From the Marxist-Leninist Point of View
E.V. Il’enkov
Marx and the Western World (ed. by Nicholas Lobkowicz)
Notre Dame – London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1967, pp. 391‑407
I
I think that the organizers of the Symposium were quite correct
in suggesting that we consider the ideas of Marx in their original form and completely
abstract them from all their later interpretations and practical-political consequences.
This is not easy, particularly if one considers the enormous role
these ideas play in the tense spiritual situation of the present time. However
as a first step in the dialogue between Marxists and non-Marxists, it is necessary
to make such an abstraction; otherwise the Symposium would immediately turn into
a heated polemic on present-day issues, become something in the nature of a general
assembly committee or subcommittee, and ultimately fail to carry out its task.
But this amounts to saying that if my paper were planned as a direct
polemical antithesis 1 to contemporary
Western European and American interpretations of Marx, it would contradict the
basic intention of the proposed discussion. I am therefore obliged, if not in
essence, then in form, to deviate somewhat from the topic directly suggested
for this paper.
I shall not present a straight polemic with these or other objections
to Marx’s ideas or with these or other specific counterarguments. I think that
the best mode of polemic refutation is to state clearly that position which has
been subjected to doubt. If it is true that every negation is an affirmation,
then it is also true that to affirm an idea means to repudiate its antithesis. [391]
II
I fully agree with the premise from which the organizers of this
symposium proceed, namely, that Marx is indeed a “son of the West” as are Plato
and Aristotle, Descartes and Spinoza, Rousseau and Hegel, and Goethe and Beethoven.
In other words, the system of ideas called “Marxism” is a natural outgrowth of
the development of the tradition of “Western Culture,” or more precisely, Western
Europe civilization.
It is an outgrowth of that very civilization which for various
reasons and circumstances during the last centuries (roughly from the fifteenth-sixteenth
century) was undeniably in the vanguard of all earthly civilization and of all
technological and scientific culture of the entire globe. Consequently the repudiation
of Marx by “Western Culture” is, in our view, a repudiation of the most progressive
traditions of its own past.
III
First of all we must define this concept, “Western World.” It is,
of course, in no way a geographical concept. Cuba, it is true, lies to the east
of the United States, but the Soviet Union is situated “more to the West” than
Japan, and North Korea is not a bit closer to the “East” than South Korea. The
world is presently divided into “West” and “East” according to a different criterion,
and this criterion is the form of ownership.
In this sense the terms ‘West’ and ‘East’ — in all their confused
inexactness — can be used. However we must keep in mind that the “Western World”
is the part of the world based on private property while the other part which
is on the road to collectivization, that is, on the road to socialism and communism,
is the “Eastern World.”
In fact the contrast which we are discussing does not involve opposition
between the “Western” and the “Eastern” world with their respective traditions
at all. Rather it is an organic, internal divergence within the “Western World”
itself, that is, strictly speaking, within that part of the world which in the
course of the last centuries has developed its culture on the basis of private
property. (Or, to use a more flattering though less exact term, on the basis
of “free enterprise.”)
Marxism was born out of the soil and the culture of this world
as [392] one means of solving its social problems and it can be described as
a theoretically founded way out of its antinomies.
IV
Why were Marx’s ideas first realized in practice in the “East”?
The answer is not that they conformed more to “Eastern psychology.” As far as
Russia is concerned, we must remember that Lenin’s more conservative political
adversaries upbraided him for his stubborn “Westernism.” They viewed socialism
as a system of ideas organically foreign to the “Russian character.” Moreover
the more vulgar and evil among them even called Lenin a “German saboteur” and
an “agent of Wilhelm”; for them, Marx and the Prussian Emperor were the same
“Germans.”
The adversaries of Marxism clung to the so-called national Russian
traditions for “specific characteristics,” but the backwardness of Russia’s economic
and cultural development not only failed to provide victory for the ideas of
Marxism on Russian soil but, on the contrary, because of Russia’s greater sluggishness,
hindered them in every way. Not “easiness,” but rather laboriousness in the realization
of these ideas in economics and in the consciousness of the people was historically
tied to the backwardness of Russia.
