1

MARX
Myths &
Legends


Edited by
Rob Lucas & Andy Blunden
2


Marx Myths & Legends

I ntroduction
A critical reading of the work of Karl Marx now requires us to lay to one side the
myths and legends which have obscured his ideas over the past one hundred and twenty
years- distortions and misinterpretations to which perhaps no thinker has been more
prone. In one sense, this is not difficult, because there is enough of his writing
preserved, albeit in translation, for any of us to read Marx in his own words. Most
however have been unwilling or unable to do this. The fifty volumes of the Marx-
Engels Collected Works are forbidding, and when beginning as one almost inevitably
does, with the received wisdom surrounding Marxs name, there is much to discourage
a reader from seriously taking on the task of understanding Marx. The aim of this
project is thus to begin to challenge some of those myths in order to clear the way for a
fresh reading of Marx that will hopefully be less prone to the distortions,
misunderstandings and blatant falsehoods that have so far surrounded Marx. We
believe that what Marx had to say remains of considerable relevance to an
understanding of problems we face today, but that a reading of Marx now must
maintain a critical caution which does not merely reproduce received ideas- positive or
negative- about Marxs work.
The distortion and questionable interpretation of Marxs work is in many senses a
direct result of his great success. His name became synonymous with a vast movement
which not only changed, but virtually defined the twentieth century. The leaders of the
communist parties needed to prove themselves true disciples of Marx, while anti-
communists followed suit by attributing everything they hated to Karl Marx.
Interpretation of Marx has thus been driven by a number of historical factors, and any
attempts to gain, for example, a scholarly understanding have necessarily been
secondary. Yet this is not to mourn any supposed loss of the purity of Marxs thought to
the struggles and conflicts in which he has been implicated! It is not simply a case of
counterposing a true Marx to the Marx that gave his name to the movements of the
twentieth century. To set against the distortions we cannot raise up a singular,
uncontradictory Marx, abstracted from history and ultimately separable from
everything that comes within Marxism, yet it remains that there is much in that
received wisdom about Marx that is refutable, or at least rendered distinctly
questionable, with a little attention to the textual and historical evidence.
There is thus, on the one hand, the generally negative task of demythologising
Marx where we need primarily to just look at the evidence carefully. This task is the
guiding one of Marx Myths & Legends, but on the other hand Marx interpretation
must to some extent also involve a battle over facts, and the negative task is
inextricable from a more positive interpretive one. In areas where controversies remain,
we hope to present a heterodox and critically open account, whilst the project itself will
be ongoing, with new texts added gradually to cover more areas of Marx mythology
and take account of other areas of debate. We encourage readers to contribute their own
Critiques & Rejoinders to the articles published here.
Divisions of Marx Myths & Legends
The myths and legends about Marx broadly fall from the start into two camps; on
the one hand those myths propagated tendentiously or maliciously by opponents of
socialism, and on the other, the myths of those who claimed Marx as their authority.
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They have been the product of various historical factors, and the question of any
responsibility for such myths is a complex one. But it remains of central importance
that Marx is fundamentally a contested thinker, bound more than any other to specific
interests and conflicts within modernity, and the myths and legends historically reflect
this.
Both of the broad pro and anti camps share thereby a common core of myths,
namely those which conflate Karl Marx with the Communist International, and its most
prominent leaders, Lenin and Stalin. The ghastly nature of real existing socialism and
the ideology of those states has often been simplistically identified with Marx by
opponents of socialism. The first group of myths which we deal with therefore are those
which ascribe to Karl Marx political ideas about workers states, state-ownership,
centralised planning and suppression of individual freedom. These are dealt with
primarily in the section on Myths Conflating Marx with State Socialism
Another group of myths about Marx that have been propagated by opponents of
socialism are ad hominem: they seek to call into question Marxs ideas by attacking his
character. Articles dealing with these myths are grouped under the section on Myths
about Marxs Character. According to these legends, Marx was a megalomaniac, a
bully, an anti-Semite and a racist, a snob, a womaniser and a sexist, a boring writer and
a plagiarist. It is easy to anachronistically impute such charges to individuals of periods
prior to contemporary notions of political correctness, but without employing a kind of
historical relativism it is valid to question the real intellectual and historical merits of
such accusations when their target is often more properly the prejudices and illusions of
an entire age than those of an individual. Works such as Hal Drapers Marx and the
Economic-Jew Stereotype can thus be useful in elucidating the real historical context
of some of Marxs remarks and language. Though Marx, as represented by Francis
Wheen for example, may not have been a perfect human being, it is fair to say that
many commonplace stories about Marxs character are distinctly questionable.
The contexts of the reception of Marxs ideas have been very different from that
in which they were formed, and this in itself is perhaps the reason for many myths.
Marxs way of thinking was arguably already somewhat alien to the dominant
intellectual trends of its time, and the critical spirit on which Marx had been raised as a
Young Hegelian was foreign to the majority of his original readers. Consequently, from
the moment what he wrote left his pen it was interpreted in the spirit of nineteenth
century socialism, and its dialectical, Hegelian aspects were largely misunderstood or
just set aside. Thus a third group of myths is also shared by many friends and foes
alike: myths conflating Marx with 19th Century socialism and positivism.
His most intelligent interpreters, and those who were to become his principal
advocates after his death, were capable of distinguishing between the ideology of the
broader socialist movement of the times and the ideas of Karl Marx, even if they did
not clearly understand that difference. The fourth and most enduring group of myths
about Karl Marx originates from his most illustrious and faithful advocates, Frederick
Engels, Georgi Plekhanov and Karl Kautsky, and were perpetuated by the leaders and
thinkers of actually existing socialism. According to these, Marx was the founder of a
coherent philosophical and metaphysical system, and a definite, repeatable
methodology. We are talking about the myth of dialectical materialism, or scientific
socialism that ideology cast from a single piece of steel
[1]
. Beyond this group we
must add further Myths of Marxism- myths based on more simplistic interpretations
of Marxs ideas: that Marx was an economic determinist, or for that matter, any kind of
determinist or any kind of economist, that Marx declared philosophy to be obsolete, or
alternatively, that he was a materialist philosopher.
Lastly we come to a collection of more recently founded myths- some of which
have their roots in Marxist tradition, but have become more important in later debates.
In this group we place the myth that conflates Marx with Alexandre Kojve and
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Hegels master-servant dialectic, the myth that Marx had a theory of ideology as
false consciousness, and the myth that there is a necessarily disdainful attitude
towards the natural world in Marxs allegedly promethean or productivist views.
These myths can perhaps be attributed to a filtering of Marx through the intellectual
climate of the second half of the twentieth century, in which issues of recognition,
ideology critique, and the critique of the Enlightenment dominated.
The categories dealt with so far in this project are intended only provisionally, and
do not cover exhaustively every area of Marx mythology. As the project grows we
intend to broaden its scope and increasingly cover areas of potential controversy, as
well as developing upon what we already have through critical dialogue.
Marx should be read just as you would read anyone else: critically and for
yourself, not uncritically or secondhand. Marx Myths & Legends will have succeeded
as a project if it at least helps some to begin to study Marx with a strong mistrust for the
prejudices, preconceptions and layers of congealed misinterpretation that surround his
life and work.
Andy Blunden & Rob Lucas, April 2005.
1.Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, Chapter 6, Lenin 1908


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Marx Myths & Legends
Texts
i. Myths Conflating Marx with State Socialism
1. A Manifesto of Emancipation
by Paresh Chattopadhyay
2. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat in Marx and Engels
by Hal Draper
ii. Myths about Marxs Character
3. Marx and the working-class
by Francis Wheen
4. Marxs Illegitimate Son
by Terrell Carver
5. Marx and the Economic-Jew Stereotype
by Hal Draper
6. Reading the unreadable Marx
by Humphrey McQueen
iii. Myths conflating Marx with 19th Century Socialism and Positivism
7. The Tradition of Scientific Marxism
by John Holloway
8. Karl Marx and Religion
by Cyril Smith
iv. The Myth of Dialectical Materialism
9. The Origins of Dialectical Materialism
by Z. A. Jordan
10. The Legend of Marx, or "Engels the founder"
by Maximilien Rubel
v. Other Myths of Marxism
11. Karl Marx: Economist or Revolutionary?
by Harry Cleaver
12. The Myth of Marxs Economic Determinism
by Peter Stillman
13. Marx and Materialism
by Cyril Smith
14. The Myth of Simple Commodity Production
by Christopher J. Arthur
vi. Recent Myths
15. Hegels Master-Slave Dialectic and a Myth of Marxology
by Christopher J. Arthur
16. Ideology and False Consciousness
by Joseph McCarney
17. The creatures,too,must become free: Marx and the Animal/Human
Distinction
by Lawrence Wilde


6

Paresh Chattopadhyay

A Manifesto of Emancipation:
Marxs Marginal Notes to the Programme of
the German Workers Party
after One hundred and twenty-five years

An earlier version of the paper was presented at Marxism 2000, University of
Massachusetts at Amherst, September 21-24, 2000. Amended by the author for inclusion
in Marx Myths and Legends.

Marxs Marginal Notes of 1875 or what he called in a letter (to Bracke, May 5,
1875), a long scrap of paper, was a purely occasional text which its author felt
compelled to compose, in order to underline what he thought to be the serious
shortcomings in a workers programme. However, the document could perhaps be
considered kind of a second Communist Manifesto, authored by Marx alone this time of
course. Both of them concern party organisation the Communist League and the
German Workers Party. The second document was enriched by Marxs great theoretical
breakthroughs as well as by his involvement in the new forms of working class struggles
as manifested above all in the work of the First International and the Paris Commune,
posterior to the Communist Manifesto. Given the necessarily limited scope of this
second document, compared with the first, its focus is also relatively circumscribed, being
confined to the critique of the specific points in the Programme that Marx found
unacceptable. Nevertheless, in spite of the narrowness of scope and the resulting selective
character of the themes involved, this document contains, drawing on the authors whole
lifes work, a condensed discussion of the most essential elements of the capitalist mode of
production, its revolutionary transformation into its opposite and a rough portrayal, in a
few bold strokes, of what Marx had called in Capital the union of free individuals
destined to succeed the existing social order.
In this paper we propose to concentrate mostly on the economic aspects of this
document. As in the Gothakritik labour is the central theme around which Marxs
arguments revolve, we start with Marxs critique of the conception of labour as it appears
in the Programme. Next we pass on to Marxs very brief discussion of the Lassallean
notion of wage labour which of course is the essence of the capitalist mode of production.
Then we propose to treat Marxs portrayal of the future society centered basically on the
problem of allocation-distribution of the societys total product. We conclude by stressing
the immensely emancipatory character of the document. As we go along we will seek to
dispel a number of misunderstandings even among Marxs professed followers
concerning Marxs categories of labour, value and state, all appearing in the Critique.
Labour and Division of Labour
The Gothakritik starts with the Programmes assertion that labour is the source of all
wealth and all culture. Marx underlines contrario that labour is not the source of all
material wealth and that nature also is a source. This idea of wealth as the conjoint product
of human labour and nature is a continuing idea of the Marxian Critique of Political
Economy from its very inception. In his Parisian manuscripts of 1844 Marx refers to
nature as the non-organic life of the human and the human as a part of nature. The
labourer can create nothing without nature, without the sensuous (sinniliche) external
world (1966a: 77,80, emphasis in text) ... One and a half decades later Marx writes: It is
false to say that labour in so far as it creates (hervorbringt) use values, that is material
wealth, is the unique source of the latter ... The use value always has a natural substratum.
Labour is the natural condition of the human, the condition of material exchange between
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human and nature, independent of all social forms (1958: 30). This whole idea would
appear in almost identical terms in Capital I.
[1]
Speaking of labour in the labour process
where products do not take commodity form, Marx observes that this is the purposeful
(zweckmssig) activity for the creation of use-values, the appropriation of the objects of
nature for human needs, the global condition of material exchange between the human and
nature, an everlasting natural condition of human existence and thus independent of all
forms of this existence, rather equally common to all its social forms (1962a: 198; 1965:
735. In the French version the expression natural condition was changed for physical
necessity and the term everlasting was dropped). In the same way, in his manuscript for
Capital III Marx writes about labour as human productive activity in general through
which the human mediates material exchanges with nature, divested not only of all
determinate social forms and characters but even in its simple natural existence,
independent of society and removed from all societies, and, as an expression and
affirmation of life, common to the human not yet social and to the one who is in any way
determined socially (1992: 843-44. Engelss edited version is very slightly different. See
Marx 1964: 823-24).
The second point about labour and its role in production natures contribution
being abstracted here that Marx makes in the Gothakritik concerns labours relation to
society in this regard. Correcting the somewhat defective formulation of the Program,
Marx observes that only labour producing in society social labour creates
material wealth; isolated labour can create use value only. About a decade earlier Marx
had told the workers that a man who produces an article for his own immediate use,
consumes it himself, creates a product but not a commodity, and that to produce a
commodity it is not only Labour but social Labour that is relevant (1968: 201;
emphasis and capitalization are in text). It is also well known that according to Marx it is
not labour as such but socially necessary labour (time) that produces commodities. Some
critics of Marx, particularly among the feminists, have inferred from these statements that
according to Marx the only labour that is social is commodity producing labour (see the
discussion in Custers 1997). However, this inference is invalid. From the premise that only
social labour produces commodities it does not follow that only the commodity producing
labour is social labour. Apart from this non sequitur, such a position would signify that all
use value producing labour is non-social labour, that all labour engaged in material
production in non-commodity societies is non-social labour which of course would be
absurd from Marxs point of view.
First of all, in what sense commodity producing labour is social labour"? Marxs
position is very clear on this question. This type of labour is social labour because it is
subordinated to the social division of labour, is socially determined average labour (time),
and destined to satisfy certain social want. Secondly, the producers here enter into social
contact through exchange of products taking commodity form. Marx, at the same time
stresses the very specific character of the sociality of this labour. The conditions of labour
positing exchange value are social determinants of labour or determinants of social
labour, but social not in a general (schlechthin), but in a particular (besondere) way. This
is a specific kind of sociality. It is a situation in which each one labours for oneself and
the particular labour has to appear as its opposite, abstract general labour, and in this
form social labour. It has this specific social character only within the limits of
exchange (1958: 24; 1959: 525; 1962a: 87; emphasis in text).
The third point about labour in Marxs critique of the Program is how Marx
envisages labour in the new society after capital has disappeared from the scene. At its
initial phase the new society cannot yet completely get rid of the legacy of the mode of
labour of the old society including the division of labour, particularly the division
between physical and mental labour. Now, in one of his early texts Marx speaks of the
abolition of the division of labour as the task of the communist revolution, even of
abolition of labour tout court (1973a: 70, 364). However, in the Gothakritik Marxs
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stand does not appear to be quite the same on this question. Referring to a higher phase
of the Association which will have completely transgressed the narrow bourgeois
horizon, Marx does not say that either labour or division of labour would be abolished.
He stresses that labour in that society would not simply be a means of life but would itself
become lifes first need. Similarly not all division of labour would be abolished, but only
the division of labour which puts the individuals under its enslaving subordination
(knechtende Unterordnung). Let us examine to which extent there is a break (coupure)
between the early Marx and the late Marx in this regard. In his Parisian excerpt notebooks
of 1844 Marx distinguishes between two types of labour. The first is labour in the absence
of private property in the means of production where we produce as human beings. Here
labour is a free manifestation of life and therefore enjoyment of life, where the
particularity of my life is affirmed. Here labour is true, active property. Contrariwise,
the second type of labour, that is labour exercised under private property, is the alienation
of life. Here my individuality is to such an extent alienated that this activity is hated by
me and is a torment. It is only an appearance of activity imposed only by an external,
contingent necessity, and not enjoined by an inner necessary need (1932: 546, 547). One
year later, in another manuscript, Marx observes that the labourers activity is not a free
manifestation of his human life, it is rather a bartering away (Verschachern), an
alienation of his powers to capital. Marx calls this activity labour and writes that
labour by nature (Wesen) is unfree, inhuman, unsocial activity conditioned by and
creating private property, and then adds that the abolition of private property only
becomes a reality if it is conceived as the abolition of labour (1972a: 435-36; emphasis
in text).
Now, labour as a pure process of material exchange between human beings and
nature is a simple and abstract category and as such does not take account of the social
conditions in which it operates. However, all production, considered as appropriation of
nature from the side of the individual, takes place within and is mediated by definite
social forms (Marx 1958: 241, 280). When labours social dimension is brought in, labour
takes on a new meaning. The question becomes relevant as to whether the labour process
operates under the brutal lash of the slave supervision or the anxious eye of the capitalist
(1962a: 198-99). In fact these two broad forms of labour epitomize, by and large, at least
the dominant type of labour that has operated in all class-societies. Traditionally, labour
has been a non-free activity of the labouring individual either as directly forced labour
under personal dependence as in pre-capitalism or as alienated labour under material
dependence or servitude of the object (Knechtshaft des Gegenstandes) in commodity-
capitalist society (Marx 1953: 75; 1966a: 76). Such labour has reduced the labourer into a
labouring animal (Marx 1962b: 256). Consequently, the division of labour practised so
far has been absolutely involuntary where the human beings own activity dominates the
human being as an alien, opposite power (Marx 1973a: 33). It goes without saying that
such labour is totally incompatible with the human beings free individuality under the
Association. This labour in the sense of the traditional mode of activity (bisherige Art
der Ttigkeit) ceases to exist in the Association, it is abolished (Marx 1973a: 70).
Referring to Adam Smiths idea of labour being sacrifice of freedom, Marx notes that
labour, as it has appeared in its historical forms of slavery, serfdom and wage labour,
always appears repulsive, forced from outside; labour has not yet created the subjective
and objective conditions in which labour would be attractive and self-realising for the
individual. However, labour could also be seen as an activity of freedom, as self-
realizing and indeed as real freedom when labour is exercised toward removing the
obstacles for reaching an end (not imposed from outside) (1953: 505). Thus when Marx
speaks of abolition of division of labour and labour itself in his writings anterior to the
Gothakritik, it is precisely with reference to the different forms of hitherto existing modes
of labour which far from being a self-realizing activity of the individual, unimposed from
the exterior, a free manifestation of human life, has been their negation. This is the labour
9

which has to be abolished along with the associated division of labour. Thereby labour,
transformed into a self (affirming) activity (Selbsttigkeit), becomes, as the Gothakritik
says not only a means of life but also lifes prime need in a higher phase of the
Association.
[2]
Again, it is about this hitherto existing type of labour that Marx observes in
the Gothakritik that the law of the whole hitherto existing history has been that in
proportion as labour is socially developed and thereby becomes a source of wealth and
culture, there develops poverty and demoralization on the side of the labourers, wealth and
culture on the side of the non-labourers.
Significance of Wage Labour
Marx portrays, in a few bold strokes, the essence of the capitalist mode of production
through his attack on the Lassallean idea of wage which Lassalle had taken over from the
bourgeois economists. Here Marx makes two points. The first concerns the Lassallean
iron law of wages, where wages are supposed to be at a level corresponding to the
minimum of subsistence just sufficient for the workers to live and the perpetuate their
class. It should be pointed out that this formulation of wage determination by the workers
minimum subsistence is not very different from the formulation that we find in Marxs
writings in the 1840s (see Marx 1965: 27, 152; 1966b: 65; 1973: 406). In his polemic with
Proudhon on the question of wage labour, Marxs reference point was Ricardos natural
price of labour which is necessary to enable the labourers to subsist and to perpetuate their
race (see Ricardo 1951: 93). In fact Engels himself pointed out in a note in the first
German edition (1885) of Marxs Proudhon-critique (1847) that the formulation was first
advanced by him (Engels) in 1844 and 1845. Marx had adopted it and Lassalle had
borrowed it from us.
[3]
Later Marx abandoned this position. Instead Marx emphasized in
Capital the relativity of natural needs of the labourer food, clothing, heating, housing
dictated by climate and physical conditions of a country as well as a moral and
historical element. Particularly during the process of extensive accumulation of capital,
the labourers receiving in the form of payment a bigger portion of the net product
created by themselves have the possibility of increasing the circle of their enjoyment,
of being better fed, clothed and furnished and making a small reserve fund (1962a: 185,
646; 1965: 720, 1127). Similarly in unpublished sixth chapter of Capital Marx wrote:
The minimum wage of the slave appears as a constant magnitude, independent of his
labour. For the free labourer this value of his labour power and the corresponding average
wage are not predestined by the limits determined by his sheer physical needs,
independently of his own labour. It is here like the value of all commodities, a more or less
constant average for the class; but it does not exist in this immediate reality for the
individual labourer whose wage may stay above or below this minimum (1988: 102;
emphasis in text). In the Gothakritik Marx cites Langes work showing the Malthusian
population theory as the basis of Lassalles iron law of wages.
[4]
In this connection it must
be stressed that while Marx has no minimum subsistence theory of wages he does speak of
absolute impoverishment of the labourers under capitalism, which has an unusual and
deep significance. In fact wage labour itself irrespective of the level of wages received
by the labourer signifies absolute poverty of the labourer. In two manuscripts Marx
tersely identifies, almost in the same words, labour (labour power) as the absolute poverty
not as penury but as total exclusion from the objective wealth [1953: 203; 1976b; 148.
Labour (Arbeit) in the first manuscript was changed into labour power
(Arbeitsvermgen) in the second].
[5]

The second point that Marx makes on wage labour is of the highest importance
clearly showing his fundamental difference with the entire bourgeois political economy
(classical as well as vulgar) in this regard.
Marx underlines that wage is not what it appears to be, that is value or price of
labour. It is, on the contrary, a masked form of the value or price of labour power.
Thereby, writes Marx, the whole hitherto existing bourgeois conception of wage as
well as the criticism directed against it (hitherto) was once and for all thrown overboard
10

and it was clearly shown that the wage labourer is permitted to work for his living, that is
to live in so far as he works gratis a certain time for the capitalist; that the whole capitalist
system of production revolves around the prolongation of this unpaid labour (Gratisarbeit)
through the extension of the working day or through the development of productivity,
intensity of labour etc. and that the system of wage labour is a system of slavery and,
indeed, a slavery which becomes more severe to the same extent as the social productive
powers develop, whether the labourer receives a higher or a lower wage (emphasis in
text).
[6]
As to the conception of wage itself Marx is here restating in an extremely
condensed form what he had written in Capital I (Chapter 16, Chapter 19 in the French
version) (On the transformation of value, respectively price of labour power in wages).
There he had shown that as regards the value and price of labour or wage as the
phenomenal form in contrast to the essential relation which is manifested therein, that
is value and price of labour power, the same distinction holds as that between all
phenomenal forms and their hidden substratum. He added that it had taken a long time for
the world history to decipher the secret of wage, which was in fact Marxs own
achievement.
[7]

Distribution in the New Society
Coming to the question of distribution in the cooperative society, Marx restates his
two well-known fundamental materialist propositions. First, the juridical relations arise
from the economic, that is production relations and not inversely, and, secondly, the
distribution of the means of consumption is a consequence of the distribution of the
conditions of production, which in its turn is a character of the mode of production itself.
Thus Marx faults the programme for limiting its scope exclusively to the distribution of
the means of consumption among the members of the new society. Vulgar socialism,
following the bourgeois economists, treats distribution basically of the means of
consumption independently of the mode of production and presents socialism as turning
exclusively on distribution.
[8]

As the Programme spoke of the distribution of societys labour-product, Marxs
approach to distribution in his critique was correspondingly directed against the Lassallean
approach in terms of distribution of societys total product, and not explicitly in terms of
the broader question, that of allocation of societys labour time. However, already earlier,
in his 1857-58 manuscripts, Marx had emphasized that all economy is finally reduced to
the economy of time and spoken of the two aspects of the employment of societys
available labour time. First, societys labour time must be economised less time society
requires to produce the daily requirements, more time it gains for other material and
spiritual production. Secondly, society must distribute its labour time among different
branches appropriately in order to obtain production corresponding to its needs. However,
on the basis of collective production the economy of time as well as planned distribution
of labour time among different branches of production remains the first economic law.
This becomes even a law of much higher degree. Marx immediately adds that this is
essentially different from measuring exchange values (labour or labour products) by labour
time (1953: 89).
[9]
In Capital I (Chapter one) Marx offers an outline of the mode of
distribution of the total social product within the union of free individuals without yet
distinguishing between the different phases through which the new society is supposed to
pass. However, in the light of the Gothakritik where (in fact the only place where) Marx
distinguishes between two phases of communism, the mode of distribution of the social
product under communism as he proposes in Capital I as well as in the manuscript for
Capital II (Chapter 18 in Engelss edition) could only refer to the first phase of the new
society. What we find particularly in Capital I would only be elaborated in the Gothakritik.
According to the earlier text, a part of the total social product is not distributed among the
individual members but is kept aside for serving again as means of production. The rest
serves as means of consumption distributed according to the magnitude of labour time that
each producer contributes to the total social labour time. Here the labour time that each
11

individual offers towards the creation of the social product corresponding to different
needs of society, serves as the measure of the share of the labouring individual in the
common labour as well as the portion of the total consumption which comes back to the
labouring individual.
[10]
An important purpose of Marxs elaboration of this scheme in the
Gothakritik was the refutation of the Lassallean notion of distribution allowing each
individual labourer the undiminished fruit of her or his labour (taken over by Lassalle
from the earlier socialists including Proudhon). Following the lead of Capital I Marx
discusses in the Gothakritik two basic aspects of the distribution of the social product
mainly with reference to the societys first phase namely, the division of the product
between societys production needs and consumption needs, and secondly, the allotment of
the means of consumption among societys members.
As to the first problem, one part of the social product serves as common funds that
include replacement and extension of the means of production as well as societys
insurance and reserve funds against uncertainty. The rest serves as means of collective
consumption and personal consumption.
As to the mode of distribution of the means of consumption, as producers are united
with the conditions of production in the new society, they are, to start with, no longer
sellers of their labour power, and the wage form of return to their labour ceases right from
the first phase. Here the labourers receive from their own (free) Association not wage
but some kind of a token indicating the labour time contributed by them to the total social
labour time after deduction for common funds. These tokens allow the labourers to
draw from the social stock of means of consumption the amount costing the same amount
of labour.
At no stage, however, of the allocation-distribution process does the product of
labour take the value form. Right from the start the new society as it has just come out
of the capitalist society based on the common appropriation of the conditions of
production excludes, by definition, all exchange in value form of the objectified labour
against objectified labour as well as of the objectified labour against living labour. As the
Gothakritik says, Within the cooperative society based on common ownership of the
means of production, the producers do not exchange their products, just as little does
labour applied to the products appear as value of these products (emphasis in text).
[11]

Indeed, in the de-alienated Association there is no need for, in fact no possibility of,
products of individual labour to be mediated by exchange in value form in order to be what
they really are, that is social. Earlier Marx had written that in the communitarian society
where community is posited before production, the individuals participation in the
collective products is not mediated by independent labour or products of labour. It is
mediated by the social conditions of production within which the individuals activity is
inserted (1953: 89; 1958: 27). Naturally, in the absence of commodity production the
tokens, that the producers receive from their association, indicating the labour time
contributed by them to the total social product, are not money.
In the first phase of the new society the right of the individual producers to receive
consumption goods proportional to the labour contributed by them (after necessary
deductions) is an equal right in the sense that the measurement involved is done with an
equal standard, labour, though the equal right is, at the same time, unequal, given the
unequal contribution of the individual producers. In so far as a given amount of labour in
one form is exchanged for an equal amount of labour in another form, the principle here
involved is the same as that which prevails under commodity production, even though
commodity production has ceased to exist.
[12]
Since the new society has just come out of
the capitalist society and has not yet been able to develop on its own foundations, the
new mode of distribution cannot be completely free from the old mode. The determining
principle of distribution among individuals continues to be each ones labour contribution,
and not (yet) human needs, this equal-unequal right being thus still within the bourgeois
horizon, it is a bourgeois right. The latter is fully overcome only in a higher phase of
12

the Association with the overcoming of the enslaving division of labour, with labour
becoming a first need of life and with the spring of cooperative wealth flowing more
abundantly.
A Manifesto of Emancipation
While elaborating on the hitherto existing human labour as enslaving Marx, in the
Gothakritik, also suggests that the situation has now arisen where conditions of negating
this labour with the corresponding division of labour have been created. Finally, adds
Marx, in the modern capitalist society the material etc. conditions are created which
enable and compel the labourers to break this malediction.
[13]
The Gothakritik gave Marx
the occasion though not for prescribing receipts for the cook shops of the future
(1962a: 25) for at least offering some broad indicators regarding how he conceived the
new society to be after the demise of the old. Let it be emphasized at the outset that for
Marx the socialist (equivalently communist) society is nothing short of a union of free
individuals because for him the (self) emancipation of the wage slaves automatically
implies human emancipation in general inasmuch as in capitalism the last antagonistic
social formation in human evolution here is no class below the proletariat.
[14]
The
associated mode of production on which the new society is based and the corresponding
collective (social) appropriation of the conditions of production stand opposed to all earlier
modes of production and appropriation appearing in what Marx famously calls the pre-
history of human society (1958: 14). Marx calls the new society the union of free
individuals (1962a: 92) because the individuals here are free in the sense that in the social
relations of production, the ensemble of which constitutes the basis of a society, there is no
longer any personal dependence the first social form of unfreedom as in pre-
capitalism nor any material dependence"- the second social form of unfreedom as in
the commodity (capitalist) production. In fact long before the arrival of the new society,
capital tends to destroy all bonds of personal dependence such as are found in patriarchy,
in the relations of the feudal lord and vassal, in those of the landlord and serf, in the system
of casts and class etc. However, while capital destroys personal dependence, it establishes
in its turn material dependence. Under capital personal independence is based on material
dependence. This is shown in (generalized) commodity production (including wage
labour). This (personal) freedom is an illusion and is more correctly considered as
indifference. While the determining factor in the pre-capitalist case appears to be the
personal limitation of one individual by another, the determining factor in the
(generalized) commodity production (capitalism) is built-up into a material limitation of
the individual by circumstances that are independent of the individual and over which the
individual has no control. The social production is not subordinated to the individuals.
The individuals remain subordinated to the social production which exists outside of them
as a fatality (Marx 1953: 76, 81).
[15]
Naturally, in the Gothakritik, focusing particularly on
the post bourgeois society, Marx leaves aside the question of the first social form of
unfreedom and refers only to the second social form of unfreedom embodied in
commodity production and wage labour, neither of which has any place in socialism
(communism) conceived as a society of free and associated producers.
[16]
After the
disappearance of the two social forms of unfreedom, the humanity arrives, in socialism, at
free individuality based on the universal development of the individual and the
subordination of their common social productivity as their (own) social power (Marx
1953: 75).
Commodity production and wage labour besides the earlier forms of personal
dependence are not the only enemies of human freedom. There is also the institution of
the state which was always considered by Marx as antipathetic to human freedom. The
existence of the state and the existence of slavery are inseparable, he already announced
in an early polemic (1976a: 401-402). A little later Marx wrote that the working class in
course of its development will substitute the old civil society by an association which will
exclude classes and their antagonism, and there will no more be (any) political power
13

properly speaking (1965: 136), and one year later in the Manifesto he (and Engels) added
that with production concentrated in the hands of the associated individuals, public power
will lose its political character (1966b: 77). Much later, only four years before he
composed the Gothakritik, he praised the Parisian communards for their Revolution not
against this or that state power ... but against the state itself (in Marx and Engels 1971:
152, emphasis in text). So, it should be clear that for Marx, after the demise of the
proletarian political power along with the proletariat at the end of the revolutionary
transformation period and the consequent disappearance of classes, the state, like
commodity production and wage labour embodying human unfreedom can have no
place in socialism. However, unlike what he does with commodity production and wage
labour, Marx does not, in the Gothakritik, directly treat the question of the state in relation
to the Association. He simply wonders about which social functions would remain in the
communist society analogous to the present day state functions. That this is no way
implies the continued existence of the state in the new society is clear in Marxs
denunciation, in the same document, of the Lassallean sects servile faith in the state,
which he considers as remote from socialism.
[17]

Let us conclude by noting that Marxs Gothakritik did not have much luck with his
followers at any period. Its emancipatory message was too strong for the immediate
followers to take. The text was suppressed for a long period before being published by
Marxs followers (at the insistence of Engels) more than fifteen years after its composition.
Even after it was published, its reception by the Marxists was far from complete. We
shall refer here to the best of the cases to Lenins State and Revolution, perhaps the
most libertarian work within orthodox Marxism. this work apparently follows the
Gothakritik so closely that Lenin is said to have built his whole State and Revolution on
it (Dunayevskaya 1991: 154). On a careful reading of the book (undoubtedly incomplete),
however, one finds that Lenins emancipatory idea falls far short of that of Marx (and
Engels). Lenin conceives socialism equated with the first phase of communism
(contrary to Marx) not in terms of new (real) social relations of production, as a free
association of producers based on the associated mode of production, but in terms of
specific ownership (that is juridical) form, in terms of social ownership of the means of
production, which is reduced to the ownership of the means of production by the working
class state. While Lenin apparently excludes commodity production from socialism, he
envisages equality of labour and wage for all citizens, now transformed into the hired
employees of the state in other words, the existence of wage labour and its
employment by the (socialist) state. On the other hand, reading his own ideas into Marxs
text, Lenin envisages the existence of bourgeois state to enforce what Marx calls the
(remaining) bourgeois right in distribution in the first phase of communism. This seems
to be a strange logic absolutely unwarranted by Marxs text which stands Marx on
his head. In Marx the first phase of the new society is inaugurated after the disappearance
of the proletarian rule (along with the proletariat) that is, all class rule. If Lenin is
correct, the workers themselves no longer proletarians would have to recreate a
bourgeois state to enforce bourgeois right. On the other hand, according to Marx, the
existence of state itself bourgeois or proletarian ends along with the classes at the
end of the revolutionary transformation period and the beginning of the new society.
Whatever bourgeois right remains in the sphere of distribution, it does not require a
particular political apparatus a state (least of all a bourgeois state) to enforce it.
Quite logically Marx envisages society itself distributing not only the labour tokens among
its members, but also the total (social) labour time among the different branches of
production. Indeed, Lenins socialism particularly if we take his other writings into
consideration as well turns out to be much closer to Lassalle-Kautsky state owned-and-
planned economy than to Marxs emancipatory project of the union of free individuals.
Let us add that Lenins inability to break altogether with the heritage of the Second
International on the state appears also in his (mis)reading of Marxs discourse on the
14

commune (1871). About a month before the Bolshevik seizure of power (1917), Lenin
wrote: Marx taught ... that the proletariat must smash the ready-made state machine and
substitute a new one for it ... This new machine was created by the Paris Commune. We
earlier saw how Marx spoke admiringly about the Parisian Revolution aiming to destroy
the state as such, not simply a particular kind of state. In fact, substituting the existing
state machine by a new state machine (as Lenin would have it) was precisely considered
by Marx to be the hallmark of all earlier revolutions, not of the proletarian revolution
whose aim a contrario is to throw off this deadening incubus altogether in course of the
revolution. In Marxs view, the Paris Commune, far from creating a new state machine,
aimed to destroy the machine itself.
Paresh Chattopadhyay
Universit du Qubec Montral
e-mail r25030@nobel.si.uqam.ca

Endnotes
1. As the creator of use values, as useful labor, labor is the condition of existence of
the human, independent of all social forms, an everlasting natural necessity, for mediating
the material exchange between the human and nature .... The human can only proceed in
production as nature itself, that is, can only change the forms of matter. Still more. In this
labor of simple transformation, the human is again constantly supported by forces of
nature. Labour is thus not the unique source of the produced use values, the material
wealth (1962a: 57-58; 1965: 570-71, the term Formung (formation) in the German
version was changed into transformation in the French version).
2. Quite in the spirit of the Gothakritik Marx writes in an earlier text: As if the
division of labor would not be just as much possible if the conditions of labor belonged to
the associated laborers and they act in relation to them as these are in nature, their own
products and the material elements of their own activity (1962b: 271).
3. The proposition that the natural, that is normal price of labour power coincides
with the minimum wage, that is exchange value of the subsistence absolutely necessary for
the life and reproduction of the labourer this proposition I established for the first time
in the Outline (1844) and The Condition (1845). It was later adopted by Marx. Lassalle
borrowed it from us ... In Capital Marx corrected this proposition while analysing the
conditions that allow the capitalists to lower more and more the price of labour power
below its value (Engels in Marx 1972b: 83).
4. For a thorough discussion of the roots of the Lassallean iron law of wages in
Ricardo and Malthus as well as of Marxs fundamental difference with the Ricardo-
Malthus-Lassalle approach see the unjustly neglected work of K. Diehl (1905: 5-7; 62-65;
70-860.
5. Marx elaborates this: since the real (wirkliche) labour of appropriating the natural
elements for satisfying human needs is the activity through which the material exchange
between the human and nature is mediated, the labour power which is denuded of the
means of production, the objective conditions of appropriating the natural elements
through labour, is also denuded of the means of subsistence. Therefore the labour power
denuded of the means of production and of the means of subsistence is the absolute
poverty as such and the labourer is its personification (1976b: 35; emphasis in text).
6. Almost two decades earlier, in a letter to Engels (January 14, 1958), Marx had
rejected the bourgeois theory of profit in almost the same terms, saying that I have thrown
overboard (ber den Haufen geworfen) the whole doctrine of profit as it had existed
hitherto (helped by his rereading of Hegels Logic by mere accident). With the whole
bourgeois conception of wage and doctrine of profit gone, one wonders what remains of
the claim that Marx was a Ricardian albeit a critical one after all.
7. To note in this connection is Marxs use of the well-known Hegelian distinction
between essence and being and the discussion around it as we find in the opening lines
15

of the second book of Logic. (See Hegel 1963: 1). Marx repeats this almost verbatim in the
Gothakritik by emphasizing that Lassalle had taken appearance for essence in his
(mis)understanding of wage. By the way this also disproves Althussers contention that the
Gothakritik is totally free from any trace of the influence of Hegel (1969: 21).
8. Marx credits Ricardo for having instinctively conceived distribution as the most
definite expression of the relations of the agents of production in a given society (1953:
8; 1992: 895; 1964: 885). This way of conceiving distribution, even instinctively (that is,
not consciously and explicitly), seems to have disappeared in the post-Ricardian bourgeois
political economy. Marx particularly mentions John Stuart Mill for having conceived
distribution independently of the mode of production, for considering the bourgeois forms
of production as absolute, but the bourgeois forms of distribution as relative, historical
(1962b: 80; 1992; 895; 1964: 885). The tendency of treating distribution in abstraction
from the mode of production has continued in bourgeois political economy. This is clearly
seen in Sen (1997).
9. In this regard see also Marxs letters to Engels, January 8, 1868 and to Kugelman,
July 11, 1968.
10. In the union of free individuals, Marx observes, the labour time would play a
double role. Its socially planned distribution regulates the correct proportion of the
different functions of labour in relation to different needs. On the other hand, the labour
time serves simultaneously as the measure of the individual share of the producers in the
common labour and thereby also in the individual share of consumption in the common
produce (1962a: 93; 1965: 613. In the French version the term planned (plannssige)
before the term distribution was left out.
11. In fact this had always been Marxs position. The texts in this regard are too
numerous to be cited here. There exists no text which contradicts this position. The
contrary position that according to Marx commodity production continues in socialism
taken by a number of authors, Marxist and non-Marxist, including some adherents of
the so-called market socialism or socialist market, is based on a complete misreading of
Marxs texts (See, among others, Dobb 1940: 299-300; Lange 1945: 128; J. Robinson
1963: 23; Lukcs 1971: 688; Schweickert 1996: 339-40).
12. In Capital I Marx had invoked the principle of commodity exchange in this
connection just to draw a parallel with commodity production without implying in any
way that the communist society (even in its first phase) is a commodity society (1962a:
93; 1965: 613).
13. In an earlier text Marx observes: The development of the faculties of the human
species, though at first effected at the cost of the majority of the human individuals and
even of the whole classes of human beings, ends up by breaking through this antagonism
and coincides with the development of the singular individuals. Thus a higher
development of individuality is brought only through a historic process in which the
individuals are sacrificed (1959: 107).
14. The proletariat, wrote the young Marx, cannot abolish its own conditions of
existence without abolishing the inhuman conditions of the present society which are
summed up in its own situation (1972a: 38) Again, in his last programmatic writing for the
working class he penned: The emancipation of the working class is the emancipation of
all human beings irrespective of sex or race (1965: 1538).
15. Earlier he had written that in the exchange process the individuals own power
over the object appears as power of the object over the individual; master of his
production, the individual appears as the slave of his production (1932: 526).
16. The second social form of human unfreedom inherent in commodity production,
including wage labour, seems not to have been recognized by the eminent humanist and
libertarian economist A.K. Sen. While he rightly stresses the liberating aspect of
commodity production (market) for the individuals in a largely pre-capitalist
environment and correctly refers to Marx in this connection, he fails to notice the
16

enslaving side of commodity production itself in relation to the participating individuals
(even in perfect market situation) precisely emphasized by Marx. Sen, of course, does
not question the wage system either, denounced by Marx as wage slavery. See Sen 1999.
17. The present day state is brought in by Marx as simply an analogy in the same
way as Marx, while discussing the mode of distribution of the means of consumption in
socialism, brings in commodity production just to give a parallel (1962a: 93). In no way
follows that either the state or commodity production would continue to prevail in the
Association. Let us add that in his (probably) last theoretical writing Marx sarcastically
mentions the Social State ascribed to him by somebody generously (1962c: 360-371).

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1. Paris: Garnier Flammarion.
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18

Hal Draper 1987
The Dictatorship of the Proletariat
in Marx and Engels

Source: Chapter 1 of The Dictatorship of the Proletariat from Marx to Lenin, by
Hal Draper, Monthly Review Press, 1987.
Copyright: reproduced with permission of Hal Drapers estate at the Center for Socialist
History. All rights remain with the authors estate.

1 The Dictatorship of the Proletariat in Marx and Engels
The phrase dictatorship of the proletariat first appeared in a series of articles by
Marx, later titled The Class Struggles in France 1848-1850, published in what was then
Marxs own London magazine. The first article, written in January 1850, came off the
press in early March. The expression or its equivalent appeared not once but three times
in each of the three installments (or chapters) that comprised the original series.
This work was Marxs attempt to sum up the political meaning of the European
revolution of 1848-49. Marx had taken an active part in this revolution in the German
arena, as editor of the leading organ on the revolutionary left, at the same time closely
following the turbulent developments in France and Vienna in particular. The revolution
was now over, and Marx was thinking over its lessons.
The first question is: when it appeared in print in the spring of 1850, what did the
phrase mean to Marx and to his contemporaneous readers?
The key fact, which was going to bedevil the history of the term, is this: in the
middle of the nineteenth century the old word dictatorship still meant what it had meant
for centuries, and in this meaning it was not a synonym for despotism, tyranny, absolutism,
or autocracy, and above all it was not counterposed to democracy.
1. Short Sketch of Dictatorship
The word dictatorship in all languages (dictature, Diktatur, etc.) began as a
reference to the dictatura of the ancient Roman Republic, an important constitutional
institution that lasted for over three centuries and left its enduring mark on all political
thought. This institution provided for an emergency exercise of power by a trusted citizen
for temporary and limited purposes, for six months at the most. Its aim was to preserve the
republican status quo; it was conceived to be a bulwark in defense of the republic against a
foreign foe or internal subversion; indeed it was directed against elements whom we might
today accuse of wanting dictatorship. It worked at least until Julius Caesar destroyed
the republican dictatura by declaring himself unlimited dictator in permanence, that is, a
dictator in our present-day sense.
[1]

The modern analogue of the Roman dictatura is the institution of martial law (or
state of siege). This device has the three distinguishing features of the Roman one: it is
based on constitutional legality, not tyranny; it is temporary; it is limited, especially in its
ability to impose new laws or constitutions. Again and again, institutions of the martial-
law type have provided for some form of crisis government or emergency regime. Few
claim that these institutions are ipso facto antidemocratic, though of course they can be
perverted to antidemocratic uses like everything else.
[2]

The old meaning conditioned all European political thought and language right into
the nineteenth century, though the application of the term tended to blur in some respects.
Most consistently it kept referring to an emergency management of power, especially
outside of normal legality. The one-man aspect of its meaning was sometimes primary, but
it was often muffled, particularly by rightists attacking the dominance of a popularly
elected body.
[3]

19

In the French Revolution like all revolutions a bubbling cauldron of political
terminology the Girondins liked to denounce the dictatorship of the National
Convention (the zenith of revolutionary democracy at the time) or the dictatorship of the
Commune of Paris (the most democratic expression yet seen of a mass movement from
below).
[4]
For over a century no one would blink when the British Parliament was attacked
as a dictatorship on the ground that it held all power, though this usage dropped even the
crisis-government aspect of the term.
The history of dictatorship on the left begins with the very first socialist-communist
movement, the first fusion of the socialistic idea with membership organization: the so-
called Conspiracy of the Equals led by Babeuf in 1796, in the backwash of the failed
French Revolution. In an influential book published in 1828, Babeufs lieutenant
Buonarroti described the activity and politics of this movement in some detail, thereby
producing a textbook of Jacobin-communist politics that helped educate (and miseducate)
the Blanquist leftists of the next two decades. (It was quickly published in English by
left Chartists.)
Buonarroti described the conspirators discussion on the transitional revolutionary
government to take power after victory. While eschewing the term dictatorship because
of its one-man meaning, he left no doubt that the revolutionary government was to be the
dictatorship of the small band making the revolution, which had the task of educating the
people up to the level of eventual democracy. This concept of Educational Dictatorship
was going to have a long future before it. There was not the slightest question of a
dictatorship of, or by, the working-people, corrupted as they were by the exploitive
society to be overthrown. The revolutionary band of idealistic dictators alone would
exercise the transitional dictatorship, for an unspecified period of time, at least a
generation.
[5]

This was also the entire content of the concept of dictatorship held by Auguste
Blanqui and the Blanquist bands of the thirties and forties. In addition, the Blanquists (and
not only they) advocated the dictatorship of Paris over the provinces and the country as a
whole which meant, above all, over the peasants and the rural artisanry; for had not the
provinces shown in the Great Revolution that they tended toward counterrevolution? In the
name of The People, the revolutionary saviors would defend the revolution against the
people.
Incidentally, the ascription of the term dictatorship of the proletariat to Blanqui is a
myth industriously copied from book to book by marxologists eager to prove that Marx
was a putschist Blanquist, but in fact all authorities on Blanquis life and works have
(sometimes regretfully) announced that the term is not to be found there. More important,
the concept of political power exercised by the democratic masses is basically alien to the
Blanquist idea of Educational Dictatorship.
[6]

By the nineteenth century political language had long included references to the
dictatorship of the most democratic assemblies, of popular mass movements, or even of
The People in general. All Marx did at the time was apply this old political term to the
political power of a class.
But Marxs usage in 1850 was significantly conditioned not merely by the long
history of the word but particularly by its history in the revolutionary period he had just
passed through.
2. Dictatorship in the 1848 Revolution
Revolutions are by nature periods of crisis management and emergency power, in
which the old legalities totter or tumble. This is true on both sides, for counterrevolutions
are no greater respecters of legality. The revolution of 1848 saw the imposition of a
dictatorship, that of General Cavaignac, which was the herald of its modern history. But
the necessity of some sort of dictatorship (in the terminology of the day) was recognized
on all sides and freely discussed by the most disparate political tendencies from right to
left.
[7]

20

The essential meaning of dictatorship at this time can be seen best in the case of
Louis Blanc, one of the pinkest social-democrats in the early history of the movement. He
constituted the left wing of the provisional government that took power in the February
Revolution. This government naturally assumed power extralegally, through an
announcement before a mass demonstration. Even Lamartine, its right-wing leader who
was anxious to lead the revolution into conservative channels, called himself and his
colleagues dictators for this reason. Louis Blanc advocated the continuance of the
dictatorship, through the postponement of elections, in order to allow for a period of re-
education of the people. Not only at the time but in a book published ten years later, Blanc
advocated that the provisional government should regard themselves as dictators
appointed by a revolution which had become inevitable and which was under no obligation
to seek the sanction of universal suffrage until after having accomplished all the good
which the moment required. Blanc not only wanted a longer postponement than did the
revolutionary workers clubs of Paris, he also advocated the old idea of the dictatorship of
Paris over the country.
[8]

Obviously dictatorship was not the property of extremists and wild-eyed
revolutionaries. Far from being counterposed to democracy, it was viewed favorably or
hostilely as an aspect of the movement of the Democracy.
Everyone had his own idea of what the proper sort of dictatorship should be.
Wilhelm Weitling had long advocated a messianic dictatorship with himself as the
messiah, and in 1848 he openly advocated a dictatorship with a single head; a couple of
weeks later, Marx attacked and rejected Weitlings proposal in the same forum that
Weitling had used.
[9]
Bakunin, involved in the revolutionary movement in Bohemia, later
recounted that his aim was the establishment of a government with unlimited dictatorial
power, in which all will be subjugated to a single dictatorial authority, through three
secret societies based on strict hierarchy and unconditional discipline. This was only the
first version of Bakunins lifelong fabrication of various forms of a secret dictatorship
exercised by Invisible Dictators.
[10]

These concepts of dictatorship (and others) were plainly antidemocratic, just as
most concepts of government were anti-democratic. But, like the word government,
dictatorship could be filled with various contents, denoting some extralegal sort of
emergency regime; and it was. In the June days of 1848, when the Paris working class
erupted in the greatest revolt that modern history had yet seen, the panic-stricken
provisional government replied by entrusting the power of military dictatorship to
General Cavaignac, who used it for an educational bloodletting on a mass scale even after
the fighting was over. (The term dictatorship was not used officially, but was common in
the press and on everyones tongue; the official term was state of siege.)
To be sure, Cavaignacs dictatorship was not a modern dictatorship, but it was the
prelude to the modern history of the term. It provided the juridical basis for the state-of-
siege provision put into the French constitution of November 1848, which in turn led to the
law of August 9, 1849, still in force in the twentieth century as the basic law of
constitutional dictatorship in France. It provided the model for martial-law institutions in
Berlin and Vienna later in 1848. It cleared the way for the dictatorship of Napoleon III,
which did not call itself a dictatorship but merely the Second Empire. It made dictatorship
a European institution.
[11]

During this revolution Marx was the dominant figure on the extreme left of the
revolution in Germany, as editor of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in Cologne. Like
everyone else, the N. R. Z. referred to dictatorship. But the first mention of dictatorship in
its columns was not by Marx but occurred in a quotation from the head of the provisional
government that had taken power in the revolution behind the mass surge of revolt and
which was determined to prevent the revolution from overthrowing the Crown and its
absolutist government. The prime minister, Camphausen, a Rhenish capitalist, strenuously
argued that if the provisional government and its assembly took sovereign power in the
21

name of the popular rule, this would be a dictatorship the dictatorship of the
Democracy indeed. If the new government democratized the elite system of voting, this
would be dictatorship too.
Now the main line championed by Marxs N.R.Z. was the simple proposal that the
National Assembly declare itself sovereign, repudiating the absolutist government and
appealing to the people. No one doubted that this raised the question of revolutionary
legality. That is what revolutions are for. The term dictatorship on all sides simply
reflected this problem, as Camphausen had exemplified by his attack on the dictatorship of
the Democracy. It was in this context that the N.R.Z. advocated that the dictatorship of
the popular assembly put through a whole series of democratizing measures to
revolutionize Germanys autocratic society. Marx wrote:
Every provisional state setup after a revolution requires a dictatorship, and an
energetic dictatorship at that. From the beginning we taxed Camphausen with not acting
dictatorially, with not immediately smashing and eliminating the remnants of the old
institutions.
There was no question of a dictatorship of the proletariat here because Marxs
policy in this revolution was to champion the initial assumption of power not by the
working-class movement (which was just getting organized) but by the liberal bourgeoisie,
whose historical task it was (as Marx then saw it) to uproot the old regime of Crown-
bureaucracy-feudalists and establish a bourgeois democratic society, in which the
proletariat could develop its own movement and its own class struggle looking toward
eventual victory. But the German bourgeoisie, in large part precisely because it saw a
revolutionary proletariat pressing behind it, refused to play out this drama, and instead
clung to the absolutist governments power as its bulwark against the future proletarian
threat.
The most important lesson that Marx learned from the revolutionary experience was
that the German bourgeoisie could not be relied on to make its own revolution, the
bourgeois democratic revolution which would eventually lay the basis for the proletarian
socialist revolution. The two tasks would have to be telescoped, unlike the pattern that
France had exemplified. A German revolution would have to be pushed forward and still
forward, from stage to stage, pressing leftward, until power could be taken by the extreme
left, the revolutionary proletariat. This is, the concept which Marx summarized as
permanent (that is, ongoing or continuous) revolution, a revolution which does not
come to a halt until the proletariat has taken power. It is this conclusion that introduced
the question of proletarian power (or, same thing, proletarian dictatorship) into Marxs
writings of 1850 analyzing the defeated revolution.
[12]

3. The Fear of the Dictatorship of the People
For decades Europe lay in the shadow of the defeated revolution. In the words of the
Communist Manifesto, the ruling classes had trembled before the specter of a Communist
revolution, and one of the lesser consequences fell on their mode of language. Above all,
talk of the threatened (and just averted), dictatorship or despotism of the people
became journalistic commonplace. Of course the idea of the despotism of the people
goes back to Platos and Aristotles horror of democracy as a threat to established society;
but in the 1850s this fear became pandemic.
The London Times thundered against giving the vote to the majority of the people on
the ground that this would in effect disenfranchise the present electors by making the
lower classes supreme. Manchester capitalists denounced a strike as the tyranny of
Democracy. The liberal Tocqueville, writing in 1856 about the Great French Revolution,
regretted that it had been carried through by the masses on behalf of the sovereignty of
the people instead of by an enlightened autocrat; the revolution was a period of
popular dictatorship, he wrote. It was perfectly clear that the dictatorship he lamented
was the establishment of popular sovereignty.
[13]

22

In 1849 Guizot, the last prime minister to serve under a French king, published an
interesting book, On Democracy in France. In a great passage, the historian-statesman
complained: everyone claims to be for democracy nowadays, including monarchists and
republicans as well as leftists; but democracy means chaos, class war, and popular
despotism. Popular despotism means that the people impose their will over those classes
which, though a minority, have the mission of ruling society. The newfangled notion that
sovereignty should flow from elections is totally un-French. Popular tyranny or military
dictatorship may be the expedient of a day, but can never be a form of government.
Guizot assumed what everyone knew: democracy meant All Power to the People.
This meant the dictatorship of the people. This dictatorship he was against.
[14]

Early in the same year, a Spanish conservative became famous all over Europe for a
speech made in Spains parliament that said bluntly and even crudely what few others
dared to put into words so frankly. Juan Donoso Corts had been one of the Spanish
political leaders who had helped put General Narvaez into power as a virtual dictator even
before the European revolution had broken out. In his Speech on Dictatorship, Donoso
had no compunction about asserting that power belonged in the hands of the propertied
bourgeoisie by right of intelligence and by right of the saber. As for legality: When
legality suffices to save society, then legality. When it does not suffice, dictatorship. Yes,
he admitted, the word dictatorship is a fearful word, but the word revolution is the
most fearful of all.
It was only a question of what kind of dictatorship you favored: it is a question of
choosing between the dictatorship of the insurrection and the dictatorship of the [present]
government, and he chose the latter. Then came his high point:
It is a question of choosing between the dictatorship from below and the dictatorship
from above: I choose the dictatorship from above, since it comes from a purer and loftier
realm. It is a question of choosing, finally, between the dictatorship of the dagger and the
dictatorship of the saber: I choose the dictatorship of the saber, since it is nobler.
The greatest dictatorship of all existed in England; for (mark this!) the British
Parliament could do anything it wanted: Who, gentlemen, has ever seen so colossal a
dictatorship? asked the Spanish reactionary triumphantly. It was something of an
anticlimax for Donoso to reveal that God is a dictator also. This speech was quickly
translated into many languages and published all over the world.
[15]

At the time, less attention was given to an important book on the European
revolution published in 1850 by Lorenz von Stein, who eight years before had written one
of the very first studies of the burgeoning of socialism in France. Steins analysis of
dictatorship was complex, and cannot be summarized here; suffice it to say that he
discussed it wholly in terms of class power, in particular in the context of the new
proletariats class struggles. He saw the question of dictatorship in terms of Louis Blanc,
whom he accepted as the spokesman of the French working class.
Social dictatorship, wrote Stein, became the slogan of the proletariat (meaning
Blanc), and popular representation the slogan of the Democracy and the property owners
(meaning the bourgeois democracy led by Lamartine). Louis Blancs followers, the social-
democrats, could decide to overthrow the government, replace it exclusively by Social
Democrats, and therewith establish the rule of the proletariat. The social-democrats idea
of popular sovereignty became the idea that a Provisional Government should uphold a
dictatorship until it has carried out all measures it considers necessary. The struggle of
the classes for control of the state was here clearly formulated.
Aside from the fact that he took Louis Blancs rhetoric seriously, Stein presented the
most sophisticated of the antirevolutionary analyses of the revolution. In some passages he
seemed on the verge of using the very term dictatorship of the proletariat, but it did not
actually appear.
[16]

Marx went over the same ground, in his own way, but with much the same
acceptance of the current vocabulary. Like Stein, Guizot, and everyone else, he not
23

infrequently used despotism in much the same way as dictatorship: in combinations
like class despotism (applied to bourgeois-democratic regimes), parliamentary
despotism, the industrial despotism of the factory, or the despotic inroads on the rights
of property to be made by a workers state. The term class despotism which he used
quite often in the 1850s was virtually a variation on class dictatorship.
[17]

In Karl Marxs Theory of Revolution 3, I have made a detailed survey of how the
word dictatorship occurs in the writings of Marx and Engels, but the conclusion is not
startling: they used the term in ways as various as everyone else did in their day,
particularly in metaphorical ways, many of which are still current. They might refer to the
intellectual dictatorship of the medieval church, or of the popes; or to a financier as
dictator of the Crdit Mobilier. The petty states of Germany were under the
dictatorship of Prussia or Austria; the Berlin government submitted to a Franco-
Russian dictatorship; all Europe was under a Muscovite dictatorship; and just as the
referee is the dictator on a soccer field, so too it was standard for the editor of a daily
newspaper to be called dictator of the press room, even though he was subordinate to
owners. Marx exercised the same dictatorship as editor of the Cologne daily he put out
during the hectic days of revolution in 1848-49.
[18]

The term military dictator[ship] was less elastic; in fact, as far as I know, Marx and
Engels never used this term about anyone or any regime toward which they felt kindly. I
suspect this was true of the general usage too.
[19]

But on the other hand, Marx applied the term dictator pejoratively to a number of
political figures who exercised no dictatorship at all: in these cases the term merely
stressed some sort of domination in another form. Among these cases we find the Irish
leader Parnell, Bismarck, Lord Palmerston, and a few others. This usage, fairly common in
the press, should remind us of how often Franklin D. Roosevelt was called a dictator
long after the meaning of the term had hardened.
[20]

More to the point are the cases where Marx or Engels attacked efforts toward
personal domination inside the working-class or socialist movement; the word
dictatorship was indeed apt to crop up in the denunciation. The two best cases in point
are those of Bakunin and Lassalle, both seekers after personal dictatorship inside the
movement, and both attacked for this reason by Marx or Engels. Bakunins schemes for a
Secret Dictatorship of his coterie (in the name of anarchist libertarianism, of course)
were the basis of the Bakuninists drive to take over the International from about 1869 on;
and by that time Marx came to understand that This Russian evidently wants to become
dictator of the European working-class movement. The International published a
brochure written mainly by Engels and Lafargue, exposing the organization of a secret
society with the sole aim of subjecting the European workers movement to the secret
dictatorship of a few adventurers ... This brochure, for years derogated by unreliable
historians, has been confirmed in all essential respects by the accumulation of evidence on
Bakunins dictatorial aspirations.
[21]

Ferdinand Lassalle was for several years defended by Marx against the Communist
club in the Rhineland which rejected Lassalles bid for membership. It is now known that
Lassalle did not bother to conceal his hankerings for dictatorship of the workers
movement, at least not from associates whom he regarded as inferiors. Marx found this out
only in 1856. Then in an 1862 visit to Marx, Lassalle revealed more of his dictatorial
ideas, his hostility to individual liberty, and his propensity for behaving as if he were
the future workers dictator. Marx told him that they were poles apart, agreeing on
nothing except some far-distant ultimate ends, and chaffed him as an enlightened
Bonapartist. The accuracy of this assessment was fully confirmed when research turned
up Lassalles attempt in 1863 to use the newly organized Lassallean social-democratic
organization to make a deal with Bismarck: the Lassallean socialists would support a
social dictatorship by the Crown in exchange for concessions. In this letter Lassalle
pointed to his own personal dictatorship in the organization as evidence of the
24

willingness of the working class to support dictatorship. The general nature of Lassalles
machinations with Bismarck were known in the movement at the time, and were reported
to Marx. It is hard to see why the myth of Marxs personal hatred for Lassalle had to be
invented to account for hostility to a man with such politics.
[22]

In a number of other cases Marx expressed his opinion on efforts at personal
dictatorship in the movement. Of Auguste Comte, whose sect called itself Positivist and
was active in working-class circles, Marx wrote that he was a prophet of personal
Dictatorship author of a new catechism with a new pope and new saints. In England,
where H. M. Hyndman founded a self-styled Marxist group, the Social Democratic
Federation, his dictatorial conduct as boss of the organization was notorious. Hyndman,
wrote Engels, had alienated associates particularly by his impatience to play the dictator.
In what was left of the Chartist movement by 1855, Ernest Jones thought to stem decay by
concentrating all organizational power in his own hands. Marx wrote the news to Engels
that Jones has proclaimed himself dictator of Chartism, stirred a storm of indignation
against himself, and showed himself an ass in his effort to play the dictator himself.
[23]

