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| 1 See Lenin, Radicalism, an Infantile Disease of Communism, 1920.
218 BASIS AND SUPERSTRUCTURE Economy is no longer regarded as the foundation of the whole materialistic investigation of society, but is transformed into a mere application of the general principles formulated by the materialistic conception of history to one particular section of historical data. Besides the system of materialistic economics, which has been represented in detailed form by Marx in Capital, there are, according to this second school, other partial systems which have not yet been fully carried out but which are theoretically equally important parts of the whole of an all-comprehensive materialistic system. There are, for example, the "materialistic" systems of politics, law, philosophy, culture, etc.1 Thus the economic materialism of Marx is disintegrated into a series of separate and co-ordinated "sociological" sciences and thereby stripped of all definite historical contents as well as of its distinct revolutionary character. From a radical attack upon the whole of the present-day capitalistic mode of production it is transformed into a theoretical criticism of various aspects of the existing capitalistic system as its economic organization, its State, its educational system, its religion, art, science; a criticism which no longer necessarily leads up to a revolutionary practice, but may just as well spend itself (and actually has already spent itself) in all kinds of reforms, which nowhere surpass the bounds of the existing bourgeois society and its State.2 In order to restore the full theoretical and practical meaning of Marx's critical materialistic principle we start with the statement that the materialistic principle of Marx does not need any such completion of its propositions as was offered by the theory of the so-called "inter-actions." When Marx and Engels formulated their materialistic principle, they were fully aware 1 For a more detailed discussion of this conception of Marxism see the author's Principles of the Materialistic Conception of History, Berlin, 1922, pp. 11 et seq. 2 See the author's Marxism and Philosophy, p. 83. 219 KARL MARX of the fact that "the same economic basis by innumerable different empirical circumstances, natural conditions, race differences, external historical influences, etc., may appear in an unlimited range of variations and graduations which can only be understood by an analysis of those given empirical circumstances."1 They comprised, in their investigation of the effects of the economic basis upon the superstructure, and of the social existence upon the consciousness, as a matter of course, the concrete forms in which, e.g., the master and servant relation that naturally grows from the given mode of production, afterwards reacts upon the mode of production itself. Nor have they treated the so-called "intellectual production" as a simple reflex of material production, but rather they have represented along with the existing historical forms of material production also "the definite forms of the intellectual production corresponding to that material production and their mutual connection."2 To gain a clearer insight into the manner in which Marx and Engels dealt with the links between the economic basis and the superstructure of a given society, it is advisable to study first the manner in which they dealt with the same connection appearing within the economic structure itself. While they described the more general aspects of their materialistic method in a half-philosophical form when historical materialism was still in the making,3 they applied it in detail to the economic sphere in the scientific writings of their later period. It is here that they finally proved the superiority of their method of dealing with historical and social connections over that "crude and conceptless manner" in which the bourgeois economists first arbitrarily tore asunder the existing links between production, distribution, circulation, consumption, and then, by an afterthought, reunited them as though they were really independent existences and had not 1 See Capital, III, ii, p. 325. 2 See Marx, Theories of Surplus Value, I, pp. 381 et seq. 3 See especially the extensive MSS. of the German Ideology, 1845-46 (MEGA, I, v, pp. 1-672).