The victory of the ideas of Marx in Russia in 1917 was a direct
result of the fact that Russia, with all its backwardness, was drawn into the
orbit of the sharpest contradictions of general European development. The world
slaughter of 1914‑1918 was indeed the direct stimulus for the revolutionary
outburst. The Revolution of 1917 was necessary to decide a typically “Western”
problem and not a “specifically Eastern one.” It appears both in theory and practice
to have been the only possible way out of the condition of national crisis. However
this crisis was not precipitated by specific “Eastern” and national-Russian causes
but rather by reasons rooted in general European conditions of Russia’s development.
And if, at that time, the revolution occurred on the geographical
“periphery of the Western World,” this happened not because Russia was located
on that periphery but because there, on the periphery of the Western World, Russia
was lying in the grip of those same antinomies in which the development of Western-European
capitalism was also gripped. These antinomies then precipitated the revolution. [393]
Thus we may justly quote the Russian proverb: “The chain is no
stronger than its weakest link.” Not external “Eastern” forces, but centrifugal
forces of development of private property destroyed private (private-capitalistic)
property in Russia.
If Lenin, the theoretical and practical political leader of the
1917 revolution, was “a son of the West,” then certainly Marx was a “son of the
West” also. It goes without saying that as Marxism, an ideological-theoretical
extract of “Western Culture,” was first actualized on the “periphery of the Western
World,” that is, in countries least prepared for it in terms of technological
and cultural development, so also a peculiar coloring was superimposed on the
practical-empirical forms of the implementation of these ideas, the ideas of
Marx and Lenin, the ideas of scientific communism.
Directly connected with this fact are those negative phenomena,
those specific difficulties in our development, which anticommunist propaganda
so zealously exploited and still exploits. These phenomena to which we, as communists,
relate no less critically than any intelligent “Western” humanist in no way offer
an argument against the ideas of Marx. With these ideas, with the program we
are effecting, these phenomena had nothing in common (nor do they now). Furthermore
these phenomena are wholly explained, not as due to the influence of the ideas
of Marx and Lenin, but on the contrary as a kind of bigoted and sometimes perfidious
resistance of that material in which these ideas had to be realized.
These are not the results of the ideas of scientific communism
but the results of how these ideas were altered according to the “specific character”
and traditions inherited by us from prerevolutionary Russia — in accordance with
the remnants of the past, as this phenomenon is sometimes called.
(In parenthesis we note that these are remnants, not only, and
not even as much, of the commercial capitalistic forms of the organization of
life as of the prebourgeois, precapitalistic forms of the development of private
property. If you like, this can be called specifically an “Eastern” legacy, which
did not and does not bear any relationship to the ideas of scientific communism.
This legacy with its traditions hindered the affirmation of the ideas of Marx
and Lenin. In a number of instances it led to the distortions with which communism
can and has come into conflict in countries possessing an insufficiently developed
economy and culture. But communism has successfully [394] overcome phenomena
of a similar nature, and the farther we go along the path of economic and cultural
development, the less and less fodder for anticommunist critics will there be.)
However since we have agreed not to speak about the latest historical
fate and latest “interpretations” of the original ideas of Marx, let us return
to the topic, to the question concerning the relationship of these ideas to that
culture in the soil of which they arose and were formed.
V
That all “Western Culture” developed and flowered in the soil of
“private property” is a historically acknowledged fact. “The Declaration of Independence”
and the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1789” that legally settled
this form of property as the basic principle of all legislation were documents
of greatest revolutionary significance. They freed the tremendous resources of
human potentialities from the surveillance of bureaucratic regimentation and
established wider limits for the realization of these potentialities and for
personal initiative. In this sense the whole technological and scientific culture
of Europe and North America owes its very existence to private property as an
indispensable condition sine qua non.
No sensible Marxist has denied or denies this. On the contrary,
the theory of Marxism has, in all fairness, always valued the historically progressive
role of private property and has stressed its advantages in comparison with the
prebourgeois, feudal type-class forms of the social organization of human activities.
Both Marx and Engels began their careers precisely as the most
radical theoreticians of bourgeois democracy, as the most determined defenders
of the principle of private property, which in their eyes at that time coincided
with the principle of full and unconditional freedom of personal initiative in
any sphere of life, whether material or spiritual.