These examples of the use of dictatorship indicate the spectrum of meaning
common in the nineteenth century. Indeed, much of this spectrum still conditions the term
today; metaphorical uses are still common. But when Marx first wrote down the term
dictatorship of the proletariat, it was a very specific sort of metaphorical usage.
4. Dictatorship of the Proletariat: First Period
Quite early, by 1844, Marx came to the conclusion that, to achieve a communist
transformation of society, the proletariat first had to conquer political power. This idea
played a basic role for him, and various terms expressing it dot his writings: not only
conquest of political (or state) power, but rule of the proletariat in particular; the
outcome would be a workers state; in terms of the British movement, this meant
proletarian ascendancy. We are going to see that, under given circumstances, one of
these terms was also going to be dictatorship of the proletariat.
[24]

Marx recognized that this aim, the political rule of the proletariat, was not at all
unique to his own theory; on the contrary, he liked to stress that all other real working-
class movements set this as their goal. This is strongly stated in the Communist Manifesto:
[25]

The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all the other proletarian
parties: constitution of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of bourgeois rule, conquest of
political power by the proletariat.
Above all, Marx knew and appreciated that the left Chartists (e.g., Harney) regularly
advocated the ascendancy (or rule, or political power) of the proletariat.
[26]
These
Chartists, like Marx, had no trouble with the alleged problem raised by modern
marxologists: How can a whole class rule? The answer was the same for Marx and the
Chartists as it was for their opponents, for (say) the liberal historian Macaulay, who feared
universal suffrage on the ground that it would put supreme power in the hands of a class,
the class of labor, hence generating a despotism, by which he openly meant a despotism
over the bourgeoisie.
[27]

We are going to see, then, that Marx used the term dictatorship of the proletariat in
exactly the same way as he used rule of the proletariat and the other labels for a workers
state. But under what circumstances did he tend to do so? A major clue is found in the fact
that Marxs and Engels use of the term dictatorship of the proletariat clustered in three
periods and was in fact notably absent in between. These three periods were the following:
Period I: 1850 to 1852, the postrevolutionary period after the upheaval of 1848-1849.
Period II: 1871 to 1875, the postrevolutionary period after the Paris Commune.
Period III (naturally involving Engels only): a sort of echo from 1875.
[28]

25

In view of the career of the word dictatorship, there is now no very difficult
problem about Marxs willingness to replace rule with dictatorship in certain contexts.
But a review of these contexts is enlightening.
Locus 1. In the first chapter of his Class Struggles in France, Marx mentioned that in
the course of the revolution in France, there appeared the bold slogan of revolutionary
struggle: Overthrow of the bourgeoisie! Dictatorship of the working class! Since there is
absolutely no record that dictatorship of the proletariat appeared as a slogan at all, I
suggest that Marx is not saying here that it appeared; he is only placing it in apposition
with the slogan that did appear, the first-mentioned slogan, namely Overthrow of the
bourgeoisie! In effect he is explaining what the first-mentioned slogan meant. In the same
passage, by the way, Marx freely used bourgeois terrorism and bourgeois dictatorship
interchangeably with bourgeois rule to characterize the bourgeois republic.
[29]

In the second chapter, Marx mentioned that the proletariat was not yet sufficiently
developed to take power itself. the proletariat ... [was] not yet enabled through the
development of the remaining classes to seize the revolutionary dictatorship ... In writing
this, Marx, as often, excluded the idea of a seizure of power by a minority in the Blanquist
fashion.
[30]

In the third chapter (written in March 1850 and published in April) Marx dissected
the pink socialism of Louis Blanc and reported that as against such social-democratic
reform currents, the proletariat increasingly organizes itself around revolutionary
socialism, around communism, for which the bourgeoisie itself has invented the name of
Blanqui. It is important to note what this clearly states: Blanquis name was inventively
applied to the communist tendency by its enemies, the bourgeoisie and not by Marx
himself.
[31]

Marxs chapter goes on to say that this revolutionary socialism is the declaration of
the permanence of the revolution, the class dictatorship of the proletariat as the necessary
transit point to the abolition of class distinctions generally and thence to the
revolutionizing of all society. Please note that Marxs emphasis is on the term class
dictatorship.
Marxs reference to Blanqui is a shorthand reference to the then well-known use of
Blanquis name as a revolutionary bogey by the counterrevolutionary politicians. At a
crucial point in April 1848, when a workers demonstration against the government was
building up, the right-wing Provisional Government leaders organized a massive campaign
to circulate the story that Blanqui and his friends were preparing to overthrow the
government and take over. (One of the first well-organized red scares.)
Karl Marxs Theory of Revolution 3 gives some space to Louis Blancs own
historical account of the use made of Blanquis name as a sort of bugbear. Blanc referred
to the part so cleverly assigned to M. Blanqui, the better to frighten the bourgeoisie a
role assigned, or invented, by the government majority anxious to put an end to
revolutionary pressure from below. This is the meaning of Marxs reference to the
communist bugbear for which the bourgeoisie itself has invented the name of Blanqui.
[32]

The repeated claim that in this passage Marx was himself equating the dictatorship
of the proletariat phrase with Blanqui is a remarkable distortion that is almost standard
among marxologists, not infrequently based on outright mistranslation.
[33]

Locus 2. In April 1850 the phrase dictatorship of the proletariat again cropped up,
in connection with the Blanquists but not as their expression.
At this time, still expecting that the quiescent revolution would burst out again on the
Continent, Marx and his comrades of the Communist League, in London exile, looked for
cooperative relations with other revolutionary groups. One of these was the left wing of
the Chartists, led by Harney, already in close touch with Marxs circle. Among the French,
the only group Marx considered to be revolutionary was the Blanquist tendency, which
had no prominent leaders and few ideas but did have some influence in the emigr
26

community. Talks took place among these three tendencies looking toward the
establishment of a sort of united-front organization for revolutionary cooperation. A
number of programmatic points were jotted down not by Marx or Engels for
consideration under the heading Socit Universelle des Communistes Rvolutionnaires.
[The full story of SUCR is set out for the first time in Chapter 12 of Karl Marxs Theory of
Revolution 3, which gives particular attention to the myths spun about SUCR by such
writers as Nicolaievsky.]
All we really know of SUCR is that some sort of preliminary agreement was reached
to discuss this proposal. All the participants signed the paper with the programmatic
points. There is no evidence that any organization resulted. Indeed all the evidence
indicates that the idea remained strictly on paper and never got off the ground. By October
Marx who had meanwhile come to the conclusion that the revolutionary situation was
over for that period repudiated the SUCR project.
[34]

For what it is worth, then, we can report that the SUCR program set down this article
first of all: The aim of the association is the downfall of all the privileged classes, to
subject these classes to the dictatorship of the proletarians, maintaining the revolution in
permanence until the realization of communism ...
[35]

The dictatorship of the proletarians is a formula that Marx never used elsewhere;
this is only one of several reasons to believe that the program was drafted not by Marx but
by August Willich, a member of the Communist League close to the Blanquists
personally.
[36]
There is no mystery about why this phrase, as well as revolution in
permanence, appealed to these people. The attractive appeal of these terms to Blanquist
types who did not understand their content suggests a hypothesis on why, and under what
circumstances, Marx occasionally used the term dictatorship of the proletariat.
[37]

The same hypothesis explains why the term makes its appearance in connection with
the Blanquists but not by the Blanquists. Ordinarily Marxs term for the idea would be, as
we have seen, rule of the proletariat, political power of the working class, etc. But when
it is a question of counterposing this class concept to the Blanquist-type dictatorship, it is
dressed in the formula class dictatorship. Class dictatorship is then counterposed to
Blanquist dictatorship, to make the contrast.
Particularly in united fronts with the Blanquists, it was only such a formulation that
would be acceptable to Marx. On its basis he could undertake to do what was necessary to
re-educate his partners. Joint collaboration with these partners took place on a formulation
that preserved the class character that was fundamental for Marx, while at the same time
no doubt making the Blanquists happy with its revolutionary flavor.
To understand this, the reader must put aside the modern aura that makes
dictatorship a dirty word for us; for this aura did not yet exist. How do you counteract the
primitive notion of dictatorship that was so common precisely among the people who
wanted to be good revolutionaries? You tell them: Dictatorship? That means rule. Yes, we
want the rule of the proletariat; but that does not mean the rule of a man or a clique or a
band or a party; it means the rule of a class. Class rule means class dictatorship.
This is how the term came from Marxs pen in 1850: an instrument in the re-
education of the Blanquist and Jacobin-revolutionary currents around Marxs own circle.
The marxological myth which had dictatorship of the proletariat pegged as a Blanquist
idea had history turned upside-down. Dictatorship of the proletariat came into existence
as an attempt to show would-be revolutionaries that there was another way of being
revolutionary, Marxs way.
This understood, we can restate our basic thesis on the meaning of the term to Marx.
For Marx and Engels, from beginning to end of their careers and without exception,
dictatorship of the proletariat meant nothing more and nothing less than rule of the
proletariat, the conquest of political power by the working class, the establishment of a
workers state in the immediate postrevolutionary period.
[38]

27

The subsequent career of the term provides proof after proof of this thesis; at the
same time no evidence turns up to gainsay it. This is the claim to be tested in the light of
the facts.
5. The First Period Continued
The next appearances of the dictatorship of the proletariat were echoes from Locus
1.
Locus 3. Otto Lning, the socialistic editor of a leftist paper in Frankfurt, wrote a
four-installment review of Marxs N.R.Z. Revue articles on The Class Struggles in France.
It was published in June in Lnings Neue Deutsche Zeitung.
[39]
What Lning criticized
above all was the red thread that wound through Marxs conception of society and
history: the cleavage of present-day society into different classes with contradictory
interests. Lnings kind of socialism believed in class harmony and reform. He therefore
repeatedly underlined that Marx advocated the taking of political power by the working
class: for Marx the aim of the revolutionary movement is the revolutionary rule, the
dictatorship of the working class. But what Lning keeps attacking is the rule. He
finally reveals that his sharpest disagreement is with Marxs emphasis on the transference
of rule from one class to another instead of on the destruction of class differences.
At no point did Lning indicate any special interest in the term dictatorship of the
proletariat, which he himself mentioned in passing. Throughout he was intent on
repudiating the aim of a working-class state, of class rule, as well as (later in his review)
attacking the very idea of a class interpretation of history. Obviously Lnings views had a
great future as the format for anti-Marxism, but it was not dictatorship of the proletariat
that drew blood.
[40]

Marx, who at first intended to write a longer analysis of Lning for the N. R. Z.
Revue, compromised on a letter to the editor in the latters paper. Marxs letter was short
and sententious and replied only to Lnings claim that Marx had written only about rule
of the proletariat and not about the further aim of abolishing class differences. It referred
to the charge about the rule and the dictatorship of the working class but, just like
Lning, was interested only in the rule idea. The letter listed a series of references and
citations to Marxs writings in which the abolition of class differences had been
prominently discussed, including the very passage that Lning was reviewing.
[41]

What stands out, in Marxs letter as in Lnings attack, was that the term
dictatorship of the proletariat was not specially involved for either of them. Both
assumed that it had no special content other than rule of the proletariat.
Locus 4. Lnings associate editor and brother-in-law was a good friend and comrade
of Marxs, Joseph Weydemeyer. In 1851 Weydemeyer had to flee government harassment
in Germany, and finally decided to emigrate to the United States. Soon after his arrival in
November, he began writing for the radical German-American press, while corresponding
with Marx. His first article appeared in the New York Turn-Zeitung for January 1, 1852,
an issue which also offered the first installment of Engels Peasant War in Germany as
well as Weydemeyers announcement of his own forthcoming weekly.
[42]

The title of Weydemeyers article was Die Diktatur des Proletariats (The
Dictatorship of the Proletariat). The article was solely concerned with the subject of the
rule of the working class as expounded in the Communist Manifesto, which is the source of
the contents of the piece. The term in the title is not even repeated in the body of the article
until the last passage, which speaks of the need for any revolution to have a dictatorship
at its head, and then presents the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat which is
concentrated in the big cities, not the proletariat tout court. Obviously Weydemeyer did
not grasp the idea of a class dictatorship, however many times Marx had underlined that
term.
Now as he wrote an article condensing the teachings of the Man (as was clearly
Weydemeyers aim), why did the title term occur to him? The answer, not very
28

conjectural, is that he had only recently stood close on the sidelines as his associate Lning
had lifted a lance against the rule, the dictatorship of the working class.
[43]

Marx must have recently received a copy of Weydemeyers article (though there is
no record of this) when on March 5, 1852, in response to his friends letters, Marx wrote
him a lengthy bit of advice on how to deal with issues in the German-American press. It
was in this context that Marx criticized the refusal by writers like Karl Heinzen to
recognize the existence of classes in society. Marx wrote that no credit was due to him for
discovering the existence of classes in modern society or the class struggle among them.
What I did that was new was (1) to show that the existence of classes is simply bound
up with certain historical phases of the development of production; (2) that the class
struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat; (3) that this dictatorship
itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.
If the reader substitutes the usual rule of the proletariat for the striking phrase here,
the content of this statement will be perfectly clear. There is nothing whatever in this
passage to indicate that Marx thought he was making an unusual pronouncement. Then
why did he use dictatorship of the proletariat instead of his usual term? Well, this is
precisely what is explained by the fact that Weydemeyer himself had just given that term
special visibility. Marxs letter was simply echoing the title of the article by Weydemeyer,
who was himself echoing the recent exchange in the NDZ between Marx and Lning.
Marx was throwing in a phrase that had special associations for his correspondent. Writing
a personal letter, Marx could let this be understood. When taken out of this context and
held up to view as if it were an extraordinary statement, its significance is distorted.
[44]

6. The Second Period of Dictatorship of the Proletariat
In the two decades before the Paris Commune, there was not a single case of Marxs
use of dictatorship of the proletariat.
[45]
As always, he kept referring to the rule of the
proletariat, conquest of political power, workers state, and similar expressions to
denote the assumption of state power by the working class. Accidental? It is entirely
explainable in terms of the thesis offered above. During these two decades, in which the
left movement was at a low ebb, Marxs work and activities did not involve him in any
connection with Blanquist elements. There was no need for him to deal with their
conception of dictatorship.
For the same reason the term dictatorship of the proletariat did not appear in The
Civil War in France, the defense and analysis of the Paris Commune that Marx wrote for
the General Council of the International. At this time, and until the Communard refugees
started trickling into London, the Blanquists had refused any ties with the International; it
was not revolutionary enough for them.
In The Civil War in France Marx argued that the Commune was a working-class
government, the political form at last discovered under which to work out the
economical emancipation of Labour. The Commune was a workers state of brief
duration and naturally with all kinds of limitations and inadequacies. Marxs
characterization of the Commune was so sweeping in this regard that there can be no doubt
that, for him, it was accepted as an example of the rule (or dictatorship) of the
proletariat.
At the same time The Civil War in France filled pages with a description and
celebration of the extraordinary advance in democracy represented by the Commune
government form and actions. The Commune supplied the Republic with the basis of
really democratic institutions; its measures could but betoken the tendency of a
government of the people by the people.
[46]

It is clear that, in Marxs eyes, the Commune took no dictatorial measures if the
present-day meaning of the word is used. Indeed, there had been a proposal inside the
Commune to do just that, as the military situation grew more and more precarious before
the military power of the Versailles government. The Blanquist-Jacobin majority of the
Commune proposed to set up a dictatorial body to be called (shades of Robespierre) a
29

Committee of Public Safety, with special arbitrary powers. The debate over dictatorship
(this is how it was put) was acrimonious; when the proposal was adopted, the Minority
walked out of the Commune. This split would have attracted more attention from
historians than it has if the final Versaillese assault on the city had not commenced at
virtually the moment of the split, making it academic as all pitched in to the military
defense. But in hindsight it is important to note that the antidictatorial Minority
represented most of the International people as well as the Proudhonists, and in particular
it included all the figures who had any special connection with Marx or showed any
tendency to look to his ideas (for example, Serraillier, who was practically Marxs
personal representative; Frankel, Longuet, Varlin).
[47]

Since the Paris Commune clearly had no dictatorial trappings in the modern sense,
it has always represented a problem for those who maintain that Marxs dictatorship of
the proletariat meant something specially dictatorial as compared with a mere workers
state. When we find that Marx (not only Engels) had no compunction about calling it a
dictatorship of the proletariat, this fact itself speaks volumes about our basic thesis.
After the fall of the Commune, Blanquist Communards among others found their
way to London, where they began working with Marx, especially on refugee aid; several
were co-opted onto the General Council. No evidence is needed to understand that Marx
naturally discussed his views with them, as with others; but there is good evidence
nevertheless. In other words, as in the 1850s, Marx tried to re-educate them from his
standpoint.
[48]
The Blanquists just as naturally set out to turn the International into a
Blanquist sect. With this two-way influence, it is of the greatest interest that now we find
Marx once again after twenty years using the term dictatorship of the proletariat. And
we will also now find the Blanquist refugees using it too! in their case, for the first
time.
[49]

Locus 5. The first post-Commune meeting of the International was the London
Conference of September 1871. At its end there was an anniversary celebration of the
Internationals founding, bringing the participants together in a social occasion a banquet
plus toasts (short speeches). Marx was voted into the chair and forced to make a short
speech.
A correspondent of the New York World sent in a longish dispatch about the banquet
(The Reds in Session) with a considerable summary of Marxs talk. About the
Commune, Marx reiterated his view that the Commune was the conquest of the political
power of the working classes. Its aim was to remove any base for class rule and
oppression: But before such a change could be effected a proletarian dictature would
become necessary. (The verbs are those of the reporters paraphrase.)
Thus Marxs first use of the term since 1852 took place before an assemblage heavily
weighted with Blanquist Communards, where the name that set the whole assembly in
motion like an electric shock was Blanquis (in the words of the dispatch). Apparently
Marx even used the French form of the term (dictature). He was once again confronting
the Blanquist mind with his own conception of class dictatorship.
[50]

Locus 6. Marxs next use of the term came in an article written around the turn of the
year 1872 into 1873, as a polemic against Proudhon and anarchism, not so much on
anarchism itself as on the anarchist stance of principled hostility to revolutionary political
activity. It was published in December 1873 in an Italian socialist annual under the title
Indifference to Politics.
The article begins abruptly with a long section, all in quotation marks, which
purports to represent what an antipolitical Proudhonist or anarchist would say if he set
down his views frankly. The dictatorship term occurs in the course of this fictitious
speech; for the speaker is shown attacking the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat in
the same way as he attacks any idea of political action or political power.
In this way the Proudhonist is represented as asserting: If the political struggle of
the working class assumes violent forms, if the workers substitute their revolutionary
30

dictatorship for the dictatorship of the bourgeois class, they commit the terrible crime of
violating principle, for (continues Marx) the workers do not lay down arms and abolish
the state but rather give it a revolutionary and transitional form.
As usual, the dictatorship phrase is used here as only another formulation for
workers political power; but there is a special interest. Here Marx makes the thought plain
by counterposing two class dictatorships; the dictatorship of the bourgeois class is
made coordinate with the revolutionary dictatorship of the working class. This usage
underlines that Marx thinks of class dictatorships (either one) in terms of the class nature
of political power, rather than in terms of special governmental forms.
[51]

When the Hague Congress of the International (September 1872) decided to transfer
the center to New York a proposal Marx made, no doubt, in order to stave off the coming
push by the Blanquists to take over the movement for their own purposes, having helped
save it from Bakunin the Blanquists reacted by announcing their split from the
International and their open reconstitution of a Blanquist sect. By this time their
programmatic ideas had undergone a degree of Marxification, though not on their basic
notion of revolution by a putschist band. In pamphlets, Internationale et Revolution (1872)
and Aux Communeux (1874), they set down their ideas. As Engels wrote to a friend, the
1872 brochure quite seriously explains all our economic and political principles as
Blanquist discoveries. This is a jocular exaggeration, but indeed the Blanquists threw in
the term dictatorship of the proletariat as a new formulation (new for them) for the
coming Blanquist seizure of power. [The passages in the Blanquist brochures which talked
about dictatorship are quoted and discussed in Karl Marxs Theory of Revolution 3; they
would be digressive here. Suffice it to say that other passages in the brochures still made it
clear that, however new their phraseology, they still advocated the assumption
ofrevolutionary power by a minority band, in the traditional Blanquist sense.] This led to
Engels first use of the term under his own name.
[52]

Locus 7. Hard on the heels of Marxs Italian article, Engels used the term in Part III
of his work The Housing Question. It occurred in two passages.
In the first Engels discussed the Blanquist pamphlet of 1872, which, he claimed,
adopted, and almost literally at that, the views of German scientific socialism on the
necessity of political action by the proletariat and of its dictatorship as the transition to the
abolition of classes and with them of the state views such as had already been expressed
in the Communist Manifesto and since then on innumerable occasions. This shows
strikingly that Engels saw nothing in the term dictatorship of the proletariat which was
not already in, say, the Manifesto which said nothing about any dictatorship.
The second passage is interesting for a similar reason. Here Engels was polemizing
against a Proudhonist, who attacked the very notion of class political power, or class
rule. Engels replies: why, every political party wants to establish its rule in the state; a
socialist workers party likewise strives for the rule of the working class.
Moreover, every real proletarian party, from the English Chartists onward, has
always put forward a class policy, the organization of the proletariat as an independent
political party, as the first condition of the struggle, and the dictatorship of the proletariat
as the immediate aim of the struggle.
What leaps to the eye is Engels assumption that dictatorship of the proletariat has
no special meaning other than the establishment of the rule of the working class.
Every real working-class party stands for it: this statement can make no sense to anyone
who believes that there is some special theory of proletarian dictatorship in Marx and
Engels, involving special notions about dictatorial measures.
[53]

Locus 8. The clearest explanation of the meaning of dictatorship of the proletariat
came soon (1874) in an article by Engels devoted precisely to the Blanquists adoption of
the term, in their brochure Aux Communeux. This article, Program of the Blanquist
Refugees of the Commune, is, far and away, the best analysis of the Blanquist tendency
31

ever published, but this is not our present subject. Its statement on our subject goes as
follows:
From the fact that Blanqui conceives of every revolution as the coup de main of a
small revolutionary minority, what follows of itself is the necessity of dictatorship after its
success the dictatorship, please note, not of the entire revolutionary class, the proletariat,
but of the small number of those who made the coup de main and who themselves are
organized beforehand under the dictatorship of one person or a few.
One can see that Blanqui is a revolutionary of the previous generation.
There could be no more instructive differentiation between on the one hand
Marxs conception of the dictatorship of the proletariat as the rule (dictatorship) of a
majority c lass or class movement, and on the other the traditional conception of
dictatorship, the idea of the previous generation, as the dictatorship of the party or
revolutionary band, hence entailing the dictatorship of the latter over the proletariat.
[54]

Locus 9. The confrontation with the Blanquists, we see, produced several contexts
for the dictatorship of the proletariat during the first half of the 1870s. The term had
cropped up, and this no doubt accounts for the fact that it was used by Marx in an
important document in 1875.
As the two German socialist parties the so-called Eisenachers led by Bebel and
the Lassalleans prepared to unite at a congress in Gotha, a draft program made for the
occasion was filled with concessions to the Lassalleans. Marx, incensed, sent a letter to
Eisenacher leaders, critically analyzing the program and attacking the Lassallean
formulations and ideas. This Critique of the Gotha Program was neither a personal letter
nor a public article, but a restricted circular of political discussion.
The passage referring to dictatorship of the proletariat is one of the most often-
quoted loci, but also one of the barest. It came in a section where Marx first attacked the
Lassallean formula free state. No, wrote Marx, we do not want to make the state free,
but rather to put it under democratic control. Freedom consists in transforming the state
from an organ set above society into one thoroughly subordinated to it, and today too the
state forms are more free or less free to the extent that they restrict the freedom of the
state. This was a blow struck against the Lassallean sects servile belief in the state.
Marx next objected to confusing the terms present-day state and present-day society.
The latter is capitalist society, and different present-day states may have capitalist society
as their social basis. He then raised a question about the future state beyond bourgeois
society:
The question comes up, then: what transformation will the state undergo in a
communist society? In other words, what societal functions will remain there that are
analogous to the present state functions?
His answer was lamentably brief:
Between the capitalist and the communist society lies the period of the revolutionary
transformation of the one into the other. To this there corresponds a political transition
period whose state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.
The one thing this short statement makes clear is that Marx did not think in terms of
more or less dictatorial forms of the transitional period represented by the workers state.
Especially in the twentieth century it was not uncommon to read that, according to Marx, a
workers state might or might not be a dictatorship of the proletariat, depending
presumably on how severely dictatorial it had to become. This interpretation is excluded
by Marxs words: the workers state can be nothing but a dictatorship of the proletariat;
in other words, the two terms are synonymous. In this connection, it is worth noting that,
soon after the passage quoted, Marx warned against confusing the state with the
government machine. This has to be applied to the previous statement that in the
transitional period the state will be the dictatorship of the proletariat. For Marx this was a
statement about the societal content of the state, the class character of the political power.
32

It was not a statement about the forms of the government machine or other structural
aspects of government or policies.
[55]

This was the last appearance of dictatorship of the proletariat in Marxs writings.
7. The Third Period of Dictatorship of the Proletariat
When Marx died in 1883, the term had not come up for eight years; and another
seven years passed before it appeared again under Engels name. During this fifteen-year
hiatus, the old Blanquist problem that had originally elicited the term had completely
changed. When the term re-emerged, it was as an echo from 1875, that is, it was due to the
publication of Marxs Critique of the Gotha Program.
In 1890 the German Social-Democratic Party was preparing to adopt a new party
program, replacing the Gotha Program of 1875. (The new program was going to be
adopted by the Erfurt Congress of 1891.) Engels was determined to use the pre-Congress
discussion to make known to the movement what the party leadership (specifically
Liebknecht, Bebel being in prison) had done its best to suppress, namely Marxs views on
Lassalle and Lassalleanism. Engels disinterred the manuscript from Marxs papers and,
with some difficulty, managed to get it published in the party press.
[56]

Locus 10. In October 1890, as he was pulling the critique out of the archive, he sat
down to write a letter to a comrade discussing the materialist conception of history. This is
one of the letters in which Engels explained that this conception does not present economic
factors as alone operative in history. Look at Marxs Eighteenth Brumaire, he advised,
which almost exclusively concerns itself with the special role that political struggles and
events play, naturally within the framework of their general dependence on economic
conditions. Pointing to other analyses by Marx, he added:
Or why then do we fight for the political dictatorship of the proletariat, if political
power is economically powerless? Force (i.e., state power) is also an economic power.
[Letter to C. Schmidt, October 27, 1890]
Once again, we see, Engels assumed, as a matter that did not even require discussion,
that dictatorship of the proletariat was a mere synonym for the conquest of political
power by the working class. Once again, if the term is assigned a narrower or more special
meaning, this rather casual reference by Engels ceases to make sense.
[57]

When Marxs Critique was published in the Neue Zeit, it was a bombshell (as
Engels said). The main reason for this was its criticism of Lassalleanism, but the reference
to the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat was equally denounced by the right
wing of the party. One leader of the parliamentary group repudiated it on the floor of the
Reichstag. For a while the entire party leadership boycotted Engels personally for daring to
make Marxs views known to the party membership and the public. Never before had the
right wings hostility to Marx come out in the open as it did now.
[58]

Locus 11, Meanwhile Engels was working on a new edition of Marxs The Civil War
in France. In March he finished his new introduction to that analysis of the Paris
Commune. This was in effect an essay on the Commune: once more he dissected the
Blanquist approach to revolution
the viewpoint that a relatively small number of resolute, well-organized men would
be able ... to maintain power until they succeeded in sweeping the mass of people into the
revolution and ranging them round the small band of leaders. This involved, above all, the
strictest, dictatorial centralization of all power in the hands of the new revolutionary
government.
Like Marx, Engels reviewed the Communes implementation of real democracy. And
then, at the very end, he paid his respects to the right-wingers who were attacking Marxs
Critique:
Of late, the Social-Democratic philistine has once more been filled with wholesome
terror at the phrase: dictatorship of the proletariat. Well and good, gentlemen, do you want
to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the
dictatorship of the proletariat.
33

In calling the Commune a dictatorship of the proletariat Engels was echoing
Marxs banquet speech of 1871, which until quite recently was virtually unknown to the
marxological industry. Hence for a very long time it was customary for writers to assert
that this was Engels own invention for how could the Commune be a dictatorship of
the proletariat if it did not take some sturdily dictatorial steps? Plainly these
marxologists will have to argue that Marx like Engels did not understand Marxism;
only they do, having virtually invented it.
[59]

Locus 12. Three months later, Engels had another bombshell ready for the Social-
Democratic philistine wing of the party: a critique of the draft Erfurt Program. He was
taking the opportunity, he said, to strike at the peaceable opportunism of the Vorwrts
[the party organ] and at the reformist view that bourgeois society would of itself grow
into socialist society. (By the way, the myth that by this time Engels had become an
advocate of peaceable gradualism was invented, after his death, by the very people
against whom this campaign was directed.)
Engels critique of the draft program especially raised the question of including a
demand for the democratic republic as one of the democratic planks, and argued that a
peaceful assumption of power was not possible in Germany. This emphasis was directed
head-on against the trend toward reformist adaptation to the German imperial state which
was developing in the party. He wrote:
If anything is established, it is that our party and the working class can come to
power only under the form of the democratic republic. This is even the specific form for
the dictatorship of the proletariat, as the great French revolution [the Paris Commune] has
already shown.
It was another chance for Engels to get in a lick for the phrase that had recently upset
all the Social-Democratic philistines; in a different year he might have said, specific form
for the workers state. But the important thing was that he was explaining the relationship
between the governmental form (democratic republic) and the class content of the state
(dictatorship of the proletariat). The Paris Commune [Because of the expression great
French revolution, the assumption has often been made that Engels meant the French
Revolution of 1789; but the idea that he, or anyone else, could view 1789 (or 1793) as a
dictatorship of the proletariat is too absurd to entertain. The specific reasons why this
interpretation is untenable are presented in Karl Marxs Theory of Revolution 3.
[60]
] had
shown in revolutionary practice that a workers state (dictatorship of the proletariat) could
and probably would be based on the forms of the democratic republic.
[61]

Engels coupling of dictatorship of the proletariat with the term democratic
republic has been another target for the marxological campaign to turn dictatorship of the
proletariat into a special slogan about dictatorship. Much of this campaign depends,
unwittingly, on the later pattern according to which the term democratic was used as a
shorthand form for bourgeois-democratic, especially but not only in the Russian
movement. But neither Marx nor Engels ever limited the word democratic to the meaning
of bourgeois-democratic. Indeed, no one has ever tried to show that they did; we are
again dealing with an unthought-through assumption, based on the naive belief that ones
own political jargon had arisen with Adam.
But the main difficulty has not been inability to see that democratic republic, to
most people, meant a republic that was democratic, and not some special term that only the
sophisticated initiates could understand. The main difficulty, as before, is the assumption
that a dictatorship of the proletariat has to be dictatorial in the modern sense, and
therefore could not be clothed in straightforward democratic forms.
[62]

Engels, who thought that a democratic republic meant a democratic republic, had a
proposal to make in his critique of the draft Erfurt Program, especially for those who
argued that the demand for a democratic republic could not be openly placed in the
program because the government would utilize it as a pretext to harass the party. We can
get around that, he suggested: in my opinion what should go in and can go in is the
34

demand for the concentration of all political power in the hands of the peoples
representation.
This is a classic formulation of the meaning of thoroughgoing democracy: the
concentration of all political power in the hands of the peoples representation. It would
stand for the illegal democratic republic, which is the specific form for the dictatorship
of the proletariat. Engels, the advocate of that revolutionary dictatorship which so
appalled the right wing, was arguing with them that they should say something about their
goal of a democratic republic instead of adapting themselves to the legality of the kaisers
regime.
[63]

8. Engels vs. Plekhanov: Pointer to the Future
The last echo of dictatorship of the proletariat that comes to us from Engels last
years points straight ahead to the next period, in which the term parted company with
Marx and Engels.
In 1893 a young Russian Social-Democratic emigr visited Engels. Plekhanov, the
leader and theoretician of the relatively new Russian Marxist group, had given him a letter
of recommendation. A third of a century later, A. M. Voden wrote up his memoirs,
including his Talks with Engels. Just why dictatorship of the proletariat came into the
conversation is not clear from Vodens account. The two were discussing the relations
between Narodniks (Russian Populists) and the Russian Social-Democrats, including
Plekhanovs attitude. Voden writes:
Engels asked how Plekhanov himself stood on the question of the dictatorship of the
proletariat. I was forced to admit that G. V Plekhanov had repeatedly expressed his
conviction to me that when we come to power, of course we would allow freedom to
no one but ourselves ... However, in response to my question who exactly should be
taken to be the monopolists of freedom, Plekhanov answered: the working class headed by
comrades who correctly understand Marxs teachings and who draw the correct
conclusions from those teachings. And in response to my question on what comprises the
objective criteria for a correct understanding of Marxs teachings and the correct practical
conclusions flowing therefrom, G. V Plekhanov limited himself to the statement that it was
all laid out clearly enough, it seems in his (Plekhanovs) works.
If Vodens report was accurate (and there is no reason to doubt it), then it is clear
what the leader and teacher of Russian Social-Democracy destined also to be the leading
theoretician of Russian Menshevism was teaching his movement. When we seize
power, democratic rights (freedom) would be withdrawn from opponents, and a
dictatorial regime would be imposed with the dictatorship in the hands of the victorious
party or just its leadership. There is no mystery about where Plekhanov himself a
Narodnik only a few years before had gotten these notions: this conception of
dictatorship had long been the unquestioned orthodoxy of the Blanquist and Bakuninist
elements who had long provided most of the training of Russian (and other)
revolutionaries. He did not get it from Marxs old term; the relationship was the other way
round this was the standard conception which he imposed on Marxs term when he
heard it. And what did Engels think of this, when told by Voden? We learn this in Vodens
memoirs, which continue as follows:
After inquiring whether I personally on the other hand was satisfied with such an
objective criterion [that is, Plekhanovs], Engels expressed the opinion that the application
of that sort of criterion would either lead to the Russian Social-Democracys turning into a
sect with its unavoidable and always undesirable practical consequences, or it would give
rise in the Russian Social-Democracy at least among the emigr Russian Social-
Democrats to a series of splits from which Plekhanov himself would not benefit.
In short, thought Engels, Plekhanovs perspective would wreck the movement, either
by a split or (what amounts to the same thing) sectification. There is an indication in
Vodens memoirs that there was more to report about Engels hostile reception to this
account of the Russian leaders views. Engels remarked that Plekhanov seemed to him a
35

Russian analogue of H. M. Hyndman. Voden footnoted that Plekhanov took this as a
compliment, and it is likely that Voden had no idea of what it meant. Hyndman, the leader
of the British Marxist sect which Marx and Engels used to denounce in the most cutting
terms, was furthermore viewed by them as a sect dictator, whose dictatorial patterns had
split the movement more than once.
It is hard to exaggerate the significance of this little-known episode, as a symbol and
as an educational beam of light on the meaning of the question. In just a few years the
Russian Social-Democratic Workers Party was going to become the first socialist
organization in the world to include the dictatorship of the proletariat in its program
though Marx and Engels had always refused to propose such a step. The term was written
into the party program by Plekhanov, who by that time was perhaps the most prestigious
theoretician of Marxism outside Germany.
[64]

Thus the new era of the dictatorship of the proletariat was launched on its way
not by Lenin (as the usual myth has it) but by the future leader and theoretician of
Menshevism.
Thus the antidemocratic interpretation of dictatorship of the proletariat, repudiated
by Engels when it was reported to him, was going to blossom in the Second International
and particularly in the Russian movement.
Footnotes

All references are to Karl Marxs Theory of Revolution, Volume 3, published by Monthly
Review Press in 4 volumes, 1976-1990.
1. The Roman dictatura: 14-16.
2. Martial law, etc.: 16-19.
3. In the 20th century: 20-21. Survey of pre-1789 usages: 23-26.
4. The French Revolution: 27-32; Marat: 33-38; Robespierre: 39-40.
5. Babouvist movement: 44-51. Marx and Babouvism: 183-89.
6. Blanquists; the myth of the Blanquist origin of the term: 51-60.
7. Early Utopians, esp. Cabet: 60-64. Dzamy Morrison, etc.: 65-68. Cabet in 1850: 177-
81.
8. Louis Blanc: 69-73.
9. Weitling: 60-61, 83-85.
10. Bakunin in 1848: 86-89.
11. Cavaignacs dictatorship: 74-82.
12. Marx in the 1848 revolution: 92-105.
13. This paragraph: 107.
14. Guizot: 108-09.
15. Donoso Corts: 109-11.
16. Stein: 112-16.
17. Despotism in Marx: 117-21.
18. This paragraph: 121-25.
19. Military dictatorship: 125-29.
20. A number of such figures, including the dictators of the Democracy: 129-41.
21. Bakunin: 142-49; some Bakuninists: 154-56.
22. Lassalle: 150-54; Schweitzer: 156-60.
23. Comte, Hyndman, Jones: 161-65.
24. This paragraph: 169-71.
25. Communist Manifesto: 171-73.
26. Chartists: 173-74.
27. Concept of class rule: 174-77.
28. Periodization: 168-69.
29. Locus 1, first chapter: 271-73. (For the use, in this work, of dictatorship alone: 266-
71.)
36

30. Locus 1, second chapter: 273-74.
31. Not summarized here is KMTRs extensive discussion of Blanqui and Blanquism with
relation to Marx; in KMTR 3, see Chaps. 9-10, 17-18, and Special Note B.
32. Blanqui as bogey: 276-79.
33. Locus 1, third chapter: 274-76.
34. SUCRs collapse: 294-304.
35. The full text: 281-82; discussion: 282-86.
36. Willich and SUCR: 319-22.
37. On the Blanquist group involved here: 286-94.
38. Basic thesis: 323-25.
39. Lning and NDZ: 329-33.
40. Lnings views and critique: 334-41.
41. Marxs letter to NDZ.. 341-44.
42. Weydemeyer: 370-73.
43. Weydemeyers article: 373-77.
44. Marxs letter: 377-79.
45. The occurrence of dictatorship of the proletariat in Marxs Herr Vogt is discussed in
380-84.
46. Marxs analysis of the Commune: 412-19.
47. The split in the Commune over dictatorship: 422-26.
48. Blanquists and the International: 427-31. The case of Vermersch: 442-26.
49. Blanquist split: 432-35.
50. Banquet speech: 447-51.
51. Locus 6: 451-54.
52. The Blanquist pamphlets: 432-38.
53. Locus 7: 454-57.
54. Locus 8: 462-64.
55. Locus 9: 464-69.
56. Republication of Marxs Critique: 475-76.
57. Locus 10: 474-75.
58. Commotion in the party: 476-82.
59. Locus 11: 483-86.
60. The interpretation: 488-89.
61. Locus 12: 486-88
62. Democratic republic: 489-93.
63. Engels proposal: 494.
64. Vodens memoirs: 495-97.

37

Francis Wheen
Marx and the Working Class

Source: Karl Marx, Francis Wheen 1999, pp 276-292. Used with permission of
the author.

According to the legend tirelessly peddled by his critics, Marx was an incorrigible
snob who despised working-class socialists, regarding them as dolts and asses who had
acquired ideas above their station. The biographer Robert Payne, for example, refers to
Marxs contempt for humanity and especially for that section of it which he called the
proletariat. Even a sophisticated Marxologist such as Professor Shlomo Avineri can write
that Marxs sceptical view of the proletariats ability to conceive its own goals and realise
them without outside intellectual help has often been documented. It suits his remark that
revolutions never start with the masses but originate in lite groups. Where have these
views and remarks been documented? You will search the works of Marx and indeed the
footnotes of Avineri in vain. Avineri mentions the snubbing of Wilhelm Weitling:
however, Marx was in fact remarkably generous to Weitling, arguing that one shouldnt be
too beastly to a poor tailor who had genuinely suffered for his beliefs, and what caused
their eventual rift was not lordly disdain for the underclass but terminal exasperation at the
political and religious delusions of an insufferable egomaniac. Had Weitling been a
middle-class intellectual, Marx would have treated him far more savagely.
Which brings us to Avineris second exhibit. Even one of his most loyal followers,
George Eccarius, also a tailor by trade, came in for a generous measure of unearned
contempt from his master and teacher. Once again no sources are cited: clearly Marxs
lofty scorn for tailors, cobblers and other pond-life is so universally accepted as to need no
verification.
This is the exact opposite of the truth. It was Marx who gave Eccarius his first break
by publishing his study of Tailoring in London in the short-lived London journal, NRZ
Revue. The author of this article, Marx informed readers, is himself a worker in one of
Londons tailoring shops. We ask the German bourgeoisie how many authors it numbers
capable of grasping the real movement in a similar manner? ... The reader will note how
here, instead of the sentimental, moral and psychological criticism employed against
existing conditions by Weitling and other workers who engage in authorship, a purely
materialist understanding and a freer one, unspoilt by sentimental whims, confronts
bourgeois society and its movement.
No sign there of contempt, unearned or otherwise. Throughout the darkest days of
the 1850s Marx remained attentive and sympathetic, helping Eccarius place articles in
German-language newspapers abroad in the hope of rescuing him from the treadmill of
tailoring from five in the morning until eight in the evening. If any money is forthcoming,
I would suggest that Eccarius get some first so that he doesnt have to spend all day
tailoring, he advised a journalistic comrade in Washington. Do try and see that he gets
something, if at all possible. However dire his own financial straits might be, he insisted
that Eccariuss needs should take priority.
When Eccarius went down with consumption, in February 1859, Marx described it as
the most tragic thing I have yet experienced here in London. A few months later he noted
sadly that Eccarius is again going to pieces in his sweatshop, and asked if Engels could
send the poor chap a few bottles of port to sustain him. In 1860, forced by ill health to give
up tailoring for a while, Eccarius was installed in lodgings rented at Marxs own expense
and fixed up with regular work for the American press at $3 an article. When three of
Eccariuss children died during the scarlet-fever epidemic of 1862, it was the poverty-
stricken Marx who organised an appeal fund to cover the funeral expenses. Finally, when
invited to nominate a speaker for the historic public meeting in September 1864, he again
38

pressed the claims of his old friend. Eccarius put on a splendid performance, Marx
reported to Engels afterwards, adding that he himself had been happy to remain mute on
the platform. And yet, even now, many authors continue to repeat the old nonsense about
Marxs mean-spirited and snooty disdain for mere tailors.
In fact, it was the presence of so many genuine workers and the refreshing lack of
preening middle-class dilettantes that attracted him to the Internationals inaugural rally,
persuading him to waive my usual standing rule to decline any such invitations.
Although he came to St Martins Hall only as a silent observer, by the end of the evening
he had been co-opted on to the General Council.
Now there seems to be a slight paradox here. Marx himself was indisputably a
bourgeois intellectual. By joining the Council was he not in danger of diluting the
proletarian purity which he so admired? To answer the question we need to look more
closely at the composition of the International. The General Council consisted of two
Germans (Marx and Eccarius), two Italians, three Frenchmen and twenty-seven
Englishmen almost all of them working class. It was a muddled mlange: English trade
unionists who cared passionately about the right to free collective bargaining but had no
interest in socialist revolution; French Proudhonists who dreamed of utopia but disliked
trade unions; plus a few republicans, disciples of Mazzini and campaigners for Polish
freedom. They disagreed about almost everything and particularly about what role, if
any, the enlightened middle classes should be allowed to play in the International. In a
letter to Engels two years after its foundation, Marx reported an all-too-typical
contretemps:
By way of demonstration against the French monsieurs who wanted to exclude
everyone except travailleurs manuels, in the first instance from membership of the
International Association, or at least from eligibility for election as delegate to the
congress the English yesterday proposed me as President of the General Council. I
declared that under no circumstances could I accept such a thing, and proposed Odger [the
English trade union leader] in my turn, who was then in fact re-elected, although some
people voted for me despite my declaration.
The minute-book for this meeting records that Marx thought himself incapacitated
because he was a head worker and not a hand worker, but it is not quite as simple as that.
(His desire to get on with writing Capital may have exerted a stronger tug at the sleeve.) A
few years later, when a doctor called Sexton was proposed for membership, there were the
usual mutterings about whether it was desirable to add professional men to the Council;
according to the minutes, however, Citizen Marx did not think there was anything to fear
from the admission of professional men while the great majority of the Council was
composed of workers. In 1872, when there were problems with various crackpot
American sects infiltrating the International, it was Marx himself who proposed
successfully that no new section should be allowed to affiliate unless at least two-thirds
of its members were wage labourers.
In short, while accepting that most office-holders and members must be working
class, Marx was unembarrassed by his own lack of proletarian credentials: men such as
himself still had much to offer the association as long as they didnt pull rank or hog the
limelight. Engels followed this example, though as an affluent capitalist he was
understandably more reluctant to impose himself. After selling his stake in the family firm
and moving down to London in 1870, he accepted a seat on the General Council almost at
once but declined the office of treasurer. Citizen Engels objected that none but working
men ought to be appointed to have anything to do [with] the finances, the minutes record.
Citizen Marx did not consider the objection tenable: an ex-commercial man was the best
for the office. Engels persisted with his refusal and was probably right to do so. As the
Marxian scholar Hal Draper has pointed out, handling money was the touchiest job in a
workers association, for charges of financial irregularity were routine ploys whenever
39

political conflict started; and a Johnny-come-lately businessman from Manchester would
have been an obvious target for any French monsieurs who wanted to stir up trouble.
Marx may have preferred to work behind the scenes, but he worked exceptionally
hard all the same: without his efforts the International would probably have disintegrated
within a year. The Council met every Tuesday at its shabby HQ in Greek Street, Soho on
the site which, almost exactly a century later, was to become the Establishment night-club,
where satirists such as Lenny Bruce and Peter Cook used rather different techniques to
undermine prevailing orthodoxy. The minute-books show that he was happy to take on his
share of the donkey-work. (Citizens Fox, Marx and Cremer were deputed to attend the
Compositors Society ... Citizen Marx proposed, Citizen Cremer seconded, that the Central
Council thank Citizen Cottam for his generous gift ... Citizen Marx stated that societies in
Basle and Zurich had joined the Association ... Citizen Marx reported that he had received
3 from Germany for members cards, which he paid to the Financial Secretary...) His
influence was apparent from the outset. The initial item of business at the Councils very
first meeting, on 5 October 1864, was a proposal by Marx that William Randal Cremer of
the London Trades Council should be appointed secretary. (Mr Cremer was unanimously
elected.) Later that evening Marx was elected to a subcommittee whose task was to draw
up rules and principles of the new Association.
So far so good. But then Marx fell ill, thus missing the next two meetings. He was
roused from his sick-bed on 18 October by an urgent letter from Eccarius, who warned that
if he didnt come to the General Council that evening a hopelessly insipid and confused
statement of aims would be adopted in his absence. Marx staggered down to Greek Street
and listened aghast as the worthy Le Lubez read out a fearfully clich-ridden, badly
written and totally unpolished preamble pretending to be a declaration of principles, with
Mazzini showing through the whole thing from beneath a crust of the most insubstantial
scraps of French socialism. After long debate, Eccarius proposed that this unappetising
menu be sent back to the subcommittee for further editing, cunningly forestalling any
suspicion of a coup by promising that its sentiments would remain unchanged.
This was the opportunity Marx needed. Putting on his most innocent expression, he
suggested that the subcommittee meet two days later at his house, which offered rather
more comfort (and a better stocked cellar) than the poky little room in Greek Street. When
the team assembled chez Marx, he then spun out a discussion about the rules at such
interminable length that by one in the morning they had still not even begun their editing
of the preamble. How were they to have it ready in time for the next gathering of the
General Council five days later? His weary colleagues, yawning fit to bust, gratefully
accepted Marxs suggestion that he should try to cobble something together himself. All
the draft papers were left in his hands, and they departed to their beds.
I could see that it was impossible to make anything out of the stuff, he told Engels.
In order to justify the extremely peculiar way in which I intended to edit the sentiments
that had already been carried, I wrote An Address to the Working Classes (which was not
in the original plan: a sort of review of the adventures of the working class since 1845); on
the pretext that all the necessary facts were contained in this Address and that we ought
not to repeat the same things three times over, I altered the whole preamble, threw out the
dclaration des principes and finally replaced the forty rules by ten. As a sop to the more
pious and less revolutionary members, he threw in a few references to truth, morality, duty
and justice, and avoided the belligerent rhetorical flourishes that had so enlivened the
Communist Manifesto. As he explained to Engels, It will take time before the revival of
the movement allows the old boldness of language to be used. We must be fortiter in re,
suaviter in modo. Which, being translated from the Latin, essentially means: speak softly
and carry a big stick.
Despite the years of seclusion, Marx had lost none of his old procedural guile. At its
meeting of 1 November, partly at his suggestion, the General Council co-opted several
new members. They included Karl Pfnder, the Communist League veteran who had once
40

examined Wilhelm Liebknechts skull; Hermann Jung, a Swiss watchmaker; Eugne
Dupont, a French musical-instrument maker; and Friedrich Lessner, the tailor who had
rushed the manuscript of the Communist Manifesto to the printers in 1848. All were
stalwart supporters of Marx and he needed all the support he could get, since some of the
English members were none too happy with his new text. One of the milder suggestions,
as the minutes record, was that some explanation should be given (in the form of a
footnote) of the terms nitrogen and carbon". (Marx thought this quite unnecessary.
We need hardly remind the reader, he commented wearily in the footnote, that, apart
from the elements of water and certain inorganic substances, carbon and nitrogen form the
raw materials of human food.) A more hostile complaint came from a printer, William
Worley, who had made his opinions clear at the previous meeting by objecting to the
statement that the capitalist was opposed to the labourer. This time, his reformist
conscience was outraged by Marxs description of capitalists as profitmongers. By
eleven votes to ten, the council agreed that the inflammatory word be erased. The address
was then passed nem. con.
The unanimous acceptance of this review of the adventures of the working class is
a tribute to Marxs skill in judging how far he could go. There were no revolutionary
predictions, no spectres or hobgoblins stalking Europe though he did his best to make the
readers flesh creep with a description of British industry as a vampire which could survive
only by sucking the blood of children. Mostly, he allowed the facts to speak for
themselves, larding the document with official statistics plagiarised from his own work in
progress, Capital, to justify his claim that the misery of the working masses has not
diminished from 1848 to 1864. But, as ever, his attempt to imagine an alternative was as
formless if sweet as a bowl of blancmange: Like slave labour, like serf labour, hired
labour is but a transitory and inferior form, destined to disappear before associated labour
plying its toil with a willing hand, a ready mind and a joyous heart.
The address ended with the words Proletarians of all countries, Unite!; the equally
familiar phrase encouraging them to throw off their chains was tactfully omitted. Even so,
one cant help wondering how closely his colleagues scrutinised the text before approving
it. The lords of land and the lords of capital will always use their political privileges for
the defence and perpetuation of their economical monopolies, he announced in the final
pages. To conquer political power has therefore become the great duty of the working
classes. Such a notion was anathema to many of the English representatives on the
General Council, who thought that the great duty of the working classes was to form trade
unions which could bargain for better pay and conditions, while leaving politics to
Members of Parliament. This was certainly the view of the impeccably moderate general
secretary, William Randal Cremer, who later became a Liberal MP and ended his career as
a knight of the realm. The fact that even he voted for the address tells us much about
Marxs powers of persuasion. As old Communist Leaguers such as Pfnder and Lessner
knew, Marxs intimidating presence his dark eyes, his slashing wit, his formidable
analytical brain would always dominate any committee. Scarcely a month after sitting
silently on the stage at St Martins Hall, he was already taking charge.
But mere force of personality was not enough to quell the feuds and animosities that
inevitably characterised such an incongruous hybrid as the International. Even the small
French contingent on the General Council was itself split into two irreconcilable factions
of republicans and Proudhonists. The republicans, represented by Le Lubez, were
essentially middle-class radicals red hot for Libert, galit and fraternit but rather less
excited by arguments about industry or property. Proudhons earnest disciples, led by the
engraver Henri Louis Tolain, regarded republics and governments as centralised tyrannies
that were inimical to the interests of the small shopkeepers and artisans whose cause they
championed; all they wanted was a network of mutual-credit societies and small-scale co-
operatives. Another Proudhonist, who joined the General Council in 1866, was the young
medical student Paul Lafargue, later to become the husband of Laura Marx. His first
41

encounters with his future father-in-law were unpromising. That damned boy Lafargue
pesters me with his Proudhonism, Karl complained to Laura, and will not rest, it seems,
until I have administered to him a sound cudgelling. After one of Lafargues many
speeches declaring nations and nationalities to be the purest moonshine, Marx raised a
laugh among his English colleagues by pointing out that our friend Lafargue, and others
who had abolished nationalities, had addressed us in French, i.e. in a language which
nine-tenths of the audience did not understand. He added mischievously that by denying
the existence of nationalities the young zealot seemed quite unconsciously to imply their
absorption by the model French nation.
If the doughty English trade unionists were incredulously amused by these Gallic
squabbles, they were downright astonished to learn that the great Mazzini a heroic figure
in London was regarded by the Germans and French as a posturing ninny whose passion
for national liberation had quite eclipsed any awareness of the central importance of class.
The position is difficult now, Marx admitted after another bruising session at Greek
Street, because one must oppose the silly Italianism of the English, on the one hand, and
the mistaken polemic of the French, on the other.
It was a time-consuming business. In a letter to Engels of March 1865 he described a
fairly typical weeks work. Tuesday evening was given over to the General Council, at
which Tolain and Le Lubez bickered until midnight, after which he had to adjourn to a
nearby pub and sign 200 membership cards. The next day he attended a meeting at St
Martins Hall to mark the anniversary of the Polish insurrection. On Saturday and Monday
there were subcommittee meetings devoted to the French question, both of which raged
on until one in the morning. And so to Tuesday, when another stormy session of the
General Council left the English in particular with the impression that the Frenchmen
stand really in need of a Bonaparte! In between all these meetings, there were people
dashing this way and that to see me in connection with a conference on household
suffrage which was to be held the following weekend. What a waste of time! he groaned.
Engels thought so too. After Marxs death he said that Moors life without the
International would be a diamond ring with the diamond broken out, but at first he simply
couldnt understand why his friend wished to spend hours suffering in dingy Soho back
rooms when he could be at his desk in Hampstead writing Capital. I have always half-
expected that the nave fraternit in the International Association would not last long, he
commented smugly in 1865, after another bout of internecine squabbling among the
French. It will pass through a lot more such phases and will take up a great deal of your
time. Until he retired to London in 1870 Engels played no part in the association.
By 1865 Marx was the de facto leader of the International, though his official title
was corresponding secretary for Germany. Even this was a misnomer: the death of
Lassalle left him with only a couple of friends in the whole of Germany Wilhelm
Liebknecht and the gynaecologist Ludwig Kugelmann and most of his corresponding
took the form of sniggers about the alleged homosexuality of Lassalles successor, Johann
Baptist von Schweitzer, plus a few dismissive remarks about the appalling political
backwardness of the Teutonic race. There is nothing I can do in Prussia at the moment,
he wrote to Dr Kugelmann. I prefer my agitation here through the International
Association a hundred times. The effect on the English proletariat is direct and of the
greatest importance. We are now stirring the General Suffrage Question here, which is,
naturally, of quite different significance here than in Prussia.
Extending the franchise was the dominant parliamentary issue of the moment
though it should be added that the various proposals for reform put forward by Tories and
Whigs in the mid-1860s owed less to high principle than to the jostle for party advantage.
There were debates galore, which today seem as remote and incomprehensible as the
Schleswig-Holstein question, about the voting rights of copyholders, 6 ratepayers and
50 tenants-at-will. But amid all the arcane arguments over fancy franchises and plural
voting, one point was accepted by all peers and MPs: there must be some sort of property
42

qualification to prevent the great unwashed from having any say in the nations affairs.
What I fear, Walter Bagehot wrote in his English Constitution, is that both our political
parties will bid for the support of the working man; that both of them will promise to do as
he likes... Even the National Reform Union, a supposedly radical pressure group, desired
only the enfranchisement of householders and rate-paying lodgers.
In the spring of 1865, after a packed meeting at St Martins Hall, a Reform League
was founded to campaign for universal manhood suffrage. (The possibility that women
might be either willing or able to vote was, apparently, too far-fetched to merit
consideration.) Marx and his colleagues from the International took charge: The whole
leadership is in our hands, he revealed triumphantly to Engels. For the next year or so he
threw himself into the crusade with gusto while also attending to the International, the
manuscript of Capital, the demands of his family and creditors and, of course, those
blossoming boils on his bum, which were more prolific than ever. He hacked away at them
with a cut-throat razor, watching with vicious satisfaction as the bad blood spurted over
the carpet. Sometimes, having staggered to bed at 4 a.m. several nights running, he felt
infernally harassed and wished he had never emerged from hibernation.
Was the game worth so many late-night candles? He convinced himself that it was.
If we succeed in re-electrifying the political movement of the English working class, he
wrote after launching the Reform League, our Association will already have done more
for the European working class, without making any fuss, than was possible in any other
way. And there is every prospect of success. Not so. Reformist trade union leaders such as
Cremer and Odger soon made concessions, deciding that they would be quite content with
household suffrage rather than one man one vote. And that, more or less, is what they got.
In the summer of 1867, Parliament approved Disraelis Reform Bill, which lowered the
property qualification for county voters and extended the franchise to all urban
householders thus doubling the size of the electorate. But the vast majority of the
working population remained as voteless as ever.
The International, too, never quite lived up to Marxs hyperbole. There were some
early successes, notably in sabotaging attempts by English employers to recruit foreign
workers as strikebreakers, and the ensuing notoriety persuaded several small craft societies
to affiliate among them such exotic bodies as the Amalgamated Cordwainers of
Darlington, the Hand-in-Hand Society of Coopers, the West-End Cabinet Makers, the
Day-Working Bookbinders, the English journeymen Hairdressers, the Elastic Web
Weavers Society and the Cigar Makers. But the big industrial unions stayed aloof.
William Allen, general secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, refused even
to meet a deputation from the International. More galling still was the failure to enrol the
London Trades Council, even though its secretary, George Odger, was also president of
the International. By the time of the Associations first pan-European Congress, held in
Geneva during the summer of 1866, the total number of members in affiliated societies
was 25,173 by no means negligible, but hardly proof that the English proletariat had
been re-electrified. If the International was to expand any further it would have to live up
to its name and broaden its horizons far beyond the Cordwainers of Darlington.
Marx himself missed the Geneva Congress, yet still managed to dominate the
proceedings. When the French Proudhonists issued their well-rehearsed protest against
middle-class socialists (all men who have the duty of representing working-class groups
should be workers), William Randal Cremer defended the record of the few non-manual
workers on the General Council. Among those members I will mention one only, Citizen
Marx, who has devoted his life to the triumph of the working classes. The baton was then
taken up by James Carter of the Journeymen Hairdressers:
Citizen Marx has just been mentioned; he has perfectly understood the importance of
this first congress, where there should be only working-class delegates; therefore he
refused the delegateship he was offered in the General Council. But this is not the reason
to prevent him or anyone else from coming into our midst; on the contrary, men who
43

devote themselves completely to the proletarian cause are too rare for us to push them
aside. The middle class only triumphed when, rich and powerful as it was in numbers, it
allied itself with men of science ...
After this barber-shop testimonial even the leader of the Proudhon faction, Henri
Tolain, felt obliged to congratulate the absent hero. As a worker, I thank Citizen Marx for
not accepting the delegateship offered him. In doing that, Citizen Marx showed that
workers congresses should be made up only of manual workers. Citizen Marx had not
intended to show anything of the kind, and there is no evidence that he stayed away from
Geneva to avoid offending proletarian sensibilities. A more likely explanation is that he
didnt wish to endure tedious harangues from the French exclusionists when he could have
a few days uninterrupted work on Capital.
A year earlier he had told Engels that the draft required only a few finishing
touches, which would be done by September 1865. I am working like a horse at the
moment. His friends had heard many such hopeful forecasts over the years, but this time
he really did seem to be in the final furlongs even if the spavined old nag was proceeding
at a limping trot rather than full gallop. Through the summer of 1865 he was vomiting
every day (in consequence of the hot weather and related biliousness), and a sudden
influx of house guests provided further unwelcome distraction. Jennys buffoonish brother,
Edgar von Westphalen, came to stay for six months, drinking the wine cellar dry and
pondering the needs of his stomach from morn till night; other visitors included Marxs
brother-in-law from South Africa, a niece from Maastricht and the Freiligrath family. This
was the price he paid for moving to a house with spare rooms, but it was a price he could
ill afford. For two months I have been living solely on the pawnshop, he fretted. A
queue of creditors has been hammering on my door, becoming more and more
unendurable every day. And yet, at the still point in the centre of this whirlwind, his
masterpiece was nearing completion. By the end of 1865 Capital was a manuscript of
1,200 pages, a baroque mess of ink-blots and crossings-out and squiggles. On New Years
Day 1866 he sat down to make a fair copy and polish the style licking the infant clean
after long birth pangs. But then the carbuncles returned. On doctors orders he was
banished to Margate for a month, where he did little except bathe in the sea, swallow
arsenic three times a day and feel thoroughly sorry for himself I can sing with the Miller
of the Dee: I care for nobody and nobody cares for me. At the end of his sea cure the
carbuncles had gone only to be replaced by rheumatism and toothache. Then the old liver
trouble returned for an encore. Even on days when he was fit to work some new
misfortune usually descended, as when his stationer refused to supply any more paper until
the last batch had been paid for.
With exquisitely bad timing, Paul Lafargue chose this unpropitious moment to ask
for the hand of the twenty-year-old Laura Marx in marriage. The Creole medical student,
having met Marx through the International, had transferred his attention to the old mans
green-eyed daughter and begun wooing her with an enthusiasm which Karl thought most
indecorous. Lafargue was suspect anyway, not only for Proudhonist tendencies but also
because of his exotic Franco-Spanish-Indian-African ancestry, which to his prospective
father-in-law suggested a certain genetic flightiness. As soon as writing paper could be
found Marx sent the overzealous suitor a letter of which any Victorian paterfamilias would
have been proud.
My dear Lafargue,
Allow me to make the following observations:
1. If you wish to continue your relations with my daughter, you will have to give up
your present manner of courting. You know full well that no engagement has been
entered into, that as yet everything is undecided. And even if she were formally betrothed
to you, you should not forget that this is a matter of long duration. The practice of
excessive intimacy is especially inappropriate since the two lovers will be living at the
same place for a necessarily prolonged period of severe testing and purgatory ... To my
44

mind, true love expresses itself in reticence, modesty and even the shyness of the lover
towards his object of veneration, and certainly not in giving free rein to ones passion and
in premature demonstrations of familiarity. If you should urge your Creole temperament in
your defence, it is my duty to interpose my sound reason between your temperament and
my daughter. If in her presence you are incapable of loving her in a manner in keeping
with the London latitude, you will have to resign yourself to loving her from a distance.
In fact it was Marx and not Lafargue who attributed this ardour and almost
everything else to the Creole temperament. As late as November 1882 he was still
going on about it, telling Engels that Lafargue has the blemish customarily found in the
negro tribe no sense of shame, by which I mean shame about making a fool of oneself.
Before consenting to the marriage, Marx required a full account of the young mans
prospects. You know that I have sacrificed my whole fortune to the revolutionary
struggle, he wrote to Lafargue. I do not regret it. Quite the contrary. If I had to live my
life over again, I would do the same. I would not marry, however. As far as it lies within
my power, I wish to save my daughter from the reefs on which her mothers life was
wrecked ... You must have achieved something in life before thinking of marriage, and a
long period of testing is required of you and Laura. Not that long, as it turned out: Laura
Marxs engagement to Paul Lafargue was announced in September 1866, only a month
after Marx dispatched his letter, and they were married in St Pancras register office on 2
April 1868. Her father, rather unromantically, described the union as a great relief for the
entire household, since Lafargue is as good as living with us, which perceptibly increases
expenses. At the wedding lunch Engels cracked so many jokes about the bride that she
burst into tears.
Lacking the vivacity of Jennychen and Eleanor, Laura never enjoyed being the centre
of attention. (As I am in the habit of keeping in the background, I am very apt to be
overlooked and forgotten.) Of all the Marx girls she was probably the most like Jenny
Marx: while her sisters dreamed of careers on the stage, Lauras only ambition was to be a
good wife. Her first child, Charles Etienne (nicknamed Schnapps), was born on 1
January 1869, almost exactly nine months after the wedding, followed over the next two
years by a daughter and another son. All died in infancy. There was, it seemed, no
escaping those reefs on which her mothers life had been wrecked. In all these struggles
we women have the harder part to bear, Jenny Marx wrote, mourning the loss of her
grandchildren, because it is the lesser one. A man draws strength from his struggle with
the world outside, and is invigorated by the sight of the enemy, be their number legion. We
remain sitting at home, darning socks.

