HISTORY AND CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS WHAT IS ORTHODOX MARXISM? conditions are all satisfied will the unity of theory and practice, Materialist dialectic is a revolutionary dialectic. This definition the precondition of the revolutionary function of the theory, so important and altogether so crucial for an understanding become possil hat if the problem is to be approached in the right Such a situation has in fact arisen with the entry of the prole ray this must be fully grasped before we venture upon a discus- tariat into history "When the proletariat proclaims the dissolu- sion of the dialectical method itself. The issue turns on the tion of the existing social order ,"Marx declares, "it does question of theory and practice. And this not merely in the sense more than disclose the secret of its own existence, for it is the given it by Marx when he says in his first critique ffective dissolution of that order "24 The links between the heory becomes a material force when it grips the masses", theory that affirms this and the revolution are not just arbitrary, Even more to the point is the need to discover those features and nor are they particularly tortuous or open to misunderstanding. definitions both of the theory and the ways of gripping the masses On the contrary, the theory is essentially the intellectual expres which convert the theory, the dialectical method, into a vehicle of sion of the revolutionary process itself. In it every stage of the revolution. We must extract the practical essence of the theory process becomes fixed so that it may be generalised, communi- from the method and its relation to its object. If this is not done ated, utilised and developed, Because the theory does nothing but that 'gripping the masses'could well turn out to be a will o'the arrest and make conscious each necessary step, it becomes at wisp. It might turn out that the masses were in the grip of quite different forces, that they were in pursuit of quite different ends To be clear about the function of theory is also to understand In that event, there would be no necessary connection between its own basis, i.e. dialectical method. This point is absolutely the theory and their activity, it would be a form that enables the crucial, and because it has been overlooked much confusion has asses to become conscious of their socially necessary or fortuitous been introduced into discussions of dialectics. Engels'arguments actions, without ensuring a genuine and necessary bond between in the Anti-Dahring decisively influenced the later life of the theory. However we regard them, whether we grant them classical consciousness and action status or whether we criticise them, deem them to be incomplete or even flawed, we must still agree that this aspect is nowhere ot enough that thought should seek to realise itself; reality must treated in them. That is to say, he contrasts the ways in which also strive towards thought. "Or, as he expresses it in an earlier concepts are formed in dialectics as opposed to 'metaphysics work:"It will then be realised that the world has long since he stresses the fact that in dialectics the definite contours of con- possessed something in the form of a dream which it need only cepts(and the objects they represent)are dissolved. Dialectics, is a continuou of transition from one defini- take possession of consciously, in order to Only when consciousness stands in such a relation to reality can tion into the other. In consequence a one-sided and rigid causality eory and practice be united. But for this to happen the emer laced by interaction. but he does not even mention gence of consciousness must become the decisive step which the the most vital interaction, namely the dialectical relation between historical process must take towards its proper end (an en subject and object in the historical Process, let alone give it the pror constituted by the wills of men, but neither dependent on human nence it deserves. Yet without this factor dialectics ceases to be whim, nor the product of human invention). The historical revolutionary, despite attempts (illusory in the last analys. function of theory is to make this step a practical possibility. to retain concepts. For it implies a failure to recognise Only when a historical situation has arisen in which a class that in all metaphysics the object remains untouched and unal nust understand society if it is to assert itself; only when the fact tered so that thought remains contemplative and fails to become that a class understands itself means that it understands society practical; while for the dialectical method the central problem as a whole and when, in consequence, the class becomes both the subject and the object of knowledge; in short, only when these If this central function of the theory is disregarded, the virtues
WHAT IS ORTHODOX MARXISM 5 HISTORY AND CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS of forming fluid'concepts become altogether problematic: a This objection to dialectical method has been voiced most purely 'scientific' matter. The theory might then be accepted or clearly and cogently by Bernstein, thanks in part to a freedom rejected in accordance with the prevailing state of science without from bias'unclouded by any philosophical knowledge. However any modification at all to one's basic attitudes, to the question the very re al political and economic conclusions he deduces from ther or not reality can be changed. Indeed, as the so- this desire to liberate method from the 'dialectical snares'of hegelianism, show clearly where this course leads. They show that it is precisely the dialectic that must be removed if one wishes to found a thoroughgoing opportunistic theory, a theory of ' evolu the classical economics with which it is so closely bound up, is tion'without revolution and of natural development'into Social- impenetrable, fatalistic and immutable