In his capacity as leader of revolutionary democracy, the young
Marx even opposed the idea of a socialization of property. His Rheinische
Zeitung did not, as he wrote in 1842, acknowledge the theoretical reality
of Communist ideas and consequently could even less desire or consider possible
their practical implementation; it only [395] could promise to subject these
ideas to a thorough “criticism.” 2
Marx rejected communism as a theoretical doctrine, for to him it
seemed to be a reactionary attempt to galvanize the “corporate principle,” the
ideal of Plato. However he viewed the dissemination of communist ideas as a symptom,
as a theoretically naive expression of a strictly practical conflict — a pressing
point among the social organisms of the progressive countries of Europe. In this
sense, he assessed communism as “the most serious contemporary question for France
and England.” 3
That this conflict undeniably existed is attested to by the fact
that the Augsburger Zeitung used the word, “communism,” as a swear word,
as a kind of bugaboo. Marx characterized the position of this newspaper thus:
“It takes to its heels when it confronts the tricky phenomena of
today, and it thinks that the dust thus raised as well as the dirty words it
fearfully mutters through its teeth while running away suffices to blind and
confuse both the embarrassing contemporary phenomenon and the complacent
reader.” 4
The following declaration is also quite typical of Marx’s position:
“We are firmly convinced, that it is not practical experiments which
are dangerous but the theoretical articulation of communist ideas; true practical
experiments (and be they carried out en masse) can be answered by cannon as soon
as they become dangerous; ideas, however, which control our thoughts, subordinate
our convictions to them, and to which reason rivets our conscience—these are
bonds impossible to break without tearing into pieces one’s heart, these are
demons which a man can conquer only by subjecting himself to them.” 5
In a word, it is impossible to deal with ideas either by cannon
or dirty words; on the other hand, unsuccessful practical attempts at actualizing
ideas are in no way an argument against them.
Moreover if some ideas displease you, then you should analyze the
soil from which they spring and disseminate, i.e., find a theoretical solution
to the real conflict, to that actual conflict from which they arise. Expose
them; only in this way is it possible to fulfill that tense [396] social demand
that expresses itself at the sight of these ideas. Then, and no sooner, will
unpleasant ideas disappear.
In this, essentially, is the position of the young Marx. This is
not the position of a communist nor of a Marxist in the modern meaning of the
word. It is simply the position of a sensible and honorable theoretician. It
is precisely for this reason that Marx in 1842 did not turn to a formal analysis
of contemporary communist ideas (they were indeed quite naive), nor to a criticism
of the practical attempts to implement them (they were quite feeble), but rather
he contemplated a theoretical analysis of the conflict within the social organism
which spawned these ideas and the elucidation of that real demand which expressed
itself in the form of ideas such as Utopian socialism and communism.
The question for Marx arose in the following form: Is it possible
(and if so, precisely how) to resolve the conflicts in the development of private
property in the soil of that private property itself? “Peacefully?” This again
is not the position of a communist. But it is the position of a theoretician
and it retains within itself the possibility of transferring to the communist
position.
This position employed a wholly objective, fearless, ruthless and
critical analysis of the social situation that was developing in the world of
private property, especially in those countries where private initiative had
secured the utmost freedom from any external, legal kind of regulation, namely,
in England and France. And so the criticism of communist ideas, so far as Marx
considered it a serious-theoretical matter and not a demagogical-idealistic one,
became a criticism of the actual conditions of life that gave birth to these
ideas and aided their dissemination.
The opinion that the wide dissemination of these or other ideas
could be explained by the activity of evil agitators had been alien to Marx from
the very beginning, even when the ideas themselves were distasteful to him. Marx
believed (and I think his opinion can be justified today) that only those ideas
that correspond to reality win sympathy and a growing audience and that these
ideas must arise from the social demands of a more or less wide category of the
population. Otherwise the most beautiful and alluring idea will never get a hearing
in the consciousness of the masses, for the masses will remain deaf to it.
It is this very point concerning the dissemination of communist [397]
ideas in France and England that Marx assessed as a symptom of the real
conflict ripening in the bosoms of those countries where private property had
received maximum freedom of development in all its facets and all legal restraints
had been removed from it.
Therefore communism was even viewed by the young Marx as an ideological
current arising out of private property itself. Thus the criticism of communism
finally became a criticism of private property as the foundation of communist
ideas.