45

Terrell Carver
Marxs Illegitimate Son ...
or
Greshams Law in the World of Scholarship*
* Greshams Law: Bad money drives out good (Sir Thomas Gresham, 1558, but not
denominated a law until 1858).

Source: Greshams Law in the World of Scholarship was written for Marx Myths
and Legends by Terrell Carver, University of Bristol in February 2005, and rights remain
with the author, as per Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
Licence 2.0.

Frederick Demuth (1851-1929) has recently become an important character in the
(after)lives of Karl Marx (1818-83) and Friedrich Engels (1820-95); he was certainly no
such thing at the time. Freddy, nearly 40 when his mother Helene
Demuth (1820-90) died, was the sole beneficiary of her will. She
left everything (95) to her son Frederick Lewis Demuth, born
Henry Frederick, according to his birth certificate, which gave no
father.
Helene, known in Marx family circles as Lenchen or (in
various spellings) Nim or Nimmy, was the daughter of a
Rhineland village baker, and at an early age she had become the
young Jenny von Westphalens maid at home. As such she had
joined the Marx family in their Brussels days in the mid-1840s in
order to help look after the infants. From all accounts she was
good-humoured and literate, and in later years she helped the
married daughters Jenny (1844-83) and Laura (1845-1911) with
their babies. By 1883, the Longuet children Jennys were
settled with their widower father Charles in France, and the three children of Laura and
Paul Lafargue had all died in childhood by the early 1870s. After Marxs death, Lenchen
needed a situation and Engels needed (yet another) housekeeper, so she settled there with
him in the Regents Park Road N.W. until she died at 70 in 1890. Engels spoke at her
funeral, and she was buried with the Marx family at Highgate (KM 183; 1 K 278-97; 2 K
429-40; 37 MEW 498).
Freddy was evidently well known to the Marx girls as Lenchens son. Jenny wrote to
Laura in 1882 about a debt to Freddy and her inability to help Nim make a journey to
Germany. Shortly after Freddys mother died, Eleanor (1855-98) wrote to Laura,
mentioning past wrongs and a sense of guilt: Freddy has behaved admirably in all respects
and Engelss irritation against him is as unfair as it is comprehensible. We should none of
us like to meet our pasts, I guess, in flesh and blood. I know I always meet Freddy with a
sense of guilt and wrong done. The life of that man! To hear him tell of it all is a misery
and shame to me.
In the next few years Eleanor, Laura and their brother-in-law Charles Longuet helped
Freddy out financially, and in 1892 Eleanor wrote to Laura: It may be that I am very
sentimental but I cant help feeling that Freddy has had great injustice all through his
life. Is it not wonderful when you come to look things squarely in the face, how rarely we
seem to practise all the fine things we preach to others?
Engels did not mention Freddy in his will of 29 July 1893, in which there were
numerous bequests, nor in his codicil of 26 July 1895 (when he knew he was dying).
Eleanor and Laura were asked by Engels in a letter to hold one-third (some 3000) of their
combined share in trust for Jenny Longuets French children, who could not be named for
46

legal reasons. The two women, in conjunction with their brother-in-law Charles, managed
to channel some of the funds from Engelss estate to Freddy.
In late 1897 and early 1898 just before she apparently committed suicide on 31
March Eleanor was in a terrible state about money, her relationship with the philandering
socialist Edward Aveling (1851-98) and his deteriorating health. She wrote a series of
moving letters, confiding in Freddy as Lenchens son: I dont think you and I have been
very wicked people and yet, dear Freddy, it does seems as if we get all the punishment.
I say to you what I would not say to anyone now, she continued, I would have told my
dear old Nymmy, but as I have not, I have only you (2 K 680-8; 2 H 727-30; DKM 224,
240, 285; 39 MEW 318-19).
It is not apparent from the reliable evidence that survives exactly what injustices
Eleanor thought Freddy had suffered and at whose hands. None of the Marx girls seemed
at all occupied with paternity in their dealings with Freddy, and all three accepted him as
Lenchens son. How long they had known of his existence, and his maternity (as it were)
are not known. Possibly they were troubled about him and inclined to thoughts of guilt
because he had grown up apart from his mother, so far as is known, and had enjoyed few
educational advantages. Any feelings that his mother had been disadvantaged did not
occur to them or did not surface in the correspondence that survives. Children were
commonly put out to nurse in the 1850s, even amongst poor families like the Marxes,
whose little Franziska (28 March 1851-14 April 1852) had been boarded out at about the
same time as the infant Freddy. Frau Marx related this in her memoirs written in 1865:
We gave the poor little thing to a nurse, for we could not rear her with the [three] others in
three small rooms. Lenchen, then about six months pregnant, was obviously in much the
same position, except that housemaids who became pregnant were lucky to be kept on.
Then in her memoirs Frau Marx also refers to an event in the early summer of 1851
Freddy was born on 23 June that caused them much distress: It greatly contributed to
increase our worries, both personal and others. But she said that she did not wish to relate
[it] here in detail and gave no specifics. Marxs letters of the following August speak of
infamies and tales visited on his wife, and he mentions names, but not substance:
My wife will go under if things continue like this much longer. The constant worries,
the slightest everyday struggle wears her out; and on top of that, there are the infamies of
my opponents ... who seek to avenge their impotence by casting suspicions on my civil
character and by disseminating the most unspeakable infamies about me. Willich,
Schapper, Ruge and countless other democratic rabble make this their business.
The context here is probably the break-up of the migr German communists into
rival groups who quarrelled bitterly about money as well as politics.
More pertinently Marx had written to Engels on 31 March 1851 about a mystery
in which you also figure that had given matters a tragi-comic turn. But in writing that
letter he was interrupted, and in the following letter of 2 April he put off relating the matter
until his visit to Manchester at the end of the month. From mid-1850 the Prussian
ambassador in London, and the Prussian government itself, had been conducting a
campaign to discredit Marx and Engels and other communists, and in March 1851
Ferdinand von Westphalen (1799-1876), stepbrother of Frau Marx and a civil servant in
the Ministry of the Interior, was involved in moves to secure the deportation of the chief
revolutionaries from Britain. Prussian methods included the use of agents to find
compromising material and collect rumours and allegations that might influence the
British government to comply with the plan to push the communists further afield, and
Marx and Engels were circumspect in their correspondence. But it may also be that the
housemaids pregnancy was under discussion. Engels, who was supporting the Marxes on
his slender resources, was in a position to pay to have the infant fostered, but there is no
record of any arrangements to which he may or may not have agreed.
If any of the odd comments in letters and memoirs were really about the pregnant
Lenchen, then the affair seems to have been viewed as an inconvenient embarrassment by
47

Marx and as the source of personal distress by his wife, but there is no sense that Marx
was intimately implicated, nor that Frau Marx saw him any differently, nor that Engels
himself was going to be seriously put out, because the comments that do survive indicate
that everyone involved was on much the same terms as usual. The pregnant housemaid and
the problem of her offspring were real but peripheral to the domestic difficulties with
money and political difficulties with spies and communists that the Marxes and Engels had
to endure (R 23-4; KM 271-3; 38 CW 324-5, 402-3, 626-7).
Freddy would be an altogether minor character in any consideration of Engelss life
or Marxs, were it not for a document, first published in extracts in 1962. According to the
story recounted there, Freddy is suddenly a relation of Marx and his family and in an
ambiguous way of Engels himself. Ostensibly the tale concerns Marx and his alleged
affair with the housemaid, but it is Engels who plays the central role in the supposed
narrative.
This typewritten document appears to be a letter dated 2-4 September 1898, written
by Louise Freyberger ne Strasser (1860-1950), three years after the Engels household
broke up. As Louise Kautsky, the recently divorced wife of the prominent German
socialist Karl Kautsky (1854-1938), she had been asked by Engels, within a month of
Lenchens death, to keep house for him, and she arrived post haste from Vienna. In 1894
she married Dr. Ludwig Freyberger, another migr, and he came to live in Engelss
house, too much to Eleanors displeasure, as she disliked Louise and her influence over
Engels, then in his seventies (2 K 444; 2 H 725-6).
The document spins a lurid tale of deathbed revelations by Engels to Eleanor Marx,
principally the claim that Marx himself was Freddys father. Fearing gossip imputing
paternity, Engels is said to have declared the truth, in case he should be accused, after his
death, of treating Freddy shabbily. The date on the document is some six months after
Eleanors suicide, so if there was a letter, Eleanor was conveniently out of the way, though
others mentioned as in on the story to some degree such as Sam Moore (c. 1830-1911),
Marxs English translator, and Eleanors sister Laura clearly were not. The addressee of
the supposed letter, the prominent German socialist and trade unionist August Bebel
(1840-1913), or anyone else who had been the recipient of such tales from Louise, could
have checked with them.
Louises letter has put Marx and his works in a bad light, and made Engelss
deathbed into high Victorian melodrama. After such a gothic story it is extraordinarily
difficult to see the situation any other way, but this now well-known version of events
must nonetheless be tested stringently against the facts as we have them. In particular
Engelss actions attested and alleged must be carefully scrutinized.
At the time of Freddys conception in 1850 and birth in 1851 the four principals in
the affair, so far as we know, were Lenchen, Marx, Frau Marx and Engels. The birth of an
illegitimate child to the maid was obviously difficult and trying for the household, because
the situation precluded any truly humane solution. Frau Marx would not have wanted to
lose her long-time maid, and Lenchen no doubt wished to keep her livelihood. Continued
residence for Lenchen with the Marxes, together with her illegitimate baby, would have
associated the household with free love and moral irresponsibility, whoever the father
was in fact or by repute. This was especially problematic with respect to the legitimate
children, who would have been confronted according to the standards of the time with
an example of flagrantly immoral behaviour, and one specially relevant to young girls.
These were standards held by both conventional conservatives and responsible
communists, albeit for somewhat different reasons. In any event such an establishment
would have been poor publicity for communism, and a considerable burden for the
children to bear, both legitimate and illegitimate. Lenchen could have been set up outside
the family with her baby, but this was probably with or without genuine regrets beyond
Engelss means, and certainly against his wish to spare his own family the possibility of
serious embarrassment, as his connection with immorality might well leak out, whether
48

or not he was presumed to be the father. The Engels family were, in any case, his
employers. The obvious solution was to board the child out and leave him there, and that is
in fact what happened, so far as we know.
Lenchen may not have objected very much, as it was clearly for her own good to
keep her situation, for the Marx family to continue unencumbered and for the communist
cause to suffer no invidious criticism. The fact that she continued in the household with
evident aplomb accords with this hypothesis, and with Eleanors evident blankness on any
injustice done to Freddys mother, whose infant had gone to another home. The grievous
injustice, from Eleanors point of view, could have been the fact that Freddy had to grow
up as a foster-child no doubt a hard upbringing away from his mother and the civilized
influence of a cultured household.
Throughout their lives all four principals lived very happily together, and Lenchen
ultimately served in both the Marx and the Engels households without any suggestion of
reluctance. Hers is another unheard voice, as she left no written testimony other than her
will, but memoirs of the two households attest to her willing service. If there were
difficulties amongst the four principals of the 1850s about finances, maternity, paternity
or whatever they were swiftly settled and never revisited. Frau Marx would hardly have
made her remarks in her correspondence about disturbing events if she knew that Karl
were the father, as she was most particular about the obligations of family life and could
not have wished to spread such a tale any further. Presumably she made her comments
because they were about a situation one that was outside her immediate relationship with
her husband that affected her deeply.
If Engels were the father, or had taken the rap for Karl, this story would surely have
surfaced at some point in the migr community, since spiteful gossips abounded. Indeed
Engels was quite capable of dishing up that sort of thing himself. Writing to Marx in 1846
about their communist contacts near Paris, Engels indulged himself in ribaldry: The best
of it is that in the house ... there are 2 women, 2 men, several children, one of them
dubious, and despite all this not a thing happens there. They dont even practise pederasty
(38 CW 55).
A considerable number of highly communicative people not all of them life-long
friends of Marx or Engels by any means knew of Freddys existence, and it seems to
have been no particular secret that Freddys mother was a close associate of both Marx and
Engels. Had there ever been a serious possibility that Freddys paternity would pose
problems for either of the two and hence for the Marx party within the communist
movement the principals could easily have passed him off as a Demuth nephew or other
relation.
Indeed the adult Freddy was known and loved in the family as Lenchens son, who
had suffered a great injustice and needed to be helped. Eleanor spoke of him in those terms
before Engelss death and afterwards, and for that reason she is unlikely to have been the
recipient of revelations on the subject of Freddy and unlikely to have sorted the Engels
papers to remove any proof of Marxs paternity. If she had learned in 1895 of something
scandalous she could hardly have gone on with Freddy exactly as before, and made almost
exactly the same kind of comments about injustice. The correspondence that survives
concerning Freddy reflects a steady, continuing interest in him on the part of the Marx
girls and vice versa from sometime before 1882 up to his final correspondence with
Laura, shortly before her suicide in 1911. Insofar as Lenchen was a second mother to her,
Freddy was a kind of half-brother, and because Lenchen was in effect a member of the
Marx family, Eleanors efforts to put him on a par with the other Marx legatees of
Engelss will are understandable in those terms alone. Also the Engels estate was probably
her only source of spare cash. Eleanor commented quite correctly in 1892 that Freddy was
part of Engelss past, but did not mention the other three principals of the original affair,
because by the time of her letter they were all dead. Later when she mentioned again the
49

injustices done to Freddy, she did not mention Engels, because by that time he was dead,
too.
Engelss reported irritation with Freddy suggests that he did not want an old
embarrassment exhumed, as there was no way that Freddys circumstances could reflect
well on himself and the Marxes as communists, and there were numerous ways that it
could be construed to bring discredit on the movement. With Freddy on the scene in
London questions might arise about his treatment in early life or just possibly his paternity,
and the difficult matter for Engels of proving himself or others innocent of all callous
behaviour might arise if such an ill-natured and unedifying inquiry were opened.
Engels had already put himself up for criticism in respect of the Burns sisters, Mary
(c. 1823-63) and Lydia (Lizzie) (1827-78) and so he was party already to conventional
discretion as a first line of defence. His liaisons were never widely advertised, they were
never made to look like free love, and they never involved children though exactly why
not, we do not know. Thus they appeared to those who were determined to inquire to
be responsible domestic relationships that had merely foregone the formalities of marriage.
As he was evidently doing right by the Irish girls, not too much could be made of his
living arrangements by conservatives bent on gutter politics or communists with scores to
settle against Marx. The situation with respect to Freddy might well have been more
difficult to explain and less easy to justify.
The most curious thing about Louises letter is that it contains allegations about
Marx and Engels that are quite sensational, but until the 1960s quite unknown. The letter
was addressed to one of the most prominent socialist leaders in Germany. In any case, why
did Louise never raise the matter again? She was nothing if not energetic and determined,
and as the intention of the letter was plainly to impose a revelation on the world, it seems
inconceivable that she put pen to paper once, and then let the sensational story drop for no
less than the fifty-two years that elapsed before her death in 1950.
Moreover Louises account of the deathbed revelation is as suspect as some of the
other facts in the document (such as the Marxes stopped sleeping together in the early
1850s Eleanor was born in 1855 and there was a further still birth and Louises very
odd claim that Eleanor knew all this!). And even if the tale of Engelss death-bed is truly
told, the validity of his claim that Marx was Freddys father is open to doubt. Of the two,
Engels himself is a better candidate than Karl, and he was indeed living in London at the
relevant time, September-October 1850. The younger, unmarried and handsomer man was
the one with a taste for girls, working-class ones at that, and Lenchen was his exact
contemporary. Writing to Marx from Paris in 1847 Engels let rip about grisettes easy
working-class girls called after their cheap grey attire: it is absolutely essential that you
get out of boring Brussels for once and come to Paris, and I for my part have a great desire
to go carousing with you ... If I had an income of 5000 francs I would do nothing but work
and amuse myself with women until I went to pieces. If there were no Frenchwomen, life
wouldnt be worth living. But so long as there are grisettes, well and good! (38 CW 115).
By contrast Karl was notably struck on Jenny as his long-suffering wife; and from all
accounts he was uxorious in the home even if he did complain a bit in letters and
desperately anxious for a son. He mourned his two dead ones Edgar or Musch (c.
December 1846- 6 April 1855) and Guido or Fxchen (after the incendiary Catholic
rebel Guido or Guy Fox) (c. 31 October 1849 c. late November 1850) with particular
bitterness. The younger boy had only recently died, and on the occasion of his third
daughter Franziskas birth he commented, My wife, alas, has been delivered of a girl, and
not a boy. And what is worse, shes very poorly. When his last surviving child, Eleanor,
was born in January 1855, he wrote to Engels, my wife was delivered of a bona fide
TRAVELLER unfortunately of THE SEX par excellence. If it had been a male child,
well and good.
Lenchen and Frau Marx were very close Lenchen was a link for Jenny with the von
Westphalens and happier days and Frau Marx was virtually all that Helene Demuth had
50

in the world. The two no doubt spent more time together than Jenny spent with Karl, who
devoted long hours to his work in the British Museum. It seems difficult to imagine
Lenchen deceiving her mistress, and if violence were perpetrated on the maid by Karl, it
seems difficult to imagine Jenny allowing the household to continue as if nothing had
happened.
Marxs wife Jenny complained on occasion about August Willich (1810-78), one of
the expatriate 48ers, saying that he was lurking around the household with seduction on
his mind. Someone like that seems a better candidate for Freddys father than either Marx
or Engels. At registration Freddy was named Henry, possibly after Karl Heinrich Marx,
and Frederick, possibly after Friedrich Engels, who had no alternative Christian name but
sometimes anglicized his own. The two were very possibly charged by the unhappy
mother and her distraught mistress with doing the best they could for the infant at a
distance (38 CW 326; 39 CV 509; 1 K 21; KM 246-7).
The story of Marxs illegitimate son has been the most obvious reading of Louises
letter. But the document should be particularly scrutinized for its allegations about
Engels, namely his behaviour on his deathbed and before. In the letter Louise says:
[Engels] said that he did not wish his name to be besmirched ... He had stood in for Marx
in order to save him from a serious domestic quarrel ... I have seen the letter which Marx
wrote to General [Engelss nickname] in Manchester at the time ... I believe that he had
this letter but, like so much of their correspondence, has destroyed it (R 134-8).
If Engels were genuinely worried at any stage that Freddys paternity would be laid
at his door and there is no evidence that he was he would hardly have wanted to
destroy the one piece of evidence that would have cleared him, as Louises letter
suggests. If, as seems more likely, he cared more for Marxs name within the communist
cause than for his own respectability, then if there were a letter incriminating Marx he
might well have burnt it, but many years before Louise arrived in his household in 1890.
However, there is little likelihood that on his deathbed Engels would suddenly demonstrate
an overpowering concern for his own moral reputation in the shallowest sense, and then
seek to salvage it from an entirely hypothetical attack, by imputing Freddys paternity to
Marx. Indeed Engels took special care to provide for the Marx children, and if Freddy
were one as well, Engels could easily have written another codicil and included him
amongst the legatees. He would thus have protected himself from charges of shabby
treatment with substantial help rather than with unsubstantiated allegations.
Overall Engels was far more concerned for the good name of the communist
movement, and for Marxs good name first and foremost within it, than he was for his
own. By the time he died he had devoted fifty years to this cause, and he is unlikely to
have wanted to blacken Marxs name for any reason whatsoever. The personal and the
political were far too closely intertwined in his life to come apart so catastrophically,
indeed they were virtually one and the same. Louises letter is instructive because it
illustrates precisely the kind of thing that he was least likely to say. Political action played
a large part in his personal relationships what they were and how they were conducted
and indeed the idea of political action completely filled his personal life.
Heinrich Gemkow and Rolf Hecker have published a useful article which surveys
and reproduces much of the material cited and excerpted above, together with a number of
extracts from documents that are difficult to access and in some cases newly added to the
list of materials relevant to the Freddy affair (GH). In particular they focus attention on
three letters from August Bebel to Eduard Bernstein (1850-1932), dated 8 and 18
September 1898, and 3 August 1899 (and on Bernsteins replies of 11 and 18 September
1898). These are evidently part of the exchange of letters to which Louises (lost) original
letter was directed, i.e. Bebel wrote to her (letter lost), she replied to him (apparent copy
dated 2-4 September 1898). Gemkow and Hecker further consider a letter from Frederick
Demuth to Jean-Laurent-Frederick Longuet (1876-1946) of 10 April 1912; a letter from
David Borisovich Ryazanov (1870-1934), the director of the Marx-Engels-Institute and
51

editor of the first Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe, to Clara Zetkin (1857-1933), dated 20
February 1929, and Zetkins reply of 27 February, written from Moscow where she was
then living (GH 47). It is rather unclear from their text exactly which of these items was
unknown and in exactly what sense. While the authors admit that these materials offer no
conclusive proof that Marx was Frederick Demuths father, and while they note
Bernsteins scepticism on this point (in a previously known letter), and refer to Kautskys
(in a published article of 1929), they nonetheless regard this additional material as weighty
enough to close the case (GH 45 n. 7, 49, 51).
The Bebel-Bernstein exchange of correspondence provides a context for Louises
letter, namely the activities and thoughts of Bebel and Bernstein in the late summer and
early autumn of 1898 when they were dealing with Edward Avelings estate (GH 47-50).
Aveling had died on 2 August, having been in bad health for some time, one of the factors
assumed to have been behind Eleanor Marxs suicide on 31 March of the same year. Their
involvement with Freddy and his (rather usual) attempts to gain money, one way or
another, from the Marx family, are perhaps explained (at least in part) by some suggestion
that one of the points at issue was a loan from Eleanor to Aveling, which could possibly be
recovered in Freddys favour (GH 48). Freddy had not figured in Eleanors will, despite
her declared affection for him (something which troubled Bernstein, who spoke rather ill
of the dead on this matter), and as with the Engels estate, there was something of a pattern
of trying to secure him some funds (GH 48). As Helenes son, and friend of Eleanor and
Laura, he was at least in that way a family-member. This correspondence was also the
occasion for an exchange between Bebel and Bernstein about a possible closer (and
scandalous) relationship to the Marx family, namely the information (from Louise) that
he was Marxs son (and therefore Eleanors illegitimate half-brother). However, as the
authors state, these documents provide no direct evidence on this point, other than a
rehearsal of their varying opinions about this possibility (and their views on Louises
reliability as an informant about anything). The conclusion between them was that
Freddy would be getting no money from the Aveling estate, at least through their offices,
however needy or deserving he actually was (GH 49).
The letter from Frederick Demuth himself, some years later, to Johnny Longuet
(Jennys son), does not feature in Gemkow and Heckers arguments, as it merely relays the
thoughts of a man in bad health who is, once again, asking for money, and they do not
seem to take his own claim to be Marxs son with any degree of seriousness (GH 50). In
any case, the document relates no new information on the subject, beyond Louises
account/Engelss alleged claim, as recounted in the typewritten document from which the
current controversy solely arises.
The Ryazanov-Zetkin exchange does actually add a new claim, namely that Zetkin
herself, while present at Eleanor Marxs house (apparently at the beginning of August
1896), was introduced by Eleanor to Freddy as her (i.e. Eleanors) half-brother and the
son of Nymmy and Mohr [i.e. Marx]. Zetkin also says that Eleanor said that she (i.e.
Zetkin) would know the history (GH 56-7). Curiously the authors do not focus much
attention on this, even though it represents the first claim that someone, other than Louise
(who merely recounts Engelss alleged claim, and her claim that Engels was telling the
truth, and that others knew the story), was told about this in direct terms of paternity
independently of Louise.
However, Zetkins narrative contains another surprise. According to her, Louise
Kautsky (as she then was) turned up at Engelss in 1890 about to become a mother (i.e.
pregnant), and her marriage to Dr. Ludwig Freyberger was rushed through on Engelss
doing in order to maintain respectability (GH 57-8). A fact not noted by Gemkow and
Hecker is that Louise and Ludwig were married only in 1894, though the authors do
comment on Zetkins speculations concerning the father of Louises baby. According to
Zetkin the father was definitely not Ludwig, but could have been Bebel or Adler or Engels
himself! (despite his advanced age). Gemkow and Hecker merely note that according to
52

evidence from their correspondence Bebel and Adler were not in contact with Louise at the
relevant time. Unmentioned, but certainly striking, is the fact that Zetkins is the sole
account of all this scandal concerning Louise and illegitimacy/fatherhood, for which
nothing else survives or fits. This puts Zetkin rather in Louises camp as someone who
exaggerates and creates fantasies, as Bernstein put it in 1898 (the first time round on this
kind of scenario).
Zetkins concern in her letter seems to be political in a number of senses: she
considers Marx, Engels, and Kautsky all to be cold and callous (males) in their evident
disregard for Freddy, whether as infant, youth or adult, whatever his exact relationship to
the Marx family; and she also considers Kautsky and Engels to be too influenced by
bourgeois niceties and hypocrisies in these matters (and indeed she seems to see that
class/gender fault as part and parcel with revisionism in the case of Kautsky) (GH 58).
Zetkin also rather indirectly suggests (by giving us remarks she ascribes to Bebel) that
Bernstein destroyed or censored letters from Marx to Engels (which could include the one
in which the former apologises for asking the latter to accept paternity and thereby avoid a
family row), whereas Louise seemed to think that that letter had already been destroyed by
Engels (GH 56). Zetkin mentions Bernsteins scepticism, which also surfaces in Kautskys
article written about the time the two exchanged letters (and was then published on 20
February 1929), even though Zetkin seems to boast that she got the Marx/paternity story
from Kautsky himself. However, she says that he got the story from Bernstein, who is
supposed to have made the crucial discovery of the letter (and then presumably reversed
his earlier scepticism about the Freddy-Marx non-resemblance, though we have no record
of any of this) (GH 50, 54). The authors note with some surprise Zetkins word-for-word
recollections (at age 71) of social occasions at Tussys (i.e. Eleanors) some 30 years
before, but then according to Zetkins account, Eleanor had promised her a surprise, so it
would have been quite memorable (GH 50). In short, Zetkin seems somewhat flawed and
unreliable as a witness (rather like Louise), not least because she was writing 30 years after
in overcharged circumstances and with certain battles on her mind. Despite her reference
to Eleanor as an independent source for the Freddy/Marx/paternity story (other than
Louise), Zetkins account is very much framed by Louises account/Engelss alleged claim
(and so does not count as fully independent corroboration).
The Gemkow/Hecker article displays some telling confusions:
Engelss presumed role in sorting out adoption is confused with Engelss
assumption of paternity, when the two should be clearly distinguished and separately
evaluated.
Engelss (alleged) denial of his paternity for Freddy is logically separate from his
(alleged) allegation of Marxs, as he could certainly have been informed (enough) about
the former, but mistaken (or less than fully informed, or indeed fictive) on the latter.
The authors methodology is one of rediscovering or decoding evidence based
on reading Louises tale into remarks that, ambiguous as they are, may well refer to other
things; whereas the authors should also be discussing the case against the claim that
these materials are indeed evidence for the given hypothesis in other words they are
throughout the article given to assuming what needs to be proved.
The validity criterion for establishing the truth, or at least the overwhelming
likelihood, of the authors hypothesis (that Louises account/Engelss alleged claim is
accurate) is apparently a cumulative one, i.e. the more reference that can be found to those,
particularly amongst respected socialists, who say that they believe it (or are said to say
that they believe it), the more certain we can be that the hypothesis is the right one;
whereas this ignores the common source for the entire affair, and also the hearsay and
unsubstantiated claims that are made about who (else) knows the tale and believes it.
53

In what I hope is a scholarly manner, I summarise the case for, and the case against,
in two paragraphs below, and then offer some further thoughts on the current state of
scholarship in this area.
Reasons for believing that Marx was Freddys father:
a circumstantial and reinterpretive fit between Louises account/Engelss
alleged claim and various letters that survive;
testimony in their own letters that Bebel and Zetkin believed Louises
account/Engelss alleged claim based on their respective close relationships with Louise
and Engels (Bebel) and with Eleanor Marx (Zetkin).
Reasons for not believing that Marx was Freddys father:
no direct evidence that bears unambiguously on this matter;
direct evidence from correspondence that those in contact with Freddy were not
concerned with his paternity;
direct evidence from correspondence that those concerned with the original
scandal were not at odds with each other from 1850 onwards;
direct evidence that the 1895 Engels deathbed revelations made no difference to
those involved;
no source for any concern about this issue other than Louises account/Engelss
alleged claim (in the 1890s and after the 1960s), other than the suggestion from Bebel that
Louise had told him something about Engels/Marx/Freddy in the early 1890s; the
recollection from Zetkin that Eleanor had told her that Marx was Freddys father; and
Fredericks self-interested and otherwise unsupported claim to be the son of the great
Marx;
lack of recorded comment on the subject from numerous people who are all said
(by Louise or Zetkin) to know, e.g. Frau Marx, Moore, Eleanor Marx, the Lafargues,
Jenny (Marx) Longuet, Engels, Ludwig Freyberger, Lessner, Pfnder, Parvus [pseud.
Alexander Lazarevich Gelfand or Helphand], Tanya Helfand [Parvuss wife], a friend of
Bernsteins etc. ... other than the self-declared sceptics Bernstein and Kautsky (in so far as
we have their directly recorded comments, which neither Louise nor Zetkin take up
directly);
Bernstein (in 1898) and Kautsky (in 1929) say directly that they dont believe
Louises account/Engelss alleged claim, or that they are not convinced by what theyve
heard of it, giving their reasons (e.g. that it was out of character for Marx, and that
Louises character lent itself to fantasy);
confusion about the one (supposed) letter that would confirm the Engels
accepted paternity to get Marx off the marital hook thesis (of course, Freddys father
might really be someone else anyway, even if Marx had had an affair and thought he was
the father, and so wanted to transfer this to Engels);
Louise had 52 more years in which to tell the tale, and no obvious reason why not
(i.e. unlike Zetkin, she was not a political figure, nor even a party stalwart).
In short, all roads in this matter lead back to Louise (save for Zetkins story about
Eleanors surprise, and even that surfaces in a context influenced by Louise) and to
Louises apparent interest in safeguarding Engelss good name and presumably his
money albeit very retrospectively. Possibly there is also an element here of Louises
concern to cause trouble for Eleanor, even after the latters death, in conjunction with the
estate of her partner Aveling, by making difficulties there and saddling Eleanor with a
bastard brother (whom Engels evidently didnt like, on Eleanors testimony). The gossip
and scandal, such as we have it, all dates from 1898 (according to surviving materials,
which have no anomalies solely soluble in terms of Louises account/Engelss alleged
claim).
I suggest the following methodological principles for investigation of the Freddy
affair:
54

1. no reading of Louises tale into the evidence without rigorous testing as to
whether other circumstances fit equally well or better.
2. rigorous separation of factual and hearsay claims, and testing of these separately,
e.g. what does Louise say and should we believe it? what does Engels (supposedly) say
and should we believe it? What does anyone else actually say in their own words and from
their own experience?
3. source material should be reproduced in full, rather than excerpted, not least to
establish the context of remarks, i.e. what questions the writers are asking and answering
and with what result in mind, which is seldom the same as a (much later) scholarly enquiry
into a (not very simple) fact. (In a short article, of course, this is not always possible;
however, I am aiming to collect all the relevant documents for publication in full in
English translation.)
4. due attention to the commonplace idea (as it was then before DNA testing,
anyway) that maternity is a fact, and paternity is an opinion! We have no testimony at all
from the one person whose account would command special credence Helene Demuth
even if there might still be room for doubt about her exact knowledge or veracity. I suspect
what concerns contemporary scholars is the answer to a different question: did Marx have
an affair with, or perpetrate violence on, the housemaid? Again the one person whose
account would command special credence has apparently left us nothing.
Conclusion
We will never know about this beyond reasonable doubt. Why we should care is
another question. Marx might appear a model family man, in a qualified sense (given his
need to do right by them all in a bourgeois world), but has there been an industry devoted
to projecting him in the guise of model heterosexual male? He was notably low key on
these issues (though not entirely silent; see P-MMx ch. 9).
Moreover, if Louises account/Engelss alleged claim is accepted as read, Engels
emerges as shabby, shallow and pathetic, and there is some implied criticism of him along
these lines in the Bebel-Bernstein exchanges as they consider the possibilities and
consequences of Louises account/Engelss alleged claim. Engels may very well have been
that way late in life (or indeed somewhat earlier), but it is in some ways more shocking,
given his youthful polemics against the bourgeois family, an area where Marx had rather
less to say (and also, so far as we know, rather less to do in terms of womanizing, given
his long courtship and childhood sweethearts sexual trajectory; see PMMx ch. 10).
At this stage of the investigation I am personally more persuaded by Bernsteins
view in 1898 (the father was someone unacceptable to the family) and by Kautskys
comments in 1929 (Marxs paternity of Frederick was wholly improbable) than to
Louises account/Engelss alleged claim. It fits much more plausibly with the
correspondence, events, feelings and character of everyone concerned ... except Louises.
While it is difficult to see quite why Louise would deliberately construct such a spiteful
tale, it is significant that there was scepticism about it amongst the inner circle at the time
(as well as credence). There is an undoubted element of gossipy invention and speculation
in the document, anyway, which even Louises most ardent supporters (such as Yvonne
Kapp, Eleanor Marxs biographer) have had to acknowledge. However powerful the tale,
and however well it seems to fit into other ambiguities, historians and scholars have a
duty to formulate clear hypotheses and to mount clearly constructed tests.
In sum, historians and biographers should sharpen up the tools of their trade, and not
be seduced by the evident narrative power of gossip and scandal, however much they are
vicariously involved with their socialist celebrities.

References
CW Marx and Engels, Collected Works (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1975-
2004).
55

DKM The Daughters of Karl Marx, Family Correspondence 1866-1898, trans.
Faith Evans (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984).
GH Unbekannte Dokumente ber Marx Sohn Frederick Demuth [Unknown
Documents concerning Marxs Son Frederick Demuth], Beitrge zur Geschichte der
Arbeiterbewegung 4/1994, pp. 43-59.
H W.O. Henderson, The Life of Friedrich Engels, 2 vols (London: Frank Cass,
1976).
K Yvonne Kapp, Eleanor Marx, 2 vols (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1972 and
1976).
KM David McLellan, Karl Marx: His Life and Thought (London: Macmillan,
1973).
MEW Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Werke (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1956-68).
P-MMx Terrell Carver, The Postmodern Marx (Manchester: Manchester
University press, 2004).
R Fritz J. Raddatz, Karl Marx, trans. Richard Barry (London: Weidenfeld &
Nicolson, 1978).

56

Hal Draper
Marx and the Economic-Jew Stereotype

Source: Hal Draper, Karl Marxs Theory of Revolution, Vol.1: State and
Bureaucracy, Monthly Review, New York 1977, pp.591-608. Hal Draper 1977,
Center for Socialist History (Berkeley). Reproduced by Marxists Internet Archive with
permission from the REDS Die Roten Website. This text is a duplicate of the
marxists.org version marked up by Einde OCallaghan.

There is a bulky output of literature alleging that Marxs essay On the Jewish
Question is anti-Semitic because it equates Jewry with the spirit of money-making, the
merchant-huckster, preoccupation with self-interest and egoism-that is, with the
commercialism of the new bourgeois order. The charge has been furthered in various
ways, including forgery: one honest critic renamed the essay A World Without Jews as if
this were Marxs title.
[1]
Few discussions of the essay explain clearly its political purpose
and content in connection with the Jewish emancipation question, or even accurately
present the views of its target, Bauer. Mainly, the allegation is supported by reading the
attitudes of the second half of the twentieth century back into the language of the 1840s.
More than that, it is supported only if the whole course of German and European anti-
Jewish sentiment is whitewashed, so as to make Marxs essay stand out as a black spot.
This note will take up only the 1843 essay and its background.
The general method was memorably illustrated in C.B. Kellands 1936 novel Mr.
Deeds Goes to Town, which some may know as a Gary Cooper film. In an attempt to have
a hearing declare Mr. Deeds of unsound mind, two little old ladies are brought in from his
home town to testify. Its well known, one explains, that he is pixillated balmy in the
head. The honest womans evidence seems damning. But the case blows up later when she
is asked one more question: Who else in your town is pixillated? She answers: Why,
everybody!
As soon as the question is raised, it is not difficult or even controversial to show that
virtually the entire population of Germany (and the rest of Europe, too) was pixillated-that
is, habitually used and accepted the words Jew and Jewry in the manner of Marxs essay
whether they were favorable to the Jews cause or not, whether they were anti-Semitic or
not, whether they were Jews or not. In this they were only following the very old, if now
discredited, practice of using national and ethnic names as epithets, usually derogatory, for
people showing a trait supposedly characteristic of the nation or ethnic group. This
practice, which began to be suppressed in self-consciously polite society only a few
decades ago, was as common in English as in any other language, and some of it still
hangs on. Consider a few: wild Indian (active child), apache (Paris criminal), Hottentot (as
in Hottentot morality), street arab, gypsy, bohemian, Cossack, blackamoor, Turk; or, as an
adjective: Dutch courage, Mexican general, French leave. Another of this group, for
centuries, has been Jew.
1. The Pattern in Germany
Marxs essay represents a very attenuated form of the general pattern, for most
commonly Jew was a synonym for usurer, whereas by this time mere money-making was
eminently respectable.
[2]
Bauers writing assumed that Jew meant usurer quite in
passing, for he was not interested in the economic Jew but in the Sabbath Jew.
[3]
The
same economic stereotype of the Jew can be found in Arnold Ruge
[4]
, who remained a
liberal and never became a communist, as well as in Max Stirner
[5]
, whose book The Ego
and Its Own heralded anarchism. These names already cover the spectrum of the Young
Hegelian milieu, whose philosophic mentor Feuerbach provided the immediate example
for this language about the role of Jewry.
[6]

57

A special case, near if not in the Young Hegelian tendency, was Moses Hess:
conscientiously Jewish himself, Hess had been brought up in an orthodox household and
later became the progenitor of Zionism. It is well known that the language of Marxs Part
II of On the Jewish Question followed the view of the Jews role given in an essay On the
Money System just written by none other than Hess, and just read by Marx.
[7]

Hesss thesis was that present-day society was a huckster world, a social animal-
world, in which people become fully developed egoists, beasts of prey and
bloodsuckers. The Jews, wrote the father of Zionism, who in the natural history of the
social animal-world had the world-historic mission of developing the beast of prey out of
humanity have now finally completed their missions work. It was in the Judeo-Christian
huckster world that the mystery of the blood of Christ, like the mystery of the ancient
Jewish blood-worship, finally appears quite unmasked as the mystery of the beast of prey.
There is more verbiage, going back to the blood-cult of ancient Judaism as the prototype
of modern society, and on to a condemnation of priests as the hyenas of the social animal-
world who are as bad as the other animal-people by virtue of their common quality as
beasts of prey, as bloodsuckers, as Jews, as financial wolves.
[8]
Earlier in 1843 Hess had
published an important article on The Philosophy of Action, which only incidentally
remarked that The Christian God is an imitation of the Jewish Moloch-Jehovah, to whom
the first-born were sacrificed to propitiate him, and whom the juste-milieu age of Jewry
bought off with money ...
[9]
Hess intended no special anti-Jewish animus in any of this
stuff, compared to which Marxs approach is complimentary and drily economic. Note that
Judaism is criticized as part of the Judeo-Christian complex, and not in order to praise
Christianity this being the same pattern as Voltaires; although Hess saw no
contradiction between his own continued Jewish faith and loyalties and his opinion,
expounded in his writings, that Christianity was the more advanced, modern and pure
religion all in the Feuerbachian groove.
[10]

It is relevant to add that much of the economic-Jew stereotype had at this time gained
general Jewish acceptance, at least as applied to rich Jews: so one can learn from the best
German historian of anti-Semitism, Eleonore Sterling.
[11]

If we move outside Young Hegelian circles, we may note that two other famous Jews
of the period are no exception to the rule: Lassalle
[12]
and Heine. Heine is especially
interesting, as always. His article on the Damascus affair of 1840 one of the famous
frameups of Jews on the blood accusation is full of bitter indignation against the
French Jews for lack of concern over their victimized brethren abroad. Among the French
Jews, as with other Frenchmen, wrote Heine (in France), gold is the god of the time, and
industry is the prevailing religion. Baron Rothschild and the noted Jewish plutocrat Fould
are called two distinguished rabbis of finance. Heine says caustically, I do not believe
that Israel ever gave money, save when its teeth were drawn by force. . . . There are, of
course, now and then examples that vanity can open the obdurate pockets of Jews, but then
their liberality is more repulsive than their meanness.
[13]
(At this point the American
translator was moved to apologize for Heines language, for by this time, 1891, the
modern racist type of anti-Semitism was over a decade old; in 1840 it had no such
significance or motivation.) An excellent study by William Rose gives the context of
Heines aphorism that The Jews were the Germans of the Orient, and now the Protestants
in the Germanic countries ... are nothing else than old-oriental Jews.
[14]
Rose naturally
makes clear Heines polyvalence about Jewry (ambivalence would be too weak).
As for other products of the Hegelian school, farther right, D.F. Strauss
[15]
was more
virulently anti-Jewish than those mentioned; and the famous Hegelian scholar Eduard
Gans, whose lectures Marx attended at the university, was another Jewish case in point.
Indeed, Ganss case can be considered a symbol. When Marx came to the University of
Berlin in 1836, Gans (in jurisprudence) was the big Hegelian influence on the faculty.
Seventeen years before, Gans had helped Leopold Zunz found the first society for Jewish
studies in the world, of which he became president. The project bogged down because the
58

rich Jews whom they had counted on refused to dip into their pockets. Zunz cried that
Jewry was beyond reform, the prey of barbarians, fools, moneylenders, and parnasim
(synogogue money-men), slaves of mere self-interest ... a pap of praying, bank notes, and
charity. But he plugged on. President Gans reported: The only link which unites the
Jews is fear; the only interest for which they are willing to part with some of their worldly
goods is charity whereupon he went through the baptism route from the cheder to the
Katheder. But even earlier, in the societys journal, Gans had had no inhibition against
remarking that Jewish life reflected a double aristocracy whose component parts ... are
... money and rabbis.
[16]

Hegel himself had written along the same lines mainly in early works, that is, before
his Prussian conservatization.
[17]
This was no paradox. It was the conservative right that
usually expressed antipathy to Jewry in religious and racialist terms; it was the left-of-
center that put the spotlight on the economic role of Jewry, the economic Jews; and both
stereotypes flourished among peasants and other poor victims of the system. Fichte,
another source of philosophic radicalism, deserved the name of systematic anti-Semite
more than any so far mentioned.
[18]

If we move to anti-Establishment dissent to the right of the Young Hegelians and
their circle, we find that the Young Germany movement, through the pens of its leader
Karl Gutzkow and prominent literary light Heinrich Laube, wrote no differently about the
Jews, and at some length.
[19]

2. The Universality of Pixillation
In the 1840s both sides, for and against political emancipation, held the economic
image of the Jew as common ground. The strong bourgeois-liberal movement pressing for
Jewish rights was quite vocal in arguing that civil emancipation was necessary in order to
solve the Jewish question by dissolving Jewry as a recognizable entity into the general
pool of Germanness and thus eventually eliminating it. Hess himself had presented this
viewpoint in his most successful book, in 1841.
[20]
Says Gustav Mayer of the pro-Jewish
liberals: Only through full and equal rights, they believed, would it be possible to wean
away the Prussian Jews from their un-German customs and from their one-sided
preference for petty trade.
[21]

Glickson, in the course of an indignant harangue against Marx, lets slip the following
statement: It is a well-known fact that the contemporary masters of philosophy and
literature, with the single exception of Lessing, had no sympathy for Jews or Judaism. The
greatest of them taught that the Jews were foreign and different, and drew definite political
conclusions from these teachings. Goethe, the great world-citizen, strongly opposed the
liberation of the Jews; he saw in them heretics who deny the source of our high culture.
[22]
Goethe had worse and stupider things to say about the Jews than this, including of
course the commercial stereotype.
[23]
Lessing, the alleged single exception, had been
dead for sixty-two years and was hardly a contemporary; we will come back to this
mythical exception. (Why, everybodys pixillated!)
Silberner, who writes as a prosecuting attorney, eventually makes the following
remark: The most various writers could indeed have reinforced Marxs prejudice against
the Jews. Many representatives of German classical literature and philosophy were not
precisely fond of the Jews, and since he read much of them, they could have contributed to
his Judeophobia.
[24]
Silberner does not mention any who were fond of the Jews,
including Jews. All of German history exists, for him, only as an influence on Marx. This
bizarre approach is due to the understandable reluctance, shown by him and similar
writers, to inform the modern reader that so many great men either disliked the Jews or
thought of them in terms of the economic stereotype, for fear of reinforcing contemporary
anti-Semitic currents by giving them respectable sanction. It is only Marx who is to be
accused of being pixillated.
As Roman Rosdolsky said of this modus operandi, In this manner one could very
easily assign to the camp of anti-Semitism three-quarters of the thinkers, writers, and
59

politicians of the past.
[25]
If we consider only left-of-center circles, the proportion would
be closer to 100 percent, since it is on the left, rather than on the right, that the economic
structure and role of Jewry was the main operative factor.
All this was not only true of Germany. In France and England the economic
stereotype of the Jew and its expression in leftish circles was similar; we are not dealing
with a phenomenon of the German soul. France was worse.
An essay by Z. Szajkowski is illuminating on the subject of France. It reports at the
end that it is impossible to find any sympathetic reference to the Jews in the French
socialist literature, from Saint-Simon to the date of Drumonts first appearance [1886].
For the most part, what this involved was the stereotyped identification of Jews with
money values and economic exploitation. More virulent attitudes existed among the
Fourierists especially. The tradition of dislike for Jewish economic activities goes back in
France not simply to Voltaire but to the history of Jewry in the later Middle Ages and the
Enlightenment.
[26]

In France, indeed, one first finds a new note: here Jew-hatred took a proto-Nazi form
in the express desire of Proudhon (father of anarchist libertarianism) for the physical
extermination of all Jews. Bakunin, the other father of anarchism, was almost as virulently
anti-Semitic in the modern sense as Proudhon.
[27]
But in this period, this proto-Nazi anti-
Semitism is found only among these anarchist liberty-shouters, as far as I know.
England was by no means as bad as France. But routine equation of the economic
Jew with money-bags, financial overlords, commercial exploitation, and the rest, cropped
up in the Chartist press, including the best of the left Chartists
[28]
, in the manner of Marxs
essay. To take another part of the political spectrum: Macaulay can be viewed as an
English example of the liberal supporter of Jewish civil emancipation who expressed as
much aversion to Jewish economic activities as many an opponent.
[29]
The jibes at the
economic Jew stereotype are not at all peculiar to socialist writings: they are found
wherever there is expression of antagonism to the bourgeois or financial world. The
reactionary antibourgeois critic Thomas Carlyle was not only virulently anti-Jewish but
also opposed the granting of greater legal rights to the Jews.
[30]

But it would be a complete misunderstanding of the economic-Jew stereotype if it is
identified with an anti-Jewish context only. Leaving aside the advocates of Jewish
emancipation who used language similar to Marxs essay just as automatically as its
opponents, it is instructive to look at the first Jewish socialist movement which began
stirring in the latter 1870s.
This is three decades later than the period of Marxs essay; the whole basis of
awareness of the Jewish question has been transformed by the rise of a systematically
racist anti-Semitic movement for the first time; we are dealing with Jewish-conscious
socialists reacting to a real anti-Semitic threat; and by this time there is something of a
Jewish proletariat in existence. Everything is different; but still, consider the terms of the
first socialist manifesto issued to Jewry, by Aaron Lieberman, the historic pioneer of this
movement. His Call to the Jewish Youth reverberated with the tones of Isaiah (as in Isaiah
2: 7-9, for example). It said: Emancipate yourselves from the power-lust that lies at the
bottom of your privileges. Stop praying to gold and might. Lieberman blames the Jewish
bankers and merchants for the plight of his people:
We have had to pay for your sins! The race hatred, the religious hatred, with all their
terrors have fallen mostly upon us [the poor Jews]. You kindled the fire that devours us.
We have you to thank for it that the name Israel has become a curse. The entire Jewish
people, suffering and astray, must suffer more than all other peoples because of your
greed. It is your fault that we have been exposed to calumny. International speculators,
who have dragged our name through the mud, you do not belong to us!
[31]

The power of the traditional stereotype is recognized here precisely by the justified
fervor of the plea to repudiate it, to emphasize the class struggle within Jewry in order to
exorcize it. There is a historical background to this.
60

3. Roots of the Economic J ew
We have assumed up to now that the reader has a general conception of the economic
history behind the stereotype at any rate, how Jews were forced into a lopsided economic
structure by Christendoms prohibition on their entrance into agriculture, guild
occupations, and professions. Three myths about the economic Jew are easy to refute but
not germane here; they are: (1) that Jews controlled finance or any part of economic life;
(2) that all Jews were rich; and (3) that it was the Jews that created, or invented,
capitalism. After these myths are disposed of, however, the real historical basis of the
economic Jew can be broached. Something else was involved beyond these exaggerations,
and may be summarized as follows:
1. The important role that the (upper stratum of) Jews did play in the development
of postfeudal society, especially considering the tiny proportion of the population they
constituted.
2. The great tilt in the economic structure of Jewry toward middleman and financial
occupations, including the bulk of poor Jews in huckstering occupations, for example,
peddlers, petty merchants.
3. The relatively high visibility of the Jews economic role as, for example, when
Junkers employed Jews as loan collectors and mortgage foreclosers, thus gaining the
profits while the Jews gained the onus as bloodsuckers.
In 1843 little was known, even to those aware of the question, about the economic or
sociohistorical development of the Jewish people. The very concept of a Wissenschaft des
Judentums (Jewish studies) had arisen only in the first quarter of the nineteenth century.
Today there is a considerable literature on the question
[32]
, but it is ahistorical to predate
its acquisition. A portion of that history which is important background for our present
subject is well summarized in Sterlings Judenhass, which deals precisely with Germany
in the years 1815-1850:
The enlightened officials recognized, already in the middle of the eighteenth century,
the useful and progressive function of the Jews in the development of commerce and
industry, which tended to transform the still seminatural-economy state into a modern
money- and credit-economy state. The princes summoned Jews to their courts in order to
carry out the financing of their provinces independently of the Estates, in order to obtain
moneys for raising and maintaining their armies, and to make possible the operation of
new businesses. In this way was formed a small rich and politically privileged upper
stratum within the Jewish population. Jewish court agents, bankers, and army contractors
assumed an important position in finance, in commerce and in the industry of the
mercantilist-oriented states. When the economic upswing set in after the Napoleonic war,
many Christians as well as Jews found themselves in an advantageous position because
they had large amounts of liquid capital at their disposal. Still their number must have been
slight ...
In the course of time arose a new but also not numerous group of Jews who became
well-to-do through the new economic development. Unhindered by old traditions and guild
regulations, they quickly adopted the methods of the modern English credit system and
stock speculation. They understood how to turn out large quantities of goods produced in
the new factories for the market, got in position to give state loans, and participated in
railroad construction and built factories.
In that way the real security of the Jews essentially depended on their usefulness to
others and on the good will of the governments; all their enterprises, indeed their very
existence, remained always in jeopardy. They therefore attempted with great energy to
compensate with economic power for the legal and social security they lacked. In this way
the Jewish financiers who had grown rich in the new capitalist order, in which money was
all-powerful, achieved a privileged position ...
In the sections where capitalist commerce and industry had already made important
progress even without Jews, the Christian population by no means felt that the success of
61

the Jewish upper stratum was a handicap for themselves. Thus, already in 1817 the
Gewerbepolizei in Aachen said that Jewish business in the Prussian Rhineland could no
longer be considered usury but a synonym for free trade and the profit system.
[33]

Such favorable attitudes were not taken, however, by merchants corporative guilds
and the patrician order in the smaller German states and backward areas, not to speak of
the peasantry and artisanry.
It is clear why the spearhead of the Jewish emancipation drive, the petition
campaign,
came mostly from the big-bourgeois circles of the cities in which industrial
development was already far advanced and in which the Jews of the bourgeois upper
stratum already played an integrating function in the economy. It was Christian and Jewish
great merchants, factory owners, bankers, and insurance directors who drafted the petitions
and submitted them with numerous signatures.
[34]

This was the nature of the emancipation campaign which Marx supported and Bauer
attacked.
But it would be a mistake to believe that the economic-Jew stereotype among the
population was merely a reflection of this upper stratum, of the Rothschilds and Foulds.
Many or most of the poor Jews also functioned as middlemen peddlers, hawkers, hand-
to-mouth traders and merchants, petty money-lenders in very direct contact with the poor
Christian population, caught in the classic pattern of having to squeeze those below as they
were squeezed from above. Jews were associated with financial exploitation on levels
far below Rothschild: Recent happenings in the Rhineland and Alsace, relates Solomon
Bloom, strengthened this popular suspicion; Jewish moneylenders broke up properties of
landlords and farmers at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth
century. The Western radical community was not unaffected by the resulting animosities.
Gustav Mayer says, of anyone brought up in the young Marxs place and time: The
Jews to him meant mainly the Jewish cattle dealers in the Rhineland, those who bought
from, and sold to the small peasants, taking advantage of their own superior business
abilities.
[35]

For our present purposes it is not necessary to settle the controversy over just how
important the Jews were in the rise of capitalism. The identification of Jewry with
commercialism, which was everybodys pixillation in the 1840s, was elaborated in great
detail as late as 1911 by Werner Sombarts The Jews and Modern Capitalism; and after all
the nonsense in that erudite opus is discounted, there is more than enough left to explain
the mind of a generation that existed before economic history had even been invented.
4. Ex Post Facto Anti-Semitism
After the rise of Hitlerism, it became de rigueur to play down the Jews significance
for capitalism, since the Nazis used it for their own purposes.
[36]
But eminent Jewish
historians have proudly lauded their role. In his introduction to Ruppins The Jews in the
Modern World, for example, Professor L.B. Namier, writing militantly as a Zionist Jew
and a true-blue Englishman, boasted: Two races [sic] headed the movement [of progress
in the capitalist system] though under vastly different conditions the British and the
Jews; they were the pioneers of capitalism, and its first, and perhaps chief, beneficiaries.
For others, that picture was considered to hold only until about the middle of the
nineteenth century, which thoroughly covers Marxs essay.
[37]

A. Leon has argued, against Sombart and others, that Jewry played such a role in
pre-capitalist society:
Judaism was an indispensable factor in precapitalist society. It was a fundamental
organism within it. That is what explains the two-thousand year existence of Judaism in
the Diaspora. The Jew was as characteristic a personage in feudal society as the lord and
the serf. It was no accident that a foreign element played the role of capital in feudal
society ... The capital of precapitalist society existed outside of its economic system.
[38]

62

But, continues Leons thesis, the rise of capitalism to dominance in the social system
went hand in hand with the decline of Jewry in this function. Thereupon the Jews were
pushed more and more into the interstices of the system, especially in a capacity as
distribution middlemen and as usurers dealing more with the poor than with kings, as
formerly. In the measure that usury became the principal occupation of Jews, they entered
increasingly into relations with the popular masses, and these relations worsened all the
time. The peasant who lost his land or stock, or the artisan who lost his tools, to the
Jewish money-lender, was incapable of seeing the upper-bourgeois Christians behind the
usurer; hatreds were let loose on the highly visible intermediaries.
[39]
Leons term for
Jewry, the people-class, is an attempt to give scientific form to the social basis of what we
have been calling the economic-Jew stereotype.
[1*]

Leon aimed at a Marxist analysis; but we can turn to a leading theoretician of
Socialist Zionism for confirmation, from an entirely different angle, of the effective
universality of the old equation for which Marxs essay gets denounced. Hayim
Greenberg, writing in 1942, was disturbed about the use made by Nazi anti-Semitism of
the facts of the Jews economic role. He denies the old charge that Jews are parasites in
the worlds economic order by arguing that the economic role which Jewry was forced
into was in fact useful, honorable, and nothing to apologize for. He concludes that There
is nothing wicked in being a middleman, but it is not sound for a whole people to consist
of middlemen. What Greenberg is trying to say is that it is no more wicked to be a Jewish
middleman than a Christian one. All of which was true, of course, as Marx had
demonstrated in his own way by transforming the issue from the contrast of Jews to
Christians into the economic equivalence of Jews and Christians. In the course of this
defense, however, Greenberg testifies to the universality of pixillation in queasy terms
which, it must be remembered, are being written by a Zionist champion a hundred years
after Marxs essay and over a decade after the rise of Nazism:
Jews also have been considerably influenced by the notion that they constitute an
unproductive, or even a destructive force, in the worlds economy. We speak of Jews as
essentially a people of ... individuals whose occupations are unsubstantial, who are
exploiters, speculators and traffickers in the labor of others.
Signs of this self-condemnation first appear in the literature of our enlightenment.
Jews who felt spiritually emancipated from the civilization of the ghetto even before they
were emancipated from its legal disabilities, developed a great admiration for European
culture and were in no small degree affected by its anti-Jewish prejudices. Certainly they
shared the Europeans disdain for the Jew as a trader.
By 1942 all this had become anti-Semitic by ex post facto determination; but note
that Greenberg was not so ignorant or hypocritical as to pretend that he had Marx in mind:
The views of many Jewish socialists in regard to the economic role of the Jews have
also been tinged by a certain anti-Semitic bias ...
Non-Jewish socialists, and not necessarily Marxian socialists, have tended to look
down on the Jew in the worlds economy.
He cites the Russian Narodnaya Volya, the peasant-oriented populist-terrorist
movement of the late nineteenth century, which was even known to encourage peasant
pogroms as one activity in their struggle. The Populists, he explains, held the idea that the
Jew was essentially a bloodsucker, and adds: This also explains Tolstoys rather
unfriendly attitude towards the Jews, an attitude most eloquently expressed by his repeated
failure to speak up on behalf of the persecuted Jews. There goes another pixillated
libertarian. But Greenberg goes further: to the Zionist socialists themselves and their left
wing:
Nor is Zionism free from its share of responsibility. There was a time when it used to
be the fashion for Zionist speakers (including the writer) to declare from the platform that
to be a good Zionist one must first be somewhat of an anti-Semite.
[41]

