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“Introduction.”

The Main Currents of Marxism. Clarendon Press:Oxford, 1978. Leszek Kolakowski.

Karl Marx was a German philosopher. This does not sound particularly enlightening, butit is not as commonplace as it may at first appear. Professor Jules Michelet used to begin his

lectures on British history with the words: ―Gentlemen, England is an island.‖ There is a good

deal of difference between knowing it is an island, and interpreting its history in the light of thatfact, which thus takes on a significance of its own. That Marx was a German philosopher mayimply a certain importance to the interpretation of his philosophical and historical thought as asystem unfolding in terms of economic analysis and political doctrine. This kind of presentationis never self-evident or uncontroversial. Moreover, although it is clear now that Marx was aGerman philosopher, in 1918 this was not necessarily the case. In the days of the SecondInternational the majority of Marxists considered him the author of an economic and socialtheory which, for some, was comparable to a number of metaphysical and epistemologicaloutlooks; others took the view that it had been furnished with a philosophical basis by FriedrichEngels, meaning that Marxism in the proper sense was a theory of parts each of which waselaborated by Marx or Engels respectively.We are all familiar with the political background to an interest in Marxism in the present,because it is regarded as the ideological tradition on which communism is based. Those whoconsider themselves Marxists, and those who oppose them, are primarily concerned with thequestion of whether communism, in its ideologies and institutions, is the legitimate heir of theMarxist doctrine. The three most typical answers to this question may be expressed in thefollowing simplified terms: (1) modern communism is the embodiment of Marxism, thus provingthat Marxism leads to enslavement, tyranny and crime; (2) modern communism is theembodiment of Marxism, and this means liberation and happiness for humanity; (3) or,communism as we know it is a profound deformation of Marxist gospel and a betrayal of thefundamentals of Marxist socialism. The first answer is simply mainstream anti-communistorthodoxy, the second is traditional communist orthodoxy, and the third is indicative of criticaland revisionist Marxism. However, the question is wrongly formulated, and attempts to answer itare not worthwhile. Additionally, it is impossible to a

nswer questions like, ―How can the problems of the world today be solved in accordance with the principles of Marxism?‖, or ―Whatwould Marx say if he could see what has been done?‖ Both of these questions are stillborn and

there is no rational way of seeking an answer to them. Marxism provides no specific method forsolving difficulties that Marx did not put to himself, or that did not exist during his time. If hislife had been prolonged by ninety years he would have had to alter his views in ways that wehave no means of conjecturing.Those who hold that communism is a betrayal or distortion of Marxism are seeking toabsolve Marx of responsibility for the actions of those who identify themselves with his spiritualposterity. In this same way the heretics and schismatics of the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies accused the Roman Church of betraying its mission and sought to vindicate St. Paulfrom association with Roman corruption. In this way, admirers of Nietzsche sought to clear himof responsibility for the ideology and practice of Nazism. The ideological motivation of theseattempts is clear, but their informative value is next to nothing. There is abundant evidence tosuggest that all social movements are explained by a variety of circumstances and that theideological sources to which they appeal, and to which they try to remain faithful, are merely one

of the factors determining the form they assume and their patterns of thought and action. It iscertain in advance that no political or religious movement is a perfect expression of that

movement’s essence as laid down by its sacred writings; while on the other hand, these writings

are themselves passive, but exercise an influence of their own on the course of the movement.What normally happens is that the social forces making themselves the representatives of a givenideology are stronger than that ideology, but are nonetheless dependent upon its structure.The problem for the historian of ideas is not the comparing of the essence of a particularidea with its practical existence in terms of social movements. Rather, it is a question of how,and as a result of what circumstances, the original idea came to serve as a focal point fordifferent and mutually hostile forces; or what the ambiguities and conflicting tendencies in theidea itself were, and how these led to its developing as it did. It is well known, and the history of civilization records no exception, that all important ideas are subject to division as their influencespreads. There is no point in asking who is a true Marxist in the modern world, because such aquestion can only arise within an ideological perspective which assumes that the canonicalwritings are the authentic source of truth, and that whoever interprets them rightly must thereforebe possessed of the truth. There is no reason why we should not acknowledge that differentmovements and ideologies, however antagonistic to one another, are equally entitled to invokethe name Marx