This plan of critical analysis became central for Marx and served
as the basic theme for the Philosophical-Economic Manuscripts. This work
led him to the conclusion that those actual-empirical conflicts, in the soil
of which sympathy arises for the ideas of communism, were not accidental phenomena,
characteristic only of the England and France of that time but inevitable outcomes
of private property seen as an international and general principle for the organization
of all social life. Marx became convinced in the course of this analysis that
the conflicts actually observable in France and England were, in essence, necessary
consequences of private property; they were already present implicitly in the
very principle of this private, individual kind of property.
And if this were so, then further developments of this principle,
inevitably would lead to much sharper conflicts, and through these, to an expansion
of the “empirical basis of communism” — to an increase in the number of people
willing to go along with communist ideas and in the number of those seeing in
such ideas the only way out of the gloomy antinomy of private property. For this
reason, then, Marx accepted communistic ideas as a necessary phenomenon in the
development of private property, notwithstanding the fact that these ideas remained
for him as unacceptable as previously, so far as representing a “positive program.”
This actual (crude, as he called it) communism, which appeared
as a prime product of the movement of “private property,” Marx considered lacking
in appreciation of its own goals and problems and void of a genuine theoretical
self-awareness. Born out of its direct antithesis, the principle of private property,
this elemental popular communism could only oppose private property and could
possess only a sign of negation to distinguish it. It simply brought to fulfillment
all private property’s inherent tendencies.[398]
Therefore in this “crude communism,” in this elemental frame of
mind called forth by the pressure of the antinomies of private property, Marx
saw first of all an enlarged and unique mirror reflecting to the world of private
property its own tendencies carried to their final, ultimate expression. “Communism
is in its first form only a generalization and consummation of
... [the] relationship [of private property]. ... Initially it comes out as common
private property.” 6
Nonetheless even with all the “crudeness and unreasonableness”
of this initial form of communism and despite the extreme abstractness of its
positive program, Marx assessed it as the only possible first step toward removing
that “alienation” which had been created by the movement of private property.
Marx’s way out is this: Although “communism as such is not a goal of human development,
is not the form of human society,” nonetheless, this very communism is the “next
stage of historical development in the process of human emancipation and recovery.
Communism is the necessary form and the dynamic principle of the immediate
future.” 7
Marx, the theoretician, found it necessary to reach this conclusion
in spite of all his antipathies to communism’s “positive program” and to the
ideals of a “crude and unreasonable communism.” Therefore in 1844, Marx came
out openly for the communist position, for a position of a “negation of private
property” and as a theoretician — began to ponder the special problem of providing
the real communist movement with a genuine theoretical self-awareness, that is,
with a basis not only for its immediate, short-term goals and problems but with
a clear understanding of its final goals and its obligations to all human civilization.
His basic thesis, which is still being developed in abstract-philosophical
phraseology (that of Hegel and Feuerbach), consists in the following, it seems
to me: a simple, formally-legal “negation of private property,” and the
establishment of social property by the wealth that society has already created,
is in fact a necessary first step, a first stage on the road to social progress.
To take this step, this political legal action, people are pushed and compelled
by the antinomy of this very world of “private property.” And the breadth and
keenness of this [399] antinomy increases in the same degree as material and
spiritual life develops.
“Crude and unreasonable communism” represents a movement that arose
quite naturally from the pressures of the antinomies of private property; it
is a frame of mind, unilluminated by the light of theory; consequently it has
neither achieved a genuine world-historical role nor realized the immensity of
the problems objectively arising before it. It has been provoked by the rather
blind but genuine power of “alienation” and spurred on by the development of
private property into personal-capitalistic property and subsequently into monopolistic,
capitalistic property.
But this genuine, theoretically unenlightened “communism” has,
in fact, realized its immediate goal, always combined with a mass of illusions,
the revolutionary abolition of the principle of “private enterprise.” We say
“combined with a mass of illusion” because a political revolution that has established
“social property” as a means of production and as a socially significant boon
to culture has been interpreted as decisive for the whole problem as if this
purely negative action were a final “positive resolution of the problem.”
According to Marx, or rather, according to his understanding of
the total complexity of the problem, which can be sharply contrasted to the outlook
of theoreticians of Utopian socialism, the business of political revolution is
only a start, and the whole problem will be visible to the communist movement
only after this act.
The real problem, which the communist movement must solve after
performing its immediate task, is directly dictated by the antinomies of private
property. After the revolutionary conversion of private property, as a means
of production and a boon to culture, into “social property,” this social property
must then, in turn, be converted into the property of each person, of each separate
individual.