BASIS AND SUPERSTRUCTURE been arbitrarily separated by theoretical reflection. They likewise opposed the insufficient form in which some philosophers, historians, and "social belletrists" had treated those various fields as directly "identical."1 The positive standpoint of historical materialism appears from a statement in which Marx summed up a thorough analysis of the various ways in which the different spheres of production, distribution, etc., can be said to condition each other: — "The result is not that production, distribution, exchange, consumption, etc., are identical, but that they all are 'moments' of a totality, differences within a unity. Production encroaches over the other 'moments.' From it the whole process begins always anew ... It follows that a definite form of production conditions definite forms of consumption, distribution, exchange, and the definite relations prevailing between those different 'moments' themselves. It is true that production in its narrower definition is in turn determined by other 'moments' ; for instance, when the market expands, i.e., when the sphere of exchange enlarges, production grows in extent and subdivides within itself. Again production is affected by a change in the distribution, e.g., by a concentration of capital, by a change in the distribution of the population between town and country, etc. Finally, the needs of consumption determine production. There is an interaction between the various 'moments.' Such is the case with every organic unity."2 There was then, as against the manner in which the materialistic principle had been applied by its initiators themselves, no needs of that violent criticism which was at a later time directed by Friedrich Engels against the so-called "one-sidedness" of the materialistic principle. This apparent "self-criticism" which is embodied in a series of letters written by Engels in the 90's to several younger adherents
2 Ibid. p. 744. 221 KARL MARX of the Marxian theory1 and which since then has been the main source of inspiration to all revisionist and bourgeois "improvers" of Marx's revolutionary materialistic principle, was in truth directed against a too dogmatic and abstract interpretation of historical materialism, which had then arisen in the writings of some of the younger of its most ardent supporters, e.g., in the "Lessing Legend" of Franz Mehring.2 There is no doubt that here as in many other cases, Engels overstated his own and Marx's responsibility for the mistakes committed by their followers, when he declared that "at first we all have neglected the formal aspect too much in favour of the contents."3 He thus unintentionally supported that other school of the younger generation of Marxists who under the cover of an attack on a too simple and "vulgar" interpretation of Marx's materialism really aimed at depriving the new doctrine of its revolutionary implications in order to make it acceptable to the bourgeoisie. It was just the struggle waged by that new Marxist school in the theoretical arena against Mehring's somewhat abstract presentment of Marx's materialism, that opened the way for the new "revisionistic" tendency which was later to get the upper hand in the German Marxist party and trade union movement and to lead it through the events of 1914 to 1918 to its complete annihilation in 1933. 1 See Dokumentc des Sozialismus, vol. II, 1903, and for an English translation Sidney Hook, Towards the understanding of Karl Marx, 1933, Appendix 1-3. The addressees were either people who like the Sombart student, Walter Borgius (Heinz Starkenburg), had never really endorsed the revolutionary implications of Marxism or, like Conrad Schmidt and J. Bloch, from apparently hopeful pupils of Marxism developed in a very short time to theoretical exponents of the revisionistic wing of the German social democratic party. The historical function performed by these letters in the later development was foreshadowed by the fact that they were first published in 1903, amidst the famous debate on the "revisionistic" issue and, in fact, by the leading initiator of revisionism, Eduard Bernstein, himself. 2 See Neue Zeit, X, i (1892), pp. 540 et seq. 3 See the section of Engels' letter of 14.7.1893 reproduced by Mehring in the notes added to the 1st vol. of his History of German Social Democracy (English translation by Hook l.c. Appendix 4).
BASIS AND SUPERSTRUCTURE The assumed one-sidedness of the Marxian materialistic conception of history exists in truth only in its abstract formulation. A theoretical statement of the connections between the economic, political, juridical, and intellectual structure of a given society unavoidably generalizes, to a certain extent, the definite historical facts, from which it is derived and to which it is to be applied as a working principle by the scientific investigator and by the practical politician. They are indeed "one-sided" as compared with the imaginary "completeness" of the actual historical "experience" or, for that matter, with the mere copying of reality which is the aim of a purely descriptive historical science, or with that "concrete" reproduction of the real which may be achieved by an artistic representation. But that "one-sidedness" is only another name for the generality of the scientific form. One might as well complain of the "one-sidedness" of the physicists who subject the many different kinds of movement of inanimate and animate bodies to the law of gravity, without taking into account the "modifications" brought about by secondary conditions. Just as with the laws of physics and technology, the apparent "one-sidedness" adhering to the "laws" of social being, historical development, and practical action as formulated by Marx, in no way interferes with their practical and theoretical utility, nay more, that utility depends upon the "one-sidedness" of their theoretical formulation. The "watering" process applied to the materialistic scheme by the Marxist "sociologists" does not therefore so much correct a faulty "one-sidedness" as it impairs the scientific utility of the scheme itself. The doctrine of an indifferent play of "actions" and "interactions," or of the general "interdependence of the social spheres" does not give us the slightest hint whether we should seek for the cause of a change occurring in any definite sector of social life—and thus also for the practical means of bringing about a change of the conditions existing