That Machism can also ism without any confict. give birth to an equally bourgeois voluntarism does not contra- dict this. Fatalism and voluntarism are only mutually contradi tory to an undialectical and unhistorical mind. In the dialectical view of history they prove to be necessarily We are now faced with the question of the methodological opposites, intellectual reflexes clearly expressing implications of these so-called facts that are idolised throughout of capitalist society and the intractability of its the whole of Revisionist literature. To what extent may we look conceived in its own terms to them to provide guide- lines for the actions of the revolutionary For this reason all attempts to deepen the dialectical method proletariat? It goes without saying that all knowledge starts from with the aid of criticism'inevitably lead to a more superficial the facts. The only question is: which of the data of life are rele view. For criticism'always starts with just this separation between ant to knowledge and in the context of which method? nethod and reality, between thought and being. And it is just The blinkered empiricist will of course deny that facts can this separation that it holds to be an improvement deserving of become facts within the framework of a system-which will vary every praise for its introduction of true scientific rigour into the with the knowledge desired. He believes that every piece of data crude, uncritical materialism of the Marxian method. Of course, rom economic life, every statistic, every raw event already no one denies the right of'criticism to do this. But if it does so we constitutes an important fact. In so doing he forgets that however must insist that it will be moving counter to the essential spirit simple an enur be. however lac of dialectics commentary, it already implies an 'interpretation. Already at The statements of Marx and Engels on this point could hardly this stage the facts have been comprehended by a theory, a be more explicit. "Dialectics thereby reduced itself to the science method; they have been wrenched from their living context of the general laws of motion-both in the external world and in and fitted into a theory. e thought of man-two sets of laws which are identical in More sophisticated opportunists would readily grant this substance"(Engels). Marx formulated it even more precisely despite their profound and instinctive dislike of all theory. They "In the stud f economic categori in the case seck refuge in the methods of natural science, in the way in which historical and social science it must be borne in mind that science distills pure' facts and places them in the relevant the categories are therefore but forms of being, conditions of existence contexts by means of observation, abstraction and experiment If this meaning of dialectical method is obscured, dialectics must They then oppose this ideal model of knowledge to the forced inevitably begin to look like a superfluous additive, a mere orna- constructions of the dialectical method ment of Marxist 'sociology'or'economics'. Even worse, it will If such methods seem plausible at first this is because capitalism appear as an obstacle to the sober,impartial' study of the tends to produce a social structure that in great measure en facts,, as an empty construct in whose name Marxism does courages such views, But for that very reason we need the dialecti iolence to the facts. cal method to puncture the social illusion so produced and help
WHAT IS ORTHODOX MARXISM? us to glimpse the reality underlying it. The pure' facts of the developments. For this reason, it is only too often necessary in natural sciences arise when a phenomenon of the real world is current history, to treat this, the most decisive factor, as constar placed(in thought or in reality) into an environment where its and the economic situation existing at the beginning of the period laws can be inspected without outside interference. This process concerned as given and unalterable for the whole period, or else is reinforced by reducing the phenomena to their purely quantita- to take notice of only those changes in the situation as arise ou tive essence, to their expression in numbers and numerical rela- of the patently manifest ever tions Opportunists always fail to recognise that it is in the nature likewise, patently manifest,ts themselves and are therefore, of capitalism to process phenomena in this way. Marx gives an Thus we perceive that there is son incisive account?of such a process of abstraction'in the case of in the fact that capitalist society is predisposed to harmonise with that he but he does not omit to point out with equal vigour scientific method, to constitute indeed the social premises of its exactness. If the internal structure of the facts,of their intercon society. "Thus the most general abstractions commonly appear nections is essentially historical, if, that is to say, they are caught where there is the highest concrete development, where one up in a process of continuous transformation, then we may feature appears to be shared by many, and to be common to all. indeed question when the greater scientific inaccuracy occurs. hen it cannot be thought of any longer in one particular form.' It is when I conceive of the facts'as existing in a form and But this tendency in capitalism goes even further. The fetishist s subject to laws concerning which I have a methodological character of economic forms, the reification of all human relations, certainty(or at least probability) that they no longer apply to the constant expansion and extension of the division of labour these facts Or is it when i consciously take this situation into which subjects the process of production to an abstract, rational account, cast a critical eye at the 'exactitude' attainable by such analysis, without regard to the human potentialities and abilities a method and concentrate instead on those points