In the social context, this question coincides with the abolition
of the division of labor among individuals, a concept inherited from the world
of “private property.” In regard to the individual, the problem of his all-around
development and his conversion into a “totally” developed individuality must
be confronted.
The political revolution is viewed here as a condition to be fulfilled
whereby society will then find itself with the power to face itself, and moreover,
to really accomplish the gigantic task of creating a society without government,
without currency and without any other [400] external mediators for relationships
among men.
Society in representing voluntary cooperation for the all-around
development of the individual will, in this capacity, no longer need “External
Mediators.” On the other hand, only the all-around development of the individual
has the strength to establish such a cooperation.
VI
In this connection I must touch upon one important current phenomenon.
I have in mind the phenomenon, which in Western literature is often considered
as somewhat of a “renaissance,” of a “return” of a number of Marxists from the
ideas of the “mature Marx” to the ideas of the “young Marx,” from Marx’s Das
Kapital to the Philosophical and Economic Manuscripts.
In this trend one occasionally may observe (a few Marxists are
included in this observation) a tendency toward a “supplementation,” toward “filling
up” the ideas of the mature Marx with humanistic ideas and toward exclusions,
as if what was done by Marx himself in the course of his development as a theoretician
was likewise done by the whole communist movement. I cannot agree with this interpretation
although the very phenomenon that has served as its basis undoubtedly does exist.
It is indisputable that in the Marxist literature of the last ten
years one can observe a heightened interest in the problems of personality and
individuality, in the problem of a human being as the subject of the historical
process, in the problem of “reification” and “de-reification,” and in general,
in that entire gamut of questions connected in one way or another with an analysis
of human activity and its conditions; this latter includes the problem of “alienation,”
and of the reappropriation of alienated wealth and so on.
This may be explainable in part by the fact that in Marxist literature
the themes as well as the phraseology of The Philosophical and Economic Manuscripts
of 1844, of the various extracts from the economists and other earlier works
have played a larger role than formerly. This is a fact — a fact which I also
personally approve, since I see in it a healthy and fruitful tendency in Marxist
theoretical thought.
However in this phenomenon I do not see any “return” of Marxist [401]
theoretical thought from the ideas of “mature Marxism” to the ideas of
an “immature Marxism.” Rather I see in it, first of all, an exceptional tendency
toward a deeper and more truthful understanding of the mature Marx as the author
of Das Kapital and the writings affiliated with it.
I allow myself to assert that the highly diffused interpretations
in “the West” of the development of Marx’s views as contained in The Philosophical
and Economic Manuscripts in opposition to those developed in Das Kapital,
an interpretation according to which this development was connected with Marx’s
loss of interest in problematical humanism, represents the most complete misunderstanding.
If anything has been lost in this process, it is only that some parts of the
specifically philosophical phraseology of the Manuscripts have been replaced
by a more concrete phraseology, and in this sense, a more exact and stronger
one. What occurs here is not a loss of concepts but only the loss of a few terms
connected with these concepts.
To prove this fact is not difficult; it is purely a formal procedure,
a procedure of extensive quoting with which I do not wish to weary the reader.
Of course, the mature Marx no longer used such terms as the ‘essential powers
of man,’ preferring instead the more exact expression ‘the energetic ways of
man,’ and in place of ‘Entäusserung’ he chose to use ‘Vergegenständlichung,’
or more simply, ‘the Aufhebung of activity in the product of that activity’
and so forth. There is no doubt that the mature Marx uses the term ‘alienation’
(Entfremdung) more sparingly (and more accurately), as the strongest way
to distinguish this concept from reification and “objectification” and other
similar phenomena.