in that sector — in the "action" of the basis on the superstructure or in the 223 KARL MARX "reaction" of the superstructure on the basis. Nor is that want of definiteness supplanted by describing in unprecise terms the economic basis as a "primary," and the superstructure as a "secondary," factor of the historical development, or by referring to the economic conditions as the "finally decisive moment." No scientist can be contented with the answer given by Engels to one of his correspondents, in which he said that, of all the conditions that form the given "environment" for human actions, "the economic conditions, however much they may be influenced themselves by conditions of a political and ideological order, are still in the last instance the decisive ones, forming the red thread which runs through the whole and alone leads to a real understanding."1 All these phrases are but useless attempts to adhere to the "dialectical" unity of substance, causality, and interaction in the Hegelian philosophical "idea",2 as against an altogether changed mode of thought prevailing during the second half of the 19th century. When that first generation of Marxist theorists who had been through the school of Hegel, or that new generation of Marxist Hegelians who have arisen in Russia since the 90's, were confronted with the question originating from quite a different general attitude and tradition of thought: — "In what sense are economic conditions causal (as sufficient reason ? occasion ? permanent condition, etc. ?) to development ?"3 their first reaction was a flood of protests against this new generation which had fallen so low that it no longer understood anything about that ars magna — Dialectics. Said Engels: — "What all these gentlemen lack, is dialectics. They never see anything but here cause and there effect. That this is an empty abstraction, that such metaphysical polar opposites exist in the real world only in time of crisis, while the whole vast process moves in the 1 See Engels' letter to Starkenburg, 25.1.1894. 2 See Hegel, Encyclopedia, §§ 142-59. 3 This was the first of the two questions addressed to Engels by Borgius (Starkenburg), the pupil of Sombart, and answered in the letter of 25.1.1894
BASIS AND SUPERSTRUCTURE form of interactions, although of very unequal forces among which the economic movement is by far the strongest, the most original, and the most decisive ; that here nothing is absolute and everything is relative, this they never begin to see ; for them there has been no Hegel."1 In all that semi-defence of Hegelian philosophy, they were nevertheless unable to save from Hegel's dialectical "idea" more than that one meagre concept of "interaction" which for Hegel had been closely connected with other concepts in the unity of a truly philosophical thought. Thus they succeeded only in adding to the abstract scientific form of causality another scientific term equally abstract, though not at all equally well-defined.2 This was not Hegel's philosophical concept, but merely that "abstract" concept which had been described by him contemptuously as a mere "refuge of reflection," and a "poor category" which was no longer sufficient for the "observation of nature and of the living organism," let alone for "historical observation." "If we consider, e.g., the customs of the Spartans as the effect of their constitution and thus, contrarywise, the latter as the effect of their customs, no matter how correct such a statement otherwise may be, yet this view will never give us final satisfaction because in truth neither the constitution nor the customs of that people are grasped in it."3 Hence those "interactions" which were supposed to preserve within the materialistic scheme of Marxism the philosophical dialectics of Hegel are neither fish nor fowl nor good red herring, they are neither Hegelian philosophy, mystically vague yet full of matter, nor are they scientific terms precisely defined 1 See Engels' letter to Conrad Schmidt of 27.10.1890. A similar attitude was adopted as late as 1914 by Lenin when he put into his notebook the following "Aphorism": — One cannot fully understand Marx's Capital, and particularly the first chapter unless one has thoroughly studied and grasped the whole of Hegel's Logic. Thus it is that after half a century none of the Marxists have understood Marx!" (See Extracts and Marginal Notes on Hegel's Science of Logic — Marx-Engels-Lenin-Institute, Moscow, 1932. P. 99). 2 See the author's Marxism and Philosophy, p. 98, footnote 56. 3 See Hegel, Encyclopedia, addition to § 156.
KARL MARX on the model of modern physics. As long as there is no sufficiently exact determination of the quantitative amount of action and reaction and of the precise conditions under which at a given time the one or the other will take place, the original statement of the materialistic principle will be in no way clarified or improved by the super-addition of so-called "interactions" which are deemed to be at one and the same time co-ordinate and subordinate to the original "causes." It is, on the contrary, deprived of all precise meaning by that utterly meaningless addition and thus transformed into a scientifically useless phrase. There is much more to be said about the peculiar quality of "one-sidedness" attached to every great revolutionary epoch-making theory. Already the earlier form of the "milieu" theory advanced by bourgeois materialists and worked out more consistently by Robert Owen in his system of communism, owed its progressive importance to that very one-sidedness which of the manifold factors in historical development stressed just the one — and the one only — which until then had been entirely neglected. It loses all importance and even the semblance of originality and depth which gives a certain flashy appearance even to the caricatured form which it subsequently assumed in Taine's belated indictment of the bourgeois revolution of the 18th century, if it is enlarged to the "impartial" statement that man is, indeed, on the one hand a product of his conditions but on the other hand is, conversely, also the cause or the "producer" of his own conditions of existence. Even more superfluous and damaging are such "supplements" to the historical and social materialism which has been developed from the "milieu" theory of early bourgeois materialism by Marx. His statement that "property relations are a juridical expression of existing