where this of the immediate producers, all these things transform the phenom- historical aspect, this decisive fact of change rea ena of society and with them the way in which they are perceived. itself? In this way arise the isolated facts, isolatedcomplexes of The historical character of the 'facts' which science seems to facts, separate, specialist disciplines(economics, law, etc. )whose have grasped with such purity makes itself felt in an even more devastating manner. As the products of historical evolution they very appearance seems to have done much such scientific methods. It thus appears extraordinarily 'scientific are involved in continuous change. But in addition they are also to think out the tendencies implicit in the facts them and to precisely in their objective structure the products of a definite historical promote this activity to the status of science. epoch, namely capitalism. Thus when 'science' maintains that the By contrast, in the teeth of all these isolated and isolating facts and partial systems, dialectics insists on the concrete unity of the adequate foundation of scientific conceptualisation and that the whole. Yet although it exposes these appearances for the illusions actual form of these data is the appropriate starting point for the they are-albeit illusions necessarily engendered by capitalism- formation of scientific concepts, it thereby takes its stand simply in this'scientific'atmosphere it still gives the impression of bei and dogmatically on the basis of capitalist society. It uncritically accepts the nature of the object as it is given and the laws of that an arbitrary construction. The unscientific nature of this seemingly so scientific metho society as the unalterable foundation of science consists, then, in its failure to see and take account of the historical In order to progress from these facts' to facts in the true character of the facts on which it is based This is the source of more meaning of the word it is necessary to perceive their historical than one error(constantly overlooked by the practitioners of the conditioning as such and to abandon the point of view that would method) to which Engels has explicitly drawn attention. The see them as immediately given: they must themselves be subjected nature of this source of error is that statistics and the 'exact' to a historical and dialectical examination. For as Marx says: economic theory based upon them always lag behind actual " The finished pattern of economic relations as seen on the surface
HISTORY AND CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS WHAT IS ORTHODOX MARXISM in their real existence and consequently in the ideas with which The concrete is concrete, Marx says, " because it is a synthesi the agents and bearers of these relations seek to understand them, of many particular determinants, i. e a unity of diverse elements.' is very different from, and indeed quite the reverse of and an Idealism succumbs here to the delusion of confusing the tagonistic to their inner, essential but concealed core and the intellectual reproduction of reality with the actual structure of reality itself. For"in thought, reality appears as the process of If the facts are to be understood this distinction between their synthesis, not as starting-point, but as outcome, although it is the real existence and their inner core must be grasped clearly and real starting-point and hence the starting-point fo recisely. This distinction is the first premise of a truly scientific and ideas. udy which in Manx's words, would be superfluous if the outward Conversely, the vulgar materialists, even in the modern guise appearance of things coincided with their essence. 10 Thus we donned by Bernstein and others, do not go beyond the reproduc- must detach the phenomena from the form in which they are tion of the immediate, simple determinants of social life. They immediately given and discover the intervening links which magine that they are being quite extraordinarily'exact'when they connect them to their core, their essence. In so doing, we shall simply take over these determinants without either analysing them arrive at an understanding of their apparent form and see it as ther or welding them into a concrete totality. They take the the form in which the inner core necessarily appears. It is neces- cts in abstract isolation, explaining them only in terms of ry because of the historical character of the facts, because they abstract laws unrelated to the concrete totality. As Marx ob- <ve grown in the soil of capitalist society This twofold character, serves:Crudeness and conceptual nullity consist in the tendene e simultaneous recognition and transcendence of immediate to forge arbitrary unmediated connections between things tha appearances is precisely the dialectical nexus. In this respect, superficial readers imprisoned in the modes of The crudeness and conceptual nullity of such thought lies thought created by capitalism, experienced the gravest difficulties primarily in the fact that it obscures the historical, transitory in comprehending the structure of thought in Capital. For on nature of capitalist society. Its determinants take on the appear- he one hand, Marx's account pushes the capitalist nature of all ance of timeless, eternal categories valid for all social formations. economic forms to their furthest limits, he creates an intellectual This could be seen at its crassest in the vulgar bourgeois econo- milieu where they can exist in their purest form by positing a mists, but the vulgar Marxists soon followed in their footsteps. he dialectical method was overthrown and with it the methodo- through, consisting of none but capitalists and proletarians, gical supremacy of the totality over the individual aspects But conversely, no sooner does this strategy produce results, no sooner does this world of phenomena seem to be on the point of whole and. instead, the whole was