63

Greenberg states that this attitude can be found in Pinsker, Syrkin, Borochov, A.D.
Gordon, and others all of them the leaders and founders of the Labor Zionist movement.
To this day, he adds, Labor Zionist circles are under the influence of the idea that the
Return to Zion involves a process of purification from our economic uncleanness.
[42]
It
should be added that the movements social-democratic theoretician, Ber Borochov, based
his whole theory of Socialist Zionism on a class analysis of the Jewish people along the
now-interdicted (anti-Semitic) lines, and that his fundamental Marxist argument for
Zionism was that it was the only road to changing the class composition of the Jews. The
same goes for his successor as the theoretician of Socialist Zionism, Nachman Syrkin.
[43]

It cannot be overemphasized that all of this, for which Greenberg beats his breast,
was a matter of contrasting the economic Jew with the Christian world to the Jews
discredit; for this bolstered the Zionist aim of making the Jews a people like other
people. None of this sort of thing was in Marxs 1843 essay, which repudiated such a
derogatory contrast by already identifying modern (bourgeois) Christendom with the
commercial role of what Leon called the people-class.
While we have shown that this identification was in no way peculiar to Marx but was
the common coin of the time and it was precisely for this reason that Marx could turn it
to account in order to make his political point we must now go a little further along these
lines. This identification was not merely generally accepted, but had been built into the
language. McLellan goes so far as to put it this way:
Judentum, the German word for Judaism, had the derivative meaning of
commerce, and it is this meaning which is uppermost in Marxs mind throughout the
article. Judaism has very little religious, and still less racial, content for Marx and it
would be little exaggeration to say that this latter part of Marxs review [Part II of On the
Jewish Question] is an extended pun at Bauers expense.
[44]

This pun was not a jest but a play on words. Such word-play was indeed a favorite
literary pattern of the young Marx, as it was of Hegel. In both it was not a humorous but an
explicatory device: a means of developing, out of the different aspects of meaning packed
into one word, various aspects of the reality which the word reflected.
Ruppin states that in the Middle Ages the conceptions of Jew and trader became
well-nigh synonymous. Gustav Mayer makes a similar statement: to the average
German, Judaism and capitalism came pretty close to being synonymous. Sterling quotes
the economist Friedrich Harkort at the time, on the fact that behind the Jewish money-
lenders and mortgage collectors stood the Junkers, who made the profit. These Junkers
Harkort called the Jews with boots and spurs who constituted the real speculators and
grasping creditors.
[45]
The synonymy of Jew and some form of commercialism was taken
for granted not only by those who threw epithets at the Jews but equally by those who
defended them.
With this background in mind, one can go back to Marxs On the Jewish Question to
read it as it was written, not as it is refracted through the dark glass of contemporary
ignorance and malice.
It was a contribution to a hotly fought campaign in favor of Jewish political
emancipation not however on behalf of the Christian and Jewish great merchants,
factory owners, bankers, and insurance directors who drafted the petitions, but to show
how to link this current battle up with the eventual struggle against these very gentlemen.
Its aim was to support political emancipation today in order to make possible social
emancipation tomorrow. Hence its last words: The social emancipation of the Jew is the
emancipation of society from Judaism.
These compact words do in fact sum up the entire burden of the argument: It is
wrong to make the political emancipation of the Jew wait on his social emancipation (as
Bauer wanted); for we are dealing with the economic Jew, and economic Judaism is now
one with bourgeois society as a whole.
64

5. How to Manufacture Anti-Semites
It should be clear now that there were two quite different issues involved in attitude
toward the Jews, from the period of the Enlightenment to at least the 1870s (when anti-
Semitism first became a racialist social and political movement and indeed the term itself
was invented by anti-Semites). One issue involved an opinion about das Judentum
[2*]

(like or dislike); the other, a position on the status of Jews in the state and society
(abolition of civic, legal, political disabilities). As we have seen, a dim view of Jewry was
well-nigh universal, in some not-always- clear sense and for varying reasons, but with
clear roots in the nature of economic Judaism. The division in public opinion occurred
on the second issue, the question of political emancipation and equal rights.
As a result there is a curious system common among historians, not to speak of
marxologists. Historical figures are made into philo-Semites or anti-Semites at will by
referring only to one or the other issue, with the same obtuse lack of distinction that was so
characteristic of the people of that benighted era itself. A couple of examples will give a
proper perspective on the treatment of Marxs essay.
We saw that Glickson (p.595) had looked for a single exception among the
contemporary masters to the general lack of sympathy for Jews, and had gone back to the
previous century to turn one up: G.E. Lessing, whose poetic drama Nathan the Wise
(1779) was the most renowned philo-Semitic production in Germany, perhaps in
European history. This reputation is based on the sympathetic portrayal of Nathan as
Edeljude, the noble Jew, good and wise. This reputation brought down on Lessings head
the vituperation of generations of anti-Semites-for example, Nazi-like ravings by E.
Dhring in 1881.
[46]
Without derogating Lessings contribution for its time, a closer look
at the play produces a strange result if it is counterposed to Marxs essay.
1. Lessings play does not raise the question of equal rights for Jews; to the
contrary, it takes their inferior status for granted. For the setting is Saladins Jerusalem,
where both Jews and Christians exist on the sufferance of Saladin, who is portrayed as
being just as noble as Nathan.
2. Lessings chosen model, Nathan, is a rich Jewish merchant who has just returned
from a debt-collecting trip, bringing back a fabulous wealth of goods. He is so rich that he
is capable of playing the part of Rothschild to the sultan. In short, he is the worse of the
two stereotypes of the economic Jew, not the poor-huckster model but the financial-
plutocrat model. Lessing does not challenge the stereotype; he gilds it. He glorifies his rich
Jew by painting him in pleasing colors.
3. Nathan is a Jew by birth but not by belief in Judaism, being in fact a Deist, like
Lessing himself. He explains in a parable (which is the ideological centerpiece of the play
and was its starting point in Lessings mind) that the three religions are as like as identical
rings; the only difference is that one happens to inherit one rather than the other. The
repugnance the wise Nathan would feel for Jewish orthodoxy is left implicit but is
unquestionable.
4. The point is repeatedly made that Nathan is an exceptional Jew. Repeatedly
Jew is used generically to refer to the usual mean; miserly, money-mad Jew of the
popular language. The noble Sittah twice wonders whether Nathan is a Jew like other Jews
or whether he is good as reported; the noble Templar wonders whether Nathan has really
unlearned to be a Jew; and the noble Nathan himself, wondering at one point what game
the sultan is playing with him, soliloquizes, Who here is really the Jew he or I? (To be
sure, Lessing does not refer to the dirty Jews; instead, he refers just as routinely to the
dirty Moors, the contemporaneous equivalent of dirty niggers.)
[47]

In short, the great philo-Semitic message of the play is the equivalent of Some of
my best friends are Jews, or even You would hardly believe hes a Jew, my dear! In
fact, Lessing had written it down himself, in an early (1749), philo-Semitic comedy
called The Jews: Truly there are Jews who arent Jews at all.
[48]
Replying to a critic who
urged that the noble-Jew figure was so great an improbability as to invalidate the play,
65

Lessing vigorously agreed the case was rare, but argued that, since the Jews unfortunate
condition was due to their necessity for living purely and simply from trade, it would
cease with the cause, when the Jews no longer maintain a wretched existence through
base small trade. Hence, he explained, he chose a rich man as his figure.
[49]
Lessings
views revolved around the economic-Jew stereotype as completely as anyones.
The single exception in a hundred years, Lessing, turns out to have used Jude as the
same generic cuss-word as every other pixillated German and European. In contrast, Marx
used Judentum as an impersonal historic-economic category, to make the point that Jewry
and Christendom had been homogenized in our huckster society.
There is a second example, mentioned earlier: the case of Voltaires anti-Semitism,
as reported by Peter Gay.
[50]
Voltaires derogatory remarks about the Jews, including the
inevitable economic stereotype, are exhibited. But we are told in addition that Voltaires
transgression is so much the less forgivable because the very same period held a live
option for philo-Semitism which was taken by other men.
John Locke is cited as the philo-Semite, against Voltaire the anti- Semite. The
evidence is Lockes Letter on Toleration (1689), where he indubitably comes out in favor
of religious worship for Jews: The Jews are permitted to have dwellings and private
houses; why are they denied synogogues? If Locke was also in favor of equal rights for
Jews across the board, as Gay seems to imply, Locke neglected to say so in this essay. He
goes so far as to state that neither Pagan nor Mahometan nor Jew should be excluded
from the commonwealth because of his religion.
Gay did not mention, however, that in this very same passage Locke makes clear that
he considers Judaism to be abominable.
[51]
This is said only in passing; but then the
other statements are in passing too; for Lockes essay is a closely reasoned argumentation,
not a discursive article, and the reference to the Jews is a hurried one. We know of no
reason to believe that Locke had any greater liking than Voltaire for the practitioners of
this abominable cult: he was arguing in the spirit of the civil-liberties lawyer who battles
for equal rights even for known criminals.
But was not Voltaire also for religious toleration in the same sense? Yes, he was; and
in fact in 1764 a French translation of Lockes essay was joined to Voltaires treatise on
toleration to make one book, with a preface (which Professor Klibansky believes was
written by Voltaire himself) praising Lockes argument.
[52]

We can now see how to create (or appoint) philo-Semites and anti-Semites at will.
Granted that both Locke and Voltaire were for toleration of the Jewish religion, and that
both disliked the Jews themselves, you quote Locke on the first and Voltaire on the second
voil! The system is an infallible recipe.
[3*]

There is a further complication about the anti-Semite Voltaire, which Gay does set
forth. It seems, argues Gay, that in these excursions Voltaire was interested in striking not
so much at Judaism as at Christianity, for he wanted to reinforce his hostile view of
Christianity by also discrediting the source (Judaism) from which this pernicious religion
derived. Hence his dislike of the Jews ... was a partly unconscious, partly conscious cloak
for his anti-Christian sentiments.
[54]
In fact, Voltaire was interested in attacking all
religions from his Deist standpoint just as, from the same Deist standpoint, Lessing
wanted to represent all religions as equally meaningless as far as differences were
concerned. Where Lessing portrayed the noble Jew, Moslem, and Christian with equable
brush in a paroxysm of reconciliation, Voltaire painted all the devout as fools, knaves, and
miscellaneous miscreants also fairly impartially. In his century there was no reason to let
the Jews off the hook; that makes him an anti-Semite in this century for historians who
project themselves back into history as undercover agents of the Anti-Defamation League.
Lastly: we mentioned earlier that the Young Germany movement (Gutzkow,
Laube) has been cited for anti-Semitic treatment of Jewish figures like everybody else.
Gutzkow, for example, wrote a novel involving this sort of anti-Semitism. But when the
young Engels, not yet nineteen, became enthusiastic about Young Germanys liberal and
66

democratic tendency, the figure he admired most was Ludwig Borne. Indeed his letters of
this time to a boyhood friend are filled with encomiums on this German Jewish publicist.
[55]
In this young mans eyes, Young Germany stood not only for political freedom in
general but in particular for Jewish emancipation Who can have anything against this?
[4*]
For him, the distress of the Jews is part of the liberal indictment of the status quo. He
tells his friend about his literary hero: You call for a faithful Eckart? See, there he is
already, a small chap with a sharp Jewish profile his name is Borne ... He mentions the
liberal poet Creizenach twice with warm praise, and both times prominently identifies
Creizenach as a Jew. He brings up the Wandering Jew (in German, the Eternal Jew) as
one of the models for freedom of the spirit about which he dreams of writing a second
Faust. He lists the emancipation of the Israelites as the first of three positive
achievements of Napoleon.
[57]

Is this young man a philo-Semite like Lessing? Yes, like Lessing: for, in this same
correspondence with his friend, one also finds the routine use of the economic-Jew
stereotype as a jibe, as also in later life. Quoted by itself, this would make him an anti-
Semite like all the other pixillated people.
The real issue of the time had nothing to do with the use of language about Judaism
based on the universally accepted economic-Jew stereotype. The real Jewish question was:
For or against the political emancipation of the Jews? For or against equal rights for
Jews?
This was the Jewish question that Marx discussed, not the one that dominated the
minds of a sick society a century later.

Footnotes
1*. Leons term people-class, which marks the conjuncture of an ethnic group with a
collective economic role, is similar to Marxs repeated references to the merchant-
peoples (or trading peoples, Handelsvlker) of antiquity and the Middle Ages. Among
these he mentioned the Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Lombards, and Normans, as well as
the Jews, all of them operating in the interstices or pores of a society not itself based
on commerce.
[40]

2*. This, in turn, divides into two subquestions: ones opinion of the religion (Judaism) or
of the people. The first problem was consciousness of the distinction. Marx had
distinguished between the two with unusual clarity in his letter of 13 March 1843 (see
p.111fn), in which he mentioned his repugnance to the religion as against supporting the
demand for Jewish emancipation. It must be recalled that at this point Judaism meant
mainly the orthodox faith as it had emerged from the Middle Ages; Reform Judaism had
just taken shape but would not have determined the public discussion. The rise of Reform
Judaism was itself a symptom of the widespread repugnance felt by those modernized
Jews who were not willing to be hypocritically orthodox la Rothschild.
3*. Gay does the same with Montesquieu, but with an open contradiction. He cites
Montesquieu as his second example of philo-Semitism as against Voltaire, since
Montesquieu deplored persecution of the Jews. But Gay also mentions, before closing the
matter, that Montesquieu was so misguided as to note the Jews affinity for commerce
and banking, and that he even wrote: You ask me if there are Jews in France. Know that
wherever there is money, there are Jews.
[53]
Everybody is pixillated.
4*. See page 200 for two citations from Engels letters of 1839 mentioning the Jewish
emancipation issue. The emancipation of the Jews, as a political issue, continued to play
the same role for Engels in later years.
[56]

Notes
1. See Dagobert Runes, ed.: A World Without Jews, by Karl Marx, an alleged translation;
the reader is not told that the title is Runess invention; there are other distortions in the
text.
67

2. For the usurer definition, see any good German-English dictionary (e.g., Muret-Sanders,
1920, or Wildhagen-Hraucourt, 1970) as well as, say, the 1843 edition of Flgels, under
Jude, Judelei, judeln, etc. Cf. Encyclopaedia Judaica (Berlin, 1932-pre-Hitler), v.9, p.530.
English was no different: in the Oxford English Dictionary, under Jew and its forms, see
the examples cited from writers like Byron, Coleridge, Cobbett, Washington Irving, D.G.
Rossetti, going back to Chaucer. (In 1973 this dictionary was sued on the demand that it
should suppress this corner of philology.) For the German Jews tendency to abandon Jude
as a dirty word by the beginning of the 19th century, see Graupe: Die Entstehung des
Modernen Judentums (1969), p.235; also the comment in Waldman: Goethe and the Jews
(1934), p.255.
3. Bauer: The Jewish Problem (1958), pp.10, 114, 123; Silberner: Sozialisten zur
Judenfrage (1962), p.117; Sterling: Judenhass (1969), p.101.
4. Silberner: Soz. z. Jud., p.117; Sterling: Judenhass, p.101.
5. Stirner: The Ego and His Own (1907), pp.20-21, 48, 135.
6. Massing: Rehearsal for Destruction (1949), p.253, n. 15; Silberner: Soz. z. Jud., p.126;
Diamond: Marxs First Thesis, Science & Society (Summer 1937), p.544; Mehring:
Geschichte der Deutschen Sozial-Demokratie (1960), Vol.1, pp.121-122.
7. Cornu: Karl Mark et Friedrich Engels (1954-70), Vol.2, pp.273, 330 fn.1; Silberner:
Moses Hess: Geschichte seines Lebens (1966), pp.191-192; McLellan: The Young
Hegelians & Karl Marx (1969), pp.153-154.
8. Hess: Philosophische und Sozialistische Schriften (1961), pp.345-346; Silberner: M.
Hess, pp.188-189, also partly quoted in his Soz. z. Jud., pp.184-185, in both without the
least comment. Cf. also Cornu: K.M. et F.E., vol.2, pp.273-274, 323-330.
9. Silberner: M. Hess, p.130; and his Soz. z. Jud., p.184.
10. Silberner: M. Hess, pp.26-28, 48, 85.
11. Sterling: Jewish Reac. to Jew-Hatred, Leo Baeck Institute (London) Year Book 3
(1958), pp.110-112.
12. Silberner: Soz. z. Jud., Ch. 10; Footman: Ferdinand Lassalle: Romantic Revolutionary
(1947), pp.119-120.
13. Heine: Works (Leland) (1891-1905), vol.8, pp.75, 78; cf. also pp.510-511.
14. Rose: Heinrich Heine: Two Studies of His Thought (1956), p.132; cf. also p.101.
15. Sterling: Judenhass, p.101.
16. Lowenthal: The Jews of Germany (1936), p.239; Reissner: Rebellios Dilemma: The
Case Histories of Eduard Gans and Some of His Partisans, Leo Baeck Institute (London)
Year Book 2 (1957), p.179; Meyer: The Origins of the Modern Jew (1967), p.181.
17. Silberner: Soz. z. Jud., p.127; cf. 167. Avineri: Hegels Theory of the Modern State,
pp.17-19, 55.
18. Krieger: The German Idea of Freedom (1957), p.181; Silberner: Soz. z. Jud., pp.170-
172.
19. Sterling: Judenhass, pp.100-101.
20. Silberner: M. Hess, p.86.
21. Mayer: Early German Socialism and Jewish Emancipation, Jewish Social Studies 1
(1939), p.410. Cf. also the example of W. Menzel mentioned incidentally in Silberner: M.
Hess, p.34.
22. Glickson: The Jewish Complex of Karl Marx (1961), p.29.
23. Waldman: Goethe, pp.246-268, esp. p.249.
24. Silberner: Soz. z. Jud., pp.126-127.
25. Rosdolsky: La Neue Rheinische Zeitung et les Juifs, Etudes de Marxologie, no.7 (Aug.
1963), p.61.
26. Szajkowski: The Jewish St.-Simonians and Socialist Anti-Semites in France, Jewish
Social Studies 9 (1947), p.60. For Fourierism, ibid., p.46-50 esp.; Silberner: Charles
Fourier on the Jewish Question, Jewish Social Studies 6 (1946), (all); also his The Attitude
of the Fourierist School Towards the Jews, Jewish Social Studies 9 (1947), (all), and his
68

Soz. z. Jud., pp.16-43. On Voltaire, Gay: The Party of Humanity (1964), pp.97-108, esp.
p.102. A good account on France is contained in Hertzberg: The French Enlightenment
and the Jews (1970).
27. On Proudhon, Schapiro: Liberalism and the Challenge of Fascism (1949), pp.358-3
59; Draper: A Note on the Father of Anarchism, New Politics (Winter 1969), p.80. On
Bakunin, Carr: Michael Bakunin (1961), pp.145, 369, 371, 459; Pyziur: The Doctrine of
Anarchism of Michael A. Bakunin (1955), p.38n.; Silberner: Soz. z. Jud., Ch.18. For James
Guillaume, Bakunins chief lieutenant, see his book Karl Marx Pangermaniste (1915),
which throughout carefully identifies as Jews all the possible enemies of humanity; also cf.
Silberner: Soz. z. Jud., p.276.
28. See e.g. Harneys Democratic Review, editorial, vol.1, p.352; Ernest Joness Notes to
the People, article on The Jews in Poland (probably not by Jones himself), Vol.1, 1851,
no.11; for Bronterre OBrien, see Collins & Abramsky, Karl Marx and the British Labour
Movement (1965), p.253 and fn; about an OBrienite, see Plummer: Bronterre: A Political
Biography of Bronterre OBrien 1804-1864 (1971), 268; Silberner: Soz. z. Jud., Ch.15.
29. Avineri: Marx and Jewish Emancipation, Journal of the History of Ideas (July-Sept
1964), p.447.
30. Symons: T. Carlyle: The Life and Ideas of a Prophet (1952), p.232; Wilson: T.
Carlyle, vol.3, pp.405, 409; vol.4, 162-163, 373, 379, 451-452.
31. Quoted in Rocker: The London Years, pp.117, 119.
32. Summations of this economic-historical research may be found in: Ruppin: The Jews
in the Modern World (1934), Part III, esp. pp.109-115, 122-123, 130-135; Reich: The
Econonomic Structure of Modern Jewry, The Jews. Their History, Culture and Religion
(1949), vol.2; Hertzler: The Sociology of Anti-Semitism Through History, in Greaber &
Britt (eds.), Jews in a Gentile World (1942), pp.86-91; Graupe: Entstehung Mod. Jud.,
pp.239-241; Cohen: Jewish Life in Modern Times (1914), pp.182-213; Leon: The Jewish
Question (1971).
33. Sterling: Judenhass, pp.29-30; re the last sentence, see also Elbogen & Sterling: Die
Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland, pp.196-197, 222.
34. Ibid., p.79.
35. For insight into lower-class anti-Jewish feeling, see Sterling: Anti-Jewish Riots in
Germany in 1819, Historica Judaica (Oct. 1950). Bloom: Karl Marx and the Jews, Jewish
Social Studies 4 (1942), p.8. Mayer: Early Ger. Soc., p.417.
36. For one silly example of this trend, see Miriam Beard: Anti-Semitism Product of
Economic Myths, in Graeber & Britt: Jews Gent. World, which is anthologized under the
rubric The Mirage of the Economic Jew.
37. Namier, in Ruppin: Jews in Mod. World, p.xvi; see also the presentation of the
question in Graupe: Entsteh. Mod. Jud., pp.239-241. For others, Cohen: Jewish Life,
pp.188ff; Engelman: The Rise of Jew in the Western World (1944), pp.93ff.
38. Lon: Jewish Qu., p.219.
39. Ibid., pp.129-135.
40. Marx: Grundrisse (1953), pp.134, 165, 167.
41. Greenberg: The Myth of Jewish Parasitism, Jewish Frontier Anthology 1934-1944
(1945), pp.223, 229; 223-234, 224-225.
42. Ibid., p225.
43. Encyclopaedia Judaica (Berlin 1929), v.4, pp.974-975. On Syrkin, see e.g., Syrkin:
Essays on Socialist Zionism (n.d. [1935]), p.23; or Labor Zionist Handbook (1939), p.6.
44. McLellan: Marx before Marxism (1970), pp.141-142; also his ed. of Marx: Early
Texts, p.112; Tucker: Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx (1961), p.111.
45. Ruppin: Jews Mod. World, p.133. Mayer: Early Ger. Soc., p.420; see also his
explanation on pp.419-420. Sterling: Judenhass, p.33; cf. use of Schacherjuden by young
Engels in his Condition of the Working Classes in England, in MEW, vol.2, p.487 (Marx &
Engels: On Britain [1962], p.314). See also Meyer: Orig. Mod. Jew, p.69.
69

46. Dhring: Die Ueberschtzung Lessings und dessen Anwaltschaft fr die Juden (1881),
esp. but not only Ch.3.
47. Lessing: Nathan der Weise, Act II, Sc.3; III, 4; IV, 4; III, 6; II, 9.
48. Quoted in Sterling: Der Kampf um die Emanzipation der Juden in Rheinland, in
Monumenta Judaica (1960), vol.2, p.285.
49. Lessing: Smtliche Schriften (1890), vol.6, pp.160-161.
50. Gay: Party of Hum., pp.97ff. Voltaires Anti-Semitism is the chapter title.
51. Locke: A Letter on Toleration (1968), p.145 (for all quotations given).
52. Preface by Prof. Raymond Klibansky, in ibid., p.xxx.
53. Gay: Party of Hum., pp.99-100.
54. Ibid., p.103.
55. Engels praise of Borne is so constant that one need simply look up Borne in the name
index to MEW, Ergnzungsband. 2; some typical examples are at pp.395, 413, 420-421,
426, 430, 434. Later Engels qualified the relationship of Borne to Young Germany; cf.
Engels: Review of Alexander Jung, MEW, vol.1, p.437.
56. E.g. Engels: Hungary, NRZ 19 May 1849, MEW, vol.6, pp.507, 514.
57. Letter, Engels to W. Graeber, 30 July 1839, MEW, Ergnzungsband 2, pp.414-415; the
same, 8 Oct. and 15 Nov. 1839, in ibid., pp.419, 432; the same, 15 Nov. 1839, ibid., p.431;
cf. Engels: German Chapbooks, MEW, Ergnzungsband 2, p.16; also see his reference to
an essay The Jews in Bremen following month, ibid., p.437 (not extant). Engels to E.M.
Arndt, MEW, Ergnzungsband 2, p.122.

70

Humphrey McQueen
Reading the unreadable Marx
Il ny a pas belles penses sans belles formes. - Flaubert.
The first rule, indeed by itself virtually a sufficient condition for good style, is to
have something to say. -Schopenhauer.

Source: Reading the unreadable Marx was written for Marx Myths and
Legends by Humphrey McQueen in March 2005, and rights remain with the author, as
per Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives Licence 2.0.

From 1850 until his death in 1880, the French novelist Gustave Flaubert compiled a
Dictionary of Received Ideas as his catalogue of stupidities, inanities and
misinformation. In this word association game, Malthus summoned up infamous, and
Louis XVI evoked unfortunate.
[1]
Were we to update Flaubert by including Marx,
the gully-trap of clichs would be clogged with discredited and unreadable.
Other contributors to this collection will discount the discredited label. This article
tackles the accusation that Marx is unreadable. The two charges are connected. The
more that people fear that Marx is impenetrable, the harder it will be to convince them to
recover his relevance.
[2]

The way to challenge the accusation that Marx is unreadable is to read him. From
The Communist Manifesto, here is the paean to the bourgeoisie that Marx and Frederick
Engels penned in 1848:
Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social
conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all
earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable
prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before
they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned ...
[3]

To keep pace with this torrent of transformations, Marx and Engels abbreviated their
phrasing. To sketch how this turmoil had come about, they continued to use parataxis:
The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the
rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisation of America,
trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities
generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known,
and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid
development.
[4]

The second sentence is as breathtaking as the tumult it captures in its run of
snapshots.
Even as we read the passage, it seems impossible that anyone could have condensed
the expanse of capitalism across 500 years into a statement as exhilarating as it is exact.
Marxs admiration for the historic achievement of the bourgeoisie as a class did not
extend to their apologists. How he would have revelled in Flauberts Dictionary"! Marx
stretched language so far that, in 1860, he was probably the first person to use Da-Da! to
voice his own detestation of what he called twaddle.
[5]
Challenged as to its propriety,
Marx came back: Da Da puzzles the Philistine and is comical ... It pleases me, and it fits
my system of mockery and contempt.
[6]

Just as the assault on Feudalism had broken through the Scholastic mode of
communication to allow Martin Luther to render the bible in vigorous, direct and metrical
German, so did the bourgeois revolution propel the prose of Marx and Engels. To convey
the eruption of economy into society, they had to fashion a syntax, a vocabulary and a
repertoire of devices in tune with the acceleration of life. Marshall Berman reads The
Manifesto as a prose poem, as the first great modernist work of art, anteceding
Baudelaires Spleen.
[7]

71

Engels had got there four years earlier when composing The Condition of the
Working Class in England in 1844. In the 1970s, that work attracted the literary critic
Steven Marcus who knew of no contemporary summary of the industrial revolution that
is as succinct, as wide-ranging and as coherent. Apart from Engelss use of vortex, he
made scant use of hyperbole because the unprecedented magnitude of the event is its own
intensifier. Marcus placed Engels alongside Carlyle and Dickens as writers who were
performing one of their quintessential functions: they were taking dead writing and
transforming it back into living writing. Or we can say that they were transforming
information into a present history whose structure they were simultaneously inventing.
[8]

Eighteenth Brumaire
Bourgeois ideologues proved less keen to entertain the prospect of perpetual
upheaval, once the proletariat began to challenge the rule of capital from the 1820s.
History, therefore, had to come to an end, as Marx observed in 1847.
[9]
By contrast, his
welcoming of the organised working class allowed him to treat the present as history.
[10]

He delivered a notable example of this perspicacity in his account of the rise to power
between 1848 and 1852 of the French emperor, Napoleon III. Marxs The Eighteenth
Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, is extraordinary for making so elaborate and so penetrating
an analysis on the run. The parts, like a Dickens novel, were planned as installments to a
weekly paper. The result is much more than a model of political journalism. By keeping
the struggles between and within classes front and central to his unravelling of events,
Marx could demonstrate how the class struggle in France created circumstances and
relations that made it possible for a grotesque mediocrity to play a heros part.
[11]

The opening lines of The Eighteenth Brumaire grace the Oxford Dictionary of
Quotations:
Hegel remarks somewhere that all events and personages of great importance in
world history occur so to speak twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy,
the other time as farce.
A few lines further on, Marx observes:
People make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please: they do
not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly
encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations
weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living. And just when they seem engaged in
revolutionising themselves and things, in creating something that has never yet existed,
precisely in such periods of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the
past to their service and borrow from them names, battle cries and costumes in order to
present the new scene of world history in this time-honoured disguise and borrowed
language.
[12]

Marx rounds off the first section of The Eighteenth Brumaire by dismissing
Napoleon III as the farcically bad copy of his uncle, Napoleon Bonaparte:
Finally, the scum of bourgeois society forms the holy phalanx of order and the hero
Crapulinski installs himself in the Tuilleries as the saviour of society.
[13]

Here, Marx has turned to his favourite contemporary poet, Heinrich Heine, for the
figure of Crapulinski.
These three extracts indicate something of the range in Marxs style. The opening is
aphoristic, memorable for its puncturing of grand narrative with humour. The insertion of
somewhere is no lapse of memory, but a considered affront to his erstwhile colleagues
among the Young Hegelians. The middle passage is as suggestive in imagery as it is rich
in concepts, bringing to life the vital processes on which Marx is commenting. He
strengthens his representation of historys slide into farce by associating its actors with a
the travesty of cross-dressing. Hegel saw in parody the means by which one age returned
to its past in order to criticise it. Marx saw parody, according to Margaret Rose, as
accompanying discontinuity in history.
[14]
Just as revolutions are ruptures in practice, so
revolutionary writers need tropes that allow for disjunctures in thought. In the third extract,
72

Marx turns to earthy language to put the pretender in his place;
[15]
the see-sawing between
scum and holiness, between crap and saviour, recalls the tumble from tragedy into farce.
Despite the care that Marx devoted to his prose, he never pursued style for styles
sake. For him, the form of his writing had to confirm its content and structure. The
Eighteenth Brumaire is a fabulous read because he made it an exemplar of historical
materialism. And it is exemplary because Marxs tone of voice is as dialectical as his
assembling of evidence and his pattern of analysis.
The German social philosopher Theodor Adorno might have had The Eighteenth
Brumaire in mind in 1946 when he charged that
... the dialectic advances by way of extremes, driving thoughts with the utmost
consequentiality to the point where they turn back on themselves, instead of qualifying
them...
... limitation and reservation are no way to represent the dialectic...
If a dialectician, for example, marked the turning-point of his advancing ideas by
starting with a But at each caesura, the literary scheme would give the lie to the
unschematic intention of his thought.
[16]

For Marx, the dialectic had to be fleet-footed, or it ceased to be dialectical. Bertell
Ollman writes of the dance of the dialectic.
[17]
For the dialectician, there are no fixed
categories, no external essences, no Ideal Forms. Everything, always and everywhere, is in
a condition of becoming and passing away. The difficulties that this mobility presents to
readers can be limited if an author makes our static medium convey the transitory.
The excitement in Marxs manner of expression grows from his fulfilling of
Schopenhauers contention that the sufficient condition for good style, is to have
something to say.
[18]
Hence, the deepest pleasure from reading Marx flows from the
substance and structure of his thinking. The French anthropologist Claude Lvi-Strauss
recalled that he rarely broached a new sociological problem without first stimulating my
thought by rereading a few pages of The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte or the Critique
of Political Economy.
[19]

Two of the cerebral stimuli from The Eighteenth Brumaire are the ground rules that
Marx offered for intellectual history and for tracing the political formation of a class. He
summarised his explorations of these issues in two key passages. The first establishes the
starting place for the history of ideas:
Just as little must one imagine that the democratic representatives are indeed all
shopkeepers or enthusiastic supporters of shop keepers. In their education and individual
position they may be as far part from them as heaven from earth. What makes them
representatives of the petty bourgeoisie is the fact that in their minds they do not get
beyond the limits that the latter do not get beyond in life, that they are consequently
driven, theoretically, to the same problems and solutions to which material interest and
social position drive the latter in practice. This is, in general, the relationship between the
political and literary representatives of a class and the class they represent.
[20]

This explication of how ideas connect with social practices confirms the materialist
credentials of the opening passages of The Eighteenth Brumaire where metaphors haunt
present actors.
[21]

As a materialist, Marx recognised that existence conditioned consciousness. Hence,
class consciousness could not fall from the sky as a disembodied idea. As a dialectician, he
knew also that existence was insufficient to generate self-consciousness. Marx drew on the
experiences of the French peasantry to illustrate why class consciousness had to be the
outcome of social practices through organisation:
Each individual peasant family is almost self-sufficient; it itself directly produces the
major part of its consumption and thus acquires its means of life more through exchange
with nature than in intercourse with society. A smallholding, a peasant and his family;
alongside them another smallholding, another peasant and another family. A few score of
these make up a village, and a few score of villages make up a department. In this way, the
73

great mass of the French nation is formed by simple addition of homologous magnitudes,
much as potatoes in a sack form a sack of potatoes.
The structure of this passage reproduces Marxs case: phrases are accumulated into a
statement that lacks a doing word, just as the vast mass of small-holders do not engage
in manifold relations with one another. The next step takes in a larger social group and
therefore requires an unbroken sentence. Finally, the commentary arrives at a metaphor
apposite to farm life: the potato sack. As the class forms politically, Marx makes the units
of his prose cohere:
In so far as millions of families live under economic conditions of existence that
separate their mode of life, their interests and their culture from those of the other classes,
and put them in hostile opposition to the latter, they form a class. In so far as there is
merely a local interconnection among these small-holding peasants, and the identity of
their interests begets no community, no national bond and no political organisation among
them, they do not form a class.
Each sentence loops around alternative criteria for the forming of a class. Their
juxtaposition gives way to a synthesis:
They are consequently incapable of enforcing their class interest in their own name,
whether through a parliament or through a convention.
Marx can now distill the components of his case into eight words which continue the
see-sawing: They cannot represent themselves, they must be represented. From this
position, Marx strikes out to link the movement of class into class consciousness with the
structure of the state:
Their representative must at the same time appear as their master, as an authority
over them, as an unlimited governmental power which protects them against the other
classes and sends them rain and sunshine from above. The political influence of the small-
holding peasants, therefore, finds its final expression in the executive power subordinating
society to itself.
[22]

The assertiveness of therefore underlines Marxs introduction of authoritarianism.
Nonetheless, he has just mocked the capacity of any government to control nature, and
hence, presumably, its ability to stem the tide of class conflict. While acknowledging that
the life circumstances among the small peasants have allowed Crapulinski to ascend to
the throne, Marx hints that their unsatisfied needs will unseat him.
Aphorisms
Another way to entice readers towards Marx has been to dangle some of the
aphorisms at which he was a dazzler, as when he observes: Hence money may be dirt,
although dirt is not money.
[23]
Of Proudhon, he quipped: He wants to be the synthesis
he is a composite error.
[24]
Marx also used aphorisms as exclamation marks at the end of
an analysis, a kind of Eureka! The impact of Circulation sweats money from every
pore
[25]
is convincing only if encountered as the outcome of his investigations into the
metamorphosis of commodities. Torn from the page, it is mere assertion. One capitalist
always kills many
[26]
sounds more than a tocsin after Marx has explained the thrust of
monopolising through the logic of competition.
The risk in parading Marxs maxims is that his meaning is rendered obvious, that is
to say, is misrepresented. Wrenched from its context, the bait can catch the opposite
response to the one after which Marx had been angling. That outcome is true of a remark
favoured by militants: Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the
point is to change it.
[27]
Marx never supposed that we could change the world without
interpreting it, any more than he believed that we can interpret the world correctly without
changing it.
Perhaps no quip from Marx is better known than his line that Religion is the opium
of the people. Few assertions are more misunderstood. Placing that remark back in his
1844 Critique of the Hegelian Philosophy of Right will reveal its significance, and display
far finer turns of phrase than is apparent from the fragment:
74

Religious distress is at the same time an expression of real distress and a protest
against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless
world, just as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people...
To abolish religion as the illusory happiness of the people is to demand their real
happiness. The demand to give up illusions about the existing state of affairs is the demand
to give up a state of affairs which needs illusions.
[28]

Marxs meaning, along with the rhythms in which he expressed it, is evident once the
epigram is returned to its textual origin. That relocation refutes any supposition that he was
spurning all varieties of religious experience. Rather, he anchored his empathy with those
enduring immiseration in his materialist appreciation that incorrect ideas are more than the
product of wrong thinking.
Marxs choice and arrangement of words strengthened the persuasiveness of this
perception. His first sentence pivots on a conflicted concept of religion. The next carries
that dichotomy through three variations, threaded with sibilance. After their rising
inflection, the notorious remark falls as a lamentation, not a rhetorical slap. The second
paragraph repeats this pattern, its recapitulated illusions again leading to a consolation.
The compassion in Marxs comment is assured by the felicities in his prose.
Figures of speech
As we have seen, wordplay is as much a part of Marxs prose as the class struggle is
pivotal to his picture of the world. The social philosopher Vilfredo Pareto worried that
Marxs words were like bats since one can see in them both birds and mice.
[29]
One danger
with this ambiguity is that his meaning can never be pinned down, and so his epigones can
escape criticism by alleging that their prophet has been misunderstood a variant of the
irrefutability that upset Popper. This possibility is unavoidable in coping with contraries,
and thus is a small price to pay for the depth of understanding that Marx was able to
provide by his appreciation of the fluidity of nature and social relationships.
Alertness to three of Marxs favourite literary devices, to wit, puns, paradoxes and
irony, will help with a reading the first volume of Capital by showing how wove his
dialectical method into the texture of his writing. One should always read Marx with an ear
tuned for words, phrases and whole passages enclosed by intonational quotation marks,
or trailing implied question marks.
[30]

Puns: To associate puns with the lowest form of wit is another possible entry in
Flauberts dictionary. Marx used puns to bind concepts together, as in his specifying the
feature of alienation under the rule of capital. He shows that alienation under capitalism is
different from other kinds of estrangement because the wage-slave has sold his capacity to
labour. In English, alienate means to sell and to make strange. In German, Marx makes
play on the German usser to convey that connection. [Aus- in German is the prefix
for out, so that ein Auslander is a foreigner.]
One can sympathise with anyone translating passages such as:
Was frher Sichuerlichsein, reale Entuerung des Menschen ist nur [nun], zur Tat
der Entuerung, zur Veruerung geworden.
The Soviet edition rendered this rolling pun:
What was previously being external to oneself mans actual externalization has
merely become the act of externalizing the process of alienating.
[31]

The three different German words rooted on uer have been given as cognates of
external. Veruern can mean to sell ones honour. That medieval concept invokes
capitalist alienation where the labourer is separated from the honour that the craftsman
once put into a product, and from the honour that he drew from its quality. In addition, the
wage labourer has sold his human capacities, his honour.
To complain about this aspect of Marxs style is like objecting to Shakespeares
punning on will in Sonnets 135 and 136. As Fowler has it: Puns are good, bad and
indifferent, & only those who lack the wit to make them are unaware of the fact.
[32]

75

Paradox: Marx combined punning with paradox: Das seine Lebensuerung seine
Lebensentuerung ist, that is, The manifestation of his life is the alienation of his
life.
[33]
The paradox is a paupers straining after dialectics. Paradoxes abounded in the
young Marx as one mark of his legacy from Idealism where words stood in for reality. For
example, he concluded The Introduction to the Contribution to Critique of Hegels
Philosophy of Law: Philosophy cannot be made a reality without the abolition of the
proletariat, the proletariat cannot be abolished without philosophy being made a
reality.
[34]
This phrase-mongering contrasts with a comparable point which Marx made
four years later at the close of the Manifesto: The proletarians have nothing to lose but
their chains. They have a world to win. The bi-polar form of the paradox remains, but
Marx is no longer conjuring with categories. Instead, he is calling for the forcible
overthrow of all existing social conditions.
Irony: Francis Wheen has discovered in Marx the Dean Swift of industrial
capitalism. Marx and Swift share brilliance in irony, but they differ in tone because of
opposed social outlooks. Irony in Swift is chilling. Marxs can be red hot.
Swifts A Modest Proposal for preventing the Children of the Poor People in
Ireland, from being a Burden to their Parents or Country; and for making them beneficial
to the Publick (1729) reasoned that those infants should be reared as food for the English
landlords whose expropriation of field and farm was devouring the parents. A Modest
Proposal was Swifts attempt to persuade his own class to alter their ways. By contrast,
Marx aimed his ironies at energising a revolution of the masses.
Irony helped Marx to reproduce his dialectical method, as it had for Hegel who saw
irony as dialectical because it allowed for two meanings simultaneously.
[35]
An ironic
comment has a kernel of subversive intent inside the shell of innocent observation.
Like Hegel, Marx saw that irony operates outside the logic that something must be
either A or non-A. Marxs analysis of capital could not be contained in such mutual
exclusivities. Capital is capital only when it is expanding. To expand, it has to be in
motion, passing from its money form, through a stage of production, into a commodity
form, and then back to the money form so that the process can start over on an enlarged
scale. Money is a shape-shifter and a form-changer.
[36]
Marx found an analogue in irony,
which not every commentator gets.
[37]

Marxs ironic voice might not have been innate, but he had made it his own before he
composed The German Ideology of 1845, as this prefatory note demonstrates:
Once upon a time a valiant fellow had the idea that men were drowned in water only
because they were possessed with the idea of gravity. If they were to get this notion out of
their heads, say by avowing it to be a superstitious, a religious concept, they would be
sublimely proof against any danger from water. His whole life long he fought against the
illusion of gravity, of whose harmful consequences all statistics brought him new and
manifold evidence.
[38]

Marx has emphasised the fallacy of Idealist philosophy by understatement, never
stepping outside the voice of an objective observer to display his own point of view by
inserting foolish in front of fellow. The reader is left to add that judgement.
[39]

Capital
Quoting from the most popular of Marxs writings to show how far they are from
being unreadable was easy. Does Capital promise equal delights? Barriers exist between
Capital and a mass readership. First, there is its length, 800 pages in volume one alone,
and another 2000 pages in the three volumes that he left partly completed.
Above all, the difficulty with Capital is in the issues that Marx tackled. The
dynamics of capital expansion will never be glimpsed by a Murdoch columnist fixated on
Foxtel, or, for that matter, by a research assistant clipping the Financial Times each
morning. Marx wrote books. He did not spray bullets from a Microsoft power point. To
approach his writings, you have to be a prose person, not a dot.point person.
76

Most sympathetic guides to Capital warn the beginner away from beginning at the
beginning.
[40]
In those pages, Marx presented the results of twenty years research. He
might have kept that material until the end, so that by the time we reached its intricacies
we would have been drawn towards his conclusions and become familiar with his terms
and cast of mind. Instead, he gave us the results first. They also set forth his method of
analysis.
Marx acknowledged that the method of analysis which I have employed ... makes
the reading of the first chapters rather arduous.
[41]
Their 100 pages cannot be
recommended as in-flight entertainment. A clear head, a pen in hand, and the preparedness
to read the material at least three times over several years are required to absorb all the
secrets that Marx uncovers. As Marx knew from experience: There is no royal road to
science, and only those who do not dread the fatiguing climb of its steep paths have a
chance of gaining its luminous summits.
[42]

At the trial of the Knave of Hearts in Alices Adventures in Wonderland, the King of
Hearts admonishes the White Rabbit: Begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to
the end: then stop. In the case of Capital, it is perhaps more judicious to start at the end of
volume one with the nine-page chapter on The Modern Theory of Colonisation.
Australians are not the only people surprised that Marx wound up with the settlement of
our continent. He tells a story about Edward Gibbon Wakefield who proposed a plan for
Systematic Colonisation to compel workers to sell their labour power instead of setting up
as farmers or tradespeople for themselves:
Wakefield discovered that in the Colonies, property in money, means of subsistence,
machines, and other means of production, does not as yet stamp a man as a capitalist if
there be wanting the correlative the wage-worker, the other man who is compelled to sell
himself of his own free-will. He discovered that capital is not a thing, but a social relation
between persons, established by the instrumentality of things. A Mr Peel, he moans, took
with him from England to Swan River, West Australia, means of subsistence and of
production to the amount of 50,000. This Mr Peel even had the foresight to bring besides
3,000 persons of the working-class, men, women, and children. Once he arrived at his
destination, Mr Peel was left without a servant to make his bed or fetch him water from
the river. Unhappy Mr Peel who provided for everything except the export of English
relations of production to Swan River!
[43]

Seven pages further, the final sentence establishes the true north of Marxs life
project. He is not concerned with Mr Wakefield, his schemes, or the emotional quotient of
Mr Peel:
The only thing that interests us is the secret discovered in the New World by the
Political Economy of the Old World, and proclaimed on the house-tops: that the capitalist
mode of production and accumulation, and therefore capitalist private property, have for
their fundamental condition the annihilation of self-earned private property: in other
words, the expropriation of the labourer.
[44]

The germ of Capitals 800 pages is in these sixty words. Almost every word that
Marx wrote after 1842 was his contribution to the struggle to check exploitation and to end
expropriation. Before reading any part of Capital, whether for the first or the umpteenth
time, it is worth returning to these lines for orientation. Should you feel lost in the detail of
factory laws, perplexed by the delineation of use, exchange and surplus values, or trip on
the poetic allusions, remember that class struggle is an anchor against being blown off
course.
Three hurdles
Although the advice to postpone an encounter with the opening segment of Capital is
sensible, that engagement cannot be put off for ever by any serious students of capitalism.
After passing so many warning signs, readers are in for a surprise at how smoothly those
early pages seem. Marxs prose is neither convoluted nor arcane. The sentences are not
77

very long. The vocabulary is well within the range of the average reader. There is no
algebra. A year-eight student could manage the sums.
Before attending to how Marx draws us towards his discoveries, three difficulties in
reading Capital should be mentioned. They are mathematics; Hegelian methods and
language; and references to other literary works.
Mathematics: Many of the formulae in Capital are not algebra. Instead, they
abbreviate Marxs description of the circuits of capital. The simplest of these notations is
M-C-M+, where M is money capital, C is Commodities, and M+ is the expanded volume
of money capital that results from the making and sale of commodities. Marx could have
kept writing these terms out in words, but hoped that a shorthand version would be easier
on his readers. One does not need to understand any kind of mathematics to follow his
notation. It involves no calculation. The formulae are closer to equations in chemistry than
in mathematics.
[45]

Hegel: In an 1873 re-issue of Capital, Marx acknowledged that, in 1867, he had
openly avowed himself the pupil of Hegel at a time when professors in Germany were
contemptuous of that mighty thinker. Flauberts Dictionary of Received Opinion
would now place impenetrable after Hegels name, not without justification, though he
could be witty, clear and pungent.
[46]
Ponderousness is one element in Hegels worst
writing that Marx did not inherit. Indeed, when Marx admitted that he had, here and
there, in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the modes of expression
peculiar to Hegel, the crucial word is coquetted. Even at his most Hegelian, Marx never
lost his cutting edge, peppering his denunciations with raillery, lightening his expositions
with caricature.
Literary allusions: The learning that Marx brought to his subject can be another toll-
gate to entry. At the close of a discussion of commodities, he asked: Who fails here to
call to mind our good friend, Dogberry, who informs neighbour Seacoal, that, To be a
well-favoured man is the gift of fortune; but reading and writing comes by Nature.
[47]

The question today is who will be familiar with Dogberry as a comic character from
Shakespeares Much Ado About Nothing. Volume One of Capital includes quotations from
Balzac, Cervantes, Dante, Goethe, Homer and Sophocles, whom Marx gave in their
original tongues. Shy references to a host of other poets, dramatists and novelists
embellish his critique of political economy.
[48]

Marx studded his writings with a comparable density of allusions to the ideas and
terminologies of philosophers, historians and political economists. For example, when he
likened life under communism where everyone would be able to hunt in the morning, fish
in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening and criticize after dinner.
[49]
In the first three
activities, Marx was mocking Adam Smith and almost every vulgar economist for their
unimaginative fantasies.
[50]
The post-prandial critical criticising was another dig at the
Holy Family of Young Hegelians. Cultural semi-literates who fail to recognise these
sources do not hesitate to berate Marx for putting forward an insipid picture of comforts
suiting a country gent, or Tolstoy.
[51]

Another joy in reading Capital comes from discovering the treasures lurking in its
footnotes which, as in Edward Gibbons Decline and Fall of Roman Empire, contain
several of the works more memorable insights and striking formulations:
This much however, is clear, that the Middle Ages could not live on Catholicism, nor
the ancient world on politics. On the contrary, it is the mode in which they gained a
livelihood that explains why here politics, and there Catholicism, played the chief part. For
the rest, it requires but a slight acquaintance with the history of the Roman republic, for
example, to be aware that its secret history is the history of its landed property. And there
is Don Quixote, who long ago paid the penalty for wrongly imagining that knight errantry
was compatible with all economic forms of society.
[52]

78

This blast at the ludicrousness of idealist historiography is a marvel of concentrated
thought, delivering more perception in its 80 words than 80 professors chorusing
discredited at the mention of Marxs name could come up with in a lifetime.
The greatest amazement from Capital is how Marx could keep so many levels of
investigation going at once. Symphonists can rarely develop more than two principal
themes, no matter how many variations they then introduce. Charles Dickens in Bleak
House (1852) depicted the Court of Chancerys generating multitudes of cases and
devouring the lives of all who approach. Critics who disparage the novels spontaneous
combustion scene fail to see that the energy of Dickenss composition is of a piece with
spontaneous combustion. How was it possible for him to keep all the themes, plots and
sub-plots running without his brain catching fire? Marxs portrayal of the expansion of
capital matches Bleak House in its encompassing of energies marshalled and of forces
unleashed.
Marx and Dickens also shared a fury at the grinding down of human capacities,
especially in children. Marx summarised official reports on the effects of 72-hour week on
the culture of children, anyone of whom could have been the model for Smike from
Nicholas Nickleby, or Jo in Bleak House. Questioned by the Employment Commissioners,
the twelve-year old Jeremiah Haynes responded:
We have a king (told it is a Queen), they call her the Princess Alexandra, Told that
she married the Queens son. The Queens son is the Princess Alexandra. A princess is a
man.
[53]

Marx fills page after page with such evidence until he takes another swipe at
hypocrisy:
Meanwhile, late by night perhaps, self-denying Mr Glass-Capital, primed with port-
wine, reels out of his club homeward droning out idiotically, Britons never, never shall be
slaves!
[54]

Marx will have none of Dickenss paternalism. Repentance no more than abstinence
will redeem Mr Glass-Capital. The ghost that is haunting his kind is not Christmas Past but
the spectre of a communist future.
The secret novelty of Capital
To propose that Capital can be read as a novel is not to imply that it is fictional, still
less a faction. The Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) proposed that the plurality
of styles and levels is characteristic of the novel as a genre. As a social investigator,
Marx called on all manner of literary devices to convey the complexities that he traced
through the social relationships of capitalism. By Bakhtins criterion, Capital Volume One
lives within the genre of novel.
[55]

Balzac hinted at a secret history of a scandalous kind.
[56]
For Marx, the secret
history of the Roman Republic was in landed property. In capitalism, the secret rests in
how the commodity form conceals the expropriation of the labourers, which is the
condition for their ceaseless exploitation.
[57]

The plotline of Capital confronts us with this secret history, and then conducts us
through the evidence. The secret about the commodity form proves to be another
multiplicity of secrets about money as another commodity; about money as the universal
equivalent for every commodity; about human capacity as a commodity. Having
established these premises, Marx can lead us to an indictment of a system of exploitation
which presents itself as one of a fair exchange of equal values.
Marx wrote in the tradition of Realism, not of Naturalism. He compiled details about
factory conditions to uncover the logic of the expansion of capital. Thus, although he
accumulated evidence with the assiduousness of a miser hoarding brass farthings, he used
those mites, as would a capitalist, to expand his intellectual store by constantly throwing
it afresh into circulation.
[58]

The protagonist for Marx is neither a Romantic champion such as Julian Sorel, a
carpenters son, in Stendahls Le Rouge et le Noir (1830), nor the master criminal Vautrin
79

in Balzac. In Capital, the central figure is the aggregation of capital, a figure which is most
truly itself when its individual personifications behave as the accumulation of dead labour.
Here is Marx making those bones speak:
Thus, what I am and am capable of is by no means determined by my individuality. I
am ugly, but I can buy for myself the most beautiful of women. Therefore I am not ugly,
for the effect of ugliness its deterrent power is nullified by money. I, according to my
individual characteristics, am lame, but money furnishes me with twenty-four feet. There I
am not lame. I am bad, dishonest, unscrupulous, stupid; but money is honoured, and hence
its possessor. Money is the supreme good, therefore its possessor is good. Money, besides,
saves me the trouble of being dishonest: I am therefore presumed honest. I am brainless,
but money is the real brain of all things and how then should its possessor be brainless?
Besides, he can buy clever people for himself, and is he who has power over the clever not
more clever than the clever?
[59]

Marx has brought us close to the grotesqueries of Rabelais as capital reproduces
Gargantuas appetites. Capital is also like that giant when he pours salt into the mouths of
sleepers to stimulate their thirst; the managers of capital have to inculcate desire for
commodities of every kind:
He puts himself at the service of the others most depraved fancies, plays the pimp
between him and his need, excites in him morbid appetites, lies in wait for each of his
weaknesses all so that he can then demand the cash for this service of love.
[60]

Gargantua and Pantagruel are flesh-and-blood creatures of a society dependent on the
soil and hand labour. Capital must be depicted as a machine because the operations of its
social world has become like the machines that accelerate its expansion. Leviathans
become the apt image for the power of capital in Dickenss Chancery Court or
Circumlocution Office, Melvilles factory ship, Zolas coal mine, Sinclairs slaughterhouse
and Irelands oil refinery.
The anti-heroes, and thus the true heroes of Marxs Capital are the new fangled
men who are needed to master the new-fangled forces of society. They too have
become machine-like. They are new-fangled because of their place in the productive
order.
[61]
If ordinary people enter European fiction as degraded,
[62]
Marx represents their
misery as a pre-condition for their remaking themselves into a collective presence to take
the place of Hegels world historical figures.
Marx did everything a writer could to clarify the complexities of capitalism without
over-simplifying. He used homely examples of how linen becomes a coat, or of how linen
is exchanged for a bible before the cash from that transaction is spent on brandy.
[63]
His
materialist approach to history as the activity of living people encouraged his dramatic
flair. Although he presented capitalists as the personifications of capital, he knew that he
had to treat these actors ... as individuals.
[64]
Hence, he told tales about Mr Moneybags
or Mr Glass-Capital.
Marxs core task was to explain the expansion of capital in the aggregate, what he
called social capital, as distinct from individual capitals. The fun that he had with fables
about Mr Moneybags ran second to the delight he took in mocking writers who
represented capitalism from the standpoint of our friend Robinson Crusoe. Capitalists
got workers to produce exchange values. Crusoe, the complete homo faber, made nothing
but use values for himself. He has provided for himself before Friday arrives. That
approach equated the operations of the capitalists system with its ideological mask as
individualism.
[65]
Capital, for Marx, was a social relationship before it was anything else.
Marx created fables to convey actual relationships: the Robinsonards treated Defoes
fiction as the model for reality. The real-life captains of industry were imprisoned in the
iron cage of capitals expansion, not marooned on an island.
No more than the meanest child labourer could escape from her travails by wishing
herself into a Dickensian plot is the capitalist able to choose the circuits of capital around
which he must chase a fortune:
80

If social capital experiences a revolution in value, it may happen that the capital of
the individual capitalist succumbs to it and fails, because it cannot adapt itself to the
conditions of this movement of values. The more acute and frequent such revolutions in
value become, the more does the automatic movement of the now independent value
operate with the elemental force of a natural process, against the foresight and calculation
of the individual capitalist.
[66]

The excitement that Marx brings to his account of the accumulation of capital is
possible because of the space he accepts between tendential laws and entrepreneurship,
fate and risk-taking, or what he calls a Faustian conflict between the passion for
accumulation, and the desire for enjoyment.
[67]
Marx used story-telling to illuminate this
reality.
Polyvocalism: Bakhtin found laughter and polyglossia to be of decisive
importance in making possible the genre of the novel.
[68]
Capital is heir to both
qualities, contributing to their enrichment. The tonal range in the laughter has been
indicated. Now it is time to illustrate how Marx creates dialogue to convince his audience
that the story he is relating represents their actual conditions.
In a chapter examining the labour-process, Marx grappled with the puzzle at the
center of the expansion of capital, and therefore the most difficult concept to explain. He
had to get across how capitalists paid their workers the full value of their capacity to add
value, while at same time paying those labourers less than the total value of the
commodities they produced. Marx restated his case in the negative by falling into
conversation with a capitalist friend who has failed to turn a profit. This unhappy fellow
has been offered no more for the cotton that his operatives have spun than the fifteen
shillings it cost him to have them produce it.
Unlike Mr Peel, this capitalist cannot lay the blame for his unhappiness on the
absence of the capitalist relations of production. What has gone wrong? His failure to
profit leaves him staring in astonishment before he gathers his knowledge of vulgar
economy to exclaim:
Oh, but I advanced my money for the express purpose of making more money.
After the capitalist has entered his first plea, Marx has assumed the voice of a judge
from on-high:
The way to Hell is paved with good intentions, and he might just as easily have
intended to make money, without producing at all.
The loser now
threatens all sorts of things. He wont be caught napping again. In future he will buy
the commodities in the market, instead of manufacturing them himself.
We have heard from the capitalist again, but in the third person. Marx reappears to
ask and state the obvious, also in the third person:
But if all his brother capitalists were to do the same, where would he find his
commodities in the market? And his money he cannot eat.
Next, the capitalist tries persuasion:
Consider my abstinence; I might have played ducks and drakes with the 15
shillings; but instead of that I consumed it productively, and made yarn with it.
The capitalist has returned in his own colloquial voice. This time Marx addresses his
remarks to some unseen third party:
Very well. And by way of reward he is now in possession of good yarn instead of a
bad conscience; ... Let him therefore console himself with the reflection that virtue is its
own reward.
This verdict is no comfort to the appellant, who becomes importunate:
He says: The yarn is no use to me; I produced it for sale.
Marx gives more unwelcome advice from the stance of a disinterested commentator:
In that case let him sell it, or still better, let him for the future produce only things for
satisfying his personal wants ...
81

This interchange continues the switch between direct speech and commentary. The
capitalist gets no more satisfaction from Dr Marx than he has from the market. Small
wonder the capitalist friend now gets obstinate, flinging forth rhetorical questions:
Can the labourer, merely with his arms and his legs, produce commodities out of
nothing? Did I not supply him with the materials, by means of which, and in which alone,
his labour could be embodied? And as the greater part of society consists of such neer do-
wells, have I not rendered society incalculable service by my instruments of production,
my cotton and my spindles, and not only society but the labourer also, whom in addition I
have provided with the necessities of life? And am I to be allowed nothing in return for all
this service?
Where will this eloquence get him? Marx no longer speaks either to his friend or as
a remote adjudicator, but to the reader of Capital:
Well, but has not the labourer rendered him the equivalent service of changing his
cotton and spindle into yarn? ... The capitalist paid to the labourer a value of 3 shillings,
and the labourer gave him back an exact equivalent in the value of 3 shillings, added by
him to the cotton: he gave him value for value.
Marx has spoken as the author of Capital rather than as the author of this fable
within Capital.
Our friend, up to this time so purse-proud, suddenly assumed the modest demeanour
of his own workman and exclaims: Have I myself not worked? Have I not performed the
labour of superintendence and of overlooking the spinner? And does this labour, too,
create value? His overlooker and his manager try to hide their smiles.
Marx assumes that readers who have reached this point in his analysis will realise
that the tasks that the capitalist claims to have performed himself were done by his
smirking employees. The smiles that Marx hopes that his fable will provoke in his readers
are here brought to the surface by this silent chorus of overseers. Even without having read
a line of Capital, those foremen know that their disciplining of labour time differs
qualitatively from its application by labourers in the creation of additional values. By this
stage, not even the capitalist can keep a straight face:
Meanwhile, after a hearty laugh, he re-assumed his usual mien.
Though he chanted to us the whole creed of the economists, in reality, he says, he
would not give a brass farthing for it. He leaves this and all such like subterfuges and
juggling tricks to the professors of Political Economy, who are paid for it.
Throughout, Marx has been using his friend to express his own scorn for those
professors. Marx had reached that valuation from his critiquing of their subterfuges and
juggling tricks. The capitalist, on the other hand, is sprouting what passes for common
sense among his kind:
He himself is a practical man; and though he does not always consider what he says
outside his business, yet in his business he knows what he is about.
[69]

Marx leaves us with the capitalist at his own assessment. Marx knows otherwise. The
anecdote would never have been possible had the capitalist known what he was about in
his business. After all, he has failed to realise a profit.
The sole author of all these words has been Dr Marx. Yet, not all the views expressed
are his.
[70]
The capitalist speaks in his own defence only to convict himself. His offence is
not that he has exploited his workers, but that he has failed to do so.
Marx has subverted the Socratic dialogue by having his friend arrive at the truth
about surplus value through rehearsing the conditions of his existence as a personification
of capital. Instead of Marxs presenting himself as a Socratic interlocutor, he confronts the
capitalist with the steps that have led to his failure to profit.
The humour that Marx has built throughout the passage depends on the instability in
the speaking positions of both Marx and his friend. Marx is, by turns, reporter, judge, and
critic of political economy. The capitalist appears astonished, threatening, persuasive,
importunate, obstinate, modest, laughing. Despite his dodges and masks, his performance
82

has had but one theme. Unlike Shylock, he demands only My ducats, caring not for his
daughter, justice, religion or the law.
Marx has reproduced in his analysis of capital, the Babel of voices in a stratified
society. He has orchestrated the voices of his friend, but also interpreted them by putting
his pleas for profit into their context of capitalist exploitation. Marx has not only put them
into his friends mouth, but has made his version of the logic of capital accumulation speak
through his creature. The ventriloquism is from off-stage, with both Marx and the
capitalist taking turns as its mouthpieces.
Abstinence: One strand in the capitalists claim for a profit was his abstinence.
This justification provided Marx with life-long opportunities for mocking the professorial
subterfuge that profit is the reward that the capitalist earns for his not having spent his
money on consumer goods:
It has never occurred to the vulgar economist to make the simple reflection, that
every human action may be viewed, as abstinence from its opposite. Eating is abstinence
from fasting, walking, abstinence from standing still, working, abstinence from idling,
idling, abstinence from working, &c.
[71]

The unhappiness that the capitalist must undergo for the sake of abstinence
becomes too much for Marx to bear:
The simple dictates of humanity therefore plainly enjoin the release of the capitalist
from this martyrdom and temptation, in the same as that the Georgian slave-owner was
lately delivered, by the abolition of slavery, from the painful dilemma, whether to
squander the surplus-product, lashed out of his niggers, entirely in champagne, or whether
to reconvert a part of it into more niggers and more land.
[72]

The more honest supporters of abstinence as a claim on profit had to admit that the
children of these self-deniers had no right to inherit their fathers fortunes because the
offspring had foregone none of the pleasures.
[73]

The Mirror Image: Because Marx recognised that capital is a social relationship, he
sought images to convey that multi-sidedness. The mirror and reflection were two obvious
tropes, yet too obvious to satisfy:
It is a sign of crudity and lack of comprehension that organically coherent factors are
brought into haphazard relation with one another, i.e., into a simple reflex connection.
[74]

As we have seen, Marx extended his rejection of reflection to history. In The
Eighteenth Brumaire, revolutionaries recognise themselves only after they have donned
the drag to appear as some historical other. Similarly, he argued that petty-bourgeois
thinkers do not reflect the thinking of shop-keepers. Their relationship is the active one of
the intellectuals not proceeding in their theoretical practices further than the shopkeepers
do in business.
Yet the mirror could be a more acceptable figure of speech if used as a simile rather
than a metaphor:
Money ... reads all prices backwards, and thus as it were mirrors itself in the bodies
of all other commodities (Emphasis added.)
[75]

The distancing that Marx has achieved here by the use of the conditional will not
serve in all cases. A looking glass cannot convey human behaviour as the real, sensuous
activity that Marx took as the root of his materialist dialectics:
The chief defect of all previous materialism ... is that things, reality, sensuousness are
conceived only in the form of the object, or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human
activity, practice, not subjectively.
[76]

Marx needed an active processing agent for his imagery. Here, the Soviet translation
came closer: Money ... depicts itself, rather than mirrors itself.
Better still, the eye let Marx represent the active aspect of the relationships between
people and objects. The eye was available as the apposite figure of speech only because of
what had happened with the actual eye in history:
83

The eye has become a human eye, just as its object has become a social, human
object an object made by man for man.
[77]

Under capitalism, the use value of the eye undergoes a transformation parallel to that
experienced by all the objects created by humankind. While use values are becoming
exchange values, the eye is being re-made into the sense mechanism that most stimulates
desire for them.
The crucial case, and the hardest to represent, is that of the commodity form, the
workings of which the untutored eye cannot discern:
From the mere look of a piece of money, we cannot tell what breed of commodity
has been transformed into it. In their money-form all commodities look alike.
[78]

Marx infuses this conceptual connection between commodities and money into an
evocation of urban energy of which Balzac or Dickens would have been proud:
The busiest streets of London are crowded with shops whose show cases display all
the riches of the world, Indian shawls, American revolvers, Chinese porcelain, Parisian
corsets, furs from Russia and species from the tropics, but all of these worldly things bear
odious, white paper labels with Arabic numerals and then laconic symbols . s. d. This is
how commodities are presented in circulation.
[79]

From this description, Marx moves to a sensuous image in which the prices
become the wooing glances cast at money by commodities.
[80]

Commodities create a mirror-effect when their differences, real or apparent, are
perceived by potential consumers. The contrast between a castle and the adjoining cottage
becomes a source of desire for a bigger house:
A house may be large or small; as long as the surrounding houses are equally small it
satisfies all social demands for a dwelling. But let a palace arise beside the little house, and
it shrinks from a little house to a hut. The little house shows now that its owner has only
very slight or no demands to make; and however high it may shoot up in the course of
civilization, if the neighbouring palace grows to an equal or even greater extend, the
occupant of the relatively small house will feel more an more uncomfortable, dissatisfied
and cramped within its four walls.
[81]

The contrasts are reflected through the eye, that is to say, received into the brain. By
exciting consumption, the eye holds a mirror to the production-consumption of
commodities.
To learn to expand ones needs through the perception of contrasts in the use values
we already possess did not come into the world with capitalism. Rather, the proliferation
of use values into ever more exchange values was able to build on a process at the heart of
hominisation:
In a certain sense, a man is in the same situation as a commodity. As he neither
enters into the world in possession of a mirror ... a man first sees and recognises himself in
another man. Peter only relates to himself as a man through his relation to another man,
Paul, in whom he recognises his likeness. With this, however, Paul also becomes from
head to toe, in his physical form as Paul, the form of appearance of the species man for
Peter.
[82]

The mirror-phase is limited neither to infancy nor to the origins of our species, but
acquired a vast domain with the spread of capitalist relations.
Neither money nor commodities is alive. Yet, it is integral to Marxs picture of the
capitalist world that they appear to be so. A carpenter fashions wood into a table. As soon
as he offers this everyday thing for sale, it steps forth as a commodity, [and] is changed
into something transcendent. Marx has to explain how a physical object acquires the
imperceptible qualities of the social relationship between capital and wage-labour. He
again turns to the experience of sight:
... light from an object is perceived by us not as the subjective excitation of our optic
nerve, but as the objective form of something outside the eye itself. But, in the act of
seeing, there is at all events, an actual passage of light from one thing to another, from the
84

external object to the eye. There is a physical relation between physical things. But it is
different with commodities. There, the existence of the things qua commodities, and the
value-relation between the products of labour which stamps them as commodities, have
absolutely no connexion with their physical properties and with the material relations
arising therefrom. There is a definite social relation between men, that assumes, in their
eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things.
[83]

The fetishism of commodities is the knot that must be untied to unravel the secret of
the expansion of capital, and hence to follow its exposition through the plot of Capital.
Conclusion
Most socialists have not been Marxists, or aspired to be. It is lunacy of a high order
to insist that the only people who will be allowed to participate in the overthrow of
capitalism are those who subscribe to this or that version of the law of the tendency of the
rate of profit to fall. It is no less true that no one can remain a Marxist without being a
socialist. Before Marxism is anything, it is a critique of capitalism. There can be no Marx
for the master class. No one who has made peace with that regime of exploitation can use
the methods, insights or rhetoric developed by Marx and Engels, not even to explain the
longevity of the system that they spent their lives interpreting, in various ways, in order to
hasten its end.
As a materialist, Marx had no time for those who approached his writings as sacred
texts. As a revolutionary, he would never have judged our understanding of him by our
ability to retrieve what he had intended, like some Medieval Schoolman From the
standpoints of revolutionary politics and materialist historiography, his test would be
whether what he had written conforms to the realities of capitalist development, or to the
experiences that socialists had acquired about how to overthrow the state. Only by
grappling with those practical ideas can we begin the even more taxing effort needed to
create a socialist society.

