind were to him not the more or less abstract images [Abbilder,
reflections; Engels sometimes speaks of "imprints"] of real things and
processes, but on the contrary, things and their development were to him
only the images, made real, of the 'Idea' existing somewhere or other before
the world existed."
In his Ludwig Feuerbach -- which expounded his own and Marx's views
on Feuerbach's philosophy, and was sent to the printers after he had re-read
an old manuscript Marx and himself had written in 1844-45 on Hegel, Feuerbach
and the materialist conception of history -- Engels wrote:
"The great basic question of all philosophy, especially of more recent
philosophy, is the relation of thinking and being... spirit to Nature...
which is primary, spirit or Nature.... The answers which the philosophers
gave to this question split them into two great camps. Those who asserted
the primary of spirit to Nature and, therefore, in the last instance, assumed
world creation in some form or other... comprised the camp of idealism.
The others, who regarded Nature as primary, belonged to the various schools
of materialism."
Any other use of the concepts of (philosophical) idealism and materialism
leads only to confusion. Marx decidedly rejected, not only idealism, which
is always linked in one way or another with religion, but also the views
-- especially widespread in our day -- of Hume and Kant, agnosticism, criticism,
and positivism in their various forms; he considered that philosophy
a "reactionary" concession to idealism, and at best a "shame-faced way
of surreptitiously accepting materialism, while denying it before the world."
On this question, see, besides the works by Engels and Marx mentioned above,
a letter Marx wrote to Engels on December 12, 1868, in which, referring
to an utterance by the naturalist Thomas Huxley, which was "more materialistic"
than usual,, and to his recognition that "as long as we actually observe
and think, we cannot possibly get away from materialism", Marx reproached
Huxley for leaving a "loop hole" for agnosticism, for Humism.
It is particularly important to note Marx's view on the relation between
freedom and necessity: "Freedom is the appreciation of necessity. 'Necessity
is blind only insofar as it is not understood.'" (Engels in Anti-Duhring)
This means recognition of the rule of objective laws in Nature and of the
dialectical transformation of necessity into freedom (in the same manner
as the transformation of the uncognized but cognizable "thing-in-itself"
into the "thing-for-us", of the "essence of things" into "phenomena). Marx
and Engels considered that the "old" materialism, including that of Feuerbach
(and still more the "vulgar" materialism of Buchner, Vogt and Moleschott),
contained the following major shortcomings:
(1) this materialism was "predominantly mechanical," failing to take
account of the latest developments in chemistry and biology (today it would
be necessary to add: and in the electrical theory of matter);
(2) the old materialism was non-historical and non-dialectical (metaphysical,
in the meaning of anti-dialectical), and did not adhere consistently and
comprehensively to the standpoint of development;
(3) it regarded the "human essence" in the abstract, not as the "complex
of all" (concretely and historically determined) "social relations", and
therefore morely "interpreted" the world, whereas it was a question of
"changing" it, i.e., it did not understand the importance of "revolutionary
practical activity".
DIALECTICS
As the most comprehensive and profound doctrine of development, and the
richest in content, Hegelian dialectics was considered by Marx and Engels
the greatest achievement of classical German philosophy. They thought that
any other formulation of the principle of development, of evolution, was
one-sided and poor in content, and could only distort and mutilate the
actual course of development (which often proceeds by leaps, and via catastrophes
and revolutions) in Nature and in society.
"Marx and I were pretty well the only people to rescue conscious dialectics
[from the destruction of idealism, including Hegelianism] and apply it
in the materialist conception of Nature.... Nature is the proof of dialectics,
and it must be said for modern natural science that it has furnished extremely
rich [this was written before the discovery of radium, electrons, the transmutation
of elements, etc.!] and daily increasing materials for this test, and has
thus proved that in the last analysis Nature's process is dialectical and
not metaphysical.
"The great basic thought," Engels writes, "that the world is not
to be comprehended as a complex of ready-made things, but as a complex
of processes, in which the things apparently stable no less than their
mind images in our heads, the concepts, go through an uninterrupted change
of coming into being and passing away... this great fundamental thought
has, especially since the time of Hegel, so thoroughly permeated ordinary
consciousness that in this generality it is now scarcely ever contradicted.