dismissed as unscientific or crystallising out into theory than it dissolves into a mere illusion, else it degenerated into the mere idea or 'sum of the parts. a distorted situation appears as in a distorting mirror which is, the fetishistic relations of cious expression of an im isolated parts appeared as a timeless law valid for every human Only in this context which sees the isolated facts of social life Marxs dictum: "The relations of production of every society as aspects of the historical process and integrates them in a form a whole"13 is the methodological point of departure and the totality, can knowledge of the facts hope to become knowledge key to the historical understanding of social relations. All the of reality. This knowledge starts from the simple(and to the isolated partial categories can be thought of and treated-in capitalist world), pure, immediate, natural determinants described isolation-as something that is always present in ever above. It progresses from them to the knowledge of the concrete it cannot be found in a given society this is put down to to the conceptual reproduction of reality. This as the exception that proves the rule. )But the changes crete totality is by no means an unmediated datum for thought these individual aspects are subject give no clear and unambiguous
HISTORY AND CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS WHAT IS ORTHODOX MARXISM? 10 picture of the real differences in the various stages of the evolu death to understand its own system of production in terms of tion of society. These can really only be discerned in the context eternally valid categories: it must think of capitalism as being of the total historical process of their relation to society as a whole. destined to eternal survival by the eternal laws of nature and Bason. Conversely, contradictions that cannot be ignored must pe shown to be purely surface phenomena, unrelated to this ode of pro This dialectical conception of totality seems to have put a The method of classical economics was a product of this ideolo- great distance between itself and reality, it appears to construe gical need. But also its limitations as a science are a consequence reality very unscientifically. But it is the only method capable of the structure of capitalist reality and the antagonistic character of capitalist production. When, for example, a thinker of Ricardos therefore, the category that governs reality 4 The rightness of stature can deny the"necessity of expanding the market along this view only emerges with complete clarity when we direct our with the expansion of production and the growth of capital attention to the real, material substratum of our method, viz. he does so (unconsciously of course), to avoid the necessity of capitalist society with its internal antagonism between the forces admitting that crises are nevitable. For crises are the most striking illustration of the antagonisms in capitalist production nd it is evident that"the bourgeois mode of production implies limitation to the free development of the forces of production". e diction and antagonism in its subject matter. If, despite this, what was good faith in Ricardo became a consciously mislead. contradictions do spring up between particular theories, this ing apologia of bourgeois society in the writings of the vulgar only proves that our knowledge is as yet imperfect Contradictions economists. The vulgar Marxists arrived at the same results between theories show that these theories have reached their by seeking either the thorough-going elimination of dialectics natural limits; they must therefore be transformed and subsumed from proletarian science, or at best its'critical"refinement under even wider theories in which the contradictions finally To give a grotesque illustration, Max Adler wished to make a critical distinction between dialectics as method, as the move- disappear. But we maintain that in the case of social reality thes ment of thought on the one hand and the dialectics of being, as dictions are not a sign of the imperfect understanding of metaphysics on the other. His criticism'culminates in the sharp eparation of dialectics from both and he describes it as a"piece the nature of capitalism. When the totality is known they will not of positive science which"is what is chiefly meant by talk of real dialectics in Marxism". This dialectic might more aptly be they will be seen to be necessary contradictions arising out of the called'antagonism, for it simply" asserts tha at an opposition of this system of production. when theory (as the exists between the self-interest of an individual and the social knowledge of the whole)opens up the way to resolving these forms in which he is confined",18 By this stroke the objective contradictions it does so by revealing the real tendencies of social economic antagonism as expressed in the class struggle evaporates, evolution. For these are destined to effect a real resolution of the leaving only a conflict between the individual and society. This contradictions that have emerged in the course of history. means that neither the emergence of internal problems, nor the From this angle we see that the conflict between the dialectical collapse of capitalist society, can be seen to be necessary. The method and that ofcriticism(or vulgar materialism, Machism, end-product, whether he likes it or not, is a Kantian philosophy etc. )is a social problem. when the ideal of scientific knowledge of history. Moreover, the structure of bourgeois society is estab- is applied to nature it simply furthers the progress of science. lished as the universal form of society in general. For the central But when it is applied to society it turns out to be an ideological problem Max Adler tackles, of the real " dialectics or, better, weapon of the bourgeoisie. For the latter it is a matter of life and antagonism"is nothing but one of the typical ideological forms of