—

except for some extreme cases beyond our interest. It is useless to inquire aboutwhich historical figure was a true Aristotelian. It may have meaning for devotees of Aristotle,but it is without relevance to the history of ideas. The historian may wish to inquire about what itwas in Aristotelian philosophy that made it possible for so many historical intellectuals to appealto the same source. In other words, the historian treats ideas seriously and does not regard themas utterly subservient to events (for in that case there would be no point in studying them), butone does not believe that they can endure from generation to generation without a change inmeaning. The relationship between the Marxism of Marx and that of the Marxists is a legitimatefield of inquiry, but it does not enable one to determine who the true Marxists are.If, as historians of ideas, we place ourselves outside ideology, this does not entail placingourselves outside the culture in which we live. On the contrary, the study of the history of ideas,and especially those ideas which have been and continue to be the most influential, is an exercisein cultural self-criticism. I propose studying Marxism from a perspective similar to the oneThomas Mann adopted in Doctor Faustus regarding Nazism and its relation to German culture.Mann would have been entitled to say that Nazism had nothing to do with German culture, orthat it was a gross denial and a travesty of that culture. In fact, he did not say this: instead, heinquired as to how phenomena such as the Hitler movement and Nazi ideology could have cometo pass in Germany, and what the elements were in German culture that had made this possible.He maintained that every German could recognize, with horror at the bestialities of Nazism, thedistortion of features which could be discerned even in the noblest representatives (and this is animportant point) of the national culture. Mann was not content to pass over the question of thebirth of Nazism in the usual manner, nor to contend that it had no legitimate claim to any part of the German inheritance. Instead, he frankly criticized the culture of which he was a part and acreative element. It is not enough to say that Nazi ideology was a caricature of Nietzsche,because the essence of a caricature helps us to recognize the original. The Nazis ordered their

Übermensch

to read The Will to Power, and it is no good to say that this was mere chance andthat they might equally well have chosen the Critique of Practical Reason. It is not a question of

establishing Nietzsche’s guilt, because as an individual he was not responsible for the use made

of his writings; nevertheless, the fact that they were thus used causes alarm and cannot be

dismissed as irrelevant to the understanding of what was in his mind. Saint Paul was notpersonally responsible for the inquisition at the end of the fifteenth century, but the historicalinquirer, whether Christian or not, cannot be content to observe that Christianity was depravedand distorted by the conduct of unworthy popes and bishops; but rather must seek to discoverwhat it was in the Pauline epistles that gave rise, in the fullness of time, to criminal actions. Ourattitude to the problem of Marx and Marxism should be the same, and in this sense the presentstudy is a historical account and an attempt to analyze the strange fate of an idea which began inPromethean humanism and culminated in the monstrous tyranny of Stalin.The Marxist chronology is problematic because many of what are now considere

d Marx’s

most important works were not printed until the 1920s, 30s, or even later. This is the caseregarding:

The German Ideology; The Difference Between the Democritean and EpicureanPhilosophy of Nature; A Contribution to the Critique of the Hegelian Philosophy of Law;Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844; Foundations of the Critique of PoliticalEconomy;

and finally Engles’s

Dialectic of Nature

. These works could not affect the epoch inwhich they were written, but today they are regarded as important from a biographicalstandpoint, and as integral components of a doctrine which cannot be understood without them.

It is still disputed whether, and how far, what are considered to be Marx’s mature ideas, as

reflected especially in Das Kapital, are a natural development of his philosophy as a young man,or whether, as some critics hold, they represent a radical intellectual change: did Marx, in the1850s and 60s, abandon a mode of thought and inquiry bounded by Hegelian philosophy? Somebelieve that the social philosophy found in Das Kapital is pre-figured by the earlier writings andis a development of them, while others maintain that the analysis of capitalist society denotes abreakaway from the utopian and normative rhetoric of the earlier period; and these two views are

correlated with opposing interpretations of the whole body of Marx’s thought.

Marx was not an academic writer, but a humanist in the Renaissance sense of the term:his mind was concerned with the totality of human affairs, and his vision of human liberationembraced, as an interdependent whole, all the major problems with which humanity is faced. Ithas become customary to divide Marxism into three fields of speculation

—

basic philosophicanthropology, socialist doctrine, and economic analysis

—

and to point to three correspondingsources in German dialectics, French socialist thought, and British political economy. However,

many are of the opinion that these clear delineations are contrary to Marx’s own purpose, which

was providing a global interpretation of human behavior and history, and to reconstruct anintegral theory of humanity in which particular questions are only significant in relation to thewhole. As to the manner in which the elements of Marxism are interrelated, and the nature of itsinternal coherence, this is not something that can be succinctly defined. Marx attempted todiscern those aspects of the historical process that confer a common significance onepistemological, economic and social ideals; that is, he tried to create instruments of thought orcategories of knowledge that were sufficiently general to make all human phenomenaintelligible

. If we attempt to reconstruct these categories to display Marx’s thought in accordance

with them, we run the risk of neglecting his evolution as a thinker, and of treating his corpus as ahomogenous block. It is better to pursue the development of his thought in its main lines andonly afterwards consider which of its elements were present at the outset, albeit implicitly, andwhich may be regarded as transient or accidental.The present conspectus of the history of Marxism will be focused on the questions that

appear at all times to have occupied a central place in Marx’s independent thinking: how is it

possible to avoid the dilemma of utopianism versus historical fatalism? How can one articulate

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Introduction to Marxism - Kolakowski

There are any number of provocative and incisive writers in human history who are useful to the development of individual critical thinking (as opposed to the training in critic... (More)

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