Further References
Gabriel Egan, Shakespeare and Marx, OUP, Oxford, 2004.
Stanley Edgar Hyman, The Tangled Bank, Darwin, Marx, Frazer and Freud as
Imaginative Writers, New York, 1962.
Pamela Hansford Johnson, The Literary Achievement of Marx, The Modern Quarterly,
New Series, 2, Summer 1947, pp. 239-44.
Giosue Ghisalberti, Tragedy and Repetition in Marxs The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis
Bonaparte, Clio, 26 (4), Summer 1997, pp. 411-26.
Thomas M. Kemple, Reading Marx Writing, Melodrama, the Market and the
Grundrisse, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1995.
Franz Mehring, Karl Marx and Metaphor, D. Ryazanoff (ed.), Karl Marx: Man, Thinker
and Revolutionist, London, 1927, pp. 95-101.
Michael Paul Rogin, Herman Melvilles Eighteenth Brumaire, Subversive Genealogy,
The Politics and Art and Herman Melville, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1979,
pp. 155-86.
Allen Speight, Hegel, Literature and the Problem of Agency, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 2001.
Dirk J. Struik (ed.), The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, New World,
New York, 1964.
Dirk J. Struik (ed.), Birth of the Communist Manifesto, New World, New York, 1971.

Footnotes
1. Gustave Flaubert, Bouvard and Pecuchet, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1976, pp. 289ff.
2. A recent biographer, Francis Wheen, deplored the mad circular argument one hears
from people who havent ventured even as far as page two. Capital is all hooey. And
85

how do you know its hooey? Because its not worth reading. Francis Wheen, Karl
Marx, Fourth Estate, London, 1999, p. 299.
3. Karl Marx Frederick Engels Collected Works (MECW), volume 6, Lawrence &
Wishart, London, MECW, 1976, p. 487.
The propulsion through the opening section of the Manifesto is so convincing that it can
sweep the reader past the warning that Marx had placed above the portal: class struggle
can end with the common ruin of the contending classes. Marx drew on his knowledge
of the Ancient world to deny inevitable progress from any purpose-driven view of history.
Karl Poppers obsession with his version of historicism blinded him to this contra-
teleological strand in Marx, whom he otherwise admired for his humanity and his
contributions to social and historical knowledge, The Open Society and Its Enemies, RKP,
London, 1966; for Poppers praise of Marxs lasting merit, see p. 88.
4. MECW, 6, p. 485.
5. Karl Marx, Theories of Surplus Value, Part I, Foreign Languages Publishing House
(FLPH), Moscow, pp. 89 and 94.
6. Letter from Helmut Hirsch to Encounter, November 1980, p. 92.
7. Marshall Berman, All that is Solid Melts Into Air, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1982,
pp. 102 and 121.
8. Steven Marcus, Engels, Manchester and the Working Class, Norton, New York, 1974,
pp. 139, 137 and 108.
9. MECW, 6, p. 174.
10. Georg Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness, Merlin, London, 1971, p. 224.
11. Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Progress Publishers,
Moscow, 1954, p. 6.
12. Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, MECW, 11, 1979, pp.
103-4.
13. MECW, 11, p. 112.
14. Margaret Rose, Reading the young Marx and Engels, Croom Helm, London, 1978, pp.
84 & 131.
15. In their correspondence, Engels wrote to Marx of the Goldshit in the Australian
colonies, 23 September 1851, Henry Mayer (ed.), Marx, Engels and Australia, Sydney
Studies in Politics 5, Cheshire, Melbourne, 1964, p. 104.
16. Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia, NLB, London, 1974, pp. 85-86.
17. Bertell Ollman, Dance of the Dialectic, Steps in Marxs Method, University of Illinois
Press, Urbana, 2003.
18. Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1970, p. 203.
19. Claude Lvi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1976, p. 70.
20. MECW, 6, pp, 130-1.
21. This interplay of thinking with doing explains how those children of the bourgeoisie,
Marx and Engels, could become proletarian intellectuals. Their case was less remarkable
than that of Honore de Balzac (1799-1850), whose sequence of novels, The Human
Comedy, Engels described as a constant elegy to the irretrievable decay of good society;
his sympathies are all with the class doomed to extinction. Yet, as Engels went on to
explain, he and Marx admired Balzac above all other contemporary novelists:
his satire is never keener, his irony never more bitter, than when he sets in motion the very
men and women with whom he sympathises most deeply the nobles ... That Balzac thus
was compelled to go against his own class sympathies and political prejudices, that he saw
the necessity of the downfall of his favourite nobles, and described them as people
deserving no better fate ... that I consider one of the greatest triumphs of Realism. Karl
Marx and Frederick Engels Selected Correspondence, FLPH, Moscow, 1953, pp. 479-80.
22. MECW, 11. 1979, pp. 187-88.
23. Karl Marx, Capital, I, FLPH, Moscow, 1958, p. 109; Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1976,
p. 204.
86

In 1867, Marx alleged that The English Established Church, e.g., will more readily
pardon an attack on 38 of its 39 articles than on 1/39 of its income. Capital, I, p. 10;
Penguin, p. 92. The stand-alone witticisms in Marx and Engels have a Shavian ring, which
leaves one wondering how much George Bernard Shaw learned from them about punch
lines.
24. MECW, 6, 1976, p. 178.
25. Capital, I, p. 113; Penguin, p. 208.
26. Capital, I, p. 763; Penguin, p. 929.
27. MECW, 5, 1976, p. 5.
28. MECW, 3, 1975, pp. 175-76. Our appreciation of the complexity of Marxs comment
on religion will be deepened by adding knowledge of medical practices from around 1840
when opiates were not taken merely to put their users to sleep, but to deaden the pain,
physical and psychological. Opiates allowed workers to continue their battles for
existence, offering comfort, not oblivion, sustenance not slumber. It was in this ambivalent
sense that Marx referred to religion as an opiate. An appreciation of the history of
pharmacy is but one example of the care that must be exercised when interpreting any text.
A similar point can be made about Nietzsches God is Dead. The messenger is a
madman who at once adds that he has arrived too soon. Anyway, the shocking aspect of
his annunciation is not that God is dead, because the death and rebirth of gods are integral
to religious thinking, including Christianity. The horror was the subsequent claim that
God remains dead, leaving humanity without the promise of resurrection, see The Gay
Science, New York, Vintage, 1974, p. 181.
29. Bertell Ollman, Alienation, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1976, p. 3.
30. M. M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination, Four Essays, University of Texas Press,
Austin, 1981, p. 75.
31. MECW, 3, 1975, p. 291; Karl Marx, Frhe Schriften, I, Cotta-Verlag, Stuggart, 1960,
p. 586.
32. H. W. Fowler, A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, Omega, Ware, Herts., 1984, p.
474.
33. MECW, 3, p. 299; Frhe Schriften, I, p. 598.
34. MECW, 3, p. 187.
35. Rose, Reading the young Marx and Engels, p. 141.
36. Capital, II, pp. 105-6; Penguin, II, p. 185.
37. Anitra Nelson, Marxs concept of money: the God of commodities, Routledge, New
York, 1999. Because Nelson is deaf to dialectics, she complains that Marx does not have a
concept of money but rather a theory of the money commodity. She divides her time
between nit-picking and thinking up Marxs motives. (pp. 92-93). The intentionalist
fallacy encouraged her to suppose that she can see into Marxs thinking, which is the more
risible given that she neither gets his jokes, nor is aware that he is being ironical. Her
literalism is of a piece with her insensitivity to process. For an astute reading of Marx on
money see Suzanne de Brunhoff, Urizen Books, New York, 1976.
38. MECW, 5, p. 24.
39. Notwithstanding this restraint, Marx was not afraid to be robust, as in this sardonic
onslaught:
Switzerland is the center of attraction for hysterical virgins over thirty, for the pale buds of
the finishing school who are keen on the chaste by so effective love-making of the fleet
hunters of the Chamois. In the original agricultural cantons the people live like animals,
and are as bovine as their oxen. It is necessary, very necessary, that this last refuge of
brutal primitive Germanism, of barbarians of bigotry, of patriarchal naivet and purity of
morals, of agricultural stability and of loyalty to death available to the highest bidder
should at last be destroyed.
87

This birthplace of freedom is nothing else but the center of barbarism, of brutality,
bigotry, hypocritical purity ... Internal affairs are exhausted in making cheese, chastity,
and yodeling ... abroad, the only claim of the Swiss is that of being hired mercenaries.
Here, the rolling thunder comes with its flashes of ridicule. To strike at his target of
hypocrisy, Marx reaches for the directness and rhythms of Luthers bible. This barrage
could be Luthers excoriating the Papacy.
40. The French Marxist Louis Althusser was but one in a line of commentators to warn
those opening Capital to skip those 100 pages, that is, Part I on Commodities and
Money, until after they had read the next 600. He further advised them to delay reading
the 30 pages of Part V, see Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy, NLB, London, 1971,
pp. 79-86.
Engels had offered parallel advice on how to approach volumes II and III, Selected
Correspondence, pp. 566-68.
41. Capital, I, p. 21; Penguin, p. 104.
42. Capital, I, p. 21; Penguin, p. 104.
43. Capital, I, p. 766; Penguin, p. 933.
44. Capital, I, p. 774; Penguin, p. 940.
45. Karl Marx, Capital, II, FLPH, Moscow, 1957, pp. 284-5; Penguin, II, pp. 359-60.
Many of us have been comforted to learn from Engels that Marx, although adept at
algebra, including differential calculus did not get the knack of handling figures,
particularly commercial arithmetic. Marx kept notebooks on differential calculus. The
notion of approaching a result by ever smaller increments without ever reaching that end,
that is, asymptotically, appealed to Marx as a means to express the dialectic, the process of
change, see Mathematics Manuscripts of Karl Marx, New Park, London, 1983.
46. To dispel the lopsidedness of that judgement, let Hegel also speak in his own defence.
Just before the end of his life in 1831, he responded to the debates leading up to the First
Reform Bill in the British parliament: Nowhere more than in England is the prejudice so
fixed and so nave that if birth and wealth give a man office they also give him brains.
The English Reform Bill, T. M. Knox and Z. A. Pelczynski, Hegels Political Writings,
OUP, Oxford, 1964, p. 311.
47. Capital, I, p. 83, Penguin, p. 177.
48. S. S. Prawer, Karl Marx and World Literature, OUP, Oxford, 1978.
The Soviet editions did not provide translations, though the Penguin series does. Working
ones way through the explanatory footnotes is a short course in cultural literacy. Marx
advised one militant to learn Spanish, as he had done, by reading Don Quixote. The
Moscow editions provided much of the necessary detail, culminating in the Marx-Engels
Collected Works from 1975. Dirk Struiks editing of the Economic and Philosophical
Manuscripts and The Communist Manifesto was exemplary for his commentaries and
scholarly apparatuses. The Penguin-New Left Editions from the 1970s also deserve to be
consulted, both for their translations and their explanatory notes, which supply translations
for Marxs quotations.
The Penguin editor, Ben Fowkes, missed this jibe at Richard Wagners 1849 manifesto,
The Art-Work of the Future: Nobody not even a practitioner of Zukunftsmusik* can
live on the products of the future .... The asterisked footnote misinterprets Zukunftsmusik
as castles in the air, or dreams which may or may not be realized, p. 272; The Moscow
edition, Capital, p. 169, made no attempt to explain this rare reference to music in Marx,
which he repeated in Volume II, Moscow, p. 493.
49. MECW, 5, p. 47.
50. Marx. Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, p. 188.
51. James Buchan, Frozen Desire, Picador, London, 1997, p. 202.
52. Capital, I, p. 83n; Penguin, p. 176n.
53. Capital, I, p. 259n; Penguin, p. 370n.
54. Capital, I, p. 264n; Penguin, p. 375n.
88

55. Bakhtin, p. 41n.
56. Honore Balzac, Lost Illusions, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1971, p. 641.
57. Capital, I, p. 774; Penguin, p. 940.
58. Capital, I, p. 153; Penguin, p. 254.
59. MECW, 3, p. 324.
60. MECW, 3, p. 307.
61. MECW, 6, 1976, pp. 176, 186-8.
62. Erich Auerbach, Mimesis The Representation of Reality in Western Literature,
Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1953, p. 481.
63. Capital, I, pp. 105, 112-13; Penguin, pp. 200 and 205-8.
64. Capital, I, p. 162, Penguin, p. 265; Capital, II, pp. 105-6; Penguin, II, p. 185; Capital,
III, pp. 289-91; Penguin, pp. 403-5.
65. Capital, I, p. 76-77; Penguin, pp. 169-71.
66. Karl Marx, Capital, II, FLPH, Moscow, 1957, pp. 105-6; Penguin, II, pp. 185-86.
67. Capital, I, p. 594; Penguin, p. 741.
68. Bakhtin, p, 50.
69. Capital, I, pp. 191-93; Penguin, pp. 298-300.
70. Bakhtin, pp. 48-49.
A disciple of Auerbachs Mimesis could explicate the structure and texture of Capital to
reveal Need to make a comparison with the tropes of Adam Smiths The Wealth of Nations
(1770). The inclusion of Capital would disturb Auerbachs categories.
In The House of All Nations (1938), Christina Stead gave a fictional representation of
money capital.
71. Capital, I, pp. 596-7n; Penguin, p. 744n.
72. Capital, I, pp. 597-98; Penguin, p. 745.
73. Maurice Dobb, Political Economy and Capitalism, Routledge and Kegan Paul,
London, 1944, pp. 137-47
74. Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Progress Publishers,
Moscow, 1970, p. 193.
75. Capital, I, p. 110; Penguin, p. 205.
76. MECW, 5, p. 3.
77. MECW, 3, p. 300.
78. Capital, I, p. 110; Penguin, p. 204.
79. Marx, Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, p. 87; Capital, II, p. 103;
Penguin, p. 183.
80. Capital, I, p. 110; Penguin, p. 205.
81. MECW, 9, 1977, p. 216.
82. Capital, I, p. 52n; Penguin, p. 144n.
83. Capital, I, pp. 72-73; Penguin, pp. 163-64.

89

John Holloway
The Tradition of Scientific Marxism

Source: Change The World Without Taking Power. The Meaning of Revolution
Today, John Holloway 2002, Chapter 7. Published by Pluto Press. This chapter used
with permission of the author, as per Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-
NoDerivatives Licence 2.0.

I
The concept of fetishism implies a negative concept of science. If relations between
people exist as relations between things, then the attempt to understand social relations can
proceed only negatively, by going against and beyond the form in which social relations
appear (and really exist). Science is critical.
The concept of fetishism implies, therefore, that there is a radical distinction between
bourgeois science and critical or revolutionary science. The former assumes the
permanence of capitalist social relations and takes identity for granted, treating
contradiction as a mark of logical inconsistency. Science, in this view, is the attempt to
understand reality. In the latter case, science can only be negative, a critique of the untruth
of existing reality. The aim is not to understand reality, but to understand (and, by
understanding, to intensify) its contradictions as part of the struggle to change the world.
The more all-pervasive we understand reification to be, the more absolutely negative
science becomes. If everything is permeated by reification, then absolutely everything is a
site of struggle between the imposition of the rupture of doing and the critical-practical
struggle for the recuperation of doing. No category is neutral.
For Marx, science is negative. The truth of science is the negation of the untruth of
false appearances. In the post-Marx Marxist tradition, however, the concept of science is
turned from a negative into a positive concept. The category of fetishism, so central for
Marx, is almost entirely forgotten by the mainstream Marxist tradition. From being the
struggle against the untruth of fetishism, science comes to be understood as knowledge of
reality. With the positivisation of science, power-over penetrates into revolutionary theory
and undermines it far more effectively than any government undercover agents infiltrating
a revolutionary organisation.
I I
It is convenient to see the positivisation of science as being Engels contribution to
the Marxist tradition, although there are certainly dangers in over-emphasising the
difference between Marx and Engels: the attempt to put all the blame on to Engels diverts
attention from the contradictions that were undoubtedly present in Marxs own work.
[1]

The classic claim for the scientific character of Marxism in the mainstream tradition
is Engels pamphlet, Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, which probably did more than any
other work to define Marxism. Criticism of scientificism in the Marxist tradition often
takes the form of a critique of Engels, but, in fact, the scientific tradition is far more
deep-rooted than that would suggest. It certainly finds expression in some of Marxs own
writings (most famously in the 1859 Preface to his Contribution to the Critique of
Political Economy), and is developed in the classical era of Marxism by writers as
diverse as Kautsky, Lenin, Luxemburg and Pannekoek. Although Engels writings
possibly have relatively few explicit defenders today, the tradition which Engels represents
continues to provide the unspoken and unquestioned assumptions upon which a great deal
of Marxist discussion is based. In what follows, our principal concern is not who said
what, but to draw out the main constituents of the scientific tradition.
In speaking of Marxism as scientific, Engels means that it is based on an
understanding of social development that is just as exact as the scientific understanding of
natural development. The course of both natural and human development is characterised
90

by the same constant movement: When we consider and reflect upon Nature at large or
the history of mankind or our own intellectual activity, at first we see the picture of an
endless entanglement of relations and reactions, permutations and combinations, in which
nothing remains what, where and as it was, but everything moves, changes, comes into
being and passes away.... This primitive, nave but intrinsically correct conception of the
world is that of ancient Greek philosophy, and was first clearly formulated by Heraclitus:
everything is and is not, for everything is fluid, is constantly changing, constantly coming
into being and passing away. (1968, p. 43)
Dialectics is the conceptualisation of nature and society as being in constant
movement: it comprehends things and their representations, ideas, in their essential
connection, concatenation, motion, origin, and ending... Nature is the proof of dialectics,
and it must be said for modern science that it has furnished this proof with very rich
materials increasing daily, and thus has shown that, in the last resort, Nature works
dialectically and not metaphysically. (1968, p. 45) Through dialectics we can reach an
exact understanding of natural and social development: An exact representation of the
universe, of its evolution, of the development of mankind, and of the reflection of this
evolution in the minds of men, can therefore only be obtained by the methods of dialectics
with its constant regard to the innumerable actions and reactions of life and death, of
progressive and retrogressive changes. (1968, p. 46) For Engels, dialectics comprehends
the objective movement of nature and society, a movement independent of the subject.
The task of science, then, is to understand the laws of motion of both nature and
society. Modern materialism, unlike the mechanical materialism of the eighteenth century,
is dialectical: modern materialism sees in [history] the process of evolution of humanity
and aims at discovering the laws thereof... Modern materialism embraces the more recent
discoveries of natural science, according to which Nature also has its history in time, the
celestial bodies, like the organic species that, under favourable conditions, people them,
being born and perishing... In both aspects, modern materialism is essentially dialectic...
(1968, pp. 47-48)
It need hardly be underlined that Engels understanding of the dialectic method is an
extremely diluted one. Lukcs brought upon himself the wrath of the Party by pointing this
out in History and Class Consciousness: Dialectics, he [Engels] argues, is a continuous
process of transition from one definition into the other. In consequence a one-sided and
rigid causality must be replaced by interaction. But he does not even mention the most
vital interaction, namely the dialectical relation between subject and object in the
historical process, let alone give it the prominence it deserves. Yet without this factor
dialectics ceases to be revolutionary, despite attempts (illusory in the last analysis) to
retain fluid concepts. For it implies a failure to recognise that in all metaphysics the
object remains untouched and unaltered so that thought remains contemplative and fails to
become practical; while for the dialectical method the central problem is to change
reality.'(Lukcs 1971, 3) Dialectics, for Engels, becomes a natural law, not the reason of
revolt, not the consistent sense of non-identity, the sense of the explosive force of the
denied. It is no doubt for this reason that some authors, in their criticism of the orthodox
Marxist tradition, have been concerned to criticise the whole idea of a dialectical
method.
[2]

For Engels, the claim that Marxism is scientific is a claim that it has understood the
laws of motion of society. This understanding is based on two key elements: These two
great discoveries, the materialistic conception of history and the revelation of the secret of
capitalistic production through surplus-value, we owe to Marx. With these two discoveries
Socialism becomes a science. The next thing was to work out all its details and relations.
(1968, p. 50)
Science, in the Engelsian tradition which became known as Marxism, is understood
as the exclusion of subjectivity: scientific is identified with objective. The claim that
Marxism is scientific is taken to mean that subjective struggle (the struggle of socialists
91

today) finds support in the objective movement of history. The analogy with natural
science is important not because of the conception of nature that underlies it but because of
what it says about the movement of human history. Both nature and history are seen as
being governed by forces independent of mens will, forces that can therefore be studied
objectively.
The notion of Marxism as scientific socialism has two aspects. In Engels account
there is a double objectivity. Marxism is objective, certain, scientific knowledge of an
objective, inevitable process. Marxism is understood as scientific in the sense that it has
understood correctly the laws of motion of a historical process taking place independently
of mens will. All that is left for Marxists to do is to fill in the details, to apply the
scientific understanding of history.
The attraction of the conception of Marxism as a scientifically objective theory of
revolution for those who were dedicating their lives to struggle against capitalism is
obvious. It provided not just a coherent conception of historical movement, but also
enormous moral support: whatever reverses might be suffered, history was on our side.
The enormous force of the Engelsian conception and the importance of its role in the
struggles of that time should not be overlooked. At the same time, however, both aspects
of the concept of scientific socialism (objective knowledge, objective process) pose
enormous problems for the development of Marxism as a theory of struggle.
If Marxism is understood as the correct, objective, scientific knowledge of history,
then this begs the question, who says so? Who holds the correct knowledge and how did
they gain that knowledge? Who is the subject of the knowledge? The notion of Marxism as
science implies a distinction between those who know and those who do not know, a
distinction between those who have true consciousness and those who have false
consciousness.
This distinction immediately poses both epistemological and organisational
problems. Political debate becomes focussed on the question of correctness and the
correct line. But how do we know (and how do they know) that the knowledge of those
who know is correct? How can the knowers (party, intellectuals or whatever) be said to
have transcended the conditions of their social time and place in such a way as to have
gained a privileged knowledge of historical movement? Perhaps even more important
politically: if a distinction is to be made between those who know and those who do not,
and if understanding or knowledge is seen as important in guiding the political struggle,
then what is to be the organisational relation between the knowers and the others (the
masses)? Are those in the know to lead and educate the masses (as in the concept of the
vanguard party) or is a communist revolution necessarily the work of the masses
themselves (as left communists such as Pannekoek maintained)? .
The other wing of the concept of scientific Marxism, the notion that society develops
according to objective laws, also poses obvious problems for a theory of struggle. If there
is an objective movement of history which is independent of human volition, then what is
the role of struggle? Are those who struggle simply carrying out a human destiny which
they do not control? Or is struggle important simply in the interstices of the objective
movements, filling in the smaller or larger gaps left open by the clash of forces and
relations of production? The notion of objective laws opens up a separation between
structure and struggle. Whereas the notion of fetishism suggests that everything is struggle,
that nothing exists separately from the antagonism of social relations, the notion of
objective laws suggests a duality between an objective structural movement of history
independent of peoples will, on the one hand, and the subjective struggles for a better
world, on the other. Engels conception tells us that the two movements coincide, that the
former gives support to the latter, but they do not cease to be separate. This duality is the
source of endless theoretical and political problems in the Marxist tradition.
Engels notion of the objective movement of history towards an end gives a
secondary role to struggle. Whether struggle is simply seen as supporting the movement of
92

history or whether it is attributed a more active role, its significance in any case derives
from its relation to the working out of the objective laws. Whatever the differences in
emphasis, struggle in this perspective cannot be seen as self-emancipatory: it acquires
significance only in relation to the realisation of the goal. The whole concept of struggle is
then instrumental: it is a struggle to achieve an end, to arrive somewhere. The
positivisation of the concept of science implies a positivisation of the concept of struggle.
Struggle, from being struggle-against, is metamorphosed into being struggle-for. Struggle-
for is struggle to create a communist society, but in the instrumentalist perspective which
the positive-scientific approach implies, struggle comes to be conceived in a step-by-step
manner, with the conquest of power being seen as the decisive step, the fulcrum of
revolution. The notion of the conquest of power, then, far from being a particular aim
that stands on its own, is at the centre of a whole approach to theory and struggle.
I I I
The implication of Engels analysis, namely that the transition to communism would
come about inevitably as a result of the conflict between the development of the forces of
production and the relations of production, did not satisfy the revolutionary theorists-
activists of the early part of the century. They insisted on the importance of active struggle
for communism, yet they retained much of the dualism of Engels presentation of
Marxism.
[3]

The problems posed by the dualistic separation of subject and object came to the fore
in the revolutionary turbulence of the beginning of this century. Virtually all the debates of
the classical period of Marxism (roughly the first quarter of the twentieth century) took
place on the assumed foundation of the scientific interpretation of Marxism. Despite their
very important political and theoretical differences, all the major theorists of the period
shared certain common assumptions about the meaning of Marxism assumptions
associated with key words such as historical materialism, scientific socialism,
objective laws, Marxist economics.
This is not to say that there was no theoretical development. Perhaps most important,
attention in this period of upheaval came to focus on the importance of subjective action.
Against the quietistic, wait-and-see interpretations of historic necessity favoured by the
main body of the Second International, all the revolutionary theorists of the period
(Luxemburg, Lenin, Trotsky, Pannekoek and so on) stressed the need for active
revolutionary intervention. But this emphasis on the subjective was seen in all cases as
complementary to (if not subordinate to) the objective movement of capitalism. Now that
the theoretical criticism of Engels as the distorter of Marx has gained such wide
diffusion, it should be emphasised that the assumptions of scientific Marxism were
accepted not only by the reformists of the Second International but by most if not all the
major revolutionary theorists.
The dualist concept of Marxism as science has, it was seen, two axes: the notion of
an objective historical process and the notion of objective knowledge. The theoretical-
political problems connected with both of these axes provided the stuff of theoretical
debate in this period.
The first of these axes, the concept of history as an objective process independent of
human will was the main issue in Rosa Luxemburgs classic defence of Marxism against
the revisionism of Bernstein, in her pamphlet, Reform or Revolution, first published in
1900. Luxemburgs pamphlet is above all a defence of scientific socialism. For her, the
understanding of socialism as objective historic necessity was of central importance to the
revolutionary movement: The greatest conquest of the developing proletarian movement
has been the discovery of grounds of support for the realisation of socialism in the
economic condition of capitalist society. As a result of this discovery, socialism was
changed from an ideal dream by humanity for thousands of years to a thing of historic
necessity (1973, p. 35).
93

Echoing the distinction made by Engels between scientific and utopian socialism,
Luxemburg sees the notion of economic or historic necessity as essential if the emptiness
of endless calls for justice is to be avoided. Criticising Bernstein, she writes: "Why
represent socialism as the consequence of economic compulsion? he complains. Why
degrade mans understanding, his feeling for justice, his will? (Vorwrts, March 26th,
1899) Bernsteins superlatively just distribution is to be attained thanks to mans free will,
mans will acting not because of economic necessity, since this will itself is only an
instrument, but because of mans comprehension of justice, because of mans idea of
justice. We thus quite happily return to the principle of justice, to the old war horse on
which the reformers of the earth have rocked for ages, for the lack of surer means of
historic transportation. We return to that lamentable Rosinante on which the Don Quixotes
of history have galloped towards the great reform of the earth, always to come home with
their eyes blackened. (1973, pp. 44-45)
The scientific character of Marxism is thus seen as its defining feature. The scientific
basis of socialism is said to rest on three principal results of capitalist development. First,
on the growing anarchy of capitalist economy, leading inevitably to its ruin. Second, on
the progressive socialisation of the process of production, which creates the germs of the
future social order. And third, on the increased organisation and consciousness of the
proletarian class, which constitutes the active factor in the coming revolution (1973, p.
11).
The third element, the active factor, is important for Luxemburg: It is not true that
socialism will arise automatically from the daily struggle of the working class. Socialism
will be the consequence of (1) the growing contradictions of capitalist economy and (2) the
comprehension by the working class of the unavoidability of the suppression of these
contradictions through a social transformation (1973, p. 31). Thus, although Luxemburg,
in common with all the revolutionary theorists, rejects the quietistic interpretation of the
inevitability of socialism favoured by many in the German Social Democratic party, the
emphasis on the importance of subjective action is located against the background of the
objective, historic necessity of socialism. Socialism will be the consequence of (1)
objective trends, and (2) subjective comprehension and practice. The focus on the
subjective is added to the understanding of Marxism as a theory of the historic necessity of
socialism; or, perhaps more precisely, Marxism, as a theory of objective necessity
complements and fortifies subjective class struggle. Whichever way around it is put, there
is the same dualist separation between the objective and the subjective the classic
dualism of economic law and subjective factor. (Marramao 1978, p. 29)
The central issue arising from this dualism was the question of the relation between
the two poles of the dualism between historic necessity and the active factor. The
terms of the question posed by scientific socialism already suggest an endless debate
between determinism and voluntarism, between those who attribute little importance to
subjective intervention and those who see it as crucial. The argument, however, is about
the space to be granted to the subject within an objectively determined framework. The
space is essentially intersticial, the argument being over the nature of the interstices.
Whatever the weight attached to the active factor, the argument is about how to
reach the objectively determined final goal. Luxemburg opens her argument against
Bernstein in Reform or Revolution by accusing him of abandoning the final goal of the
socialist movement. She quotes him as saying The final goal, no matter what it is, is
nothing; the movement is everything. (1973, p. 8) To this Luxemburg objects: the final
goal of socialism constitutes the only decisive factor distinguishing the social democratic
movement from bourgeois democracy and from bourgeois radicalism, the only factor
transforming the entire labour movement from a vain effort to repair the capitalist order
into a class struggle against this order, for the suppression of this order... (1973, p. 8) And
what is this final goal, according to Luxemburg? The conquest of political power and the
suppression of wage labour. (1973, p. 8)
94

The goal, then, according to Luxemburg, is to bring about social revolution through
the conquest of political power. From the first appearance of class societies having the
class struggle as the essential content of their history, the conquest of political power has
been the aim of all rising classes. (1973, p. 49) It is necessary to extract the kernel of
socialist society from its capitalist shell. Exactly for this reason must the proletariat seize
political power and suppress completely the capitalist system. (1973, p. 52) Class struggle
is instrumental, the aim being to extract the kernel of socialist society from its capitalist
shell. Struggle is not a process of self-emancipation which would create a socialist society
(whatever that might turn out to be) but just the opposite: struggle is an instrument to
achieve a preconceived end which would then provide freedom for all.
In the classical debates of Marxism, the issue of the relation between the active
factor and historic necessity was focused most clearly in the discussions surrounding the
collapse of capitalism. These discussions had important political implications since they
centred on the transition from capitalism to socialism, and therefore on revolution and
revolutionary organisation (although the different positions did not follow any simple left-
right split (cf Marramao 1978)).
At one extreme was the position usually identified with the Second International, and
formulated most clearly by Cunow at the end of the 1890s (Cunow 1898-99): since the
collapse of capitalism was the inevitable result of the working out of its own
contradictions, there was no need for revolutionary organisation. Those who argued that
the collapse of capitalism was inevitable did not all draw the same conclusions, however.
For Luxemburg, as we have seen, the inevitable collapse of capitalism (which she
attributed to the exhaustion of the possibilities of capitalist expansion into a non-capitalist
world) was seen as giving support to anti-capitalist struggle rather than detracting from the
need for revolutionary organisation.
The opposite view, the view that collapse was not inevitable, also led to diverse
political conclusions. For some (Bernstein, for example) it led to the abandonment of a
revolutionary perspective and the acceptance of capitalism as a framework within which
social improvements could be sought. For others, such as Pannekoek, the rejection of the
idea of the inevitability of capitalist collapse was part of an emphasis on the importance of
revolutionary organisation: he argued that the objective movement of capitalist
contradictions would lead not to collapse, but to ever more intense crises, which must be
understood as opportunities for subjective action to overthrow capitalism (1977). It is
interesting that Pannekoek, the leading theorist of left or council communism, denounced
by Lenin in his Left-Wing Communism An Infantile Disorder, accepted, in spite of all
his emphasis on the importance of developing the active side, the framework of Marxs
economic materialism as the analysis of the objective movement of capitalism. His
emphasis on activism did not take the form of challenging the objectivist interpretation of
Marx, but of arguing that it was necessary to complement the objective development by
subjective action.
The second axis of scientific Marxism, the question of scientific knowledge and its
organisational implications, formed the core of the discussion between Lenin and his
critics.
In Lenins theory of the vanguard party, the organisational implications of the
positive notion of scientific knowledge are developed to the point of creating a sharp
organisational distinction between the knowers (those who have true consciousness) and
the non-knowers (the masses who have false consciousness). In the pamphlet which spelt
out the theory of the vanguard party, What is to be Done?, Lenin argues the point very
explicitly. After discussing the limitations of the strike movement of the 1890s, he makes
his central point about class consciousness and socialism: We said that there could not yet
be Social-Democratic consciousness among the workers. This consciousness could only be
brought to them from without. The history of all countries shows that the working class,
exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness, i.e., it may
95

itself realise the necessity for combining in unions, for fighting against the employers and
for striving to compel the government to pass necessary labour legislation, etc. The theory
of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophic, historical and economic theories that
were elaborated by the educated representatives of the propertied classes, the intellectuals.
According to their social status, the founders of modern scientific socialism, Marx and
Engels, themselves belonged to the bourgeois intelligentsia. Similarly, in Russia, the
theoretical doctrine of Social-Democracy arose quite independently of the spontaneous
growth of the labour movement; it arose as a natural and inevitable outcome of the
development of ideas among the revolutionary socialist intelligentsia. (1966, pp. 74-75)
It has been suggested (by del Barco 1980) that the clear separation of theory
(developed by bourgeois intellectuals) and experience (that of the workers) was a
reflection of the particular history of the Russian revolutionary movement. Lenins own
references, however, suggest that his ideas have a wider basis within the Marxist tradition.
He quotes both Engels and Kautsky at length. Particularly significant is the passage quoted
with evident approval from an article by Kautsky, in which Kautsky writes: Of course,
socialism, as a theory, has its roots in modern economic relationships just as the class
struggle of the proletariat has, and just as the latter emerges from the struggle against the
capitalist-created poverty and misery of the masses. But socialism and the class struggle
arise side by side and not one out of the other; each arises under different conditions.
Modern socialist consciousness can arise only on the basis of profound scientific
knowledge. Indeed, modern economic science is as much a condition for socialist
production as, say, modern technology, and the proletariat can create neither one nor the
other, no matter how much it may desire to do so; both arise out of the modern social
process. The vehicles of science are not the proletariat, but the bourgeois intelligentsia
[K.K.s italics]: it was in the minds of some members of this stratum that modern
socialism originated, and it was they who communicated it to the more intellectually
developed proletarians who, in their turn, introduced it into the proletarian class struggle
where conditions allow that to be done. Thus, socialist consciousness is something
introduced into the proletarian class struggle from without (von aussen Hineingetragenes),
and not something that arose within it spontaneously (urwchsig). Accordingly, the old
Hainfeld programme quite rightly stated that the task of Social-Democracy is to imbue the
proletariat with the consciousness of its position and the consciousness of its tasks. There
would be no need for this if consciousness emerged itself from the class struggle. (1966,
pp. 81-82)
The quotation from Kautsky makes clear that the central issue is not the peculiarities
of the Russian revolutionary tradition: however important those peculiarities might have
been, ascribing the problems of Leninism to them lets mainstream Marxism off the hook.
The central issue is rather the concept of science or theory which was accepted by the main
stream of the Marxist movement. If science is understood as an objectively correct
understanding of society, then it follows that those most likely to attain such an
understanding will be those with greatest access to education (understood, presumably, as
being at least potentially scientific). Given the organisation of education in capitalist
society, these will be members of the bourgeoisie. Science, consequently, can come to the
proletariat only from outside. If the movement to socialism is based on the scientific
understanding of society, then it must be led by bourgeois intellectuals and those
proletarians distinguished by their intellectual development to whom they have
transmitted their scientific understanding. Scientific socialism, understood in this way, is
the theory of the emancipation of the proletariat, but certainly not of its self-emancipation.
Class struggle is understood instrumentally, not as a process of self-emancipation but as
the struggle to create a society in which the proletariat would be emancipated: hence the
pivotal role of conquering power. The whole point of conquering power is that it is a
means of liberating others. It is the means by which class-conscious revolutionaries,
organised in the party, can liberate the proletariat. In a theory in which the working class is
96

a they, distinguished from a we who are conscious of the need for revolution, the
notion of taking power is simply the articulation that joins the they and the we.
The genius of Lenins theory of the vanguard party, then, was that it developed to
their logical conclusion the organisational consequences of Engels notion of scientific
socialism. From being a negative concept in Marx (science as the negation of fetishised
appearances), science in Engels becomes something positive (objective knowledge of an
objective process), so that unscientific then denotes the absence of something: absence of
knowledge, absence of class consciousness. The question that Marx leaves us with (how
can we, who live against and in fetishised social relations, negate this fetishism?) becomes
turned around to become how can the workers acquire class consciousness? Simple,
replies Lenin, since their consciousness is limited to trade union consciousness, true
consciousness can only come from outside, from (us) bourgeois intellectuals. The
inconvenient question of the material source of the bourgeois intellectual consciousness is
lost, since it is seen as just the acquisition of scientific knowledge.
Marxist practice then becomes a practice of bringing consciousness to the workers,
of explaining to them, of telling them where their interests lie, of enlightening and
educating them. This practice, so widely established in revolutionary movements in all the
world, has its roots not just in the authoritarian tradition of Leninism but in the positive
concept of science which Engels established. Knowledge-about is power-over. If science is
understood as knowledge-about, then there is inevitably a hierarchical relation between
those who have this knowledge (and hence access to the correct line) and those (the
masses) who do not. It is the task of those-in-the-know to lead and educate the masses.
[4]

It is not that scientific Marxism simply reproduces bourgeois theory: clearly the
perspective is revolutionary change, the point of reference is a communist society. It
introduces new categories of thought, but those categories are understood positively. The
revolutionary character of the theory is understood in terms of content, not in terms of
method, in terms of the what, not the how. Thus, for example, working class is a central
category, but it is taken to refer, in the manner of bourgeois sociology, to a definable group
of people, rather than to the pole of an antagonistic relation. Similarly, the state is seen as
the instrument of the ruling class rather than as one moment in the general fetishisation of
social relations, and categories such as Russia, Britain and so on go entirely
unquestioned. The concept of revolutionary theory is much too timid. Revolutionary
science is understood as a prolongation of bourgeois science rather than a radical break
with it.
The Engelsian concept of science implies a monological political practice. The
movement of thought is a monologue, the unidirectional transmission of consciousness
from the party to the masses. A concept that understands science as the critique of
fetishism, on the other hand, leads (or should lead) to a more dialogical concept of politics,
simply because we are all subject to fetishism and because science is just part of the
struggle against the rupture of doing and done, a struggle in which we are all involved in
different ways. Understanding science as critique leads more easily to a politics of
dialogue, a politics of talking-listening, rather than just of talking.
[5]

The great attraction of Leninism is of course that he cut through what we have called
the tragic dilemma of revolution. He solved the problem of how those who lacked class
consciousness could make a revolution: through the leadership of the Party. The only
problem is that it was not the revolution that we (or they) wanted. The second part of the
sentence we shall take power and liberate the proletariat was not, and could not be,
realised.
I V
The concept of scientific socialism has left an imprint that stretches far beyond those
who identify with Engels, Kautsky or Lenin. The separation of subject and object implied
by the idea of scientific socialism continues to shape the way that capitalism is understood
in much modern Marxist debate. In its modern form, scientific socialism is sometimes
97

referred to as structuralism, but the impact of the scientific position is not limited to
those who would recognise themselves as structuralists. Rather, the scientific separation
of subject and object is expressed in a whole series of categories and specialised fields of
study developed by people who do not feel themselves addressed in any sense by
criticisms of Engels or of modern structuralism. It is important, therefore, to get some
sense of just how much modern Marxism has been marked by the assumptions of scientific
socialism.
The basic feature of scientific socialism is its assumption that science can be
identified with objectivity, with the exclusion of subjectivity. This scientific objectivity, it
was seen, has two axes or points of reference. Objectivity is understood to refer to the
course of social development: there is a historical movement which is independent of
peoples will. It is also taken to refer to the knowledge which we (Marxists) have of this
historical movement: Marxism is the correct discovery of the objective laws of motion
that govern social development. In each of these two axes, the objectivity shapes the
understanding of both object and subject.
Although the notion of scientific Marxism has implications for the understanding of
both subject and object, in so far as science is identified with objectivity, it is the object
which is privileged. Marxism, in this conception, becomes the study of the objective laws
of motion of history in general, and of capitalism in particular. Marxisms role in relation
to working class struggle is to provide an understanding of the framework within which
struggle takes place. Marxists typically take as the point of departure, certainly not a denial
of the importance of class struggle, but an assumption of it which amounts to virtually the
same thing: class struggle becomes an of course,
[6]
an element so obvious that it can
simply be taken for granted and attention turned towards the analysis of capitalism.
A special role falls to Marxist economics in the analysis of history and especially of
capitalism. Since the driving force of historical development is seen as lying in the
economic structure of society, since (as Engels puts it) the key to social change is to be
found in economics and not in philosophy, the Marxist study of economics is central to the
understanding of capitalism and its development.
Marxs Capital is the key text of Marxist economics, in this view. It is understood as
the analysis of the laws of motion of capitalism, based on the development of the central
categories of value, surplus value, capital, profit, the tendency for the rate of profit to fall,
and so on. Thus, recent discussions in Marxist economics have focused on the validity of
the category of value, the transformation problem (concerning Marxs transformation of
value into price), the validity of the tendency for the rate of profit to fall and the various
theories of economic crisis. As in mainstream economic discussion, much attention is
devoted to defining the terms, to establishing precise definitions for constant capital,
variable capital, and so on.
The understanding of Capital as a book on economics is certainly supported by some
of Marxs own comments, but it owes much to the influence of Engels. Engels, who was
responsible for the editing and publication of Volumes II and III of Capital after Marxs
death, fostered through his editing and his comments a certain interpretation of Marxs
work as economics. In the ten years which separated the publication of Volume II (1884)
and Volume III (1894), for example, he promoted the so-called prize essay competition
to see if other authors could anticipate Marxs solution to the transformation problem, the
problem of the quantitative relation between value and price, thus focussing attention on
the quantitative understanding of value (cf. Howard and King (1989) pp. 21ff; Engels
Preface to Vol. III of Capital). In a supplement which he wrote to Volume III on the Law
of Value and Rate of Profit, he presents value not as a form of social relations specific to
capitalist society but as an economic law valid for the whole period of simple
commodity-production ... a period of from five to seven thousand years (Marx 1972a, pp.
899-900). It was through Engels interpretation that the later volumes of Capital were
presented to the world. As Howard and King put it: he conditioned the way in which
98

successive generations of socialists viewed Marxs economics, both in his editions of
Marxs writings and in what he left unpublished. (1989, p. 17)
For the Marxists of the early part of this century, Marxist economics was the
keystone of the whole structure of scientific Marxism, that which provided the certainty
which was the crucial moral support for their struggles. In more recent times, Marxist
economics has continued to play a central role in Marxist debate, but it has acquired the
newly important dimension of also dovetailing with the structure of university disciplines:
for many academics Marxist economics has come to be seen as a particular (albeit deviant)
school within the broader discipline of economics.
The defining feature of Marxist economics is the idea that capitalism can be
understood in terms of certain regularities (the so-called laws of motion of capitalist
development). These regularities refer to the regular (but contradictory) pattern of the
reproduction of capital, and Marxist economics focuses on the study of capital and its
contradictory reproduction. The contradictory nature of this reproduction (understood
variously in terms of the tendency for the rate of profit to fall, underconsumption or
disproportionality between the different departments of production) is expressed in
periodic crisis and in a long-term tendency towards the intensification of these crises (or
towards the collapse of capitalism). Class struggle does not play any direct part in this
analysis of capitalism. It is generally assumed that the role of Marxist economics is to
explain the framework within which struggle takes place. Class struggle is intersticial: it
fills in the gaps left by economic analysis, does not determine the reproduction or crisis of
capitalism, but affects the conditions under which the reproduction and crisis take place.
[7]

Thus, for example, the left Marxists of the early part of the century, it was seen, argued
that class struggle was essential to convert the crisis of capitalism into revolution: class
struggle was seen as an ingredient to be added to the understanding of the objective
movement of capital.
The understanding of Marxist economics as an alternative approach to a particular
discipline (economics) suggests the possibility of complementing it with other disciplinary
branches of Marxism, such as Marxist sociology and Marxist political science
[8]
. Marxist
sociology focuses principally on the question of class and the analysis of class structures,
while Marxist political science has the state as its principal focus. Neither of these
disciplinary approaches is as well developed as Marxist economics, but they start from the
same basic understanding of Marxs work and of the Marxist tradition, according to which
Capital is a study of economics, which needs now to be complemented (since Marx did not
live to do it) by similar studies of politics, society, etc.
What all these modern disciplinary strands of Marxism have in common, and what
unites them with the underlying concept of scientific Marxism, is the assumption that
Marxism is a theory of society. In a theory of society, the theorist seeks to looks at society
objectively and to understand its functioning. The idea of a theory of' suggests a distance
between the theorist and the object of the theory. The notion of a theory of society is based
on the suppression of the subject, or (and this amounts to the same thing) based on the idea
that the knowing subject can stand outside the object of study, can look at human society
from a vantage point on the moon, as it were (Gunn 1992). It is only on the basis of this
positing of the knowing subject as external to the society being studied that the
understanding of science as objectivity can be posed.
Once it is understood as a theory of society, Marxism can be ranged alongside other
theories of society, compared with other theoretical approaches which seek to understand
society. Through this comparison, emphasis falls on the continuity rather than the
discontinuity between Marxism and the mainstream theories of social science. Thus, Marx
the economist is seen as a critical disciple of Ricardo, Marx the philosopher as a critical
disciple of Hegel and Feuerbach; in Marxist sociology, there has been discussion of
enriching Marxism with the insights of Weber; in Marxist political science, especially in
99

the writings of many who claim to derive their inspiration from Gramsci, it is assumed that
the purpose of a theory of the state is to understand the reproduction of capitalist society.
The understanding of Marxism in disciplinary terms, or as a theory of society, leads
almost inevitably to the adoption of the questions posed by the mainstream disciplines or
by other theories of society. The central question posed by mainstream social science is:
how do we understand the functioning of society and the way in which social structures
reproduce themselves? Marxism, in so far as it is understood as a theory of society, seeks
to provide alternative answers to these questions. Those authors who look to Gramsci to
provide a way of providing a way of moving away from the cruder orthodoxies of the
Leninist tradition, have been particularly active in trying to develop Marxism as a theory
of capitalist reproduction, with their emphasis on the category of hegemony as an
explanation of how capitalist order is maintained.
The attempts to use Marxs own categories to develop a theory of capitalist
reproduction are, however, always problematic, in so far as the categories of Marxism
derive from a quite different question, based not on the reproduction but on the destruction
of capitalism, not on positivity but on negativity. The use of Marxist categories to answer
the questions of social science inevitably involves a reinterpretation of those categories
for example a reinterpretation of value as an economic category, or class as a sociological
category. The attempt to use Marxist categories to construct an alternative economics or an
alternative sociology is always problematic, not because it involves a deviation from the
true meaning of true Marxism, but because the categories do not always stand up to
such reinterpretation. Thus, these reinterpretations have often given rise to considerable
debate and to a questioning of the validity of the categories themselves. For example, once
value is reinterpreted as the basis for a theory of price, then doubts can be (and have been)
raised about its relevance; once working class is understood as a sociological category
describing an identifiable group of people, then doubts can fairly be raised about the
significance of class struggle for understanding the dynamic of contemporary social
development. The integration of Marxism into social science, far from giving it a secure
home, actually undermines the basis of the categories which Marxists use.
[9]

The understanding of Marxism as a theory of society gives rise to a particular type of
social theory which can be described as functionalist. In so far as Marxism emphasises the
regularities of social development, and the interconnections between phenomena as part of
a social totality, it lends itself very easily to a view of capitalism as a relatively smoothly
self-reproducing society, in which whatever is necessary for capitalist reproduction
automatically happens. By a strange twist, Marxism, from being a theory of the destruction
of capitalist society, becomes a theory of its reproduction.
[10]
The separation of class
struggle from the laws of motion of capitalism leads to a separation between revolution
and the reproduction of capitalist society. This does not necessarily mean that the idea of
revolution is abandoned: it may indeed be given up (in the name of realism), but often it is
simply taken for granted (in the way that class struggle is taken for granted in so much
Marxist analysis), or relegated to the future. Thus, in the future there will be revolution,
but in the meantime, the laws of capitalist reproduction operate. In the future, there will be
a radical break, but in the meantime we can treat capitalism as a self-reproducing society.
In the future, the working class will be the subject of social development, but in the
meantime capital rules. In the future, things will be different, but in the meantime we can
treat Marxism as a functionalist theory, in which the requirements of capital, a phrase
which recurs frequently in Marxist discussions, can be taken as an adequate explanation of
what does or does not happen. The emphasis on reproduction, combined with an analysis
of reproduction as class domination, leads to a view of society in which capital rules and
capitals will (or requirements) prevails. Rupture, then, if the idea is maintained at all, can
only be seen as something external, something that is brought in from outside.
Functionalism, or the assumption that society should be understood in terms of its
reproduction, inevitably imposes a closure upon thought. It imposes bounds upon the
100

horizons within which society can be conceptualised. In Marxist functionalism, the
possibility of a different type of society is not excluded, but it is relegated to a different
sphere, to a future. Capitalism is a closed system until, until the great moment of
revolutionary change comes. Consequently, social activity is interpreted within the bounds
imposed by this closure. The relegation of revolution to a distinct sphere shapes the way in
which all aspects of social existence are understood. Categories are understood as closed
categories rather than as categories bursting with the explosive force of their own
contradictions, as categories containing the uncontainable. That which might be (the
subjunctive, the denied) is subordinated to that which is (the indicative, the positive which
denies) ... at least until.
Twist and turn the issue as one may, the notion of scientific Marxism, based on the
idea of an objective understanding of an objective course of history, comes up against
insuperable theoretical and political objections. Theoretically, the exclusion of the
subjectivity of the theorist is an impossibility: the theorist, whether Marx, Engels, Lenin or
Mao, cannot look at society from outside, cannot stand on the moon. Even more damaging,
the theoretical subordination of subjectivity leads to the political subordination of the
subject to the objective course of history and to those who claim to have a privileged
understanding of that course.
V
The tradition of scientific Marxism is blind to the issue of fetishism. If fetishism is
taken as a starting point, then the concept of science can only be negative, critical and self-
critical. If social relations exist in the form of relations between things, it is impossible to
say I have knowledge of reality, simply because the categories through which one
apprehends reality are historically specific categories which are part of that reality. We can
proceed only by criticising, by criticising the reality and the categories through which we
apprehend that reality. Criticism inevitably means self-criticism.
In the tradition of scientific Marxism, criticism does not play a central role. Certainly
there is criticism in the sense of denunciation of the evils of capitalism; but there is no
criticism in the sense of the genetic criticism of identity. To be blind to fetishism is to take
fetishised categories at face value, to take fetishised categories without question into ones
own thought. Nowhere has this been more disastrous in the tradition of orthodox Marxism
than in the assumption that the state could be seen as the centre point of social power. A
Marxism that is blind to the question of fetishism is inevitably a fetishised Marxism.
[11]

The core of orthodox Marxism is the attempt to enlist certainty on our side. This
attempt is fundamentally misconceived: certainty can only be on the other side, the side of
domination. Our struggle is inherently and profoundly uncertain. This is so because
certainty is conceivable only on the basis of the reification of social relations. It is possible
to speak of the laws of motion of society only to the extent that social relations take the
form of relations between things.
[12]
Non-fetishised, self-determining social relations
would not be law-bound. The understanding of capitalist society as being bound by laws is
valid to the extent, but only to the extent, that relations between people really are thing-
ified. If we argue that capitalism can be understood completely through the analysis of its
laws of motion, then we say at the same time that social relations are completely
fetishised. But if social relations are completely fetishised, how can we conceive of
revolution? Revolutionary change cannot possibly be conceived as following a path of
certainty, because certainty is the very negation of revolutionary change. Our struggle is a
struggle against reification and therefore against certainty.
The great attraction of orthodox Marxism remains its simplicity. It provided an
answer to the revolutionary dilemma: a wrong answer, but at least it was an answer. It
guided the revolutionary movement to great conquests that, in the end of the day, were not
conquests at all, but dreadful defeats. If, however, we abandon the comforting certainties
of orthodoxy, what are we left with? Is our scream not then reduced to the childishly nave
and self-deceptive appeal to the idea of justice, do we not return, as Luxemburg mockingly
101

warned, to that lamentable Rosinante on which the Don Quixotes of history have galloped
towards the great reform of the earth, always to come home with their eyes blackened'?
No, we do not. We return, rather, to the concept of revolution as a question, not as an
answer.
Footnotes

1. See Gunns critique of historical materialism: Gunn (1992)
2. This crude understanding of dialectics is surely at the basis of Negris rejection of
dialectics, for example.
3. For a helpful discussion of this period, see chapter 2 of Smith (1996).
4. The oft cited idea of the organic intellectual introduced by Gramsci makes little
difference in this respect: the organic intellectual is simply one of the more intellectually
developed proletarians who have the task of introducing the correct line into the
proletarian class struggle. See Gramsci (1971), pp. 3-23.
5. Subcomandante Marcos claims that the main lesson which the EZLN (Ejrcito Zapatista
de Liberacin Nacional) learnt from the indigenous inhabitants of the Lacandon Jungle
was to listen: That is the great lesson that the indigenous communities teach to the
original EZLN. The original EZLN, the one that is formed in 1983, is a political
organisation in the sense that it speaks and what it says has to be done. The indigenous
communities teach it to listen, and that is what we learn. The principal lesson that we learn
from the indigenous people is that we have to learn to hear, to listen. (Unpublished
interview with Cristin Calnico Lucio, 11 November 1995, quoted by Holloway (1998) p.
163.
6. On the treatment of class struggle as an of course, see Bonefeld (1991).
7. For a critique of the work of Hirsch in this sense, see Bonefeld (1991) and Holloway
(1991c).
8. Poulantzas, in particular, devoted considerable effort to providing a foundation for a
Marxist political science in the structuralist idea of the relative autonomy of the political.
See particularly Poulantzas (1973).
9. Repeatedly, discussions which begin as a defence of Marxist categories within a
disciplinary perspective lead to a questioning of the disciplinary perspective itself. The
defence of the Marxist concept of value, for example, leads back to an insistence on the
difference between the study of economics and the Marxist critique of economics, and on
the lack of continuity between Ricardo and Marx.
10. An important and influential example of this is regulation theory, which seeks to
understand capitalism in terms of a series of modes of regulation. For a critique, see
Bonefeld and Holloway (1991).
11. For a helpful discussion of the fetishisation of Marxism, in relation to recent Marxist
debates, see Martnez (2000).
12. To reduce freedom to the insight into necessity, to knowledge of the laws of motion of
society, as Engels does, is thus to treat people as objects. This, as Adorno points out, has
had incalculably vast political consequences: see Adorno (1990), p. 249.