But to acknowledge this fundamental thought in words and to apply it in
reality in detail to each domain of investigation are two different things....
For dialectical philosophy nothing is final, absolute, sacred. It reveals
the transitory character of everything and in everything; nothing can endure
before it except the uninterrupted process of becoming and of passing away,
of endless ascendancy from the lower to the higher. And dialectical philosophy
itself is nothing more than the mere reflection of this process in the
thinking brain." Thus, according to Marx, dialectics is "the science of
the general laws of motion, both of the external world and of human though."
This revolutionary aspect of Hegel's philosophy was adopted and developed
by Marx. Dialectical materialism "does not need any philosophy standing
above the other sciences." From previous philosophy there remains "the
science of thought and its laws -- formal logic and dialectics." Dialectics,
as understood by Marx, and also in conformity with Hegel, includes what
is now called the theory of knowledge, or epistemology, studying and generalizing
the original and development of knowledge, the transition from non-knowledge
to knowledge.
In our times, the idea of development, of evolution, has almost
completely penetrated social consciousness, only in other ways, and not
through Hegelian philosophy. Still, this idea, as formulated by Marx and
Engels on the basis of Hegels' philosophy, is far more comprehensive and
far richer in content than the current idea of evolution is. A development
that repeats, as it were, stages that have already been passed, but repeats
them in a different way, on a higher basis ("the negation of the negation"),
a development, so to speak, that proceeds in spirals, not in a straight
line; a development by leaps, catastrophes, and revolutions; "breaks in
continuity"; the transformation of quantity into quality; inner impulses
towards development, imparted by the contradiction and conflict of the
various forces and tendencies acting on a given body, or within a given
phenomenon, or within a given society; the interdependence and the closest
and indissoluble connection between all aspects of any phenomenon
(history constantly revealing ever new aspects), a connection that provides
a uniform, and universal process of motion, one that follows definite laws
-- these are some of the features of dialectics as a doctrine of development
that is richer than the conventional one. (Cf. Marx's letter to Engels
of January 8, 1868, in which he ridicules Stein's "wooden trichotomies,"
which it would be absurd to confuse with materialist dialectics.)
THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY
A realization of the inconsistency, incompleteness, and onesidedness of
the old materialism convinced Marx of the necessity of "bringing the science
of society... into harmony with the materialist foundation, and of reconstructing
it thereupon." Since materialism in general explains consciousness as the
outcome of being, and not conversely, then materialism as applied to the
social life of mankind has to explain social consciousness as the
outcome of social being. "Technology," Marx writes (Capital,
Vol. I), "discloses man's mode of dealing with Nature, the immediate process
of production by which he sustains his life, and thereby also lays bare
the mode of formation of his social relations, and of the mental conceptions
that flow from them."
In the preface to his Contribution to the Critique
of Political Economy, Marx gives an integral formulation of the fundamental
principles of materialism as applied to human society and its history,
in the following words:
"In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations
that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production
which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive
forces.
"The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the
economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal
and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of
social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions
the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not
the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary,
their social being that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage
of their development, the material productive forces of society come in
conflict with the existing relations of production, or -- what is but a
legal expression for the same thing -- with the property relations within
which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the
productive forces these relation turn into their fetters. Then begins an
epoch of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation
the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed.
In considering such transformations a distinction should always be made
between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production,
which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the
legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic -- in short, ideological
forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.
"Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he
thinks of himself, so we cannot judge of such a period of transformation
by its own consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained
rather from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict
between the social productive forces and the relations of production....
In broad outlines, Asiatic, ancient, feudal, and modern bourgeois modes
of production can be designated as progressive epochs in the economic formation
of society." [29]
(Cf. Marx's brief formulation in a letter to Engels dated July 7, 1866:
"Our theory that the organization of labor is determined by the means of
production.")