production-relations" was transformed into a hackneyed commonplace by that modern German philosopher who concluded that, though on the one hand all law is to be considered as a mere form of the economic contents, on the other hand economic 226 BASIS AND SUPERSTRUCTURE phenomena must themselves be understood as mere "mass-phenomena of legal relations" and thus both are to be interchangeably explained by each other.1 Neither "dialectical causality" in its philosophical definition, nor scientific "causality" supplemented by "interactions," is sufficient to determine the particular kinds of connections and relations existing between the economic "basis" and the juridical, political, and ideological "superstructure" of a given socio-economic formation. Twentieth century natural science is aware that the "causal" relations occurring in a particular field of knowledge are not to be defined by a general concept or "law" of causality, but must be determined specifically for each separate sphere.2 The most important pioneer work for the establishment of the same scientific principle in the sphere of the historical, social, and practical life of man was done in a philosophical form by the dialectics of Hegel and continued in a form, no longer philosophical and yet not entirely separated from the Hegelian philosophy, by the materialistic dialectics of Marx and Engels. The greater part of the results thus obtained do not consist in theoretical formulae, but in the specific application of the new principle to a number of questions which are either of fundamental practical importance or of an extremely subtle nature theoretically, and which had not, up to that time, been so much as touched by other investigators.3 Even in the future the main 1 See R. Stammler, Economics and Law According to the Materialistic Conception of History, 1896. 2 See Philipp Frank, The Law of Causality and its Limits, Vienna, 1932. 3 Here belong, e.g., the questions dealing with the "uneven development" of various spheres of social life, enumerated by Marx Introduction, 1857, pp. 779 et seq.: uneven development of material and artistic production (and of the various forms of art among themselves) ; formation-process of U.S.A. as compared with that of Europe; uneven development of production-relations in form of legal relations, etc. Here belong, furthermore, Lenin's law of the "uneven development of capitalism in different countries"; the "law of combined development" discussed by Trotzky in the first chapter of his History of the Russian Revolution (1931); the law of the "lag of the ideological development" as formulated by Varga and other Marxian writers, etc.
KARL MARX task of scientific research in this field will not lie in the theoretical statement of any new formulae. To a great extent, the new results will come from a further application and testing of the principles implicit in Marx. Nor should we adhere too strictly to the words of Marx who often used his terms only figuratively as, for instance, in describing the connections here considered as a relation between "basis" and "superstructure," as a "correspondence," etc. He presented the history of society at one time as a development of material productive powers and production-relations ; at another time, as a history of the class struggle. In the same broad way, he used the terms of "basis" and "superstructure" applying them on one occasion to production-relations and such institutional phenomena as "State" and "law" and, on another occasion, to the proletariat and the "higher" strata of official society borne by that lower stratum and to be rent asunder by its upheaval.1 There is no need to smooth over such apparent contradictions by a scholastic interpretation; to say, e.g., that the organization of the workers as a social class rests on the economic conditions of a given epoch but that, at the same time, the further historical development of the economic conditions is influenced by the class struggle or, conversely, that the class struggle develops under the stimulus of the productive forces but determines, within a given period, the existing economic conditions. By the former interpretation, the term of the "productive forces," by the latter, the concept of the "class struggle" is deprived of what was with Marx their main content. While these terms may be applied also to a mere description of a given historical state of society they both attain their full and true significance only when applied to the genetic and revolutionary process by which each given form is transformed into a new and higher form of development. As a matter of fact, the "objective" description of the historical process as a development of the productive forces and the "sub- 1 See Preface 1859 and Communist Manifesto (MEGA, I, vi, p. 536). 228 BASIS AND SUPERSTRUCTURE jective" description of history as a class struggle are two independent forms of Marxian thought, equally original and not derived one from the other, which are worked out in an objective and simultaneously subjective materialistic theory for the use of the investigator and which, at the same time, are meant to be applied by the proletarian class in its practical struggle. In either case, they are to be applied singly or together, according to the conditions of each given position, as an instrument for the most precise solution of the task in hand. The Marxian concepts (as among the later Marxists was most clearly realized by Sorel and Lenin1) are not new dogmatic fetters or pre-established points which must be gone through in a particular order in any "materialistic" investigation. They are an undogmatic guide for scientific research and revolutionary action. "The proof of the pudding is in the eating." 1 See G. Sorel, Introduction à l'économic moderne, 3-me edition 1919, pp. 386 et seq. For the earliest form of Lenin's criticism of "objective" Marxism see the pamphlet, The Economic Content of Narodnikidom and its Critique in Mr. Struve's Book, 1895; for his last years, the critical comments on N. Suchannovs Notes On Our Revolution, 1923 (Collected Works I and XXVII—Russian). 229 CHAPTER VII CONCLUSIONS MARX'S most important contributions to social research are that he: (1) related all phenomena of the life process of society to economics ; (2) conceived of economics itself as a social science ; Yüklə 0,99 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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