102

Cyril Smith
Karl Marx and Religion

Source: Karl Marx and Religion was written for Marx Myths and Legends by
Cyril Smith in March 2005, and rights remain with the author, as per Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives Licence 2.0.

It is vital to understand the meaning of Marx to grasp his ideas in relation to his
development. In this connection, his conception of religion is one of the most important
aspects of his notions.
As early as 1842, he wrote:
I desired there to be less trifling with the label atheism (which reminds one of
children, assuring everyone who is ready to listen to them that they are not afraid of the
bogy man), and that instead the content of philosophy should be brought to the people.
(Letter to Ruge, November 24, 1842.)
It was quite easy to deal with religion by just being against it, but that was not good
enough. Everybody knows that Marx wrote about religion being the opium of the people,
so we shall look at the entire passage from which this comes.
The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not
make man. Religion is indeed the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has
either not yet won through to himself or has already lost himself again. But man is no
abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man, state, society. This
state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world,
because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its
encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point dhonneur, its
enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement and its universal basis of
consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the
human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is therefore
indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.
Religious suffering is at one and the same time the expression of real suffering and a
protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a
heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. (Critique
of Hegels Philosophy of Right. Introduction.)
Everybody thinks that Marx was saying that religion was dope manufactured by the
ruling class to keep the masses happy. The real Marx, however, was concerned with much
more weighty problems. Among other things, he was thinking about how an abstract
human being could exist. He concludes that one could not. Man is the world of man, state,
society, and the conception of God was a necessary conception in an inverted world.
Once the world was right side up, the idea would not be needed. Meanwhile we should pay
attention to it.
The Critique of Hegels Philosophy of Right: Introduction contains Marxs first
mention of the proletariat. His views now took on more critical political-economic ideas,
following Engels brilliant essay, Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy, which Marx
was pleased to publish in the Deutsch-Franzosiche Jahrbuecher. (The trouble with Engels
views on political economy was that this was the limit of his work. See Friedrich Engels
and Marxs Critique of Political Economy, Capital and Class, 62.)
Reading a French translation of James Mills Elements of Political Economy, Marx
takes up Mills banal definition of money as the medium of exchange.
Man becomes the poorer as man, i.e., separated from this mediator, the richer this
mediator becomes. Christ represents originally: 1) men before God; 2) God for men; 3)
men to men. Similarly, money represents originally, in accordance the idea of money: 1)
private property for private property; 2) society for private property; 3) private property for
103

society. But Christ is alienated God and alienated man. God has value only insofar as he
represents Christ, and man has value only insofar as he represents Christ.
Marx is certain that his view of money as the mediator is necessary to comprehend
the situation of the proletariat. Any easy rejection of this view would be as useless as
atheism.
The Paris Manuscripts, penned in 1844, returns to this theme.
Since the real existence of man and nature has become evident in practice, through
sense experience, because man has thus become evident for man as the being of nature,
and nature for man as the being of man, the question about an alien being, about a being
above nature and man -- a question which implies admission of the unreality of nature and
of man -- has become impossible in practice. Atheism, as a negation of God, has no longer
any meaning, and postulates the existence of man through this negation; but socialism as
socialism no longer stands in any need of such a mediation. (MECW, Vol. 3, p. 306.)
At this time, in 1843-4, Marx thought of himself as a follower of Feuerbach. But
even this thinker, beloved of atheists, was not one of them. His target was not so much
religion but theology, the formal study of God, the worst enemy of the awakened spirit.
But, as Marx was to realise, Feuerbach was concerned to awaken man, but as an
isolated individual. Some time in 1845, Marx scribbled eleven Theses on Feuerbach, and
Theses 3, 4 and 6 particularly turn on the questions of religion.
Thesis 4.
Feuerbach starts off from the fact of religious estrangement [Selbstentfremdung], of
the duplication of the world into a religious, imaginary world, and a secular [wetliche] one.
His work consists in resolving the religious world into its secular basis. He overlooks the
fact that after completing this work, the chief thing still remains to be done. For the fact
that the secular basis lifts off from itself and establishes itself in the clouds as an
independent realm can only be explained by the inner strife and intrinsic contradictoriness
of this secular basis. The latter must itself be understood in its contradiction and then, by
the removal of the contradiction, revolutionised. Thus, for instance, once the earthly family
is discovered to be the secret of the holy family, former must itself be annihilated
[vernichtet] theoretically and practically.
Thesis 6.
Feuerbach resolves the essence of religion into the essence of man [menschliche
Wesen = human nature]. But the essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each single
individual. In reality, it is the ensemble of the social relations. Feuerbach, who does not
enter upon a criticism of this real essence is hence obliged:
1. To abstract from the historical process and to define the religious sentiment regarded by
itself, and to presuppose an abstract -- isolated -- human individual.
2. The essence therefore can by him only be regarded as species, as an inner dumb
generality which unites many individuals only in a natural way.

Thesis 7.
Feuerbach consequently does not see that the religious sentiment is itself a social
product, and that the abstract individual that he analyses belongs in reality to a particular
social form.
Marx, in these brief summaries, has thus cleared out of the way Feuerbachs
treatment of the human individual. His awakening of man is seen to be as a social atom,
and not what Marx is striving for.
Let us jump now to Marxs chief work, which took much more than his lifetime to
complete. (Its completion, by the proletarian revolution, is not yet achieved!) We begin
with a quote from the Grundrisse, the first attempt at a critique of political economy as a
whole.
"An example in the religious sphere is Christ the mediator between God and man -
mere instrument of circulation between them - becomes their unity, God-man, and as such
104

becomes more important than God; the saints more important than Christ; the priests more
important than the saints. (Grundrisse, MECW, Vol. 29, p. 257.)
This return to our familiar theme, is part of the exposition of Marxs of his
explanation of the central importance of money.
But his treatment of this notion in Capital is not the same as that we have seen in the
other extracts.
The religious reflections of the real world can, in any case, vanish only when the
practical relations of everyday life between man and man, and man and nature, generally
present themselves to him in a transparent and rational form. The veil is not removed from
the countenance of the social life-process, i.e. the process of material production, until it
becomes production by freely associated men, and stands under their conscious and
planned control. This, however, requires that society possess a material foundation, or a
series of material conditions of existence, which in their turn are the natural and
spontaneous product of a long and tormented historical development. (Capital, p. 173.)
Here, Marx brings together his views on religion and his historical view of the
communist revolution and the growth of production generally. He relates religion to the
effort to unite human beings without really understanding the sweeping historical forces
which have separated them.
One more quotation, from a piece of Capital, the so-called Sixth Chapter, omitted
from Volume 1, maintains this historical outlook.
This antagonistic stage cannot be avoided, any more than it is possible for man to
avoid the stage in which his spiritual energies are given a religious definition as powers
independent of himself. What we are confronted by here is the alienation [Entfremdung] of
man from his own labour. (Capital, p. 990.)
Here, Marx has set out his conception of religion in the light of his notion of the
stages of history as a whole. First, humans see themselves as a local community, with their
local gods. Then, in the era of money and exploitation, God Almighty rules over all.
Finally, there is no use for Him, as humans freely govern their own lives.

105

Z. A. Jordan
The Origins of Dialectical Materialism

Source: From Z.A. Jordans book The Evolution of Dialectical Materialism,
published by Macmillan, 1967. This chapter of the book is reproduced for non-
commercial, educational purposes only, and no permission is granted to reproduce the text.

In the history of Marxian thought the publication of Anti-Dhring (Herrn Eugen
Dhrings Umwalzung der Wissenschaft) turned out to be an epoch-making event.
Originally planned as a polemical tract with a narrowly defined objective of no more than
transitory importance,
[1]
Anti-Dhring gained the distinction of being the canonical
statement of the doctrine which came to be known as dialectical materialism and acquired
great renown all over the world. Engels is the founder of dialectical materialism but he
never used its now familiar name, calling it simply modern materialism. While he saw its
modernity in being dialectical,
[2]
that is, in the application of dialectics to the phenomenon
of nature, he left it to Plekhanov and Lenin to coin the new term dialectical materialism.
[3]

Although the term dialectical materialism is of later origin, there is no doubt that
the oldest and most authoritative exposition of the doctrine itself is to be found in Anti-
Dhring. Dialectics of Nature, published posthumously only in 1925, is another important
source of our knowledge about dialectical materialism. But while Anti-Dhring gives a
text fully approved and twice revised by Engels himself, Dialectics of Nature is only a
collection of fragments, notes, and other materials for private use, accumulated by Engels
in the years 1873-83 in preparation for a book which he never managed to complete.
[4]

Therefore, it is Anti-Dhring rather than Dialectics of Nature that should be regarded as
Engelss fully considered formulation of dialectical materialism. The commonly accepted
view that Engels wrote Anti-Dhring in close collaboration with Marx has considerably
enhanced its authority and reputation.
I. The Significance of Anti-Dhring
In the spring of 1876, in response to the pressing demands of his political friends in
Germany,
[5]
Engels finally decided to settle accounts with Eugen Dhring (1833-1921),
Marxs detractor and short-lived rival for the intellectual leadership within the German
Social Democratic Party. While feeling duty-bound to face Dhrings challenge, Engels
was also disgruntled and in private complaining to Marx of having to go after the scalp of
the boring Eugen Dhring.
[6]

In the Preface to the first edition of Anti-Dhring Engels emphasized that his book
was by no means the fruit of any inner urge. He undertook the task of refuting Dhrings
new socialist theory only because it was imperative to prevent sectarian quarrels and
splits from developing within the Party. The popularity of Dhring was symptomatic of the
revival of utopian socialism which replaced the materialistic basis of socialism by
modern mythology with its goddesses of Justice, Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.
[7]

Since Marx and he had tried to emancipate the German workers from sentimentality and
socialistic day-dreams for decades, they could not allow some muddleheads to influence
the leaders of German socialism with their silly, stale, and reactionary utopianism.
However, he undertook the polemical task reluctantly, for Dhring was not a serious
opponent and on his account he was forced to neglect more important work. Although
Engels thought that his exposure of Herr Dhrings banalities and sublime nonsense,
necessary as it appeared at that time, would soon become useless and fall into oblivion,
two more editions of Anti-Dhring were published before Engels died in 1895 and many
more after that date.
[8]

106

Engels clearly had no inkling that his polemical examination of Dhrings views
would make history. The opponents of Engels in his dispute with Dhring were no more
perspicacious. When Anti-Dhring first began appearing in the Vorwarts by instalments,
some of its readers described it as completely without interest and the annual congress of
the German Social Democratic Party, held in Gotha in May 1877, nearly decided to
suppress it altogether. Anti-Dhring was saved from being withdrawn from further
publication by the transfer from the main columns to a theoretical supplement of Vorwarts.
[9]

From its first publication Anti-Dhring gained the reputation of being, next to The
Communist Manifesto, the most successful work that came- as it has been believed- from
the pen of Marx and Engels. Moreover, it is widely accepted that no book except Capital
has done as much as Anti-Dhring for the dissemination of Marxian thought. Antonio
Labriola called it the most accomplished and the un-excelled book in the literature of
socialism.
[10]
According to Lenin, Anti-Dhring is a wonderfully rich and instructive
book.
[11]
For Plekhanov the first part of Anti-Dhring was the main and the most
authoritative source from which the philosophical views of Marx and Engels could be
learnt.
[12]
Karl Kautsky conceded that Capital was an altogether more powerful book but
added that only owing to Anti-Dhring did we learn to read and understand Capital the
right way.
[13]
As Engels himself observed, Anti-Dhring provided the most detailed
account of historical materialism;
[14]
it has remained, ever since, one of the most
authoritative. Few people, if any, who are interested in the views of Marx and Engels
would disagree with Bertrand Russells opinion that the clearest statements of the
materialist conception of history are to be found in Anti-Dhring.
The passage of time has confirmed these impressions and views about Anti-Dhring.
As his biographer Gustav Mayer observed, what Engels considered as a thankless task
turned out to be the decisive blow for the conversion of Continental social democracy to
Marxism. In Anti-Dhring the original views of Marx and Engels were revealed for the
first time in simple and lucid language to a whole generation of social democratic leaders,
writers and thinkers, to men like Bebel, Bernstein, and Kautsky in Germany, Plekhanov
and P. B. Axelrod in Russia, Victor Adler in Austria, Labriola and Turati in Italy. Only
upon the publication of Anti-Dhring were a real Marxian school and a real Marxian
tradition created on the Continent of Europe.
[15]
Furthermore, at the suggestion of Paul
Lafargue, Marxs son-in-law, Engels extracted three chapters, the most relevant and free
from polemics, from Anti-Dhring, which Lafargue translated into French and published
in La Revue Socialiste and under separate cover in 1880. This pamphlet, known in its
English version under the title Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, caused, to Engelss
delight, a real revolution in the heads of the French.
[16]
It was translated in its authors
lifetime into ten languages and became as famous and widely read as The Communist
Manifesto. While the circumstances to which Anti-Dhring owes its existence have long
been forgotten, the book has not lost its significance many years after its publication, but
continues to be read and, rightly or wrongly, is a recognized source of knowledge of
Marxian theories.
2. The Prevailing View of the Intellectual Partnership of Marx and Engels
Dialectical materialism as formulated in Anti-Dhring has been traditionally
regarded as the common product of Marx and Engels.
[17]
Some contemporary writers go
even further and attribute dialectical materialism to Marx exclusively. According to G. A.
Wetter, Marx may be considered as the founder of dialectical materialism.
[18]
In the
opinion of Henri Levebvre, the extension of la dialectique concrete a la nature was
accomplished by Marx and only followed by Engels under Marxs close supervision and
approval.
[19]
While eschewing this extreme point of view, others firmly dismissed as
groundless the idea that Marx and Engels could differ in their views concerning the
problems of the philosophy of nature.
[20]

107

The only justification of the traditional belief that Anti-Dhring represents not only
Engelss but also Marxs Naturphilosophie comes from Engels himself.
I must note in passing that inasmuch as the mode of outlook expounded in this book
was founded and developed in far greater measure by Marx, and only in an insignificant
degree by myself, it was understood between us that this exposition of mine should not be
issued without his knowledge. I read the whole manuscript to him before it was printed
and the tenth chapter of the part of economics (From the Critical History) was written by
Marx. ... As a matter of fact, we had always been accustomed to helping each other out in
special subjects.
[21]

It is easy to understand why Engelss account has been accepted uncritically by
practically everybody. Engelss statement in Anti-Dhring merely brought out with
specific reference to a particular issue what people had always felt to have been the case in
general, namely, that the views of Marx and Engels were without exception absolutely the
same.
Franz Mehring emphasized the identity of thought and intellectual development of
Marx and Engels and Gustav Mayer followed in his footsteps.
[22]
Heinrich Cunow was
confident that Engels wrote nothing without the approval of Marx, who was even in the
habit of seeing the proof sheets of what Engels was about to publish.
[23]
M. M. Bober, an
American scholar, wrote that the two friends thought and worked together and it would be
impossible to dissever the thoughts of one from those of the other. Even if the task were
possible, it is doubtful whether it would yield fruitful results.
[24]
Both friends and foes,
and among the former, persons as different as Karl Kautsky, Plekhanov, Lenin, Karl
Vorlander, or Sir Isaiah Berlin are in full agreement that, as Kautsky put it, the totality of
Marxs and Engelss literary production constitutes a spiritual union (eine geistige
Einheit).
[25]
According to Vorlander, from 1845
[26]
Engelss philosophical development
was interlinked in every respect with that of Marx and they could no longer be
differentiated. Marxs philosophical views may be inferred from those of Engels and what
Engels said about his friends contribution and assistance behind the scene is inherently
reliable.
[27]
This must also have been the belief of Lenin, who in his essay Karl Marx drew
almost exclusively upon the works of Engels to outline Marxs conception of materialism
and dialectics. R. N. Carew Hunt described Anti-Dhring in Lenins manner as the best
general exposition of Marxs philosophical views,
[28]
and Sir Isaiah Berlin went even
further, for he claimed that Engels understood his friends new, only half articulated ideas
sometimes better than he understood them himself.
[29]
It is clear from this wide range of
opinions that according to the common implicitly or explicitly accepted assumptions one
cannot and should not differentiate the views of Marx from those of Engels, for those
views were perfectly identical. The two friends were intellectually twin brothers whose
achievements constitute a living unity.
There is no reason to dispute the fact that during Marxs lifetime Engels, with his
knack of writing quickly and clearly and with his talent for popular exposition, often
interpreted Marxs main doctrines. It is right to emphasize that frequently it was owing to
Engels that others first came to understand how Marx viewed the course of history and
what inferences he drew from his interpretations. After Marxs death the authority of
Engels, Marxs lifelong friend and editor of his manuscripts, increased enormously.
Engelss likeable character, his admirable honesty and humanity, his unswerving loyalty to
Marx, his intellectual honesty and common sense, implicitly induced trust and confidence
in his testimony. He considered himself and was recognised by others as the faithful and
rightful guardian of Marxs original thought. This does not necessarily provide the
guarantee that Marxs thought is to be found authentically in Engels writings. The fact
that Engels was the recognized interpreter of Marxs system and that he was also a writer
in his own right prompts the re-examination of the whole question concerning Engelss
intellectual relationship to Marx.
108

3. Engelss Tradition in the Interpretation of Marx
It was Sidney Hook who in the early thirties challenged the accepted opinion that
from the beginning of their personal, intellectual, and literary friendship the views of Marx
and Engels were identical. Considering the indisputable fact that they were minds of a
different order, the alleged identity of views is highly implausible. In a letter to J. P.
Becker, Engels frankly confessed that in Marxs lifetime I played second fiddle.
[30]
He
wrote to Franz Mehring with his unfailing and self-revealing modesty that Marx was a
man with a more rapid coup doeil and wider vision than himself. If after Marxs death
he was given more credit than he deserved, history will set this right in the end. Engels
felt sure that:
What Marx accomplished, I would not have achieved. Marx stood higher, saw
further, and took a wider and quicker view than all the rest of us. Marx was a genius, we
others were at best talented.
[31]

Engels never tired of emphasizing that it was owing to Marx alone that socialism
became a science. Marx made the two great discoveries, namely, he revealed the secrets
of capitalist production in his theory of surplus-value and formulated the materialist
conception of history. Although the second of these discoveries was attributed to both
Marx and Engels, Engels claimed for himself only a very insignificant share and publicly
and consistently discounted any suggestions to the contrary. The greater part of its leading
basic principles in the realm of economics and history and their final trenchant
formulations belonged to Marx; he limited his own share to their elaboration and
application. Similarly, The Condition of the Working Class in England represented only
one phase of the embryonic evolution of modern socialism which was since [then] fully
developed as a science, chiefly and almost exclusively through the efforts of Marx.
Notwithstanding Marxs appreciative references to The Condition of the Working Class in
England and Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy Engels held unflinchingly to the
position that what I contributed... Marx could very well have done without me.
[32]

Engelss self-effacement may have been exaggerated and was actually excessive.
That Engels was Marxs intellectual inferior is a fact, however, of which not only Engels
himself was aware but which was also recognized by others, including some of the greatest
admirers of Engels.
[33]
On the other hand, there is no reason to believe that because Engels
had neither the inventive genius nor the deep historical and social insight of Marx, they
were divided by a gulf of more important differences of opinion. On the whole, it is
enough to assume, as Hook did, that Engels gave a characteristic twist to the doctrine of
Marx.
[34]

The emphasis given by Engels to Marxian thought consists in viewing it as a
monistic system concerned with the ultimate constituents and laws of the universe rather
than as an application of a unified method. Thus, for instance, Engels gave final currency
to the belief that Capital was an exposition of a system of political economy, and not a
critical, sociological, and historical analysis of a particular socio-economic formation,
undertaken from the standpoint of the class-conscious proletariat of Western Europe and,
above all, eine Streitschrift, as Eduard Bernstein put it. In philosophy, a similar shift was
accomplished, for Marx, who, after his break with Hegel, was uninterested in academic
metaphysics and the theory of knowledge , was presented by Engels as a supporter of
dialectical materialism and naive realism. But Marx did not embrace Engelss modern
materialism; neither did he accept Engelss theory about sensations being images or copies
of the objects of the external world. These doctrines are incompatible with the views to be
found in Marxs works, with his naturalistic activism and the conception of sensations as
forms of practical, sensory activity.
[35]

If Engels had never published Anti-Dhring, and this might easily have happen
considering the circumstances of its publication, nobody would have regarded Marx as a
dialectical materialist in Engelss sense. Marxs own works do not contain the basic
assumptions of dialectical materialism and do not justify the application of this label to
109

their author. As has been mentioned earlier, apart from Engelss account in the Preface to
the second edition of Anti-Dhring, which was written and published after Marxs death,
there is no other evidence that Marx dissociated history from nature or differentiated
between dialectical and historical materialism and regarded the former as logically
prior to the latter.
Marx did not disavow the responsibility for the views expounded by Engels, but he
need not have seen any necessity for doing so; he might have felt that there was no danger
of a work of Engels being construed as an exposition of his own philosophical beliefs. In
the Preface to the first edition of Anti-Dhring, published in Marxs lifetime, Engels said
that the criticism of Dhrings philosophy gave him the opportunity to set forth my views
on controversial issues which are today of quite general scientific and practical interest.
[36]
He suggested nowhere that what he wrote committed Marx in any way. Quite a
different problem is the question as to what was Marxs opinion about Engelss peculiar
combination of science and speculative philosophy, and the most plausible answer is that
Marx did not trouble to make up his mind about it. At that time Marx was entirely
engrossed in his own work, above all in the completion of the remaining volumes of
Capital, which increasingly prevented him from becoming interested in matters unrelated
to his main task.
In 1873 Marxs health began deteriorating seriously and there was constant fear that
he might suffer a stroke. Although Marx temporarily rallied his ebbing strength, thanks to
an extended medical treatment, annual visits to the seaside and Karlsbad, a complete
recovery was never achieved. Having completed the second edition of the first volume of
Capital (1872) and the editing of its French translation (1875), he kept up his vast
correspondence but wrote practically nothing apart from short articles. In 1878, that is, the
year of the first publication of Anti-Dhring, Marx suffered a relapse of bad health and
was able to do no more work, even on Capital (the last revisions and editions incorporated
in the second volume of Capital date from 1878). About the same time the anxiety
concerning his wife, who was suffering from cancer, began in earnest. Frau Marx died in
December 1881 and, as Engels said, on the day of her death the Moor also died.
[37]
One
year later (January 1883) Marx suffered the second painful blow, the sudden death of his
eldest daughter Jenny Longuet.
There were, therefore, ample reasons why Marx should have showed little interest in
what Engels was doing, especially since at first they both regarded a reply to Dhring as a
task too unimportant to be bothered about. There is really no need to explain why Marx
allegedly acquiesced in the attribution of Engelss doctrine to him, for no such attribution
was actually made during his lifetime. Marx was probably entirely unaware, and he had
every right to be so, of the implications which were to be drawn from Anti-Dhring with
respect to his own philosophical beliefs.
The fully developed division of the theory of Marxism into dialectical materialism
(providing the most general assumptions and procedures) and historical materialism (based
on dialectical materialism and applying its laws to the study of society and history) can be
found only in Marxism-Leninism, that is, in Lenins interpretation of the doctrine
attributed to him by Marx and Engels. But many basic Leninist ideas are contained in their
rudimentary form in Anti-Dhring or are based upon the views of Engels expounded in
this work. In particular, contrary to the views of some exponents, Engels tried to deduce
dialectics of society from dialectics of nature and to provide the communist world outlook
with a Naturphilosophie.
[38]
In the Preface to the second edition of Anti-Dhring Engels
confessed that his work contained more than he originally intended to say. He realized post
factum that in his examination and refutation of Dhrings doctrine his negative criticism
became positive and that the polemic was transformed into a more or less connected
exposition of the communist world outlook. This comprehensive system which, in his
opinion, was the common property of Marx and himself, comprised the views presented to
the world in The Poverty of Philosophy, The Communist Manifesto, and Capital as well as
110

some positive conceptions developed alongside the polemic against the philosophy of
Dhring.
[39]
The latter ranged over a vast area of subjects, both practical and scientific,
and dealt, to use Engelss own words, with everything under the sun and with some others
as well. As he frankly conceded, he followed Dhring into realms where at best he could
only claim to be a dilettante and had to exercise great caution.
[40]
Engels was aware
that he went further than he originally planned. He knew that he overreached himself and
was uneasy about it, although later his self-criticism gave way to the pleasure which the
success of Anti-Dhring aroused in the authors breast.
Notwithstanding Engelss original uneasiness, Anti-Dhring became the main source
of knowledge about the philosophy of Marx and Engels. Unintentionally and somewhat
unknowingly Engels established the tradition which ascribed to Marx a coherent monistic
system of materialistic metaphysics in the accepted sense of this term, comprising a
philosophy of nature, a theory of society, and a view of history, all three derived from a
common set of first principles and logically supporting each other. Anti-Dhring is the
original and most important source of this tradition and, in particular, of the false belief
that the materialist conception of history is closely connected with or deducible from
philosophic materialism.
It was in this way that at the turn of the century Anti-Dhring was read by the first
generation of students and followers of Marx. As its name already shows, wrote
Bernstein, the materialistic conception of history closely hangs together with a materialist
world outlook.
[41]
The same view was voiced by Ludwig Woltmann, who claimed that
historical materialism is only a special application of dialectical materialism to the history
of mankind, for history itself should be conceived as a segment of the universal natural
process (Naturprozess).
[42]
Plekhanov conceded that the general public often used the
term Marxism to refer to historical materialism, but he asserted that this was not correct
and that historical materialism cannot be separated from philosophical materialism to be
found fairly fully set forth, although in a polemical form, in the first part of Engelss book
Herrn Eugen Dhrings Umwalzung der Wissenschaft.
[43]
It has rightly been said that the
doctrine of Marxism, as understood by Plekhanov, came into being in the period
separating the death of Marx from that of Engels.
[44]
Engelss philosophy was taken to be
a faithful presentation of Marxs original views and acquired the status of Marxian
orthodoxy.
Engelss interpretation of Marx, later codified by Lenin and Stalin into the canonical
doctrine of so-called Marxism or Marxism-Leninism, was, however, subject to some
important revisions. In the early twenties Georg Lukacs maintained that when Engels
extended Marxian dialectics outside the realm of history and society, he misunderstood
Marx entirely.
[45]
About the same time Karl Korsch argued that Marxs historical
materialism did not need the support of philosophical materialism or even of the
materialism expounded by Engels in Anti-Dhring.
[46]
Similarly, a few years later Sidney
Hook claimed that Marx did not conceive of dialectical materialism as a doctrine of nature,
distinct from a theory of society and history, for the attempt to apply the dialectics to
nature was incompatible with his basic position.
[47]
Sidney Hook was supported by
Bertrand Russell and, more recently, by a number of other scholars and historians.
[48]
If
the view of these writers is essentially correct and Anti-Dhring does not provide a
substantially true account of Marxs philosophy, the question arises as to how Marxs
philosophic position should still be described.
4. The Naturalism of Marx and the Dialectical Materialism of Engels
Marx believed that man is an object of nature; that his mind or soul is not a
supernatural entity; that there is an essential unity of mind and body; and that human
behaviour can be explained by means of empirical hypotheses to be tested by the
procedure accepted in natural science. But these beliefs do not make of Marx a dialectical
materialist, nor even a materialist in the usual sense of the word unless naturalism and
materialism are considered identical.
111

Naturalism is usually defined as the view which regards mind as part of nature and
demands that it should be investigated by the same method as that applied to other parts of
nature. This brief statement is not incorrect but it does not do justice to all essential beliefs
of naturalism and might lead to the confusion of materialism and naturalism.
Naturalism comprises a cosmological and methodological component.
[49]
As a
cosmological doctrine, naturalism claims the self-sufficiency of nature, rejects the primacy
of mind, accepts ontological pluralism, and emphasises the basic significance of the
categories of time, space, and causality for the knowledge of the world. As a
methodological conception, naturalism asserts that we can have reliable knowledge only of
such objects as can be investigated by scientific method. Scientific method is not identified
with the procedures applied in physics or biology, but with certain accredited ways or
standard procedures of acquiring knowledge, such as observation, experiment, and
inference, of which different sciences make use in different ways, determined by the
subject-matter and the technical means available. As a rule the naturalist combines the
methodological conception of naturalism with some naturalistic cosmological principles
which expose him to the objection of being a concealed materialist. Marx has constantly
been described as a materialist, a name which he himself did not renounce and did not
wish to disclaim, and contemporary naturalism is often criticized for disguising its true
nature by using a misleading name.
[50]

The methodological premises of naturalism imply that human behaviour can be
adequately explained in terms of causal laws of the same sort as those which govern the
conjunction and sequence of natural phenomena, without resorting to the teleological order
of events, to ideals, values, spirit, or normative standards. To accept the existence of only
such objects as can be studied by scientific method does not necessarily imply
metaphysical materialism. It is important to realize this distinction although it was not
clearly made and applied in the times of Marx; Marx himself used materialism and
naturalism synonymously, perhaps because he defined materialism as the opposite of
Hegelian spiritualism, that is, as the view which denies the independent existence of mind
without matter.
While materialism, in some sense of the term, may be a true doctrine, it can never be
known to be true. On the other hand, while materialism may be false, it can never be
disproved. Since naturalism is compatible with both the truth and falsehood of
materialism, naturalism cannot imply materialism and still less be identical with it, as
some philosophers seem to believe. Naturalism is not a metaphysical but rather an
epistemological and methodological doctrine. It is a systematic reflection upon the
procedures applied in the acquisition of knowledge about the world and not a system of
beliefs concerning the ultimate constituents of the world.
If the naturalism of Marx should be differentiated from the dialectical materialism of
Engels, the problem arises as to how the latter emerged from the former. To answer this
question, the problem has first to be extended. Naturalism is closely related to positivism
and clearly opposed to metaphysics or speculative philosophy. To regard Marx as a
naturalist philosopher seems to militate, therefore against the accepted view of Marx being
deeply affected by Hegel and sharply critical of Comte and positivism. On the other hand,
dialectical materialism is hostile to positivism and favourably disposed to speculative
philosophy. This particular combination of intellectual attitudes appears in turn to be
incompatible with the view that Engels is the founder of dialectical materialism, for he is,
or is widely considered to be, a positivist rather than a Hegelian.
In order to disentangle this intricate cluster of conflicting influences and intellectual
loyalties, the impact of Hegelianism and French positivism upon Marx and Engels has to
be re-examined. There is much evidence that in their formative years both Marx and
Engels were affected by these two schools of thought, which at the time were the major
centres of philosophical attraction. While the examination of the relation of Marx and
Engels to Hegelianism and positivism has an inherent interest of its own, it also affords an
112

occasion for defining and explaining the important differences in their respective
philosophical positions. It may also help towards an understanding of how dialectical
materialism, a conception essentially alien to the philosophy of Marx, emerged from and
replaced the naturalism of Marx.
Historically, the incompatibility of naturalism and positivism on the one hand and
Hegelianism on the other is not as unquestionable as it might appear. F. A. Hayek
introduced the term Hegelian positivism to denote a trend among those thinkers- Ernest
Renan and Hippolyte Taine in France, Marx and Engels in Germany, Benedetto Croce in
Italy, John Dewey in the United States- who succeeded in combining the ideas derived
from Hegel and Comte.
[51]
Hegelian positivism is an apt expression to designate
Engelss dialectical materialism. As presented in Anti-Dhring, dialectical materialism
combines the elements of three different trends of thought, namely, the naturalism of
Marx, Hegelian philosophy, and French positivism. The contribution of each of these
trends to the final outcome has to be examined before the historical development and
logical analysis of dialectical materialism are undertaken.

Notes
1. Engels exclaimed, I have him on the hip now, when at the planning stage he outlined
the content of Anti-Dhring and disclosed the tactics which he intended to follow in
rewarding Dhring according to his just deserts. See Engels letter to Marx of 28 May
1876.
2. Engels, AD, p. 39.
3. Plekhanov, Zu Hegels sechzigsten Todestag (SAHD), originally published in Neue Zeit
in 1891, and Foreword to the Russian translation of Engelss Ludwig Feuerbach (FNLF),
published in 1892. For the first time, Lenin used the expression dialectical materialism in
What the Friends of the People Are, published in 1894.
4. As Engels himself imformed us, since Marxs death his time was required for more
urgent duties, that is, the publication and republication of the works and manuscripts left
by Marx, above all, of the remaining volumes of Capital, and Engels was thus compelled
to lay aside his own studies. Although he hoped that he would return to them one day, the
opportunity never materialised. See Engels, AD, p. 19.
5. In the Special Introduction to the English edition of Socialism: Utopian and Scientific,
Engels explained the political reasons why it became necessary to take up the gauntlet
thrown down to us [i.e. By Dhring], and to fight out the struggle whether we liked it or
not.
6. Engelss letter to Marx of 28 May 1876.
7. Marxs letter to F.A.Sorge of 19 October 1877.
8. Originally Anti-Dhring appeared in Vorwrts, the central organ of the united German
Social Democratic Party. The first instalment was published in January 1877, and the last
in July 1878, one and a half years later. As a separate book the first edition of Anti-
Dhring appeared in 1878, the second in 1885, and the third in 1894.
9. F. Mehring, Karl Marx, p. 512. The scandal caused by Anti-Dhring within the German
Social Democratic Party was not restricted to Dhrings supporters. Many people were
shocked by the violence of Engelss language and the content of his attack upon the blind
Privatdozent at Berlin University who publicly defended socialism and was persecuted by
the authorities for this heinous crime. It was widely believed at that time that Dhring
suffered persecution only because of his political convictions and Engels himself rose to
his defence in the Preface to the second edition of AD. According to K. Vorlander, Karl
Marx, pp. 251-2, this was not, however, the case. The ostensible reason why the University
Senate deprived Dhring of veniam legendi was because of his offensive attacks on
Helmholtz and other Berlin scientists. Apparently there was not other path for the Senate
to take, since at that time Dhrings alleged conceit rose to the height of a megalomaniac
delusion. Whatever the true reasons responsible for Dhrings loss of his Privatdozentur at
113

Berlin University were, his scholastic reputation was considerable - no lesser man than
Ernst Mach spoke highly of him in Science of Mechanics (Preface to the first German
edition) - and Engelss malice was both out of place and unjustifiable. When it came to
defending Marx against his opponents, the kind, gentle, and modest Engels was quite
capable of outdoing his friend in sarcasm, irony, invective, and ridicule.
10. A. Labriola, Socialism and Philosophy, pp. 24 and 53.
11. Lenin, Frederick Engels, CW 2, p.25.
12. Plekhanov, FPM, p.3. Lenin repeated this evaluation in Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of
the Death of Joseph Dietzgen, CW 19, p. 79.
13. K. Kautsky, Aus der Fr&uum;l;hzeit des Marxismus, p. 15.
14. Engelss letter to J. Bloch of 21 September 1890.
15. G. Mayer, Friedrich Engels, Bd. 2, p. 285. Cf. D. Riazanov, Karl Marx and Friedrich
Engels, p. 210.
16. Engelss letter to E. Bernstein of 8 August 1882. See E. Bernstein, Die Briefe von
Friedrich Engels an Eduard Bernstein, p. 75. The German version had the title Die
Entwicklung des Socializmus von der Utopie zur Wissenschaft and was first published in
1883 with the year 1882 on the cover page. It was preceded by a Polish translation which
appeared in Geneva the same year as the French. The English translation was first
published in 1892.
17. See, e.g., Lenin, MEC, pp. 19, 246; Sombart, Der proletarische Socializmus, Bd. I, pp.
122-6, 212.
18. G. A. Wetter. DM, p. 40. Wetter changed his view entirely in Die Umkehrung Hegels,
pp. 28-38.
19. H. Lefebvre, Le Materialisme dialectique, p. 90.
20. See, e.g., D. Joravsky, Soviet Marxism and Natural Science, p. 6.
21. Engels, AD, p. 14.
22. F. Mehring, Karl Marx, p. 231; G. Mayer, Friedrich Engels, Bd. I, pp. 172-3, 226-7.
Cf L. Woltmann, Der historische Materialismus, pp. 212, 293.
23. H. Cunow, Die Marxsche Geschichts-, Gesellschafts- und Staatstheorie, Bd. I,
Vorwart.
24. M. M. Bober, Karl Marxs Interpretation of History, Preface.
25. K. Kautsky, Aus der Frhzeit des Marxismus, p. 395.
26. This qualification is important for such of Engelss publications as Outlines of a
Critique of Political Economy (1844) and The Conditions of the Working Class in England
(1845) make it clear that Engels was at first ahead of Marx. It was Engels, says Gustav
Mayer, who opened Marxs eyes to the facts of economic life.
27. K. Vorlander, Kant und Marx, pp. 66-67.
28. R. N. C. Hunt, The Theory and Practice of Communism, p. 37.
29. I. Berlin, Karl Marx, p. 101.
30. Engelss letter to J. P. Becker of 15 October 1884.
31. Engelss letter to F. Mehring of 14 July 1893; LF, p. 349 n. See also Engelss letter to
E. Bernstein of 14 March 1883, and to F. A. Sorge of 15 March 1883.
32. Engels, HCL, pp. 311-122; LF, pp. 324, 349 n.; Preface to the English edition of CWC,
p. 22; Marx, CPE, pp. 13-14; Werke, Bd. 19, p. 181.
33. See, e.g., Lenin, Frederick Engels, CW 2, p. 26; M. Eastman, Marx and Lenin, p. 27;
G. Mayer, Friedrich Engels, Bd. 2, pp. 351-2.
34. S. Hook, Towards the Understanding of Karl Marx, pp. 29. Cf. Bocheriski, SDM, p.
22, first published in 1950, where a similar view is expressed.
35. S. Hook, Towards the Understanding of Karl Marx, pp. 29-33. Cf. M. Adler, Marx als
Denker, p. 129.
36. Engels, AD, p. 10.
37. F. Mehring, Karl Marx, pp. 501, 526-8; D. Riazanov, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels,
pp. 205-6.
114

38. See, e.g., G. Mayer, Friedrich Engels, Bd. 2, p.323. Mayer argued that Communism
had a cosmic and metaphysical meaning for Fourier but not for Engels, who, accepting the
possibility of a thermal death of the universe, was a cosmic pessimist. On this account
Engels was allegedly unwilling to speculate about the constitution of the universe and to
establish his historical and social theories on the foundations of a philosophy of nature.
39. Engels, AD, p. 10.
40. Ibid., p. 12; Engelss letter to Marx of 28 May 1876.
41. E. Bernstein, Zur Geschichte und Theorie des Sozialismus, p. 323.
42. L. Woltmann, Der historische Materialismus, p. 264.
43. Plekhanov, FPM, pp. 1-2.
44. G. Lichtheim, Marxism, p. 235.
45. G. Lukacs, Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein, p. 17.
46. K. Korsch, Karl Marx, pp. 167-71, where the main conclusions of his Marxismus und
Philosophie, first published in 1922, are summarized.
47. S. Hook, From Hegel to Marx, pp. 75-76.
48. B. Russell, Freedom versus Organisation, ch. xviii; H. Marcuse, Reason and
Revolution, p. 314; J.-Y. Calvez, La Pense de Karl Marx, pp. 374-82, 408, 416; L.
Kolakowski, Karol Marks I klasyczna definicja prawdy, pp. 46-54; L. Landgrebe, Das
Problem der Dialektik, pp. 50-51; I. Fetscher, Das Verhltnis des Marxismus zu Hegel,
p. 94; J.-P. Sartre, Critique de la raison dialectique, tome I, p. 129; R. C. Tucker,
Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx, p. 183; G. Lichtheim, Marxism, pp. 245-6.
49. For a more detailed discussion of the distinctive characteristics of naturalism see R. W.
Sellars, Realism, Naturalism, and Humanism, in particular p. 274, and E. Nagel, Logic
without Metaphysics, pp. 7-9.
50. See, e.g., C. J. Ducasse, Nature, Mind and Death, pp. 219-22; M. Farber, Naturalism
and Subjectivism, p. 3.
51. F. A. Hayek, The Counter-Revolution of Science, pp. 194, 204.

115

Maximilien Rubel
The Legend of Marx, or Engels the founder

Source: Rubel originally prepared his Gesichtspunkte zum thema Engels als
Begrnder as a paper in German for the Internationale wissenschaftliche Engels-
Konferenz of May 1970 in Wuppertal, but first published it in French in 1972 as La
Lgende de Marx ou Engels fondateur in tudes de Marxology, Srie S, No. 5.
Socialisme : Science et Ethique. This version is translated from the French by Rob Lucas
for Marx Myths and Legends and is covered by the Creative Commons Attribution-
NonCommercial-NoDerivatives Licence 2.0.

Note from the author
In May 1970, upon the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the birth of Friedrich
Engels, the town of Wuppertal had organised an international scientific conference. This
occasion brought together around 50 specialists from more than 10 European countries, as
well as Israel and the United States whose task was to take stock of modern research on
the thought of he who is universally taken to be, alongside his friend Karl Marx, one of the
founders of Marxism. Invited to participate in this conference, I intended to submit as a
text for the discussion a series of critical theses centred on the theme of Engelss
responsibility for the genesis of the dominant ideology of the 20th century: Marxism. It
had seemed to me normal and urgent to share my critical reservations, in the context of a
more scientific than commemorative event, to an audience informed of the problems in
the evolution of ideas in relation to the events and upheavals that have marked the 20th
Century. I had therefore presented the organisers a document in 8 points, written in
German, which I had titled Gesichtspunkte zum thema Engels als Begrnder.
To my surprise, upon arrival in Wuppertal, I was received by the conference officials
who informed me of a certain predicament: my Soviet and East German colleagues, being
personally offended when reading my Viewpoints, were threatening to leave the
conference if my contribution was not retracted from the debate! After laborious
negotiation we came to an agreement on a formula which seemed likely to calm the
irritation of these scientific representatives from socialist countries: the texts would no
longer be read from the platform, but merely commented upon and discussed. It would be
tempting to recount the details of the debate if the objections had merited the term
scientific, and if the behaviour of certain participants hadnt translated as a complete
refusal to engage in a discussion that risked putting in question the range of ideological
positions of marxism-leninism. At the same time, this obstinate if not insulting refusal,
was enough to confirm to the eyes of an impartial observer the fundamental criticism that
can be directed at the use of this concept of Marxism, the erroneous use of which was
precisely what my Viewpoints denounced
[1]
.
The epilogue to this conference was to further underline the solid grounding of a
critique which, in the form of a simple semantic reflection, in fact represented a defence of
Marxs social theory in opposition to Marxist mythology. As it turned out, the organisers
were not afraid of avoiding the elementary rules of editorial policy generally respected in
bourgeois democracies: the text (submitted at the request of the officials) was not
included in the volume of collected contributions that were submitted prior to the
conference
[2]
. Habent sua fata libelli...
[3]

We here present a translation of the text refused by the conference at Wuppertal, with
some supporting commentary.
Viewpoints on the Theme of Engels the Founder
For the ultimate final triumph of the ideas set forth in the Manifesto, Marx relied
solely upon the intellectual development of the working class, as it necessarily has to
ensue from united action and discussion.
116

-F. Engels, Preface to the 1890 German edition of the Communist Manifesto
I
Marxism did not enter the world as an authentic product of Karl Marxs way of
thinking, but was conceived in Friedrich Engels mind. Insofar as the term marxism
conceals a rational concept, it is not Marx but Engels who carries the responsibility; and if
today Marxs argument retains a priority, it is principally related to problems for which
Engels did not find more than a partial solution, or with which he did not concern himself.
Therefore, if these problems can be resolved at all, this can only be with the help of Marx
himself. By no means does this mean that Engels must be excluded from discussion, but it
is legitimate to question the extent to which he should be taken into account in any
dealings with the writings of Marx which escaped his attention. In more general terms the
question can be thus formulated: what are the limits of Engels competence in his role as
uncontested executor of Marxs intellectual legacy, to which we still appeal to elucidate
the material and ethical problems of our time?
II
This interrogation must examine a central problem that of the intellectual
relationship between Marx and Engels, founders of a collection of ideological and
political concepts artificially grouped under the name marxism. The fact that this
question must be posed itself reveals a very characteristic phenomenon of our epoch,
which one might now call the myth of the 20th Century. We should recall that the
founders sometimes themselves evoked mythological interpretation to underline the
peculiar character of their friendship and intellectual collaboration: Marx was not being
ironic in invoking the example of antique Dioscures or that of Orestes and Pylade, whilst
Engels mocked the rumour according to which Ahriman-Marx had led Ormuzd-
Engels astray
[4]
. There is equally an opposite tendency, with increasingly frequent efforts
to oppose Marx to Engels: the first would be the true founder, the second reduced to the
rank of mere pseudo-dialectician
[5]
.
III
Any investigation into the relationship between Marx and Engels is in advance
destined to fail if it does not clear away the legend of the foundation and does not take
for a methodological point of departure the aporia of the concept of Marxism. It was the
merit of Karl Korsch, when twenty years ago at the threshold of a radical revision of his
intellectual positions, to have attempted a critique of Marxism which amounted to a
declaration of war. However, Korsch simply did not dare commit the act of sweeping away
the concept of Marxism and its mythological residues. Instead, he tried to remove this
difficulty through the usage of linguistic artifices destined to conserve and to save the
important elements of the Marxist doctrine with a view to the reconstruction of a
revolutionary theory and practice. In his Ten Theses on Marxism Today Korsch moves
indiscriminately between speaking of the teaching of Marx and of Engels, Marxist
doctrine, the doctrine of Marx, Marxism and so on
[6]
. In the fifth thesis, concerning
the question of the precursors, founders and continuators of the socialist movement,
Korsch goes so far as to omit the name of Engels, the alter ego of Marx! Yet he was not far
from the truth when he wrote:
Today, all attempts to re-establish the Marxist doctrine as a whole in its original
function as a theory of the working classes social revolution are reactionary utopias.
Korsch could as well, and more accurately, have spoken of absurd mythologies in
place of reactionary utopias.
IV
In view of the impossibility of rationally defining the meaning of the concept of
Marxism, it seems logical to abandon the word itself, yet it is so commonly and so
universally employed. This term, degraded to the point of merely being a mystificatory
slogan, carried from its birth the stigma of obscurantism. Marx struggled hard to undo this
when, in the last years of his life, his reputation had broken the wall of silence which
117

surrounded his work, and he made this categorical declaration: ce quil y a de certain
cest que moi, je ne suis pas Marxiste
[7]
. However revealing, the fact that Engels
bequeathed this warning to posterity does not relieve him of the responsibility of having
given in to the temptation of lending the stamp of his authority to this unjustifiable term.
Charged with being the guardian and the perpetuator of a theory, the elaboration of which
he admitted to not having contributed more than a modest part
[8]
, and glorifying Marxs
name in an attempt to repair the damage, Engels inadvertently promoted the genesis of a
superstition, the negative consequences of which he could not have known. Today, sixty
years after his death, his efforts are perfectly clear. When Engels decided to appropriate
the terms marxist and marxism from his adversaries in order to change a hostile name
into a name of honour, he could hardly have expected that, through this gesture of defiance
(or was it resignation?), he would become the godfather of a mythology destined to
dominate the twentieth century.
V
The genesis of Marxist myth can be traced to the conflicts within the International.
The need to hurl abuse at the opponent and their partisans made the anti-authoritarians,
with Bakunin at their head, inventive enough to create such terms as marxites, marxists,
and marxism. Gradually Marxs disciples in France developed the habit of accepting
these denominations which they had not created and which destined them to be
distinguished from other socialist factions, so that finally these terms became political and
ideological labels. From then on only the authority of Engels was necessary to sanction the
usage of these terms, the ambiguity of which may not have been evident to those who used
them. Engels was from the outset energetically hostile to their usage; he knew better than
anyone that it risked corrupting the profound significance of a teaching that should have
been considered the theoretical expression of a social movement and by no means as a
doctrine invented by an individual for the benefit of an intellectual elite. His resistance did
not weaken until when, in 1889, the dissent between, on one hand the possibilists,
blanquistes and broussistes, and on the other hand the collectivists and guesdistes,
threatened to cause a rupture in the movement in France, each faction having decided to
organize its own international Workers Congress. Engels predicament is obvious; he
attempted to avert danger of confusion and of verbal and ideological corruption by using
inverted commas to speak of Marxists and of Marxism, and by speaking of so-called
Marxists. When Paul Lafargue expressed his apprehension in seeing his group pass for a
faction amongst others in the Workers Movement, Engels replied we have never called
you anything other than the so-called Marxists and I cannot know what to call you
otherwise. If you have another name as short, tell us and we will duly call you that with
pleasure.
[9]

VI
If Nietzsche published Ecce Homo for fear of one day being canonized by disciples
for which he did not at all wish, the same precaution did not seem necessary in the case of
Marx, even though he had not written and published more than a fragment of his projected
oeuvre. Nevertheless, the printed and unpublished material which he had bequeathed to
posterity amounted to a rigorous formal prohibition against linking his name to the cause
for which he had fought, and to a teaching for which he believed himself mandated by the
anonymous mass of the modern proletariat. If Engels had respected this prohibition as
Marxs executor, and had applied his veto to the abusive term, the universal scandal of
marxism would never have seen the light of day; but Engels committed the unpardonable
error of supporting this abuse, and thus acquired the dubious honour of being the first
Marxist. It is tempting to see it as the punishment of destiny that, believing himself heir,
he was in truth the founder albeit involuntarily of Marxism. The irony of history
which Engels loved to invoke had played a cruel trick on him. He thus became a prophet in
spite of himself when on his 70th birthday he pronounced the regretful words: my destiny
willed that I harvest the honour and the glory sowed by a greater man than I; Karl
118

Marx
[10]
. For his 150th anniversary, we must acknowledge in Engels the contestable merit
and the more dubious title of founder of Marxism.
VII
In the history of Marxism and the cult of Marx, Engels is at the forefront. We are
familiar enough with the human and quasi-religious aspect of this friendship, which does
not require particular analysis. On the other hand, what necessitates a thorough
examination is the effect of the friendship as much upon Marx himself as on his epigones
and his distant disciples. Always ready to act as pioneer of Marxs theories, Engels
expressed many ideas which Marx could not, of course, accept without critique; the silence
of Marx can be explained by his desire to scrupulously respect the solidarity which he held
with his friend. We cannot confirm the extent to which he should be identified with
everything that Engels had said or written, but this problem is minor, considering his
acknowledged admiration for the intellectual gifts of his friend: after all, he considered
himself Engels disciple
[11]
. That which Marx did not allow himself has today become a
strict duty: we must break the bewitching charm of this legend, and determine the place of
Engels oeuvre in the development of the intellectual inheritance of socialism, in relation
to the destiny of the workers movement.
VIII
It is only if one understands that Engels had the makings of a founder that one will
grasp the reasons for which he went about the duties of editor and perpetuator of the
manuscripts of Marx in a manner which, today more than ever, demands some critique
[12]
.
The writings of Marx neglected by Engels (amongst others the preparatory works for the
doctoral thesis, the Kreuznach anti-Hegelian manuscript, the economico-philosophical
sketches of Paris and of Brussels, the Economic Manuscripts of 1857-1858 (The
Grundrisse), the numerous workbooks and the correspondence with third parties) did not
only place the researcher and specialist before entirely new interpretive problems; they
erected new categories and created new generations of readers who could not and would
not content themselves with the stereotyped phraseology of professional Marxists. The real
imperative is to understand a world and to live and act in a time when ideology,
mechanization and manipulation of consciousness are allied with pure violence, to change
the world into a vale of tears.

The theses sketched here above constitute the introduction to a debate whose
essential theme must be the problem of Marxism as the mythology of our era. The question
of the extent to which Engels can be held responsible for the genesis of this universal
superstition is secondary to the extent that we can affirm, if we recognize the teaching of
Marx the materialist, that ideologies- amongst which Marxism in all its variants should
be placed do not fall from the sky; they are essentially bound to the class interests which
are at the same time the interests of power. It is enough to recognize in Engels the
legitimate inheritor of Marxs thought to denounce in his name and to his honour, the
established Marxism as a school of confusion and misguided ways for our age of iron.
M. Rubel, 1972.

Footnotes
1. For a general survey of the debates at Wuppertal, cf. Henryk Skrypczak, International
wissenschaftliche Engels-Konferenz in Wupperta in International Wissenschaftliche
Korrespondenz zur Geschichte der Deutschten Arbeitebewegung (I.W.K.), no. 10, Berlin, June
1970, p. 62 ff. A summary of my viewpoints can be found ibid. p. 81 ff.
2. Friedrich Engels 1820-1970. Referate-Diskussionen-Dokumente. Internationale
wissenschaftliche Konferenz in Wuppertal vom 25-29 Mai 1970, Hannover, Verlag fr
Literatur und Zeitgeschehen, 1970.
My position is commented upon in the following terms:
119

In order to fulfill the program of the final day, the council of the conference had decided
to give up the discussion after the 6th session, and to begin after the 7th with the general debate.
Firstly, Maximilien Rubel was supposed to have continued (?) to expound his conception. He
submitted a text to the conference which was a polemical formulation against Engels, but did
not then present this text before the assembly (with good reason!). These 8 theses which were,
in accordance with the authors intention, to provoke a debate on the actual significance of
Marxism, may be summarised as follows: after Marxs death, Engels made great efforts to
elevate the term Marxism formed by Marxs adversaries, to the rank of an intelligible and
definable concept. In doing this, Engels became the founder of a hybrid system of thought
which was alien to the intentions of Marx himself. After the death of Engels, the ideological
germs of this system were transformed into a conceptual methodology necessarily dependent
upon certain class conditions. [p. 255 ff.]
The report then mentions a polemic in opposition to mine, from a preceding session, from
an East-German Marxist, about the concept of a historic mission, a controversy, in which
Engels did not play more than an indirect role [ibid.]
Much could be said about the abridged report which summarises my theses and the
polemic which they had provoked. I would simply affirm, however, that my text against
Engels was simply the critique of a historically negative act by the closest and most active
collaborator of Marx, and against a certain school of Marxist thought, the existence of which
constitutes the negation of all that Marx and Engels themselves did for socialist thought and the
workers movement. I continue to believe that my contribution responded, more than any other,
to the true scientific spirit of that conference, in the memory of he who invented the notion of
scientific socialism, and who equally identified this notion with critical socialism. The
conference could not offer a real homage to the man whom it intended to celebrate if it did not
take as a guiding thread in its debates these words of Engels:
The workers movement rests on the most rigorous critique of existing society. The
critique is the vital element. How could it absent itself from critique, or prohibit debate?
(Engels to Gerson Trier, 18th December, 1889).
3. [editorial note:books have their fate]
4. Cf. Marx to Engels, 20th January, 1864; 24th April, 1867. Engels to E. Bernstein, 23rd
April, 1883. There are even instances in which the two friends are spoken of as if they acted as
a single person: for example Marx and Engels says (see Marx to Engels August 1st, 1856.)
5. See, for example, the opposition that Iring Fetscher established between Marxs
philosophy of the proletariat, and that of Engels. Fetscher explores their different ways of
envisaging the negation of philosophy and the relation of human history to nature in the
conception which was unacceptable for Marx of an objective dialectics of nature, and of
thought as a reflection of reality. See I. Fetscher, Karl Marx und der Marxismus. Von der
Philosophie des Proletariats zur proletarischen Weltanschauung, Munchen, 1987, p. 182 ff. See
also Donald C. Hodges, Engelss Contribution to Marxism, The Socialist Register, 1965, p.
297-810, and Vladimir Hosky, Der neue Mensch in theologischer und marxisticher
Anthropologie Marxismusstudien, VII, 1972, p. 58-86.
6. See Karl Korsch, Dix thses sur le marxisme aujourdhui, Arguments III, no. 16,
1959, p. 26 ff. The mimeograph of this text supports the date Zurich, 4th September, 1950.
[editorial note a translation of this text is available: Ten Theses on Marxism Today]
7. Engels specifies that this declaration was made by Marx with regards to the Marxism
which was rampant between 1879-1880 amongst certain of the French, but the blame also
applies to a group of intellectuals and students within the German party; they, together with the
opposition press, exhibited a distorted and disfigured Marxism (see Engelss letter to the
editors of Socialdemokrat, 7th September 1890, published in the journal, 18th September
1890). This quip of Marxs, so full of foreboding, was reported by Engels every time the
occasion arose; see his letters to Bernstein, 3rd November, 1882, to Carl Schmidt, 5th August,
1890, and to Paul Lafargue, 27th August, 1890. G. A. Lopatine, the Russian revolutionary, met
Engels to discuss the perspectives for Russian revolution in September 1883. He recounted
120

some details of their talks in a letter to a member of the Norodnaiia Voliia containing the
passage: You should remember what I told you once that Marx himself was never a Marxist.
Engels reported that at the time of the struggle of Brousse, Malon, and Cie against the others,
Marx said with laughter one day that I can say just one thing; that I am not a Marxist! See
the extract from Lopatines letter to M. N. Oshanina of 20th September, 1888, translated from
Russian, in Marx-Engels-Werke 21, p. 489. However, there is no humorous tone to Marxs
letters to his friend when, on a trip to France, he communicated his impressions of the
arguments of the socialists in the competing congresses of the Possibilists in Saint-Etienne, and
the Guesdists in Roanne in Autumn 1882. The Marxists and the anti-Marxists, he wrote,
both types have done their best to ruin my trip to France (Marx to Engels, September 30th,
1882). On his disagreement with the Russian Marxists, see Marx to Vera Zasulich, 1881, on
the possibilities of the Russian peasant commune. On the relations between Marx and Engels
and their Russian disciples, see Die russische Kommune. Kritik eines Mythos, Herausgegeben
von M. Rubel, Carl Hanser Verlag, Munich, 1972.
8. The formal declarations of Engels in this respect are too numerous to be recounted
here. Let us say simply that there is not the slightest doubt regarding the paternity of the great
scientific discoveries, which are all, without exception, attributable only to Marx. Of all his
declarations, the most significant is perhaps the note inserted by Engels in a writing which was
to demonstrate the continuity of German philosophy in elevating its most dignified inheritor,
Karl Marx, to the rank of founder of a system. See Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of
Classical German Philosophy, 1888. It is in this work that Engels made the official gesture of
baptising the theory with Marxs name: Out of the dissolution of the Hegelian school,
however, there developed still another tendency, the only one which has borne real fruit. And
this tendency is essentially connected with the name of Marx. Engels repeated this act in the
note where he remarks that What Marx accomplished I would not have achieved. [...] Marx
was a genius; we others were at best talented. Without him the theory would not be by far what
it is today. It therefore rightly bears his name. We should not then be surprised at the
conclusion to this critique, which consecrates Marx as both inheritor and founder of a
philosophical school: The German working-class movement is the inheritor of German
classical philosophy. Engels had thus cast the die.
9. Engels to Lafargue, 11th May, 1889. Once engaged in this verbal concession, Engels
could no longer back out, and he had to go all the way. His mind was made up the moment he
felt assured of the triumph of the collectivists led by Guesde and Lafargue: But the advantage
gained over the anarchists after 1873 was put into question by their successors, and I did not
therefore have a choice. Now that we are victorious, we have proved to the world that almost
all of the socialists in Europe are Marxists. It will drive them crazy that they gave us that
name and they will be left with Hyndman to console them (Engels to Laura Lafargue. 11 June,
1889). Ironically it is precisely the same Hyndman whom Marx had advised against referring to
his name in the program of the new English party. In the party programs we should avoid
everything which leads to the appearance of a direct dependence on a particular author or a
particular book (Marx to Henry Mayers Hyndman, 2 July, 1881).
10. Letter to the editors of the Berliner Volksblat, 5th December, 1890.
11. You know, primo, that I am always slower in getting onto things and, secundo, that I
follow in your footsteps. (Marx to Engels, 4th July, 1864).
12. See M. Rubel, Introduction to Karl Marx, Oeuvres: Economie II, Gallimard, Paris,
1968. See ibid. p. CXXVII ff., for the list of the discoveries which Marx regarded as being his
own. Marx attributed to himself neither the founding of historical materialism, nor the
discovery of surplus value. However, this attribution an act of Engelss was tacitly
approved by Marx. See, for example, the account given by Engels in Das Volk, 1859, and the
biographical article on Marx in Volkskalendar 1877.