The discovery of the materialist conception of history, or more correctly,
the consistent continuation and extension of materialism into the domain
of social phenomena, removed the two chief shortcomings in earlier historical
theories. In the first place, the latter at best examined only the ideological
motives in the historical activities of human beings, without investigating
the origins of those motives, or ascertaining the objective laws government
the development of the system of social relations, or seeing the roots
of these relations in the degree of development reached by material production;
in the second place, the earlier theories did not embrace the activities
of the masses of the population, whereas historical materialism
made it possible for the first time to study with scientific accuracy the
social conditions of the life of the masses, and the changes in those conditions.
At
best, pre-Marxist "sociology" and historiography brought forth an accumulation
of raw facts, collected at random, and a description of individual aspects
of the historical process. By examining the totality of opposing
tendencies, by reducing them to precisely definable conditions of life
and production of the various classes of individual aspects of the
historical process. By examining the choice of a particular "dominant"
idea or in its interpretation, and by revealing that, without exception,
all ideas and all the various tendencies stem from the condition
of the material forces of production, Marxism indicated the way to an all-embracing
and comprehensive study of the process of the rise, development, and decline
of socio-economic systems. People make their own history but what determines
the motives of people, of the mass of people -- i.e., what is the sum total
of all these clashes in the mass of human societies? What are the objective
conditions of production of material life that form the basis of all man's
historical activity? What is the law of development of these conditions?
To all these Marx drew attention and indicated the way to a scientific
study of history as a single process which, with all its immense variety
and contradictoriness, is governed by definite laws.
THE CLASS STRUGGLE
It is common knowledge that, in any given society, the striving of some
of its members conflict with the strivings of others, that social life
is full of contradictions, and that history reveals a struggle between
nations and societies, as well as within nations and societies, and, besides,
an alternation of periods of revolution and reaction, peace and war, stagnation
and rapid progress or decline. Marxism has provided the guidance -- i.e.,
the theory of the class struggle -- for the discovery of the laws governing
this seeming maze and chaos. It is only a study of the sum of the strivings
of all the members of a given society or group of societies that can lead
to a scientific definition of the result of those strivings. Now the conflicting
strivings stem from the difference in the position and mode of life of
the classes into which each society is divided.
"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class
struggles," Marx wrote in the Communist Manifesto (with the exception
of the history of the primitive community, Engels added subsequently).
"Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master
and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition
to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight,
a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstruction
of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes....
The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal
society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established
new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place
of the old ones. Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however,
this distinctive feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society
as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps,
into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat."
Ever since the Great French Revolution, European history has, in a number
of countries, tellingly revealed what actually lies at the bottom of events
-- the struggle of classes. The Restoration period in France already produced
a number of historians (Thierry, Guizot, Mignet, and Thiers) who, in summing
up what was taking place, were obliged to admit that the class struggle
was taking place, were obliged to admit that the class struggle was the
key to all French history. The modern period -- that of complete victory
of the bourgeoisie, representative institutions, extensive (if not universal)
suffrage, a cheap daily press that is widely circulated among the masses,
etc., a period of powerful and every-expanding unions of workers and unions
of employers, etc. -- has shown even more strikingly (though sometimes
in a very one-sided, "peaceful", and "constitutional" form) the class struggle
as the mainspring of events. The following passage from Marx's Communist
Manifesto will show us what Marx demanded of social science as regards
an objective analysis of the position of each class in modern society,
with reference to an analysis of each class's conditions of development:
"Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today,
the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes
decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the proletariat
is its special and essential product. The lower middle class, the small
manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight
against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions
of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative.
Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of
history. If by chance they are revolutionary, they are so only in view
of their impending transfer into the proletariat; they thus defend not
their present, but their future interests; they desert their own standpoint
to place themselves at that of the proletariat."
In a number of historical works (see Bibliography), Marx gave brilliant
and profound examples of materialist historiography, of an analysis of
the position of each individual class, and sometimes of various
groups or strata within a class, showing plainly why and how "every class
struggle is a political struggle." The above-quoted passage is an illustration
of what a complex network of social relations and transitional stages
from one class to another, from the past to the future, was analyzed by
Marx so as to determine the resultant of historical development.
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