For me this is so unquestionable that all the problems of the early
works are actually rendered more fully later, and moreover, in a more definitive
form. It is quite obvious that the process of the “human alienation” under the
conditions of an unhindered development of “private property” (in the course
of its becoming private-capitalistic) is viewed here more concretely and in more
detail. The problem of the “Aufhebung of alienation” and of “reappropriation”
is shown much more concretely, as a person “alienated” from his wealth by the
movement of [402] private property. It is easy to demonstrate that the mature
Marx maintained, and defined more exactly, his critical relationship toward that
“crude and thoughtless communism,” which still bore the marks of its violent
origin out of the movement of private property and because of this was still,
to a large degree, contaminated by moral and theoretical prejudices (see, for
example, documents that describe Marx’s fight against Proudhonism, against the
“barracks communism” of Bakunin and Nechaev and so on). It is also obvious that
the mature Marx, and after him Lenin, never, even in a single phase of his theoretical
writings, viewed the act of turning private-capitalistic property into “state”
property as the highest and final goal of the communist movement but only as
a first, although necessary, step toward creating a society, without government,
without currency, without forcible-legal forms for regulating man’s vital activity,
and without any “alienated” forms of human collaboration. It is these very forms
that the communist movement, because it is not in a position to overcome them
immediately by decree or by force, preserves during the first (socialist) phase
of its maturity; however they are preserved only as signs of the movement’s historical
immaturity.
In this way the fourth question of the Symposium is answered: “Western”
criticism of present day communism, so far as a grain of rationality is to found
in it, is in its entirety, even though only implicitly, self-criticism.
It is justified in so far as it objects to those tendencies and phenomena which
still have not been overcome by communist society—tendencies which were inherited
by this society from the world of “private property.”
However the essence of the problem is that these “wrong” tendencies
of a socialistic society are, in fact, surmountable; they can be overcome even
while certain elements of a commodity-capitalistic society, and especially of
a monopolistic one, are being inescapably strengthened.
Therefore let us make clear that the nightmares of Aldous Huxley
and George Orwell — aside from the authors’ illusions in these Utopian works
— do not at all picture the evolution of socialist society but rather the development
of private-capitalistic forms of property. While, according to external acceptances
and signs, these authors are painting a picture of “contemporary communism,”
they are actually depicting a tendency in the commodity-capitalistic system of
life. In this way these nightmares frighten even the humanistic intellegentsia
of the “Western World.” They do not frighten us. We understand these tendencies
as a part of our heritage that is almost but not completely past. [403]
After all has been said, I can assert that no problem of “editing
the mature Marx” in the spirit of the “immature” Marx has ever arisen as far
as scientific communism is concerned. We were and are speaking only about the
fact that the ideas of the “mature” Marx have been converted into personal property,
the “personal” property of each participant of a real communist movement, and
in this way, of the entire communist movement and that these ideas must be set
against the actual philosophical-legal and moral-humanistic context in which
they are framed.
We are speaking, however, of more than those immediate practical-political
deductions and slogans of war which are assimilated by a genuine movement and
which rise in the bosoms of the private-property portion of the world more easily
and quickly than in any other and which, in any case, are easier to grasp than
the philosophical-theoretical basis and context of the mature Marx’s ideas. So
far as we are speaking about the “appropriation” of these ideas by every participant
of a communistic movement, about their conversion to an actual theoretical “awareness”
of the whole movement, the Manuscripts of 1844 can and should play an
important role.
These manuscripts were the first approach, from the standpoint
of theoretical thought nurtured in the soil of a classical Western-European culture,
toward understanding the true rationale and true goals of the communist movement.
They represented the first awareness of the existence of a “real” transitory
stage from the still indefinite position of “humanism” and “formal democracy”
to the ideas of a practical-effective, concrete understanding of how humanism
and democracy must fare in the world of private property.
From accepting the Manuscripts, one can proceed to a genuine
understanding of Das Kapital where nothing of substance is lost except
abstract philosophical phraseology. But the Manuscripts can be a help in the
text of Das Kapital itself in scrutinizing those passages that could otherwise
be overlooked. If such passages are overlooked, Das Kapital easily appears
as an “economic work” only, and in a very narrow meaning of the term. Das
Kapital is then seen as a dryly objective economic scheme free from any trace
of “humanism” — but this is not Das Kapital, it is only a coarsely shallow
interpretation. It is essentially true that a humanistic orientation of thought
encompasses the theoretical thinking of the mature Marx, by its very method,
in its interpretation of the dialectic, as a method of [404] critical analysis
of the life conditions of man and not simply as an “objectification” of an alien
being.
Moreover this example of the method of Marx that is basically different
from the revealingly “scientific” version of Hegel’s dialectic can be viewed
more readily through the Manuscripts. For in them is found precisely this
process of humanistic-humane interpretation of the Hegelian Logic—as an “alienated
form of thought alienated (from humanity)” — a process of a “reappropriation”
of the Logic, alienated from man and his activity in the guise of a scheme-structure
of an Absolute, Suprapersonal and Impersonal “Spirit.”