121

Harry Cleaver
Karl Marx: Economist or Revolutionary?

Source: Originally written for the Centennial Symposium on Marx, Schumpeter and
Keynes held at the University of Colorado at Denver, August 20-22, 1983. Published in
Suzanne W. Helburn and David F. Bramhall, eds., Marx, Schumpeter and Keynes: A
Centenary Celebration of Dissent, Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 1986, pp. 121-146. Used
with permission of the author, as per Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-
NoDerivatives Licence 2.0.

During the last ten years Marxism has come to occupy a substantial position within
American academia.
[1]
This is especially true in economics where, until recently,
discussion of Marx and the Marxist tradition was largely confined to courses in the history
of economic thought and in the economic history of the Soviet Union.
[2]

The rise of an academic Marxism has been due, I would argue, to two forces. First,
the struggles of students within the context of the social upheavals of the late 1960s and
early 1970s carved out time and space within which politically active students could study
Marxism as apart of radical economics, insurgent sociology, and so on.
[3]
Second,
university administrators and the business interests they generally represent have been
surprisingly tolerant of the expansion of Marxist studies.
[4]
This reaction to student
demands is not simply a case of the repressive tolerance Marcuse described so vividly.
[5]

The current tolerance is due, more importantly, to the need of business for new ideas
during the present period of economic and social crisis.
[6]
There is a long history of the
capitalist appropriation of Marxist ideas which should lend credence to this suggestion.
[7]

Moreover, the numerous attempts in recent years in the business press and in professional
economic journals to give space to radical ideas and to evaluate current Marxist economic
research demonstrates the on-going interest of business and its ideologues in the possibility
of appropriating something new from Marx. Nowhere has this tolerance been more
obvious than in the area of Marxist research on the theory of economic crisis."
[8]

This willingness on the part of business to appropriate Marxist ideas and to use them
for its own purposes has been largely ignored by Marxists working on the theory of crisis.
They have, time and again, formulated their theories in ways that facilitate such
appropriation.
[9]
Yet this is not necessary. There is a way to read Marx and to develop
Marxist theory that does not lend itself to this kind of appropriation.
In this essay I do two things. First, through a series of examples, I illustrate how, in
the history of Marxist work on the theory of crisis, many have forgotten the revolutionary
content of Marxs own work and thus left themselves open to the dangers of capitalist
appropriation. Second, I suggest an alternative approach to the study and elaboration of
Marxs analysis of crisis that makes its political and revolutionary content explicit and thus
more immune to appropriation.
Some Problems with Marxist Crisis Theory
Recognizing the obvious interest of mainstream economists and of the business press
in Marxian economics, and understanding the possibilities of the capitalist appropriation of
our ideas, we should recognize real shortcomings to some of the theoretical work within
Marxist economics. In the process of building an alternative economic paradigm
acceptable within the academic community, too many Marxist students and Marxist
economists have overemphasized economics and lost Marx in the process (1974).
The theory of crisis has always been a central issue in Marxist theory and indeed in
Marxs own work. He was interested in both cyclical crisis, what is often called the
business cycle, and fundamental secular trends undermining the long-term viability of the
system. It is certainly because we are in the midst of a major crisis of the system that this
aspect of Marxist research has been the one most closely followed by the business press. It
122

is because some Marxists have formulated crisis theory in ways comparable with
bourgeois theories that business can hope to gain insight and use-value from their work.
In Marxs own research, theory and empirical studies developed together. Probably
the most important single leap forward in his thinking on this subject occurred during the
crisis of 1857 when, during long nights of work, he sought integrate his empirical
observations through the development of a new theoretical framework. The products of
that period include both his newspaper articles and the notebooks known collectively as
the Grundrisse. In those articles and notebooks are found a rich variety of historical and
theoretical observations on various aspects of capitalist crisis. Some of those observations
Marx later integrated into Capital and Theories of Surplus Value. It is in this wealth of
material that we find Marx struggling to elaborate a political analysis of crisis from which
he could draw strategic lessons for the working class movement.
In the history of Marxism since Marx, however, including the present, the
development of crisis theory has been disappointing. We can identify at least two striking
shortcomings in this work. The first has been the tendency to focus on some narrow
selection from Marxs work. This tendency, which Peter Bell (1977) has shown to produce
one-sided, monocausal theories, involved a failure to digest the full range of Marxs work
on crisis and has led to endless Marxological debates. For example, the debate between
those Marxists who base themselves on Marxs comments on underconsumption and those
who base themselves on his discussion of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall has been
going around in circles for over forty years and is nowhere near resolution.
The second shortcoming of Marxist work on crisis, and the one I would like to
explore here, concerns the tendency to think about crisis as a subject of economics and
to apply methods of analysis that closely parallel those of mainstream economics. This
tendency not only leads Marxists to forget the political content of their categories and
theories but also makes it easy for capitalist ideologues to examine and appropriate the
theory for their own purposes. To illustrate this tendency I will examine a few examples
from the history of Marxist crisis theory.
Case Study 1: Rosa Luxemburgs
The Accumulation of Capital (1968)
Luxemburg was one of the most brilliant Marxists of the early twentieth century. Her
revolutionary understanding of Marx made her the arch-foe of the social democrats of the
Second International, and her closeness to the working class made her a severe critic of
Lenins elitism. Yet, when she turned to the project of developing a theory of
accumulation and crisis she did what so many Marxists tend to do --she left her political
acumen behind and got lost in an economic reading of Capital.
As is well known, Luxemburg based her theory of crisis on Marxs analysis of
reproduction in the second volume of Capital. She focused on Marxs schemes of
expanded reproduction and, by studying their evolution through time, came to the
conclusion that given realistic assumptions it was impossible for the necessary equilibrium
between the two departments to be maintained because the production of commodities
would outstrip the ability of the market to absorb them. Thus, she deduced both the
necessity for crisis and for some outside sector (e.g., imperial colonies) into which the
excess products could be dumped.
Her analysis constituted one moment of along debate among Marxists on the
tendencies to crisis in capitalism that took as its basic analytical framework Marxs
reproduction schemes. That debate had started with Tugan-Baranowskys attack on
underconsumptionism and his substitution of a theory of limited disproportionality
between departments.
[10]
Luxemburg s work was partially an attack on Tugan-
Baranowsky and partly an attempt to find a basis for both a theory of crisis and a theory of
imperialism.
Luxemburgs book was followed by arguments by Nikolai Bukharin, Otto Bauer,
Henryk Grossman, and others.
[11]
All of these authors approached the reproduction
123

schemes in the same manner as Luxemburg: as a basis for their reasoning about crisis, and
as economists studying conditions of equilibrium. In modern terms they were reading
Marxs reproduction schemes as a two- or sometimes a three-sector growth model.
[12]

Luxemburg, like the others, was studying stability conditions. Many years later, after
Leontiefs adaptation of those schemes had been incorporated into macroeconomic
modeling, we would find capitalist planners doing something similar with multisectoral
growth models. But where Luxemburg and these other Marxists were content with the
observation that the model would (or would not) automatically generate contradictions and
therefore that crisis was (or was not) inevitable under capitalism, the planners would use
the model to help them figure out what adjustments could be made so that accumulation
could proceed smoothly.
At first glance one might say it was a stroke of genius to figure out this way of using
Marxs schemes for the analysis of crisis. Were not these Marxists extending Marx?
Marx had developed the reproduction schemes during his work on the Grundrisse.
He did so within the context of examining some of the factors that could lead to the
breakdown of accumulation. He was led to them through his examination of capitals
problems of reproducing its social totality. As Mario Tronti has shown in his book Operai
e Capitale (1966), the reproduction schemes constitute one approach to the examination of
social capital, where social capital includes not merely the sum of the individual capitals
but also the production and reproduction of the working class and therefore the struggles
of that reproduction.
[13]
This view of the schemes sees them not as schemata of purely
interindustrial flows but as one approach to a political totality.
This is absent in an economic reading of part 3 of volume 2. Luxemburg and the
others deal with reproduction the way contemporary growth theorists do --in a very
narrow and fetishistic economic way that leaves social and political relations out of
account and reduces Marx s problem to one of abstract quantitative proportionality.
The result? I submit that this part of her analysis of crisis provides little of use to the
working class other than a formal argument about the inevitability of imperialism.
Case Study 2: Paul Sweezys Theory of Capitalist Development (1942) and
Monopoly Capital (1946)
For almost thirty years, from the 1940s to the early 1960s, Paul Sweezy was, with
Paul Baran, the best known Marxist in the United States. His books and his magazine
Monthly Review educated the generation of Marxist economists who grew up in the 1960s
and are today teaching in universities, schools, and shop-floors across the United States.
Unlike Rosa Luxemburg, who was first and foremost a political activist and dug into
Marx in the course of her political practice, Sweezy was first of all a scholar and an
economist. Educated at Harvard under Alvin Hansen, one of the foremost interpreters of
Keynes, Sweezy developed a theory of crisis that bears the clear marks of his profession
and his background. If Marxist crisis theory today is above all a theory of economic crisis,
it is partly due to Sweezys pervasive influence.
I want to discuss here only three parts of Sweezys treatment of crisis theory in his
books. The first is the treatment in his Theory of Luxemburg and of the other Marxists
who based their work on Marxs schemes of reproduction. The second is his treatment and
dismissal of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. The third is his embrace of Marxs
comments on the limits to working-class consumption as the valid core of crisis theory.
In his Theory, when Sweezy turns to Luxemburg and the others I have mentioned, he
evaluates their theory and criticizes it in its own terms. He presents the mathematics of the
reproduction schemes and in good economic form sets out mathematically precise
equilibrium conditions. In the case of Otto Bauers work, Sweezy explicitly translates it
into the form of a mathematical growth model. His evaluation of their work only involves
questioning either their assumptions or details of their reasoning, never the general
framework of a purely economic approach. As with most economists, accumulation for
Sweezy is the accumulation of capital narrowly defined in terms of growing amounts of
124

money, means of production, mobilized labor, and commodities. It is for this reason he can
work with the language and forms acceptable to Leontief or Harrod-Domar.
When Sweezy turns to Marxs law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, he
interprets it in a very typical economic fashion. By this I mean he assumes that the theory
concerns forces acting on the actual monetary rate of profit. Secondly, when he uses the
value categories of variable capital (v), constant capital (c), surplus value (s), the rate of
exploitation (s/v), and the organic composition of capital (c/v), he treats them exactly the
way an economist would treat any variables: as mathematical quantities to be manipulated
formalistically. Thus he notes that if the numerator and denominator of the rate of profit
s/(c+v) are both divided by v, we obtain (s/v)/[c/v)+ 1]. This he likes because the rate of
profit is now expressed in terms of the two categories that Marx is concerned with: the rate
of exploitation and the organic composition of capital. On the basis of this expression he
argues that the law, is indeterminant because although c/v might rise faster than s/v, as c
is substituted for v, we cannot be sure a priori because the rising productivity that
accompanies the investment in constant capital lowers the value of c as well as that of v,
and there is no way to predict which will fall most. Voila! So much for the law Marx
called the most fundamental and important law of capitalist development.
As a result of Sweezys argument there has been an almost endless flow of articles
attacking or defending him on this subject. Among those Marxists most prominent in the
attack have been Paul Mattick (1969b), Mario Cogoy (1973), and David Yaffe (1972),
who have all defended the centrality and validity of the law. Most of these critiques have
included an attempt to restate the law in a different mathematical form in order to
recuperate it. Defenses of Sweezys rejection have also been forthcoming from the man
himself --repeatedly in the postwar period-- and from others on either theoretical (Roemer,
1978; 1979; 1981) or empirical (Weiskopf, 1979) grounds.
And what are the essential points of the debate among all these Marxists? Are they
political points? Hardly, they are not even political economic points. They are mainly
mathematical and formalistic. In his summary of the debate Herb Gintis, writing in OIlman
and Vernoffs (1982) book, says in general American Marxists have carefully scrutinized
the mathematical theory on which the falling-rate-of-profit prediction is based, and have
concluded that there is no such tendency.
What are we to say about this kind of Marxism? Certainly the similarity of the debate
to the mainstream discussion on the same subject is striking.
[14]
If this is Marxian
economics, then clearly the emphasis is on economics, not Marx. What we have here is a
sanitized, seminar-room Marxism that has been stripped of its political content and class
anger. This is a Marxism mainstream economists can understand and evaluate in their own
terms. If more economists of this Marxian I. stripe are not getting tenure it can only be
because either the mainstream judges f their work to be unproductive or because, like Rosa
Luxemburg, their political actions in other areas are more militant than their theory.
The last aspect of Sweezys work that I want to examine, and one which has also
generated a whole wing of contemporary Marxist crisis theory, is his interpretation of
Marxs comments on the limits to working-class consumption. Sweezys positive view of
Marxs comments fit easily with a Hansenian interpretation of Keynes on inadequate
aggregate demand and the views of both Hansen (1938; 1941) and Steindl (1952) on
capitalisms tendencies toward stagnation.
This interpretation of Marx as an underconsumptionist is again very much within the
tradition of economics. From Malthus, whom Marx studied, through Hobson in the
underground, to Keynes at the center of mainstream thought, the issue of the adequacy of
demand to sustain and induce growth in output has been a central subject of debate. But,
where Marx studied capitalist attempts to limit working-class income and working-class
demands for ever higher income (as well as less work) as one important class contradiction
in the system, Sweezy finds a justification for embracing a pessimistic Keynesianism in
which it is the weakness of the working class that leads to crisis. So preoccupied is Sweezy
125

with studying the similarities and differences between Marx and Keynes that he included
as an appendix to his book an essay by Tsuru that explicitly maps Marxian and Keynesian
aggregate macro categories onto each other.
Twenty years later, when Sweezy published Monopoly Capital, the book he had
written with Paul Baran, he still embraced essentially the same position. But by this time
Marxism provided little more than a rhetorical gloss on what might otherwise have been
taken as the work of a liberal mainstream economist in the tradition of the neoclassical
synthesis. In Monopoly Capital the analytical core of Sweezy and Barans reasoning was a
mixture of neoclassical firm theory and Keynesian macro theory. The title pointed to their
central concern with defining the current stage of capitalism in terms of the structure of
capitalist markets --monopoly as opposed to an earlier competitive state. Their discussion
of the absorption of the surplus amounted to a twist on the Keynesian problem of
adequate aggregate demand. Gone almost completely from their analysis were Marxs
theoretical categories based on the labor theory of value. In the place of surplus value, we
found surplus; in the place of the problem of extracting surplus value, we found the
problem of disposing of it. Whereas The Theory of Capitalist Development had at least the
form of Marxian theory, Monopoly Capital adopted both the form and content (albeit with
the authors own critical approach) of mainstream economics. Only in the concluding
chapters when they set aside economics and draw on Critical Theorys concepts of
historical reason and capitalist irrationality did they retain much of the Marxian tradition --
and the aspects they did retain derive more from Hegel than from Marx.
When other Marxists began to attack Sweezy, his abandonment of Marx and his
embrace of a Keynesian crisis theory of inadequate demand was one of their first points of
departure. (See Mattick, 1969b; Cogoy, 1973; Yaffe, 1972.) In his responses to these
attacks Sweezy (1974) back-pedalled and recast his underconsumptionism once more in
Marxian theoretical terms. But it is not the details of that debate that interest me here. It is
rather the way in which Sweezys views, and a whole subsequent literature, formulated
Marxs thoughts in the language and framework of economics. How can we be surprised
when, in the late 1960s, many radical economists considered their real problem to be the
discovery of how to adapt mainstream economics to the analysis of the subjects that
concerned them? Many considered the legacy of Marx (whom most had not yet studied) to
lie more in the identification of problems that were ignored by the mainstream than as a
source of different theoretical tools. And when they did return to Marx, after having been
raised on Baran and Sweezy and having followed Marxist debates on crisis that resembled
in form, and even to some degree content, the debates of mainstream economics, should
we be too shocked that they read Marx as an economist? I think not. Nor do I think we
should be shocked that much of the contemporary Marxist crisis theory continues in the
same vein.
Case Study 3: The Relative Shares Literature
The relative shares literature includes most prominently the work of Glyn and
Sutcliffe (1972) and followers in England, and that of Boddy and Crotty (1975) and
followers in the United States (Crotty and Rapping, 1975). Briefly put, this is a brand of
Marxist crisis theory that draws explicitly or implicitly on Marxs work on the role of the
wage in crisis. This work includes the discussion in volume 1, chapter 25, of Capital, and
Marxs analysis in Wages, Prices and Profit. At its core is the idea that workers, through
their struggles, can and have pushed up income to the point where it undermines capitalist
profits or the capitalist share of national output. Sometimes this argument is formulated in
terms of wages, sometimes more broadly in terms of all income (wages plus benefits, plus
government services, etc.). In most cases the theory is backed up by empirical studies that
show that this has in fact occurred during the current crisis.
Unlike the theories mentioned earlier, this one has an explicit political moment of
class struggle. Underconsumptionism has an implicit moment of class struggle --the
capitalist attempt to hold down wages-- although it is rather one-sided in its usual
126

interpretation. But in the relative shares literature, for almost the first time in the history of
academic Marxism, the class struggle has been recognized and has found a place among
economic models and mathematical formalisms. This clearly constitutes a refreshing
departure from the kinds of economic crisis theories we have discussed so far.
And yet, there are two problems that persist within this literature. The first is the
tendency to confine the analysis of crisis to the sphere of circulation without recognizing
how the demand for higher wages and income has complemented a simultaneous attack on
the structuring of life around work. In short, the relative shares theorists have mostly failed
to analyze the revolt against work and the crisis in production. Where the revolt against
work has been recognized it has been interpreted as a rebellion against the degrading
conditions of work within capitalism, but there has been no grasp of the way peoples
growing refusal to be reduced to mere workers has constituted a fundamental undermining
of the capitalist order.
Second, by confining the analysis of crisis to the struggle over the division of output,
the relative shares theorists formulate the problematic of crisis in a way very similar to
mainstream economic discussions of income distribution. This is a very old reformist
terrain of discourse in which one debates the division of output but eschews discussion of
overthrowing the wage system itself. Within this discourse conservative, pro-capitalist
economists and commentators (such as those associated with the Reagan administration)
respond to the decline in capitalist shares by calling for a redressing of shares --an attack
on wages and social services. Liberal, pro-capitalist economists (such as neoliberals like
Thurow) call for an incomes policy to stabilize shares in a proportion favorable to capital,
yet not totally destructive of working-class standards of living. The radical critics are
willing to grant the necessity of a social surplus for investment and growth but want a
larger role for workers in determining the course of such investment. They want greater
economic democracy"--a slogan and a policy which has become the clarion cry of todays
social democrats.
Thus, this relative shares version of Marxian crisis theory also falls within the scope
of mainstream debates, albeit at the socialist fringe.
Is this the best Marxism has to offer? Are these theories of crisis, formulated in the
language and style of economics, all that can be gotten from Marx? Is Marxism, after all,
just a subdivision of economics? Fortunately, the answer is no, this is not all there is --not
even in the area of crisis theory, let alone other aspects of Marxism. There is an alternative
way of reading Marx and Marxs theories of crisis that leads to quite different results.
Marx the Revolutionary
The alternative to the economic interpretation of Marx that I find the most useful is
the reading of his concepts and theories as moments of his political analysis of capitalism
as class struggle. This is what I call a political reading of Marx. The roots and
development of this kind of political reading I have sketched in the introduction to my
book Reading Capital Politically (1979). Among the best-known writers associated with
this approach are C. L. R. James, Raya Duneyevskaya, Martin Glaberman, Cornelius
Castoriadis and Claude Lafort (in the 1950s), Ranerio Panzieri, Mario Tronti (in the
1960s), Mariarosa Dalla Costa, Selma James, and Antonio Negri.
[15]
This approach
explicitly rejects any economic or political economic analysis that sees Marxs work
as focused on the economy, where economy is conceived in the usual sense of the spheres
of production, circulation, and distribution. This approach insists that what is usually
called the economic sphere is made up of moments of a political whole: the class struggle.
Basic to this approach is the position that the object of Marxs study, and the only
proper object for any revolutionary, is the class struggle. Let us be clear, this position
denies the autonomy of the political --there is no economic sphere here and political sphere
over there. The position argues that from the point of view of workers who want to
overthrow capitalism there can be one and only one subject of study: the structures of their
127

power relations with capital. Everything must be interpreted in terms of its relation to this
central political issue.
It is not that the class struggle is being elevated to a new centrality in theory, or, in
the case of, crisis theory, , that class struggle is seen to be the cause of crisis. Class
struggle is neither a cause nor an effect. It is the whole, and Marxs analysis is seen to be
concerned with the exploration of the forces at work within that whole.
Therefore Marxs theory of crisis, like the theory of accumulation more generally, is
a theory of the dynamics of the class struggle. When Marx says in Capital that
accumulation is first and foremost the accumulation of the classes, we must recognize that
this necessarily means the accumulation of the class relations of conflict and struggle.
Accumulation certainly includes the expanded reproduction of money capital, commodity
capital, productive capital, and so on, but these are understood to be, not things, but
moments of the basic class relationship .
This political reading of Marx is an interpretation that takes seriously his repeated
admonition that capital is above all a social relation. It also takes seriously the Ilth Thesis
on Feuerbach: that the point is to transform the world, and therefore any theory worth the
title Marxist must not only embody the class relations but also playa self-conscious and
explicit role in the struggle for transformation.
[16]

Part of what differentiates this approach from most other versions of Marxism is its
way of looking at capital. For most Marxists, orthodox or revisionist, capital is the
totality of the capitalists and their capital. Its dynamic is derived from what they like to
call its internal logic. The driving force of this capitalogic, according to them, is
competition among capitalists. Within this framework, workers appear as outside factors
capable of resisting the logic of capital, and even, in principle, of overthrowing it, but their
struggles are reactive and only have the effect of throwing up barriers to capitals self-
propelled development.
By reviewing the examples of crisis theory I have examined, one can see that the
above characterization applies universally. Luxemburg, Sweezy, their supporters and
detractors, and even the relative shares theorists see capitalism developing through its own
internal laws of motion. Whether we look at the dynamics of underconsumption, the law
of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, or the profit squeeze, we see working-class
struggle as external to capitals own logic. Underconsumption assumes at its core a limit to
workers ability to raise wages. In the case of the falling rate of profit, the drive to raise the
organic composition of capital is usually taken to flow from competition. And in the case
of the relative shares argument, the working-class struggle that undercuts accumulation
appears as an exogenous threat to capitalist development.
Within the alternative framework that I present here, to speak of crisis is to speak of
a crisis of the class relation. In general, a capitalist crisis is therefore a crisis of capitalist
control over the working class. Therefore, the so-called internal laws of motion of capital
must be understood to be the general characteristics of the class struggle. Similarly, the
categories of Marxs labor theory of value are concepts designed to lay bare the patterns
and logic of that struggle.
Within this framework, Marx is seen to be, above all, a militant theoretician of the
subject, or more precisely, of two political and historical class subjects: the capitalist and
working class. The laws of motion Marx describes are the regularities capital is able to
impose in the face of the struggles of an antagonistic opponent. The two historical subjects
are fundamentally different in character, and that difference forms the core of their
antagonism.
Capital is a particular way of organizing the lives of human beings. Within capitalist
society most people are members of the working class. They are under an endless and
artificial compulsion to work, producing a surplus which capitalists either consume or,
more importantly, reinvest to create ever more work. The capitalists, whether of the
coupon-clipping leisure class or the modern corporate managerial hierarchy, are essentially
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what Marx called functionaries of capital as a way of organizing society. That is to say,
their work, to the degree that they work, is the work of organizing the process of the
accumulation of capital, whether in the sphere of production, circulation, or reproduction.
Capital is self-reproducing, as orthodox Marxists often say, but only in the sense that it
recreates the social conditions within which most people are forced to sell their labor
power in order to survive. This is why the work ethic is central to capitalist ideology-
because it justifies the life sentences of hard labor that capital would like to impose on all
of us.
But the working class, those upon whom work is imposed, repeatedly breaks free of
capitalist ideological and social controls and struggles against that imposition. As an
historical subject workers form a true class for itself, in Marxs terms, only when they
engage in such battles.
Yet, there is something else even more fundamental that differentiates the working-
class subject and explains the antagonism that permeates every moment of capital and
every category in Marx. It is the fundamental quality of creativity and change that workers
have as human beings and that they struggle to liberate. This is what might be called the
positive side of workers struggle. Not only do they oppose the subordination of their lives
to capitalist-imposed work, but they fight for their own autonomous development, or self-
valorization, as Toni Negri (1984) calls it. And because that development is autonomous
and refuses all outside coercion, it tends to escape capitals efforts to bind it within its own
forms. It is in this sense that capital, as one particular way of life, is frozen or dead, as
Marx said. It only knows its own circuits. It only knows how to repeat the same forms and
impose the same content, over and over again. Vampire-like, it can only draw its energy
and life from others. It seeks to harness the spontaneous energy and creativity of human
beings by limiting their autonomy and by turning them into workers in its factories and
offices and into functionaries of its own existence.
Critical Theorists grasped this truth. Their failure lay in not seeing how Marxs work
contained elements of something they were unable to either conceive or construct on their
own: a theory of working-class autonomy against capital and for its own self-
development.
[17]

Most Marxists working on the theory of crisis see neither the autonomy of the
working class nor the capitalist need to harness it. They read Marxs categories as they
read the variables of mainstream economics, and they play the same games with them. But
we do not have to do this. We can, instead, take those categories, slowly, one by one, and
then in combination, and discover how they constitute categories of the class relations of
struggle. We can give them a political reading to discover their meaning for each class.
And by doing this we can recuperate Marxs work on crisis, and maybe even some of the
work done by our Marxist economists.
This is a project that is already underway. Its historical and political origins I have
sketched in the introduction to my book Reading Capital Politically. There I undertook a
reinterpretation of the basic categories of Marxs labor theory of value to show how they
could be read as categories of the class struggle over the organization of society around
work. A more recent effort contains a first, systematic interpretation of Marxs writings on
crisis as observations and theories of how working-class struggles rupture the processes of
accumulation (Cleaver and Bell, 1982). Other recent materials and references to work on
crisis carried out within this framework can be found in the journals Zerowork and
Midnight Notes as well as in Red Notes (1980), Semiotext(e) (1980), and Negri (1984).
[18]

For the purposes of this essay I will restrict myself to the discussion of two aspects of
this approach to Marxian crisis theory. The first concerns its ability to offer an alternative
interpretation of those concepts of Marx which have been given an economic interpretation
and used as the basis of theories of economic crisis. The second concerns the reduced
susceptibility of this kind of interpretation of Marx to the kind of capitalist
instrumentalization warned against above.
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The Schemes of Reproduction and Class Struggle
As mentioned previously, Tronti has provided the basis for an alternative reading of
Marxs reproduction schemes. His rethinking of the material in volume 2 of Capital led
him to see that the schemes provided one approach to the analysis of the total social
capital where social capital must be understood to involve not only the sphere of
production but also that of reproduction. Tronti recognized that Department II of the
schemes, which produces the means of subsistence, is providing not only for the
reproduction of the workers in the industries of departments I and II but also for all others,
including those in the reserve army whether active or latent. The concept of department
therefore must be conceived more broadly than a mere aggregation of factories.
Department II refers to the sphere of working-class self-reproduction which includes the
industries producing the means of subsistence but is not limited to them.
In this vein, we can see that the very division of the economy into two departments
producing means of production and means of subsistence corresponds to the class division
in capitalist society. The means of production, after , all, constitute that part of production
that is of most direct interest to capitalists. When they fight to maximize surplus value and
investment they are, in effect, fighting to shift the distribution of workers labor away from
the products that directly interest workers (the means of subsistence) and toward the
production of means of production. Conversely, Department II, which includes the
production of means of subsistence, is of most direct concern to workers, and their
struggles to raise wages and benefits at least partly tend to maximize the role of this
department. Furthermore, the attempt by workers to reduce the amount of work they must
give up to acquire the means of subsistence amounts to an attempt to subordinate the role
of production in reproduction to the expansion of the time available for reproduction and
self-valorization.
From a working-class political point of view, these must be counted among the most
essential characteristics of this part of Marxs analysis. This class perspective on the basic
categories of the schemes of reproduction gives us away of looking at them in which they
appear as determinations of the class relations of struggle.
From a capitalist point of view, the relations between the departments are ones that
must be managed, either by the price mechanism or by direct planning or by some
combination of the two. The capitalists must expand output in Department I if they are to
expand their investment in fixed capital and expand the imposition of work to new
generations of workers-especially since part of that investment is labor displacing. At the
same time, they must try to manage workers demands for wages and the means of
subsistence so that the working class can reproduce itself, but also limit Department II
production so that it does not cut into Department Is share of inputs and share of output.
Once we see that the distribution of resources across departments is something
capital must fight for and try to manage in order to guarantee its own expanded
reproduction, then the interest of capitalist economists in elaborating the schemes into
input-output tables and multisectoral growth models is obvious. Whether the schemes be
studied as a two-sector growth model or be elaborated into Leontiefs giant one-hundred-
plus-sector models of contemporary economies, the object is clear enough.
But why should Marxists do this? Marx certainly did not do it. Was it just because he
didnt have time? Or was it because there is no need?
We have seen what the capitalists gain: it helps them clarify the dimension of a
problem they face. They want to see what is required to achieve accumulation. Since we
are not seeking to spur accumulation but to rupture it, there is no reason to think that we
need the same kind of information.
Sometimes, it does help to understand what capital is trying to do in order to be able
to anticipate and undermine it. But it is not clear that growth models provide that kind of
information. And to the degree that they do, we can get the information from the models
130

that are being used to plan. That is certainly one reason why we need to study mainstream
economics --to spy on capitalist planning.
But what, if any thing, do we gain from the elaboration of Marxs reproduction
schemes? If the work of Marxist economists to date is any indication, we dont gain much.
Their debates on the inevitability of crisis have gone round in circles, with the conclusions
derived depending on the assumptions made at the outset --as in any model. So far, after
some eighty years of debate, it seems to me very little has been accomplished. For the
future the burden is on those who would seek to use Marxian reproduction schemes
beyond the use to which Marx put them --one way of clarifying some aspects of the class
relation.
The Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall and Class Struggle
If the debate over crisis that has turned around the reproduction schemes must be
judged rather fruitless, then so too has been the debate over the tendency of the rate of
profit to fall. Within this second debate many valid criticisms have been leveled against
one or another argument. But, from the perspective of an interpretation of Marx that insists
that his theories be read politically, the most basic criticism of the whole debate is that all
of its participants think that the subject under discussion is the monetary rate of profit.
Whether the position taken leads to the demand for empirical verification of the theory by
examining the actual evolution of some average rate of profit, or whether it leads to an
insistence on the theorys status as a statement of tendency that cannot be falsified because
the actual rate of profit may be under the influence of other forces, there is never any doubt
that it is the monetary rate of profit whose behavior is under study.
[19]
It is partly for this
reason that the so-called transformation problem has been so important to these Marxists.
Since they want to analyze the tendency of the rate of profit to fall at the level of money
profits, they must be preoccupied with whether or not the monetary form of aggregate
surplus value accurately expresses the behavior of the value category.
[20]

This is the universal position, despite the fact that Marx carries on his whole analysis
in value terms. His expression for the rate of profit is the ratio of surplus value extracted to
value invested, that is, the ratio of surplus labor time extracted to the sum of the labor time
embodied in the means of production and the labor time that is embodied in the final
product but returned to the workers for their subsistence. In short, what s/(c+v) represents
is one measure of the degree of ease or difficulty of extracting surplus labor.
Marx (1981, chap. 9), however, is at pains to point out that his analysis is at the level
of the entire social capital. As we have seen with reference to the reproduction schemes,
social capital is more than the sum of the individual capitals. Therefore, his analysis of the
rate of profit is at the level of class relations, not at the level of the firm or even of the
industrial sector of the economy.
This becomes even clearer when we focus on the two determinants of the rate of
profit that he uses to analyze its evolutionary tendencies: the rate of exploitation (s/v) and
the organic composition of capital (c/v). We have seen how Sweezy (and many others)
have treated these categories pretty much the same way mainstream economists treat the
rate of return on investment and the capital-labor ratio: as quantitative mathematical
variables that can be manipulated formalistically. We have also seen how many Marxists
view their determination: as by-products of competition. Leaving aside the question of the
direction of change of the organic composition of capital, we know that the substitution of
capital for labor within technological change is generally thought to be the result of
competition among firms who seek to undercut each others prices by lowering costs.
Similarly, the rise of c/v is seen by most economists working in this area as a by-product
of just this same relative surplus value strategy component of competition. The evolution
of s/v and of c/v thus appear as by-products of what Negri (1984) has aptly called the
sordid family quarrels of capital. This is why the debate over the tendency of the rate of
profit to fall as a result of the tendency of the organic composition to rise has been
131

confined, on the whole, to the realm of capitalogic and has been devoid of any political
class content.
Once again, this is by no means necessary. A political reading of volume 1 of Capital
reveals that both the rate of exploitation and the organic composition of capital are
imminently political categories. Right from the start in Marxs discussion of absolute
surplus value, the determination of length of the working day, and hence of s/v, is the
result of class struggle which Marx sketches in chapter 10.
Next, in his discussion of relative surplus value Marx states quite plainly that it
becomes capitals central strategy because of the success of the working class in forcing
down the length of the working day (1977: chap. 15). Thereafter, with respect to the
continued rapid development of machinery and modern industry, he argues that It would
be possible to write a whole history of the inventions made since 1830 for the sole purpose
of providing capital with weapons against working class revolt (1977: 563). And why
does capital need such technological weapons that are embodied in arising c/v? Obviously
because of the constant spur of such revolt. More generally we can show, as Raniero
Panzieri (1976) has done at length, that the tendency of the organic composition of capital
to rise occurs as one part of capitals ever renewed efforts to plan its control over labor
power. We can also learn to read this concept of Marxs from a workers viewpoint and
see that not only is the organic composition of capital based on the technical composition,
that is, the particular combination of labor power and means of production in use, but it
also implies a certain structure of power relations between the working class and
capital.
[21]
It is the working-class recomposition of those power relations that forces capital
to substitute constant for all-too-variable capital.
From this perspective we can see how to reinterpret Marxist economists central
concept of competition. We can agree that competition is a phenomenon internal to
capital, but capital conceived as the class relation. We can recognize it as one mechanism
through which capital rewards its best managers --those who can get the most work and
creativity from their workers-- and gets rid of those who are least capable of controlling
the working class.
Having now seen how the basic determinants of the rate of profit, and the changes in
them, are themselves moments of the class struggle, we can see that the law of the
tendency is itself a characteristic of the evolution of the class war. But what does the law
tell us if not that the class struggle tends to result in a fall in the monetary rate of profit?
Let us look at the rate of profit once again. I have already said that it is a ratio of the
surplus labor extracted to the labor invested. It is therefore one measure of the difficulty of
imposing surplus labor. If, therefore, there is a tendency for this rate to fall, then there is a
tendency for it to become more and more difficult for capital to impose surplus labor. And
if it is increasingly difficult to impose surplus labor, then it becomes equally difficult to
impose labor at all.
Here at last is an explanation of why Marx considered the law of the tendency to be
the most important law of capitalist development, an explanation that links it to the most
fundamental defining character of capitalism. It reveals that working class struggle and the
capitalist response of substituting machinery for workers tends to undermine the
foundation of the capitalist order: its universal imposition of work.
[22]

We can conclude this recasting of the falling rate of profit theory by pointing out
some implications of our reasoning. First, if workers struggles for more income and less
work drive capital to expand the use of labor-displacing machinery, then evidence that the
workings of this law are undermining capitalist accumulation is not to be found in time
series of monetary profit rates, a la Feldstein and Nordhaus, but rather in secular declines
in the proportion of the labor force employed in the profitable production of goods and
services. While a decline in the secular growth of productivity might indicate a crisis in the
relative surplus value strategy of raising c/v, it is only at the level of capitals ability to
impose work that the law of the tendency applies.
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Second, what Marxs reasoning shows is the absolute centrality of workers struggle
against work in the effort to undermine and overthrow capital. This can be arrived at
directly by observing the way capital builds its civilization on the imposition of work, but
Marxs law tells us something more. It shows how progressive, that is, productivity-
raising, capitalist responses to workers demands ultimately reinforce the direction of
workers struggles. His analysis also implies that not only should we refuse both the
Luddite attack on productivity-increasing new technology and the recourse to
appropriate (labor-intensive) technology, but we must focus rather on how to appropriate
the time set free. Marx not only understood this, he saw beyond the crisis of capitalist
control to the possibility of a postcapitalist world in which not labor but disposable time
becomes the measure of value (1973: 708).
Underconsumptionism and Class Struggle
There can be no doubt that Marx saw the limits to working-class income as
constituting a limit to the ability of Department II to expand, and thus indirectly a limit to
the expansion of Department I as well. But the effort to elevate this contradiction to the
status of the core of crisis theory comes up sorely lacking. It can be said that Keynes has
done as much with the idea as anyone by generalizing it to the problem of inadequate
aggregate demand. But that is a capitalist appropriation of a concept if ever there was one.
Baran and Sweezys analysis in Monopoly Capital is limited mainly to commentaries on
the effectiveness with which capital is able to generate sufficient demand, either through
the state or through private markets.
[23]
This is a subject of an almost endless mainstream
macroeconomic literature.
What of the class content of this theory? At its core, in Marx, is the contradiction
between capitalist needs to expand productivity and production under the prod of working-
class struggle and the limits on the ability of Department II producers to dispose of that
increased production. Capital has tried to cope with this problem, first privately in the high
wage strategy of Henry Ford and then through the state in the Keynesian attempt to
harness rising wages to induce capitalist growth.
Marxist understanding of the working-class use of these strategies has been sadly
disappointing. As we have seen, Baran and Sweezy, like many of their generation of
Marxists, considered those workers who succeeded in forcing capital to have recourse to a
productivity deal, to be bought off, even participants in the imperial order.
[24]
In the case of
Critical Theories of consumerist society, this increased consumption appears only as a
means of domination.
We, on the other hand, can recognize that while rising wages do not necessarily
rupture capitalist accumulation, they do raise the absolute level of working-class
consumption and strengthen it in its struggles. And there are neither theoretical nor
historical reasons to think that those struggles, in the aggregate, ever cease or can always
be harnessed. As a political category, from the standpoint of capital, the wage (or income
more generally) does not define exploitation, it hides it. From the standpoint of workers
the wage is first and foremost a weapon and a measure of working-class power. In these
terms Marxs comments on the limits to workers wages is a commentary on the limits to
their power. In these terms, relative surplus value strategies and the Keynesian
productivity deals are reflections of the ability of workers to expand that power.
The saddest part of Marxist underconsumptionist theory is its insistence on focusing
on the limits to workers power rather than on its absolute and relative extent. This is a
criticism to which Marx was partially, but only partially, open. His theory of relative
surplus value and its recognition of the way workers can successfully expand their wage
and their power balances his remarks on the limits to consumption and helps us to keep
them in perspective. In the wake of Ford and Keynes, Marx would have no problem
recognizing the institutionalization of relative surplus value and analyzing its implications.
The failure of contemporary underconsumptionist Marxists to do this is a striking
limitation to their work. The analysis of the absolute rise in working class income leads to
133

an understanding of how the struggle for wages, while perhaps bound for a while within
capitalist accumulation, can create, and indeed has created, a sufficient base to break free
of those constraints and rupture both relative surplus value and accumulation in such a
manner as to precipitate crisis. Because they recognize this, the relative shares theorists
constitute a decided advance over the class myopia of the under-consumptionists.
Relative Shares and Class Struggle
Underconsumptionisms dismal view of workers ability to raise their share of value
derives, at least in part, from Marx himself. Although his theory of relative surplus value
allowed for increases in the standard of living of the working class, his discussion in
chapter 25 of Capital and in Wages, Prices and Profit was explicit in arguing that any time
workers were able to raise wages enough to undermine profits, capitalists could
successfully use crisis and expanded unemployment to force wages down again. While
pessimistic, this argument was clearly based on Marxs observations of nineteenth-century
business cycles and the downward flexibility of wages. There is nothing in Marxs theory
that precludes workers achieving enough power to impose downward inflexibility of
wages as they did after the Great Depression.
As was noted in the last section, Marxs theory of relative surplus value certainly
allows for the possibility of state management of a link between wage growth and
productivity growth-a characteristic of the Keynesian solution to the rise of militant
industrial unionism and the social conflicts of the 1930s.
One can also imagine that Marx would not have been surprised to observe that
workers, by the late 1960s, after two decades of rising wages, were able through their
political recomposition both within and without the factory to mobilize enough power to
rupture the Keynesian productivity deal and throw capital into crisis. Although he did not
foresee such developments, there is, again, nothing in his theory that precludes them, and
there is much that helps us analyze these developments politically.
In the first place, what is called a profits squeeze in the relative shares literature
takes the form, in Marxian terms, of a fall in the rate of relative surplus value-a clear sign,
as the relative shares theorists recognize, of an increase in working-class power in the class
struggle.
But two criticisms could be addressed to the profits squeeze theorists. First, although
they focused on the factory labor force, their emphasis on accelerating wage growth was
not accompanied by an analysis of the other side of the break-down of the productivity
deal: the crisis in productivity. This neglect perhaps flowed from their emphasis on the
sphere of circulation and their failure to explore the crisis in the sphere of production.
Second, their focus on the factory meant that they failed to develop an analysis of
working-class recomposition at the level of social capital, that is, an analysis that took
account of struggles in the sphere of reproduction and their impact on struggles in the
sphere of production.
Both of these aspects of crisis were analyzed by Marxists working within the
alternative framework proposed here. Analyses of the way in which class struggle had
ruptured accumulation in both production and reproduction was developed by Italian
Marxists of the autonomy school in the late 1960s and by American Marxists associated
with Zerowork in the early 1970s. The first issue of Zerowork containing detailed
arguments along these lines appeared in December 1975. The arguments contained in the
articles of that issue were historically grounded in case studies of private (auto, coal
mining) and public (post office, welfare programs) sectors, of production and reproduction
(education, community). In case after case the articles showed how workers struggles had
grown, circulated, and ruptured accumulation, forcing crisis on capital. Finally, they
showed how these struggles created crisis for capital not only at the national but also at the
international level. Comparable recognition of the importance of the interrelationship
between struggles in production and reproduction later found its way into the writing of
134

the American wing of the relative shares school (Gintis and Bowles, 1982; Piven and
Cloward, 1982).
Today, considerable work has been done within the framework of this approach that
has undoubtedly contributed to our understanding of the present crisis. To date, however,
only the work of the Marxists in the alternative interpretation I have been exploring have
rooted their work on the present crisis in a reinterpretation of the theoretical categories of
Marx. Whether the relative shares authors will follow their lead remains to be seen.
Conclusion
To end this essay let us return now to the problem of appropriation raised in the
beginning and ask whether, or to what degree, the alternative interpretation of Marxian
crisis theory represented here is subject to the same criticism I have leveled at the theories
of Marxist economists.
In the formulation and discussion of a political reading of Marx, I have sought a
transparent language to discuss the various aspects of class struggles. By adopting a
transparent language that makes the political class content of every concept and theory
explicit, this kind of exposition would seem to make the material as accessible to capitalist
ideologues as to the working class. Does not the form of this interpretation leave it even
more open to capitalist appropriation than the jargon of Marxist economists? As far as the
choice of language and style is concerned, I think the answer must be positive.
The content of this interpretation, however, is not likely to be of any use to capital.
Capitalist ideologues and planners know there is a class struggle. They dont talk about it
because they try to hide its existence. Indeed they have developed their own obfuscating
languages to keep it hidden. The working class become labor or human capital. Class
relations are replaced by those between individuals and decision makers. In macro theory
the class struggle is reduced to the union bargaining of labor economics. And so on.
Therefore, even if they agree with the basic thrust of this analysis, and I think that in their
own way some do, they are not going to adopt any of these formulations precisely because
they are too transparent!
Capitalist economists know that there are problems in orchestrating the distribution
of resources among spheres of production. They have, as we have seen, developed
planning models to help them intervene where their micro theory or their experience
indicates that market forces are inadequate. Nothing has been said, or is likely to be said,
in this approach to Marx that would facilitate that process.
They also know that workers struggles push capitalists into the development of new
technologies and the reorganization of production. The economists among them may only
discuss this in terms of relative prices and marginal rates of technical substitution, but that
is just their jargon for analyzing the issue. Industrial engineers, industrial sociologists, and
labor-relations experts are all hard at work grappling with the problem and trying to help
business manage such change. I do not believe that my formulation of the tendency of the
organic composition of capital to rise can teach them anything useful about how to deal
with the problem.
Similarly, mainstream economists concerned with macro policies of employment,
micro policies of manpower planning, or corporate-level negotiations over job
displacement and retraining are all too aware of the problem of the tendency of the rate of
profit to fall, even though they dont call it that. As early as 1930 Keynes (1931) had
realized the importance of this phenomenon. He spoke of the new disease of
technological unemployment, of unemployment due to our discovery of means of
economizing the use of labor outrunning the pace at which we can find new uses of labor.
He even saw, as Marx had before him, the possibility of postcapitalist freedom from work.
Unlike Marx, of course, he spent the rest of his life trying to preserve capitalism rather
than trying to overthrow it.
Later, the acceleration of automation in the late 1950s produced another moment of
capitalist, and worker, awareness of this tendency. The solution that emerged was the rise
135

of a more labor-intensive service sector which has absorbed a rising percentage of the
labor force and has provided most of the jobs for new entrants during the last twenty years.
More recently, spurred by the rapid advances in automation and robotization,
economists and a variety of futurologists have become terribly worried about not being
able to find jobs for either the present or the emerging labor force. Although not all of the
problems of un- and underemployment can be attributed to labor-displacing technological
change, enough are to warrant growing alarm among capitalist planners. These worries,
and our opportunities, are particularly great because the new forms of automation are
being extended to the service sector as well as to manufacturing.
[25]

In short, this reinterpretation of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall as a tendency
of class struggle to undermine capitals ability to impose work offers no help to capital
because they are already aware of the problem. It does clarify for us about the importance
and implications of the struggle against work, and it identifies the misdirections and
obfuscations of some Marxist crisis theories.
As to the theory of underconsumption, when we interpret it as one aspect of the
contradictions of capitalist accumulation and of the limits to workers power, it provides us
with a useful argument for justifying wage and benefit increases to provide a spur to
economic growth. At the same time, it provides nothing new to capital, which long ago
absorbed the concept and, through Keynes, discovered how to put it to good use.
As to the considerations of the meaning of rising absolute wages to which the theory
of underconsumption can lead, we can draw conclusions quite different from those of
either Marxist economists or Critical Theorists. While rising income provides markets for
capitalist realization and possible cultural mechanisms of domination, it also leads, even in
the case of productivity deals, to changes in the content of workers desires for wealth and
leisure and to changes in their ability to fight for what they want. Rising wealth leads to
increased desire for the time to put it to use. Simultaneously, this improvement of material
condition helps workers undercut the relative surplus value strategies of capital. This is a
problem capital is again aware of, but one to which too many Marxists have been blind.
Once again it points to the centrality of the struggle against work as a Daslc element or
worKlng-class strategy.
In the case of the relative shares theory of crisis, I have already pointed out some of
its merits as well as some of its limitations. Probably the most important of the latter
concerns the failure to ground the theory in the kind of reinterpretation of Marxian
theoretical categories I have outlined here. Especially serious is the failure to recognize
that the social struggles that have ruptured the productivity deal and brought on the current
crisis have had as a central concern the struggle against work and for self-development.
Among the social democratic wing of the relative shares theorists this is probably
inevitable because there is no evidence that they understand the central function of work in
structuring capitalist society, and therefore they do not conceive of the transition to
socialism as involving the liberation of human beings from imposed work. They are more
inclined to embrace the traditional perspective that socialism is defined in terms of
workers controlling work rather than abolishing it. This naturally leads to their
preoccupation with workers control and economic democracy (Carnoy and Shearer,
1980; Espinoza and Zimbalist, 1978). This is one reason their politics are social
democratic rather than revolutionary. It also illustrates one way capital can use a Marxist
crisis theory based on class struggle. If that theory fails to identify and clarify some
fundamentally antagonistic quality of the struggle, such as the struggle against work, then
it will not escape instrumentalization.
In conclusion, I have tried to demonstrate that while the bulk of Marxist crisis theory
has been cast more in the language of economics than in the political language of class
struggle, it is still possible to develop an interpretation of Marx wherein his work retains
its revolutionary content. It is this approach that holds the only hope of escaping the easily
136

appropriated confines of economics and gives us at least a chance to develop Marxist
theory as a working-class weapon within the crisis.

Footnotes
1. So pervasive has the rise of Marxism been in American universities that OIlman and
Vernoff have called it a cultural revolution. and documented it in their book The Left
Academy (1982). In terms of Thomas Kuhns analysis of emerging paradigms, the last few
years have seen Marxism achieve all the trappings of recognized academic legitimacy:
specialized journals, professional organizations, tenured professors, and credited courses
of study.
2. Economists long ago abandoned serious discussion of Marxs labor theory of value --the
theoretical core of most of his work in economics. At the threshold of the Marxist
cultural revolution, in the early 1960s, there was only one well-known, tenured Marxist
professor of economics in the United States: Paul Baran at Stanford, who died in 1964. As
a result, the present generation of Marxists is largely self-taught.
3. When Ollman and Vernoff say, in their introduction to The Left Academy (p. 2), that a
space opened up within the university for critical thinking we need to remember that we
were the ones who carved out that space through our struggles. When the struggle is
abandoned the space often closes down dramatically. What has not yet been written in the
history of Marxist studies is a serious evaluation of both the strategies that were successful
in opening up space and those that were not.
4. The influence of business on the structure and content of American education has been
one of the phenomena most thoroughly studied by the new radical Marxist students and
professors. See Bowles and Gintis (1975), Spring (1972), and Carnoy (1974). It is the
omnipresence of that influence that should make us ask why business would tolerate
overtly anti-capitalist Marxist teaching in the university.
5. Marcuses analysis of repressive tolerance involves the idea that the establishment
tolerates difference in order to domesticate and neutralize it, to keep it off the streets and
safely tucked away in the cloister of academia (Wolf, Moore, and Marcuse, 1965).
6. The need for new ideas has stemmed from the crisis of theory that has been part of the
current economic and social crisis of the system. In economics this has mainly concerned
the crisis of the Keynesian paradigm which dominated policy making and academic
textbooks for almost thirty years.
7. One important attempt to use Marx to help plan capitalist accumulation was during the
1920s when Soviet economists drew on Marxs schemes of expanded reproduction to
develop models to guide Soviet policy makers. One such attempt by Feldman was
interesting enough to draw the attention of Evsey Domar (1957), the well-known Western
growth theorist. In the West there has been a parallel history of building on Marx. The
seminal moment of this history was the development of input/output analysis by Wassily
Leontief, who based himself partly on Marx s work. For some assessment of the history
and import of this appropriation of Marx see Leontief (1938), the essays in Horowitz
(1968), and Kuhne (1979).
8. From about 1970 on the American Economic Association made space in its annual
meetings for papers by radical economists or for discussions of the development of
Marxist economics. The curious reader has only to peruse the annual May issue of the
American Economic Review, which contains the proceedings of the annual meetings, to
verify this radical presence. Also see Bronfenbrenner (1970) and the debate around Gurley
(1971). Two surveys of Marxist work in the business press are BusinessWeek (1975) and
Wall Street Journal (1975).
9. There are two aspects of a theory that influence the facility of its appropriation by
capital: its content and its form. If the content of a theory is focused on the same problems
as bourgeois theories, if the theory defines its subject the same way bourgeois writers do,
comparison and evaluation come easily. If the focus and problematic are different,
137

however, the relevance is not so apparent. Similarly, if the form of analysis is the same, if
the language and methods are the same, then even if some core theoretical concepts are
different (say, the concept of value), it is easy for mainstream observers to follow the
arguments and to look for new insights that might inform their own work.
10. See Sweezys summary of Tugans position in Sweezy (1942).
11. See Sweezys outline of the debate in Sweezy (1942).
12. Fe1dmans model is reformulated and examined by Evsey Domar (1957: chap. 9). This
article, also referred to in note 7 above, is paradigmatic for seeing how bourgeois
economists sometimes try to learn from Marxists. It seems to me, Domar writes, worth
while to explore a growth model constructed on a Marxist foundation, even if modified,
and to show its relation to a corresponding Keynesian one. ..it may be o fuse in unraveling
a few puzzles in Soviet economic development and in achieving abetter understanding of
Soviet economic thinking. It also raises some questions regarding economic development
in general (p. 228).
13. The key part of Tronti ( 1966) that concerns the interpretation of the schemes of
reproduction was translated and published in English (Tronti, 1973).
14. See, for example, Okun and Perry (1970) and Nordhaus (1974).
15. For further references to the writers and works associated with this approach to
Marxism see the footnotes to the introduction of Cleaver (1979).
16. The 11th Thesis on Feuerbach reads: The philosophers have only interpreted the
world differently, the point is, to change it.
17. This critique of Critical Theory is elaborated at greater length in Cleaver (1979).
18. Red Notes (1980) and Semiotext(e) (1980) are both collections of translated articles
from the autonomist wing of Italian Marxism. Negri (1984) is a translation of Negris
book Marx Oltre Marx, which consists of a series of lectures on the Grundrisse.
19. See in addition to previous references Sweezy (1942; 1974), Alberro and Persky
(1979), and Hunt (1983).
20. The whole enormous literature of the transformation problem"--the problem of
transforming Marxs value quantities into prices-- stems from two sources. The first is the
one here: the perception that the theory of the tendency refers to monetary rates of profit.
The second is the perception that Marxian economics should be able to do all that
mainstream economics does, especially explain relative prices. The long debate on this
issue is rendered irrelevant if we recognize that Marxs theory has a totally different object
from that of mainstream economics. While mainstream economics is designed to provide
necessary information to the capitalist and policy maker about the operation of the system,
e.g., market prices, Marxian theory was designed to help overthrow the system as a whole.
For such different objectives one needs quite different theories. The one should not be
judged by the criteria of the other.
21. Much debate has taken place concerning the meaning of the organic composition of
capital and it has had considerable influence on the debate over the tendency of the rate of
profit to fall. In Capital, however, in both volumes 1 and 3, Marx is explicit that the
organic composition is the value composition insofar as it reflects the technical
composition-that is, insofar as changes in the organic composition reflect changes in the
concrete relations of labor and machinery. See, for example, Marx (1977: chap. 25).
Therefore the organic composition rises always and only when capital introduces new
machinery to raise productivity. For a discussion of the impact of this on the composition
of power relations among workers and between workers and capital see Cleaver (1979:
112-14).
22. Marxs most vivid and clear statement of this process can be found in the Grundrisse
(Marx, 1973: 699-715).
23. In the jargon of macroeconomics, which they sometimes use, they are discussing the
limits to raising the consumption function, the investment function, and the government
138

expenditure function in order to increase aggregate demand. See Baran and Sweezy : ;
(1964).
24. Among the most vivid of their condemnations can be found in Baran (1957).
25. The literature on the current wave of automation is enormous, but for an overview see
the special issue of Scientific American (1982) on the mechanization of work.

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140

Peter G. Stillman
The Myth of Marxs Economic Determinism

Source: The Myth of Marxs Economic Determinism was written for Marx Myths
and Legends by Peter G. Stillman, in April 2005, and rights remain with the author, as per
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives Licence 2.0.