V.I. Lenin was quite correct when he noted that “it is impossible
to fully understand Das Kapital, and especially its first chapter, without
having studied and mastered Hegel’s Logic.” Without this condition, the
understanding of Das Kapital remains formal, i.e., tendentiously dogmatic.
To achieve a critical mastery of the actual content of Hegel’s
Science of Logic, that is, to discover therein the “alienated form,” the
Manuscripts have one other important aspect. This has in no way arisen
from the desire of individuals to “humanize” Marxism as existentialist authors
have suggested. The desires of individuals can be significant in the scales of
the historical process only if they coincide with a need that has grown out of
a wide, objective mass movement. No one will attend to these desires if such
is not the case.
The fact is that the problems connected with “reappropriations,”
with the “Aufhebung of alienation” and with similar such categories necessity
for reaching a practical solution to these problems is dictated not for reasons
of the “prestige doctrine” but by the pressure of real needs that have become
urgent in the organism of socialized production. The fact of the matter is that
industrial production of present-day proportions represents an objective, the
realization of which can only be effected by a democratically organized collective
that would include in its number all interested individuals. It is precisely
from this point of view that the problem of drawing all individuals into the
direction of social affairs and into the business of directing “property” arises.
Therefore the basic goal of the development of a socialist society consists in
the gradual and consistent transmission of all the functions of directing collective
affairs from a government apparatus to those individuals immediately banded together
about [405] a common business. In other words, the goal is the conversion of
formally collective property into genuinely collective property. This tendency
will no doubt pave the way for a further expansion of the scales of production.
But the solution to this question demands that each and every individual
— and not merely a chosen few — be capable of really participating in the business
of directing “collective property,” possess the necessary theoretical competence
and skills and the appropriate culture for this.
From this viewpoint, the question of building a communist society
amounts to the converting of each individual from a one-sided professional —
from a slave of the division of labor system — into an all-around personality,
a real master (proprietor) of the material and spiritual culture created by all
mankind.
This point is even expressed in the Marxian formula, according
to which communist society liquidates “the division of labor” and replaces it
with a rational “distribution of the kinds of activity” among equally widely
and thoroughly developed individuals. These people, among others, will be able
to carry out the directive role within the individual collective, within the
national economy and within all human society.
Under these conditions, social property, as a modern form of production,
is not a Utopian perspective, but a real need. It does not depend on the will
or awareness of individuals, but is dictated by the interests of a rational,
functioning organism of present day industrial production — “the stuff of property.”
Under the conditions of private property the opposite tendency
is stronger; it moves toward a governmental, monopolistic form of “collectivization”
of property and the duties of directing it. The forces of market elements inescapably
doom individualism to one-sided professional specialization, to professional
“cretinism,” as Marx expressed it. Therefore to counteract this tendency, a monopoly
of leadership of socially important affairs is given over to professionals. This,
taking place independently of the will and desires of individuals, represents
a tendency toward “total government.” Thus the ultimate goals of these two movements
for the organization of social life turn out to be directly contradictory.
The system that is based on the principle of socialized property
will necessarily evolve toward a democratic direction of socially [406] significant
affairs and toward the withering away of government as an apparatus opposing
the majority of individuals, for all will be called on to direct social (collective)
affairs and all will be required to grow in social consciousness.
The world of private property will undoubtedly drift toward the
opposite goal. Therefore in summary it seems that Marxist communism in the twentieth
century is the only rationally based doctrine that is strong enough to offer
people a real earthly ideal. There is no rational doctrine opposed to communism
but only an absence of one. Therefore reasonable people must choose now between
Marxism, some form of social pessimism or salvation in the form of a transcendental
religion. I, personally, prefer communism which opens to humanity a real, albeit
difficult, road to a future here on earth. [407]
1 The title originally
suggested to the author was “Marxist-Leninist Objections to the Current West
European and American Interpretation of Marx.” [Editor]
2 MEW, I, 108.
3 Ibid., 105
4 Ibid., 106.
5 Ibid., 108.
6 MEGA, I, 3, 111; cf. K. Marx,
Economic and Philosophic
Manuscripts of 1844, trans. by M. Milligan, Moscow 1961, p. 99.
7 MEGA, I, 3, 126; cf.
Manuscripts, p. 114.