Marx has frequently been characterized as holding to economic determinism. During
his lifetime, in Lenins writings, in Stalins diamat and the mirroring Western caricature,
and in some scholarly books in the last quarter of the twentieth century, Marx and
Marxism have been portrayed as presenting a theory in which economic factors determine
non-economic spheres of life such as politics, religion, and ideology. Although some texts
may appear to support the argument that Marx is an economic determinist (sec. I, below),
the economic determinist interpretations of those texts is weak (sec. II) and the
interpreters use of economic is misleading (sec. III). Moreover, when the reader moves
from the questions and perspectives of the economic determinist to examine Marxs
project, he does not base his ideas on economic determinism (sec. IV).
I. The Case for Marxs Economic Determinism.
Characterizing Marx as an economic determinist is based on some textual evidences.
Perhaps the clearest and strongest statement of what is taken as economic determinism
occurs in Marxs Preface to his 1859 Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy:
In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are
indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a
definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these
relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation on
which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of
social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the social,
political, and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that
determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their
consciousness. At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of
society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or -- what is but a legal
expression for the same thing -- with the property relations within which they have been at
work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn
into fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution. With the change of the economic
foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In
considering such transformations a distinction should always be made between the
material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be
determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious,
aesthetic or philosophic -- in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of
this conflict and fight it out. .... This consciousness must be explained rather from the
contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between the social productive
forces and the relations of production. (MER, 5)
This extensive passage contains some key elements for the economic determinist
argument. As he rarely does elsewhere, Marx talks of the economic structure and the
ideological superstructure that rises on it, and how change in the economic foundation
leads to a transformation of the entire immense superstructure. He describes social
change as a conflict between material productive forces and existing relations of
production. He insists that the analyst should distinguish between the economic
conditions of production and the ideological forms that men use to describe their
positions.
Economic determinists can argue four possible forms of determinism from
passages in the Preface. One determinism refers to the level of the individual: the human
141

will is determined -- i.e., its contents and actions are causally formed by the circumstances
in which the person lives. A second operates at the level of human interactions: in some
ways the economic causes the political and the ideological. A third determinism can be
independent or can sum and expand the first two: the course of history itself is inevitable.
The fourth determinism derives from Marxs claims that his critique of political
economy is a science.
So an economic determinists interpretation of individuals in Marxs system would
assert that Marxs is a deterministic system because it deprives human beings of agency or
free will: men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their
will. Marxs economic laws also seem to leave little scope for freedom, as is suggested in
the Preface, above, where economic conditions of production ... can be determined with
the precision of natural science or in Marxs Preface to Capital, where he writes of the
natural laws of capitalist production (MER, 296).
The economic determinist argument about society argues that either the
(technological) forces of production or the (more broadly economic) relations of
production (or forces and relations of production -- determinists differ here) serve as the
causal variable in worldly life, with political and legal structures and ideological
formations as the dependent variable, changing in lockstep with technology or economy.
The forces, or forces and relations, of production are the locus, then, of all effective
change and the cause of all that occurs in human life beyond the realm of production.
Lastly, some determinists argue determinism in history or through science. Some
emphasize the inevitability of predictable or predicted historical change, as suggested in
the Manifesto: What the bourgeois ... produces, above all, is its own grave-diggers. Its fall
and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable (CM, I; MER, 483). In private
letters Marx could be even more deterministic: on 5 March 1852 Marx wrote that he
proved that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat, ...
[and] that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all
classes and to a classless society (MER, 220). Here Marx seems to be making a
straightforward prediction of what will necessarily happen. Others note that Marx
frequently parallels his interpretations to modern natural science, both in the 1859
Preface and throughout his works.
It should be noted that determinist arguments can advocate hard or strong
determinism: that, e.g., a specific set of productive forces uniquely and directly cause a
specific set of political, legal, and ideological arrangements. Or there is a softer
determinism, perhaps arguing that the specific set of productive forces causes in the last
instance the superstructural elements. The text of the 1859 Preface, as well as other
texts, has been used to support a range of determinisms from soft to hard.
2. The Myth of Economic Determinism.
But economic determinism in Marxs thought is a myth. I argue against the economic
determinist argument in three ways in this and next sections. One way of arguing, which I
shall try to avoid most (but not all!) of the time, is to hurl quotations at your opponents
hoping they have the power of Zeuss lightening-bolts. Battles between opposing
quotations rarely solve any disputes (or, rather, any disputes they solve have been long
settled), if only because a quotation (like any fact or piece of evidence) requires an
interpretive context if it is to understood and placed with other quotations (and their
interpretations) into a larger theory.
I do want to suggest, therefore, some interpretive issues related to the economic
determinist interpretation of the 1859 Preface. The determinists claim that Marxs
system undermines free will seems argued only in a limited manner. Two arguments stand
out, but on examination neither seems able to bear the weight of determinism. One
suggests that human beings live in circumstances that exist independent of (and prior to)
their will. But this seems to me to be a sociological truth for social theorists of all
ideological stripes: we live in a world whose institutions, practices, and languages are pre-
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constituted by those who have lived before us, a constitution that is independent of our
wills and that shapes our wills. Marx stated as much (but with a different emphasis from
the Preface): Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please;
they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances
directly found, given and transmitted from the past (18thB, I; MER, 595). Marx seems to
be suggesting that the already-constituted social world provides a context that limits the
ways in which we can make our own history; he does not seem to be saying that the
already-constituted social world so causally determines each one of us that, instead of
making history, we are merely reacting to external causes that drive us.
The second argument for determinism, which builds on Marxs statement about life
determining consciousness, overlooks that statements peculiar twist. Marx engages
frequently in a kind of contrapuntal statement, where he denies a left-wing Hegelian
slogan and then presents his view as the reverse. But Marxs aphorism -- It is not the
consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being
that determines their consciousness -- presents its assertion asymmetrically. Having
denied the left-wing Hegelian stance that consciousness determines being, Marx reverses
the terms but adds social -- and social being is not defined but seems to be more
extensive than merely forces (or forces and relations) of production and indeed as social
likely includes consciousness
Marxs starker statement in The German Ideology -- life is not determined by
consciousness, but consciousness by life (MER, 155) -- does not add social but does
present its own asymmetry. The left-wing Hegelians, pace Marx, think that consciousness
determines life, as though consciousness were something independent of life, standing
apart from it (like an individualized Geist-like spirit) and shaping it. But Marx in this
section rejects the view of consciousness as independent of life (so that he goes on to reject
that philosophy can be an independent branch of knowledge). Rather, he is trying to
make consciousness a part of human life. So, when life determines consciousness, Marx
is tautologically asserting, as part of his on-going argument, that life (a totality including
consciousness) determines consciousness (because it is a part of life). As he himself
writes, when we see that life determines consciousness, the starting point ... is real
living individuals themselves, and consciousness is considered solely as their
consciousness (MER, 155). So these statements do not deny free will so much as they put
human consciousness into an intimate relation with other aspects of human life.
Some determinist interpreters insist that in Marx the economic -- the forces, or forces
and relations, of production -- determines political, legal, and ideological institutions and
structures. Indeed, it is important to Marx to emphasize (against philosophers and others
who would ignore) the importance of the economic; and so it should be expected that
Marx will mention frequently and give weight to economic factors. But giving weight to
economic factors is far from determinism as causality, especially far from strong causality.
And some of his mirrored statements also suggest how far from unidimensional causality
Marx is: circumstances make men just as much as men make circumstances (MER,
165).
The words that Marx uses should indicate how far from causality he is. The English
translation conveys the feel of the German, and in a set of places where Marx could use
cause (were he giving a monocausal, strongly causal, or even partially causal
explanation of how economics causes non-economic factors), he uses instead rises,
correspond, conditions, and is ... transformed. When the legal and political
superstructure rises, definite forms [note the plural] of social consciousness
correspond to it. Despite the frequent treatment of this paragraph of the 1859 Preface
as deterministic, its language does not prima facie demand the theory of economic
determinism.
Marx does suggest, I think, that forms of consciousness such as ideology are limited
in what can be thought -- perhaps in parallel to the way that the circumstances into which
143

we are born limit how we make history. Marx wishes to explain consciousness from the
contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between the social productive
forces and the relations of production (MER, 5). What human consciousness does is to try
to understand the world. When social life is calm, so are ideologies; when class conflicts
come into existence, so too do competing ideologies and conscious statements (CM, I;
MER, 481); and only when a revolutionary class arises can revolutionary ideas come into
being (MER, 173). To suggest limitations, however, seems very different from asserting
causal connections.
Marx gives a fascinating specific example of limitation when he discusses the
equality of value in commodities. He praises Aristotle for having clearly enunciated a
number of basic principles about the money-form, value, and the requirement that
exchange take place with equality and commensurability. Aristotle has attained many
insights necessary for Marxs economics.
There was, however, an important fact which prevented Aristotle from seeing that, to
attribute value to commodities, is merely a mode of expressing all labour as equal human
labour, and consequently as labour of equal quality. Greek society was founded upon
slavery, and had, therefore, for its natural basis, the inequality of men and of their labour-
powers (CI, 59-60).
So Aristotle could not see the equivalence of human labour -- and that equivalence
cannot be discovered until the notion of human equality has already acquired the fixity of
a popular prejudice (CI, 60). Aristotles range of thinking is limited by the practices of his
society. But to me such limitation is far from determinism.
Economic determinism suggests historical determinism: inevitability and
predictability. But most of Marxs statements about the historical inevitably are in
especially rhetorical works, like the Manifesto, or in minor documents (like his 1852
letter). When Marx is not trying directly to foment revolution, inevitability yields to
judicious assessment; and in minor documents Marxs opinions vary according to
circumstances and audiences.
In both minor and major works it is striking how little and how rarely Marx claims
an inevitable course for the future or predicts it. Those who seek to find a blueprint of the
future society in Marx search in vain for a document that Marx did not produce. Enticing
comments he did write. In The German Ideology, he stated that
in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each
can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general
production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow,
to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after
dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming a hunter, fisherman, shepherd, or
critic (MER, 160).
He echoes that thought at various places in Capital (C3, 820; MER, 441) but
nowhere does he articulate an institutional context or psychological dynamics for that
vision. The closest, perhaps, that Marx comes to a blueprint of the future is in the
Manifestos ten points that in the most advanced countries ... will be pretty generally
applicable (CM, II; MER, 490). But that list of 1848 Marx and Engels explicitly
evaluated in their Preface to the 1872 English edition:
The practical application of the principles will depend ... everywhere and at all times,
on the historical conditions for the time being existing, and, for that reason, no special
stress is laid on the revolutionary measures proposed at the end of Section II. That passage
would, in many respects, be worded differently today (MER, 470).
Rather than be a blueprint or a prediction, then, the ten points -- like so much else of
what Marx wrote about the future -- depends on the specific historical conditions of the
present out of which that future shall grow.
Moreover, when Marx analyses the present, he seems to do so in a way that
emphasizes particularity and detail. It is difficult, I think, to read The Eighteenth Brumaire
144

of Louis Napoleon or his Herald-Tribune articles without appreciating Marxs attention to
the specifics of history and his attempt to recognize the novelty, contingency, and variety
of current events. In The Communist Manifesto, the executive of the modern State is but a
committee for managing the common affairs of the bourgeoisie (CM, I; MER, 475); four
years later Marx writes about a very different kind of state in The Eighteenth Brumaire,
one in which the individual President panders to almost all classes to support himself in
power. (There are in all cases economic laws of motion which undergird the state, but, as
Marx quotes a reviewer at one point, with all laws we look for the variations of the law as
well as its uniformity [CI, Afterward to the Second German Edition; MER, 300]. The state
executive varies from one country to another according to its economic formation,
historical factors, and particularities.)
Despite the parallels that Marx draws between his critique of political economy and
natural science, a careful examination of how Marx also contrasts them shows basic
differences between Marxism and natural science. For instance, Marx refers to both
chemistry and physics in the Preface to Capitals first edition. Marx states that physics
uses observation and experiment; but observation is of only limited usefulness for Marxs
economic analysis. To observe a commodity -- Marxs example is a coat -- does not help
in seeing the (exchange) value of a commodity; examine a commodity as much as you
like, wear it until it is threadbare, and you still cannot see its value: the coat is a
depository of value, but though worn to a thread, it does not let this fact show through
(MER, 316). While chemistry uses microscopes and chemical reagents, Marx must use
the force of abstraction, and, for instance, in his examination of the coat abstract from its
physical properties to its status as an exchange value whose value determined by human
labor time; so far no chemist has ever discovered exchange-value either in a pearl or a
diamond (MER, 328). In brief, a commodity appears, a first sight, a very trivial thing,
and easily understood. Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing, abounding
in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties (MER, 319).
Marxs attempt to attain systematic knowledge of the commodity in all its relations
and meanings is far removed from the methods and goals of modern natural science.
3. The Myth of Economic Determinism, cont.
Because the interpretation is labeled economic determinism, it might also be useful
to think about the terminology. Economic is in some ways an odd term for economic
determinists to use, because it tends to shift the emphasis from forces and relations of
production to a reified sphere of human activity that, though changeable in its specific
contents, scope, and power, gains an unchanging stability in the term economic. Much
better to think in terms of forces of production and relations of production. These
terms are not so susceptible to reification because of their specificity: they cover a less
wide range than economic and refer to specific aspects of the full economic process.
Consequently, using forces and relations of production makes it easier to think that
they might change.
They also lack a clear and distinct meaning that sharply delineates them from other
factors. Indeed, are the forces of production just tools and machinery? or are they the work
force whose productivity varies depending on how it is organized? do the forces of
production include the imaginative undertakings that modernize the forces? Relations of
production is if anything more ambiguous: are they merely the relations of social labor? as
social interactions, do relations have to include communication and consciousness, ideas
and ideologies? what about political and legal relations that regulate social interactions?
Marxs terminology, when delved into, suggests that any single dimension of production is
intimately related to other dimensions.
So too economic tends to ignore labor and needs, and in doing so occludes
central human characteristics. For Marx human labor is a central category of economic
analysis and a central dimension of our humanity:
145

Labour is, in the first place, a process in which both man and Nature participate, and
in which man of his own accord starts, regulates, and controls the material re-actions
between himself and Nature. He opposes himself to Nature as one of her own forces,
setting in motion arms and legs, head and hands, the natural forces of his body, in order to
appropriate Natures productions in a form adapted to his own wants. By thus acting on the
external world and changing it, he at the same time changes his own nature. He develops
his slumbering power and compels them to act in obedience to his sway. (MER, 344)
Economic is too bloodless and abstract to emphasize such labor, activity,
development, and transformation of individual and society.
Finally, economic makes it difficult to imagine a future society, which will not
have an economic sphere -- especially not one governed by the natural laws of
capitalism -- even though there will of course be a realm of necessity, whose scope and
specific requirements will vary and beyond it begins the development of human energy
which is an end in itself, the true realm of freedom (C3, 820; MER, 441). So economic
seems to be a reified, unitary, and static concept, that prevents us from seeing clearly the
many relations and dimensions it includes and implies.
4. An Alternative View of Marxism
Even on their own grounds and using their own terms, the arguments of the
economic determinists about Marx do not seem cogent, powerful, or convincing. The
strongest arguments against Marxs purported economic determinism, however, do not
meet the determinists on their own grounds and their own interpretations of Marxs texts.
Economic determinist presentations require their authors to slight or ignore important
dimensions that constitute Marxs theoretical achievements and practical importance. In
other words, even as they pick out good quotations from Marxs corpus, the economic
determinists ask the wrong questions and consequently look for the wrong answers.
Imposing their questions on Marx, they ignore Marxs questions. Marx does not focus on -
- indeed, he does not even address -- the issue of whether human beings have free will. He
is not attempting to create a causal (or monocausal) theory of human life, similar to
theories in chemistry and physics, which allow for causal statements and scientific
prediction. He is not concerned with causality or inevitability in history.
Marx, rather, thinks of human beings as active creators and shapers of their natural
and social worlds who find their scope for free action drastically constrained by systems of
private property and especially capitalism. He is concerned with the relations among
forces of production, relations of production, and consciousness, but he is concerned to see
those relations as an interrelated coherent totality in which human beings live and to
present that totality in a systematic manner. Throughout his writings Marx is dialectical,
looking at how practices (and the concepts that represent them) develop and change over
time and in interaction with other practices.
Marxs dialectic does not involve any kind of thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis triad: he
nowhere uses that language. Nor does he use the language of cause-and-effect. Rather,
what Marxs dialectic involves is a careful analysis of the categories of bourgeois and
human society. Just as Hegel begins his Science of Logic with the simplest logical (or
mental) category he can imagine, being, and then analyses it to pull from it all the
meanings inherent in it, so too Marx begins Capital with the commodity, the basic
category of capitalist society, and analyses it. The progress of Capital cannot be seen as
thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis, if only because there is no anti-thesis to the commodity that
produces a clear synthesis; but the progress is rather the detailed articulation of the
meaning and implications of the commodity. When Marx discusses money in the opening
chapter, he does so in the terms that he has been using for commodities, to show how
money is a logical outgrowth of commodities (and not, for instance, a conventional
invention by human beings nor merely a historical development in economic history).
Given Marxs method of progressive articulation, it cannot be said that the commodity
causes capitalism, or money, or the fetishism of commodities, or exchange: all of these
146

categories are bound up with the commodity, and their meanings are explored as Marx
explores the meaning of commodities; but the relation is not one of cause-and-effect but
rather of inter-connected categories. (One cannot have capitalism without commodities, for
instance, but it would be strange to say that extensive production and circulation of
commodities causes capitalism; rather, both phrases are synonymous, emphasizing
different aspects of the same economic formation.)
Dialectical reasoning does allow for fluidity and development: it allows for them in
part because in any articulation of a concept the dialectician needs to follow wherever the
logic demands, and so what appears as an early conclusion may be modified at later stages,
dead ends can appear to require a change in focus, and the articulation of a social product
can lead to conflict or contradiction. For instance, as Marx works out the implications of
labor time and the length of the working day in capitalism, he notes that, in the exchange
that is wage labor, the capitalist maintains his rights as a purchaser when he tries to make
the working-day as long as possible and the labourer maintains his right as seller when
he wishes to reduce the working-day. In the heart of capitalism There is ... therefore, an
antinomy, right against right, both equally bearing the seal of the law of exchanges.
Between equal rights force decides (MER, 364). Dialectic can both portray capitalism as
a system and a conflict within capitalism that might destroy it.
Portraying capitalism as a totality -- by which Marx means a self-forming, structured,
and evolving whole, that can have within itself contradictions and conflicts, forces of
stability and openings for change -- is another important part of Marxs social theory. In
his discussion of method in the Grundrisse, Marx talks about how he is studying a rich
totality of many determinations and relations (MER, 237).
Capital volume I presents such a totality. Even though it presents only the first of a
promised four-book work, in Capital Marx presents the self-forming of capitalism on its
own terms in So-called Primitive Accumulation. Most of the book is devoted to
discerning and portraying capitalism as a structured, interconnected social formation in
which the major elements are related to each other. In that presentation, Marx omits much.
He leaves until later the circulation of capital (MER, 298). He discusses national
differences briefly. He talks some of the ideological life of capitalism: he notes that for a
society based upon the production of commodities ... Christianity with its cultus of abstract
man ... is the most fitting form of religion (MER, 326) and in a paragraph of imaginative
rhetoric suggests that the ideology of Freedom, Equality, Property, and Bentham
descriptively replicates the sphere or simple circulation (MER, 343). Of the psycho-social
implications of capitalism, he says at one point:
It is not the place, here, to go on to show how the division of labor seizes upon, not
only the economic, but every other sphere of society, and everywhere lays the foundation
of that all engrossing system of specialising and sorting men, that development in a man of
one single faculty at the expense of all other faculties, which cause A. Ferguson, the
master of Adam Smith, to exclaim: We make a nation of Helots, and have no free
citizens (MER, 394).
Not here but elsewhere in Marxs writings the social -- and political and legal --
aspects of capitalism are discussed; what Smith includes in his political economy, Marx
includes in his, and more.
Finally, capitalism as a totality is evolving. Capitalism includes contradictions and
conflicts, as is indicated by the conflict between capitalist and worker about the length of
the working day, a conflict of right versus right redolent of the conflicts in ancient
Greece between Creon and Antigone and within the Oresteiea, conflicts which for Hegel
signals the decay of Greek ethical life. Even in the more simple analysis of The German
Ideology, the potential for conflict and change is inherent in any economic formation:
these three moments, the forces of production, the relations of production, and
consciousness, can and must come into contradiction with one another as long as the
division of labor exists (MER, 159).
147

Capitalism also displays intimations of the future. From Marxs tantalizing passages,
two may be worth examining briefly.
Modern Industry ... compels society, under penalty of death, to replace the detail-
worker of to-day, crippled by life-long repetition of one and the same trivial operation, and
thus reduced to a mere fragment of a man, by the fully developed individual, fit for a
variety of labours, ready to face any change of production, and to whom the different
social functions he performs, are but so many modes of giving free scope to his own
natural and acquired powers (MER, 413-14).
However terrible and disgusting the dissolution , under the capitalist system, of the
old family ties [through child labor, e.g.] may appear, nevertheless modern industry, by
assigning as it does an important part in the process of production, outside the domestic
sphere, to women, to young persons, and to children of both sexes, creates a new economic
foundation for a higher form of the family and of relations between the sexes (MER, 415).
(One comment about technical or economic determinism: note that modern
industry is doing the compelling and creating a new foundation, not some future
technology; and in that future, built on modern industry, relations of production and social
relations will be very different. In other words, while the forces of production remain
recognizably similar to contemporary modern industry, the social relations of the future
are significantly different from those of the present.) What Marx is indicating, I think, is
that in current productive processes and practices can be seen the possibility of drastically
transformed productive, social, developmental, and other relations: capitalism is a totality,
and part of a totality usually includes possibilities for change. What Marx analyses are not
isolated pieces of capitalism, but capitalism as an inter-related ensemble of social
relations (TF, 6; MER, 145), in which the detailed analysis of any component requires
that at some point it be re-placed in the totality.
When Marx presents capitalism as a totality using dialectics, his science is an
interpretive science whose elements are systematically connected -- science in the sense
of Hegels Wissenschaft, not modern natural science. Appearances deceive, and analysis
must burrow through them:
the final pattern of economic relations as seen on the surface, in their real existence
and consequently in the conceptions by which the bearers and agents of these relations
seek to understand them, is very much different from, and indeed quite the reverse of, their
inner but concealed essential pattern and the conception corresponding to it (C3, 209).
All science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of
things directly coincided (C3, 817), and Marxs goal is to discern that historically created
and changing essence and to present it in a systematic, scientific manner.
For Marx human activity is central. When Marx in The German Ideology goes back
to the first premise of human existence to ask what human beings are like, he sees that
the first historical act is ... the production of the means to satisfy ... needs, the production
of material life itself; from that follows the second point, that the satisfaction of the
first need ... leads to new needs. Human beings then begin to interact with each other,
form families and other social relations, and develop consciousness (MER, 155-60).
Marx distinguishes his materialism from all previous materialism, in which the
thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of
contemplation, but not as human sensuous activity, practice, not subjectively; so a
materialism like Feuerbach does not grasp the significance of revolutionary, of
practical-critical activity (TF, 1; MER, 143). Objects that he sees -- like cheery-trees in
France, are an historical product, the result of the activity of a whole succession of
generations (MER, 170). In the Manifesto, Marx praises the bourgeoisie because it has
been the first to show what mans activity can bring about (CM, I; MER, 476). And the
long quotation above from Capital about labor is yet another presentation of human beings
as active beings who transform nature and themselves by their activity.
148

Of course human activity always has occurred under constraints; in a society with a
division of labor,
Mans own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him
instead of being controlled by him .... This fixation of social activity, this consolidation of
what we ourselves produce into an objective power above us, growing out of our control,
thwarting our expectations, bringing to naught our calculations, is one of the chief factors
in historical development up till now. (MER, 160).
Marx spends three-quarters of a page in Capital (I, 645) summarizing just some of
the constraints, limitations, and convolutions imposed by capitalism. Human beings are
and always have been active beings, but they have always had to act under severe
constraints.
Marx wishes to abolish, as much as possible, those constraints. Active human beings,
able to unify with others in the class, formed by the Communist Party and become
gradually more conscious of their goals, can revolt against capitalism, overthrow it, and
remove these alien limits in order to liberate human activity and unfetter human
development. In the place of the myth of economic determinism, Marxs theory presents
the interpretation of a complex, dynamic totality by a careful dialectic, an interpretation
that shows that active human beings can by revolution transform the world, tear down
alien structures and powers, and build on the potentials of modern industry.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Megan Gallagher and Matt Rand for their helpful comments on an
earlier draft of this article. They helped save me from a number of infelicities and they are
of course not responsible for those that remain.
Bibliographical Note
For the most powerful and cogent arguments that Marx in some senses is an economic
determinist, see the following three books, whose common date of publication constitutes
an interesting coincidence:
Cohen, G. A., Karl Marxs theory of history : a defence (Princeton : Princeton University
Press, 1978);
McMurtry, John, The structure of Marxs world-view (Princeton, N.J. : Princeton
University Press, 1978);
Shaw, William H., Marxs theory of history (Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press,
1978).
The classical arguments against the Second International, Leninist, and (German) SPD
views of Marx as an economic determinist can be found, most famously, in:
Lukcs, Gyrgy, History and class consciousness; studies in Marxist dialectics trans. by
Rodney Livingstone (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,1971).
Other important Eastern European interpreters of Marx after the Russian Revolution who
were open to seeing him not as an economic determinist include:
Karl Korsch, Marxism and philosophy, trans. and introd. by Fred Halliday (New York,
Monthly Review Press, 1971);
Rozdolski, Roman, The Making of Marxs Capital, trans. by Pete Burgess (London :
Pluto Press, 1977); and
I. I. Rubin, Essays on Marxs Theory of Value (Detroit: Black and Red, 1972).
More recent works include:
Avineri, Shlomo, The social and political thought of Karl Marx (Cambridge : University
Press, 1968), and
Ollman, Bertell, Alienation: Marxs conception of man in capitalist society (Cambridge,
University Press, 1971).
For a further development of some of my arguments, see:
Marxs Enterprise of Critique, in J. Roland Pennock, ed., Marxism (NOMOS Series;
New York: New York University Press, 1983), pp. 252-76.
149

In addition, just about any interpretation of Marx finds itself tending to one side or the
other in the debate about economic determinism. As many have suggested, it may well be
that those who come to Marx via economics or Engels tend to see him as an economic
determinist, whereas those who come to Marx through Hegel (or come to see the
importance of Hegel in his thought) see him not as an economic determinist.

Works Cited
All references to quotations are in parentheses in the text, and are to works by Marx.
Because the Marx-Engels Reader is a common text, I have tried to cite all quotations to
that work whenever possible; in addition, in many cases I have also cited the specific book
in question.
MER, Tucker, Robert C., ed. The Marx-Engels Reader (Second edition; New York: W. W.
Norton, 1978)
CI Marx, Karl. Capital, volume 1 (New York: International Publishers, 1967)
C3 Marx, Karl. Capital, volume 3 (New York: International Publishers, 1967)
CM Marx, Karl. Manifesto of the Communist Party (cited to section number)
18thB Marx, Karl. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (cited to section number)
TF Marx, Karl. Theses on Feuerbach (cited to Thesis number)

150

Cyril Smith
Marx and Materialism

Source: Marx and Materialism was written for Marx Myths and Legends by
Cyril Smith in September 2004, and rights remain with the author, as per Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives Licence 2.0.

Today, increasing numbers of people are struck by the suspicion that Marx was not
the man we all thought, but very few are aware how far the Marxist picture was from the
reality. Many think that Marx may be judged by the comprehensiveness of his complete
works. Not many are conscious that his difficulty of finishing any one of his projects was a
sign of his essential incompleteness of his overall task: the construction of communism.
Unlike his devoted followers, he was not prepared to let revolutionary impatience stand in
the way of clarity.
Let us begin with Lenin, with the early work, What the Friends of the People are.
Lenin writes:
We do not say to the world, Marx wrote as far back as 1843, and he fulfilled this
programme to the letter, we do not say to the world: cease struggling, your whole
struggle is senseless. All we do is to provide it with a true slogan of struggle.
That is what Lenin wrote in 1893, and meant it all his life. But this is what Marx
wrote in 1843:
We do not say to the world: Cease your struggles, they are foolish; we will give you
the true slogan of struggle. We merely show the world what it is really fighting for, and
consciousness is something that it has to acquire, even if it does not want to.
Lenin did not intend to distort the words of Marx, but was incapable of imagining
such a humanist thought possible for the founder of Marxism.
So here we have two programmes, the programmes of Marx and Lenin : on the one
side, Marxism, on the other, the figure of Karl Marx. The former holds that Marxism is
a certainty, an unlimited collection of truth, or as Lenin, echoing Plekhanov, put it, a
complete, integral world outlook, cast from a single sheet of steel. To the latter, on the
contrary, it is an organic growth.
In 1843, Marx was just beginning. As he told Karl Kautsky a lifetime later, he
couldnt publish his collected works, because they had not been written. (That was in
1882.) In 1843 he had not yet developed his notions yet of class struggle, of the
dictatorship of the proletariat, of value. But already the notion was present of a truly
human world. At this stage he thought of himself as a Feuerbachian. But Feuerbach was
some kind of materialist. For such thinkers, the world existed, and we had to make our
thoughts conform to it, and by thought, the materialists mean no more than activity of a
single, isolated human head. But Marx, while partially agreeing with Feuerbach in
his criticism of Hegel, has nothing to do with him in his conception of society. His
discoveries of the proletariat and of communism are unaffected by Feuerbach.
When he writes his Comments on James Mill (1844), he is quite clearly not a
materialist:
If then our mutual thraldom to the object at the beginning of the process is now seen
to be in reality the relationship between master and slave, that is merely the crude and
frank expression of our essential relationship. Our mutual value is for us the value of our
mutual relationships. Hence for us man himself is mutually of no value.
The object cannot be seen as merely an object, but only as a social product. As such
it is not merely something which affects the thought in my head or yours, but which is a
link between us and everybody else. But this is in contradiction with our human being.
Let us suppose that we had carried out production as human beings. ... I would have
been for you the mediator between you and the species, and the other person. ... and
151

therefore would become recognised and felt by you yourself as a completion of your own
essential nature and as a necessary part of yourself, and consequently would know myself
to be confirmed both in your thought and your love.
When he came in 1845 to write his Theses on Feuerbach, he could launch an attack
on materialism: The very first Thesis begins:
The chief defect of all previous materialism (that of Feuerbach included) is that
things [Gegenstaende], reality, sensuousness are conceived only in the form of the object,
or of contemplation, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence,
in contradistinction to materialism the active side was set forth abstractly by idealism
which, of course, does not know real, sensuous activity as such Feuerbach wants
sensuous objects, really distinct from conceptual objects, but he does conceive objects, but
he does not conceive human activity itself as objective activity. In Das Wesen des
Christentums he therefore regards the theoretical attitude as the only genuinely human
attitude, while practice is conceived and defined only in its dirty-Jewish form of
appearance. Hence he does not grasp the significance of revolutionary, of practical-
critical activity.
And Thesis 3 returns to the subject:
The materialist doctrine concerning the changing of circumstances and upbringing
forgets that circumstances are changed by men and that the educator must himself be
educated. This doctrine must, therefore, divide society into two parts, one of which is
superior to society. The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human
activity or self-change [Selbstveraenderung] can be conceived and rationally understood as
revolutionary practice.
The point is that Marx is not a philosopher. He is a critic of philosophy. That does
not mean that he disagrees with this or that philosophy, but that he takes the questions that
philosophy asks and shows that the answers are to be found by relating the questions to the
contradictions of society.
Marx had learned from Hegel one lesson which he never forgot: putting in front of
society a slogan, a formula, a set of sectarian principles with which to make the world
correspond is not the point. The social formation Marx strove for all his life was a human
society, which he fought to release. While he respected the work of Fourier and Owen, he
saw it as foreshadowing the Communism that arose from the sufferings of the proletariat
itself.
In 1859, Marx published Critique of Political Economy, Part 1. (There was no Part 2.
Capital, Volume 1 was published eight years later.) The Preface to the Critique, which
Marx used to summarise his views, is noteworthy, among other reasons, for its complete
failure to mention the topics we have been talking about. Instead, he refers to the the
social production of the being, and contains the celebrated and much misunderstood
account of relations of production relations and productive forces. I would only like to
point out that the whole of this passage ends with the statement that the pre-history of
human society accordingly closes with this social formation.
The distinction between human productive forces and social relations of production,
the key point in Marxs whole outlook, is ignored by the Marxists. They simply cannot
see what all the fuss is about. Communism, which turns on the re-unification of these two,
is beyond them.
Let us jump a few decades, to 1873. In the Afterword [Nachwort] which he wrote to
the Second Edition of Capital, Marx felt it necessary to reply to a reviewer of the First
Edition on the question of the method of the book and its relationship to that of Hegel:
My dialectical method is, in its foundations, not only different from the Hegelian, but
the direct opposite to it. For Hegel, the process of thinking, which he even transforms into
an independent subject, under the name of the Idea, is the creator of the actual, and the
actual is only the external appearance of the idea. With me, the reverse is true: the ideal is
nothing but the material reflected and translated in the mind of man.
152

And he goes on to contrast the dialectical method and its role in history in Hegels
case and in his own.
Marxist translators have gone to great lengths to make this look like materialism.
The best to date is Penguin translation, due to Ben Fowkes:
With me, the reverse is true: the ideal is nothing but the material world reflected in
the mind of man, and translated into forms of thought.
The Untermann translation is much more direct:
With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected
by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought.
Eden and Cedar Paul give the following:
In my view, on the other hand, the ideal is nothing other than the material since it has
been transposed and translated inside the human head.
Marxs original is as follows:
Bei mir ist umgekehrt das Idealle nichts andres als das in Menschenkopf ungesetzte
und ubersetzte Materialle.
What these people miss, is the meaning of Hegel, and without that, there was no
possibility of recognising the message of Marx. In everybody up to and including Kant, the
pair form and matter confront of each other, and there is no way of proceeding from
one to the other. Hegel was the first person to break away from this, and Marx does not go
back on it. For the translators of Capital, being materialists, the Kantian standpoint is the
most advanced they can reach. (Kant himself, was able to see, dimly, the contradictions in
this. From then on, the attitude of most thinkers was pre-Kantian.) Marx is inverting Hegel
without returning to the earlier point of view. Hegels Mind (or Spirit [Geist]) is far
from the Marxists. His meaning comprises at least as much as his understanding of
world, and Marxs use of this word never ignores that of Hegel. What eludes Hegels
grasp is that with the victory of the proletariat the revelation of the meaning of the history
places the true significance of Mind in the heads of the individuals of the whole of society.
This appears to be strange time to rediscover the true heritage of Marx. Bush and
Blair, along with their counterparts Bin Laden and Putin, seem to have things their own
way. How can anyone can imagine that human life could be so different? Well, the works
of Karl Marx, if we decide to read them as they were written, can indicate a direction we
might take.

153

Christopher J. Arthur
The Myth of Simple Commodity Production

Source: Written in 2005 for Marx Myths & Legends. Covered by the Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives Licence 2.0.

The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics of 1987 represented the distilled
wisdom of the economics profession. The article on Karl Marx was written by the
leading Marxist theorist of the day, Ernest Mandel. This multi-volume work included
enough articles on Marxism to enable a separate volume on it to be extracted and
published, The New Palgrave: Marxian Economics, 1990, in which Mandels overview
had pride of place. He referred to what Marx calls simple commodity production
einfache Waren-produktion.
[1]
In this, quasi-official expression was given to the most
enduring myth of Marxology.
For Mandel was following a very long tradition. Paul Sweezy in his much-used
classic textbook The Theory of Capitalist Development stated Marx begins by analysing
simple commodity production...
[2]
(Notice the quotation marks, but, as with Mandel,
unsupported by any actual reference.) Earlier, in the thirties, Oskar Lange, in explaining
Marxs theory of value, said Marx starts with such a notion: Marx calls it einfache
Warenproduktion.
[3]
A later authority, R. L. Meek, in his 1967 essay on Karl Marxs
Economic Method alleged Marx had a model he called simple commodity
production
[4]
.
But the simple truth is that Marx never called anything einfache Warenproduktion;
the term cannot be found in his writings.
[5]

Who, then, introduced it? The term occurs in Engelss Preface and Supplement to his
edition of Capital Volume III, and it was interpolated by him into the text itself (as keen-
eyed readers can deduce from the editorial brackets surrounding the passage containing it).
In his Preface Engels claimed that at the beginning of Volume I of Capital Marx
takes simple commodity production as his historical presupposition, only later, proceeding
on this basis, to come on to capital: the advantage of this was that he could proceed from
the simple commodity and not from a conceptually and historically secondary form, the
commodity as already modified by capitalism.
[6]
This is in fact a misreading: Marx never
used the expression simple commodity production in Capital. Likewise, it is certain he
never referred to the capitalistically produced commodity as a secondary derivative
form.
[7]
Marx certainly does not develop the idea of simple commodity production at the
point where it was supposed to be under discussion, namely the first few chapters. Rather,
as the first sentence of Volume I makes clear, the simple circulation discussed in the first
few chapters is that of the capitalist economy.
The only occurrence of the term simple commodity production in the whole three
volumes of Capital occurs in Volume III, but this is in a passage given to us subsequent to
Engelss editorial work, as he himself warns us in a note.
[8]
It is now possible to check this
against the manuscript itself, which has been published in the new Marx-Engels
Gesamtausgabe (MEGA). It is clear that the entire paragraph was inserted by Engels (as,
indeed, was the one on the next page about capitals historical mission).
[9]
Later in the
text Engels also inserted the phrase and commodity production in general.
[10]

It is not very usual for an editor to impose his own reading on the text. Why, then,
did Engels do it? The reason can be established with some precision. However, first let us
note that Engelss cast of mind was primarily historical. In his review of Marxs 1859
Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy he put forward what came to be known
as the logical-historical method (another term Marx never used, by the way). When he
responded to the first proofs of Capital, he reacted to the proposal to add a special
appendix on the value-form by urging that this take the shape of a proof from history.
[11]

154

(Marx ignored this advice.) However, when Engels came to write Prefaces to Capital I in
1883, 1886, and 1890 he did not suggest that the first part was historical. Nor did he refer
to simple commodity production in his Preface to Volume II. It was only in 1894 in the
Preface to Volume III that he came up with the idea in the context of judging what has
been called the prize-essay competition (in which people had been challenged by Engels,
in his Preface to Volume II, to solve the problem of generating a uniform rate of profit on
the basis of the law of value). This gives us the requisite context for understanding
Engelss intervention.
Engels became involved in the discussion of simple commodity production because
it seemed that in the third volume of Capital Marx abandoned the law of value in favour of
another principle of price determination. Of course, in Marxs procedure values are a stage
in the process of generating the Volume III prices of production. But, if such values are
not empirically present because they are superseded by these prices of production, are they
not merely fictitious? Engels reacted to this possibility by interpreting the stages of Marxs
presentation historically in order to ensure that the values were indeed empirically visible,
but, of course, in the past, before capitalism modified the relationships involved.
Thus, when in response to Capital Volume III Conrad Schmidt put forward the thesis
that the value discussed in Volume I is a necessary fiction, Engels wrote to him arguing
that value is real enough for practical purposes at the stage of simple commodity
production.
[12]
The day before writing to Schmidt, Engels had written to Werner Sombart
in much the same vein, arguing that value had a direct and real existence at the time
when commodity exchange began, but this direct realisation of value ... no longer
happens, for the value of the capitalist mode of production ... is so thoroughly hidden.
[13]

So strongly did Engels feel about this that he wrote a special paper on the subject, which
was placed as a Supplement to the second edition of Capital Volume III. He was there
concerned to dispel any doubt that what is involved is not just a logical process but a
historical one. After developing the point at length, he concluded that Marxs law of
value applies universally, as much as any economic laws do apply, for the entire period of
simple commodity production, i.e. up to the time at which this undergoes a modification
by the onset of the capitalist form of production.
[14]

It is true that Engels was able to cite a passage from the manuscript of the third
volume in which something like the content of the idea of a stage of simple commodity
production was mentioned by Marx. Seizing enthusiastically on this, Engels claimed that
if Marx had been able to go through the third volume again, he would undoubtedly have
elaborated this passage significantly
[15]
: however, it is just as possible he would have
decided it was a false trail and eliminated it! Certainly, odd references in Capital to pre-
capitalist production are not used with any systematic intent.
Engels, Sweezy, and Meek, all (wrongly) believed Capital starts with simple
commodity production, however they characterised its status. For Sweezy the virtue of
simple commodity production was its theoretical clarity as the starting point for a logical
derivation, not its supposed empirical reality as part of a corrected history as it was for
Engels. Meek went for an ambiguous middle position: simple commodity production was
not a myth he argued but mythodology.
[16]
But the belief Marx began with something he
called simple commodity production is the real myth!
Generations of students have been taught Marxist economics on the basis of a
distinction between capitalist production and simple commodity production. Yet this
approach descends from Engels, not Marx. To turn to the present, let us look at the most
widely read popularisation of Marxs economics: Ben Fines Marxs Capital. This has
been through four editions since 1975 and has been reprinted many times. As late as the
third edition of 1989 there still occurs the flat statement Marx called such a situation
simple commodity production.
[17]
Only in the fourth edition of 2003 is this modified to
often termed simple commodity production.
[18]
The most commonly used English edition
of Capital today has an Introduction by Mandel which says that Marx could not start with
155

capitalist production, i.e. generalised commodity production, because this springs,
logically and historically, from simple commodity production.
[19]

How did it happen no one ever actually looked to see if Marx said Part 1 was about
simple commodity production? On the face of it there seems no ready explanation for such
an extraordinary failure of scholarship. The explanation is that behind this myth lies
another: that Marx and Engels were the same person! (the greatest testimony to which is
the absurdity of the Collected Works of 50 volumes devoted to two authors who hardly
ever published joint works). Meek, in all his work, was absolutely unselfconscious about
treating Marx and Engels as one person. Throughout, he quoted freely from Engels when
purporting to give Marxs views. For example:
I still think I was right in laying special emphasis on Marxs logical-historical
method: indeed, if anything I think I underestimated the extent to which Marxs economic
work was guided by it.... Marxs logical transition in Capital (from the commodity relation
as such to the capitalistically modified form of this relation) is presented by him as the
mirror-image of a historical transition (from simple to capitalist commodity
production)....
[20]

The by him in this remark is simply false, because all the quoted material in this
passage is not from Marx but from Engels.
However, if Engels in his Preface took it for granted everyone knew Marx started
with simple commodity production this may have been because of Karl Kautskys little
book Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx.
[21]
This appeared in 1887, and was an immediate
success selling 5000 copies straightaway.
[22]
In this, simple commodity production is
mentioned in the first chapter.
[23]
There are also references to it throughout the last chapter.
Undoubtedly Kautskys interpretation had a continuing influence; for the book was
reissued many times. But it would be hasty to assume that Kautsky invented the term.
Engels drew Kautskys attention to the importance of simple commodity production as
early as a letter of June 26th 1884.
[24]
So priority lies with Engels.
It is evidence of the enormous authority of Engels, as interpreter of Marxs meaning,
that the standard textbooks for so long repeated his view of the matter.
Now, pity the situation of the orthodox indexer. Since Engels said so, it must be
true that Part 1 of Capital I deals with simple commodity production: but there is no
mention of it! This did not prevent Dona Torr, for example, indexing no less than twenty
pages of Volume I under the head Commodity Production, Simple if there are no
references invent fictitious ones! This was in a 1938 edition of Capital based on a reissue
of Engelss edition. Anyone today who attempts to follow up my remarks about simple
commodity production themselves will discover a very strange fact. In the Marx-Engels
Collected Works the three volumes of Capital are indexed together at the end of volume
37. When consulting this index one finds that there is one reference to simple commodity
production directly and another in relation to capitalist production. Both of these are to
pages of Volume I, but nothing of the kind appears there. By contrast, the three
occurrences of the term in Volume III, mentioned above, are not listed. (How can anyone
conduct research on this basis!) The solution to this mystery is that this index has been
compiled simply by zipping together the existing indexes of the separate volumes
previously put out by Moscow; a few false entries have been deleted, but no attempt has
been made to achieve concordance. The indexes to Volumes II and III were compiled in
the fifties for the Foreign Languages Publishing House. The person who compiled the
index for Volume III evidently thought the term simple commodity production not
worthy of mention (an interesting fact in itself). Volume I, published in 1954, did not have
a subject index at all; but when the three volumes were brought out again by Progress
Publishers Volume I was supplied with an index later; this time the person responsible put
in a couple of fictitious entries.
It is to be regretted that the indexes of the new MEGA editions of Volume One also
make concessions to the myth of simple commodity production. For the first edition
156

(1867), MEGA lists Warenproduktion einfache and gives three page references. But on
none of these pages does the term einfache Warenproduktion appear, and in my opinion
nothing corresponding to its meaning appears either. However when MEGA gives the
original manuscript of Volume Three it does not list the term in its index very rightly.
Here I have dealt with a strictly philological issue. Behind that lie interpretative
issues, and substantive ones. I believe in both Engels is seriously misguided. However, it is
open to anyone to support Engelss reading in one or both respects. But in future I hope
such people will not refer to what Marx called simple commodity production, but to
what Engels called simple commodity production.
I have argued elsewhere that Engelss reading of Capital is wrong-headed.
[25]
But, if
so, how did it happen that the myth went unchallenged? While the authority of Engels was
important in this, there must have been a predisposition present in readers of Capital to
find the concept of simple commodity production congenial. There are three
considerations I offer to explain this.
a) The first generation of Marxists, such as Engels and Kautsky (who were also
enthusiastic about Darwin), believed that Marx made a uniquely powerful contribution to
the critique of political economy insofar as he systematically differentiated between modes
of production on a historical basis. Capitalism was a historically specific social formation.
They confused this genuine insight of Marxs with a methodological imperative to explain
things in terms of historical origins and development, albeit suitably dialecticised. What
this missed was the possibility that Marx intended a rigorously logical ordering of
concepts, employing not a historical dialectic but a systematic dialectic of the kind found
in Hegels logic, wherewith an abstract beginning is sequentially concretised.
b) The following generations of Marxists included those educated in Economics
departments, who absorbed a different methodology, namely modelling. They naturally
found in Capital a number of such models, beginning with simple commodity
production. They read the book as a sequence of more and more complex models,
approximating more and more to the real object.
c) By the time Capital appeared Hegel was a dead dog to such an extent that
nobody was in a position to understand and assess Marxs somewhat nuanced
acknowledgement of his influence. Dialectical thought of the kind found in Capital was no
longer familiar, even to scholars. Even if Marx had provided more guidance in a suitably
didactic methodological introduction, readers would have found it difficult to fathom.
Without it, they were lost. The Afterword Marx put in the second edition of Volume I
certainly raises more problems than it solves. This suggests to me that Marx was not
himself clear about the issues. The hiddenness of the systematic dialectical method in the
argument itself may not merely be in the interest of popularisation; to some extent it must
have been hidden from Marx himself. Any attempt to recover it may well require some
reconstruction of the argument.
But that takes us well beyond the simple point I am making in this article.

Endnotes
1. Mandel Karl Marx, p.4.
2. Sweezy Theory of Capitalist Development p. 23.
3. Lange Marxian Economics and Modern Economic Theory in Review of Economic
Studies Vol. II 1934-35, p. 195, p. 198. He continually uses the same expression in the rest
of the article. But there is something strange about it: a) he never translates the phrase; so
the words simple commodity production do not appear; b) this is the only German
expression in the article; as if it were a peculiarly untranslatable technical term of Marxs;
but it isnt untranslatable, and it isnt Marxs.
4. Meek, Studies in the Labour Theory of Value, (2nd ed. 1973) Appendix p. 303.
5. In English we find one reference to it in Theories of Surplus Value, Part II, p.501, Marx-
Engels Collected Works (MECW) Vol. 32 p.132. But in the German original it is blose
157

Waarenproduction, ie. pure commodity production: Marx Zur Kritik... Marx-Engels
Gesamtausgabe (MEGA) Abt. II Band. 3.3 p 1123.
6. Marx Capital Volume III, Preface by Engels p. 103.
7. There is a passage in which Marx presupposes the worker owned his own product (Marx
Capital Volume I, pp. 729-30). But that passage is written in hypothetical mode. I argue it
is counter-factual in character in Arthur The New Dialectic and Marxs Capital Chapter
6.
8. Marx Capital Volume III, p. 370 and p. 371n.
9. Compare the version of Volume III in Marx-Engels Werke, Band 25, pp. 271-73, with
the 1863-65 manuscript of it in MEGA Abt.II Band 4.2 pp. 334-36.
10. Marx Capital Volume III, p. 965.
11. Engels letter to Marx of June 16th 1867 in Marx and Engels Selected Correspondence,
p.186.
12. Letter to Schmidt of March 12th 1895; in Marx and Engels Selected Correspondence,
p.481-85.
13. Letter of March 11th 1895; in Marx and Engels Selected Correspondence, p.481.
14. Marx Capital III, Supplement by Engels pp.1033 & 1037.
15. Marx Capital III, Supplement by Engels p. 1034; the full passage from Marx is on pp.
277-78.
16. Meek Studies 2nd ed 1973 Appendix p.304.
17. Fine Marxs Capital, third edition, p. 11.
18. Fine Marxs Capital (fourth edition with A. Saad-Filho) p. 22. This was a result of
publications of mine exposing the myth, starting first with Engels as Interpreter of Marxs
Economics, 1996; and then again with Against the Logical-Historical Method:
Dialectical Derivation versus Linear Logic, 1997.
19. Marx Capital I, Introduction by Mandel pp. 13-14. Possibly Mandel originated the
complementary expression generalised commodity production.
20. Meek Studies in the Labour Theory of Value, Introduction to the Second Edition,
(1973) p. xv.
21. Paul Hampton drew my attention to Kautskys work.
22. According to Engels in a letter to Sorge of September 16th 1887 in Engels 1887-90,
MECW Vol. 48 p. 104.
23. Kautsky Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx, p. 19-20.
24. Marx and Engels Selected Correspondence, p. 377.
25. Arthur The New Dialectic and Marxs Capital chapter 2.

References
Arthur, Christopher J. Engels as Interpreter of Marxs Economics in Engels Today: A
Centenary Appreciation edited by C. J. Arthur (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press) 1996.
Arthur, Christopher J. Against the Logical-Historical Method: Dialectical Derivation
versus Linear Logic in New Investigations of Marxs Method edited by F. Moseley and M.
Campbell (New Jersey: Humanities Press) 1997.
Arthur, Christopher J. The New Dialectic and Marxs Capital ( Leiden: Brill) 2002.
Engels, Frederick Letters 1887-90, Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels Collected Works
Volume 48, (London: Lawrence & Wishart) 2001.
Fine, Ben Marxs Capital, third edition, (Basingstoke: Macmillan Education) 1989.
Fine, Ben (with A. Saad-Filho) Marxs Capital, fourth edition, (London: Pluto Press)
2003.
Kautsky, Karl Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx, English trans. H. J. Stenning, (London:
A. & C. Black Ltd) 1936.
Lange, Oskar Marxian Economics and Modern Economic Theory in Review of Economic
Studies Vol. II 1934-35.
158

Mandel, Ernest Karl Marx in The New Palgrave: Marxian Economics, edited by J.
Eatwell et al, (Basingstoke: Macmillan) 1990.
Marx, Karl Capital Volume I, trans. B. Fowkes, (Harmondsworth: Penguin) 1976.
Marx, Karl Capital Volume III, trans. D. Fernbach, (Harmondsworth: Penguin) 1981.
Marx, Karl Capital Volume I in Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels Collected Works
Volume 35, (London: Lawrence & Wishart) 1996.
Marx, Karl Capital Volume III in Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels Collected Works
Volume 37, (London: Lawrence & Wishart) 1998.
Marx, Karl Das Kapital: Dritter Band, Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels Werke, Band 25,
(Berlin: Dietz Verlag) 1964.
Marx, Karl Das Kapital. Drittes Buch. Die Gestaltungen des Gesamtprozesses, in Karl
Marx und Friedrich Engels Gesamtausgabe (MEGA) Abteilung II, Band 4.2 (Berlin: Dietz
Verlag) 1992.
Marx, Karl Das Kapital Erster Band 1867: Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels
Gesamtausgabe (MEGA), Abteilung II Band 5, (Berlin: Dietz-Verlag) 1983 .
Marx, Karl Economic Manuscript of 1861-63: Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels
Collected Works Volume 32, (London: Lawrence & Wishart) 1989.
Marx, Karl Theories of Surplus Value Part II (London: Lawrence & Wishart) 1969.
Marx, Karl Zur Kritik der politischen konomie (Ms. 1861-63), Karl Marx und Friedrich
Engels Gesamtausgabe (MEGA), Abteilung II Band 3.3, (Berlin: Dietz-Verlag) 1978.
Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels Selected Correspondence, (Moscow: Progress) 1965.
Meek, Ronald L. Studies in the Labour Theory of Value, 2nd ed. (London: Lawrence &
Wishart) 1973.
Sweezy, Paul M. The Theory of Capitalist Development, [1942] (New York: Monthly
Review Press) 1970.

159

Chris Arthur
Hegels Master-Slave Dialectic and a Myth of Marxology

Source: Originally published in the New Left Review, November-December 1983,
pp. 6775. Revised by the author for Marx Myths & Legends. Used with permission of
New Left Review for non-commercial, educational purposes only, and no permission is
granted to reproduce the text.

There is a widely held view that Marx was profoundly influenced by the Master
Servant (Herrschaft und Knechtschaft) dialectic in Hegels Phenomenology of Spirit.
This view was first popularized by Jean-Paul Sartre, who refers in his Being and
Nothingness (1943) to the famous Master-Slave relation which so profoundly influenced
Marx.
[1]
Sartre does not explain how he knows this.
[2]
Probably this remark reflects the
influence of Alexandre Kojves lectures on Hegel in the nineteen-thirties. Kojve presents
a reading of the Phenomenology which centralizes the place of the MasterServant
dialectic in it, in a quasi-Marxist interpretation.
[3]
(Kojve may have assumed that Marx
himself read it in the same way. However, it is one thing to read Marxism back into Hegel,
it is another to generate it out of Hegel.) Three years after Sartre we find Jean Hyppolite
again saying that the dialectic of domination and servitude is the best-known section of the
Phenomenology because of the influence it has had on the political and social philosophy
of Hegels successors, especially Marx.
[4]
As a matter of fact, despite the assertions of
numerous commentators to the contrary, Sartre and Hyppolite did not attend Kojves
lectures. The myth that they sat at the feet of the unknown superior is now well-
established, but the secondary literature concerned does not give any evidence for it.
[5]
Let
us turn then to first-hand accounts. Kojves disciple Raymond Queneau, who was
responsible for collecting and publishing Kojves lectures in 1947, has given a list of
participants which does not include Sartre or Hyppolite.
[6]
As far as Hyppolite is concerned
we have the additional testimony of Mme. Hyppolite
[7]
that he did not attend for fear of
being influenced.
[8]

However that may be, by the time Sartre and Hyppolite made their equations
between Hegel and Marx a crucial document of Kojves was already in the public
domain. In the 14 January 1939 issue of Mesures Kojve published a free translation, with
interpolated glosses, of the section of the Phenomenology entitled Autonomy and
Dependence of Self-consciousness: Mastery and Servitude. Still more interesting for our
purposes is that Kojve includes as an epigraph the following words of Marx: Hegel ...
erfasst die Arbeit als das Wesen, als das sich bewhrende Wesen des Menschen.
[9]

(Hegel ... grasps labour as the essence, as the self-confirming essence of man.) No
reference is given, but in fact this is quoted from Marxs 1844 Paris Manuscripts, which
remained unpublished until the nineteen-thirties. Kojve is the first person, therefore, to
make a direct connection between this famous judgement of Marxs on Hegel and the
MasterServant dialectic in the Phenomenology.
Today it is dogmatically asserted in numerous books that Marx was inspired by
Hegels analysis of the labour of servitude.
[10]
This view is completely false. The present
note attempts to show that this is so and to explain the real significance of Marxs critical
appropriation of the Phenomenology.
If we are to consider the influence of Hegels Phenomenology on Marx, the crucial
text to examine has to be Marxs manuscripts of 1844, in which he introduces his theory of
alienation, and then devotes considerable space to a penetrating critique of the
Phenomenology. In this latter section Marx praises Hegel for having grasped man as the
result of his own labour. Nearly all commentators, innocently assuming that material
labour is meant here, turn to the Phenomenology and find that there is indeed a fascinating
discussion in the MasterServant section of the significance of material labour; in and
160

through this the servant finds himself. Furthermore, the fact that this labour is seen by
Hegel as actualized in the context of servitude, leads some commentators to make the
more extravagant claim that in his theory of alienation Marx draws on this same section.
Herbert Marcuse was probably the first to do so; he says in his Reason and Revolution
(1941): In 1844, Marx sharpened the basic concepts of his own theory through a critical
analysis of Hegels Phenomenology of Mind. He described the alienation of labour in the
terms of Hegels discussion of master and servant.
[11]

The only difficulty with these presuppositions of the secondary literature is that Marx
never refers to this section of the Phenomenologynever mind giving it any
importance!when, in his 1844 manuscripts, he embarks on a critique of Hegels
dialectic. He discusses the Phenomenology as a whole and draws attention to its last
chapter especially; he singles out three other sections for praise; but not one of them is on
the masterservant dialectic.
[12]
This should make us suspicious, therefore, of the claims
made for the masterslave.
Before considering Marxs assessment of the Phenomenology let us rehearse the
dialectic of Herrschaft und Knechtschaft. (Incidentally, although it is popularly nominated
the MasterSlave, the correct translation of Knecht is servant.
[13]
) This section occurs
early in the Phenomenology at the point where consciousness is to turn into self-
consciousness. Hegel believes that the self can become conscious of itself only in and
through the mediation of another self-consciousness. The first stable relationship that
emerges in Hegels dialectical development of this topic is that of Lordship and Bondage.
The master is acknowledged as such by his servant, and he achieves immediate satisfaction
of his desires through goods and services provided by the servants labour. The dialectic
moves forward precisely through the servant, however, because through work ... the
bondsman becomes conscious of what he truly is. Work forms and shapes the thing, and
through this formative activity the consciousness of the servant now, in the work outside it,
acquires an element of permanence; for it comes to see in the independent being of the
object its own independence. The shape does not become something other than himself
through being made external to him, says Hegel, for it is precisely this shape that is his
pure being-for-self. He concludes: Through this rediscovery of himself by himself, the
bondsman realizes that it is precisely in his work wherein he seemed to live only the life of
a stranger [fremder Sinn] that he acquires a sense of himself [eigner Sinn].
[14]

These terms are superficially comparable to Marxs in that both Hegel and Marx see
work not merely in its utilitarian aspect but as a vehicle of self-realization; thus they see
the servant rather than the master as the locus of a more developed human existence.
However, fundamental differences between Marx and Hegel become obvious when we
notice that, whereas Marx holds that only a change in the mode of production recovers for
the worker his sense of self and its fulfilment, Hegel thinks that the educative effect of
work, even within an exploitative relation of production, is sufficient for the worker to
manifest to himself his own meaning in his product. Furthermore, at this stage in the
phenomenological dialectic, the condition of fear and service is stipulated as necessary to
this end: that is, to the servants becoming objective to himself.
[15]

Hegel defines work as desire held in check: it involves putting a distance between
the immediate impulses of self-will and formative activity grounded in objective
principles. If you like, it is really the master who is a slave because his object is the
unalloyed feeling of self-satisfaction: that is to say, he is a slave to his appetites, but his
satisfactions are only fleeting, lacking the permanence of objectivity.
[16]
The servant on
the other hand, in the work he creates, achieves mastery of his craft; it is he who rises to
the level of universal human reason. However, Hegel introduces the notion that fear and
service are necessary to induce the check to desire and to ensure that consciousness rises
above self-centred goals to the freedom that comes from a consciousness of the universal
power of human creative activity.
[17]
Quite arbitrarily, apparently, Hegel assumes
161

everyone must undergo breaking of self-will through subjection to an alien power before
being capable of rational freedom.
[18]

Let us now examine the crucial passage in Marxs complex discussion of the
Phenomenology, in which Marx praises Hegel for grasping the importance of labour. The
great thing in Hegels Phenomenology and its final resultthe dialectic of negativity as
the moving and producing principleis that Hegel conceives the self-creation of man as a
process, objectification [Vergegenstndlichung] as loss of object [Entgegenstndlichung],
as alienation [Entusserung] and as sublation [Aufhebung] of this alienation; that he
therefore grasps the nature of labour and conceives objective man ... as the result of his
own labour ... The realization of himself ... is only possible if man ... employs all his
species-powers ... and treats them as objects, which is at first only possible in the form of
estrangement [Entfremdung].
[19]

Does such a judgementas Kojve insinuates and so many later writers boldly
assertrest on Hegels discussion of the labour of servitude? The first thing that should
give us pause is that immediately after this praise Marx qualifies it by complaining that
the only labour Hegel knows and recognizes is abstract mental labour.
[20]
The servants
labour is clearly material, so this remark shows that not only has Marx not drawn on that
analysis, but he has actually forgotten all about it and done Hegel a minor injustice!
[21]

What Marx does refer us to is the closing chapter of the Phenomenology ...
(Absolute Knowledge), which contains the concentrated essence of the
Phenomenology and its dialectic.
[22]
It contains the upshot of its whole movement. The
abstract mental labour to which Marx refers is the labour of spirit. The Phenomenology
is a spiritual odyssey, or, perhaps, a Bildungsroman of spirit, in which spirit discovers that
the objective shapes given to it in consciousness and self-consciousness are nothing but its
own self-determination. Spirit comes to know itself through producing itself, in the first
instance as something which stands over against itself. In the final chapter, Marx notes, the
world of estrangement thus brought to life is overcome, or negated, in a peculiar way in
thatas Hegel puts itself-consciousness has sublated this alienation [Entusserung]
and objectivity ... so that it is at home with itself in its otherness as such.
[23]
Within this
framework spheres of estrangement such as religion, the state, civil society, and so forth,
are grasped as spirits own work. Hegel emphasizes that spirit can come to itself only
through setting up opposition and then negating it. This is the labour of the negative as
he calls it.
[24]

When Marx refers to the final result of the Phenomenology being the dialectic of
negativity as the moving and producing principle, it is to this entire labour of spirit in the
Phenomenology that he refers. Of course, in Marxs view man produces himself through
material labour. It would be a mistake, however, to assume therefrom that he praises Hegel
for what he says about material labour such as that of the servant. When Marx says Hegel
grasps labour as the essence, he is talking not about what Hegel actually says about
material labour (hence the lack of reference to Lordship and Bondage) but about the
esoteric significance of the dialectic of negativity in spirits entire self-positing movement
(hence Marxs claim that the only labour Hegel knows is abstract mental labour). Marx
sees in Hegels dialectic of negativity the hypostatization of the abstract reflection in
philosophy of the material process whereby man produces himself through his own
labour, a process which (Marx concurs with Hegel) must pass through a stage of
estrangement.
It is necessary to locate the MasterSlave within this perspective of spirits
development of its self-awareness. As we have already noted, and now stress, it is an early
moment in the story of spirits recovery of itself. It is much less concrete (in Hegels
terminology) than cultural achievements such as law, art, religion and philosophy.
[25]

Nonetheless, it is located at a turning point of some importance, for the problem Hegel
faces is how to develop dialectically self-consciousness out of the mere consciousness of
external objects. Consciousness cannot grasp itself in things. It must distinguish itself
162

absolutely from them through their radical negation. The consumption of objects of desire
accomplishes this in an evanescent way. To risk ones life in forcing another
consciousness to grant one recognition represents a more promising mediation. But the
master finds himself frustrated in reducing the vanquished to his servant, his thing. Self-
consciousness can only gain proper recognition through mutual respect such as that
accorded to individuals constituted in the legal and ethical relations Hegel develops later in
the story.
[26]
At this stage the dialectic advances through the despised servant. As we have
seen, he finds himself through the negating action of work on things. However, it must
be stressed that the point of this is that it brings about an advance in self-consciousness.
This does not have much in common with Marxs interest in the realization of an
objective being in forming the material world; but it is of a piece with the project of the
Phenomenology as a whole. It is worth noting that in Hegels Encyclopaedia
Phenomenology no mention is made of the worker finding himself in his product; the
emphasis in the outcome of the MasterSlave there is on community of need and fear
of the lord is the beginning of wisdom.
[27]
As far as the Phenomenology of Spirit is
concerned, as it is a spiritual odyssey it is quite wrong to place special stress on this
moment of material labour (as is the case with the overly Marxist readings of Marcuse
and of Kojve), for its importance lies not in the material result but in the spiritual one.
The next stage in the dialectic is that, since self-consciousness lacks unity here in being
split between different selves, it attempts to find its freedom in thinking; objectivity is
negated in the pure universality of thought in the attitudes Hegel identifies with Stoicism
and Scepticism.
[28]
This freedom of inner life is compatible with any social positionas
Hegel says.
[29]

Does Marx, as Marcuse claims (above), follow in his theory of alienation the terms
of Hegels MasterServant relationship? We have already said enough to cast doubt on
this. Furthermore, not only does Marx himself not refer us to this section, but Hegels own
discussion in it does not mention alienation. It is obvious that immediately material labour
is not as such a problem for Hegel just because it is material, as might be supposed.
[30]

Contrary to this, Hegel gives it an affirmative significance in the development of spirit. It
is perfectly true, however, that Marx finds in Hegel the theme of alienation (Entusserung)
and estrangement (Entfremdung)but he does not find it in the labour of servitude. Even
those commentators who light on Hegels chapter Spirit in Self-Estrangement (Der sich
entfremdete Geist) are only partially correct. It is true that Marx makes favourable
reference to some of this material; he says: these separate sections contain the critical
elementsbut still in estranged formof entire spheres, such as religion, the state, civil
life and so forth.
[31]
However, in these sections we are dealing with a realm of finite spirit,
referred historically to the period from feudalism, through the Enlightenment, to the
French Revolution. Marx mainly concerns himself, not with this so much, but with spirits
movement of absolute negativity, and especially with the final chapter Absolute
Knowledge (and when he mentions the Encyclopaedia, it is the Absolute Idea and its
alienation of itself in nature that he discusses).
A complicating feature in discussing these issues is that translations of texts by
Hegel, and by Marx, may give either or both of Entusserung and Entfremdung as
alienation. However, in Hegel these terms are widely separated in the text and have
different functions. We have just mentioned the chapter on Entfremdung. Entusserung,
as Lukcs point out,
[32]
is the key concept in the upshot of the Phenomenology: spirit
grasps the sphere of estrangement as the product of its own self-alienation. Entfremdung
stands to Entusserung as phenomenological resulta state of beingto the active
process of spirits positing of itself in otherness.
[33]

While Marx was impressed by Hegels phenomenological description of
estrangement, what really excited him was the metaphysical aspect of the
Phenomenologyspirit mediating itself with itself in alienation (Entusserung). This is
the process of absolute negativity and it is to this Marx refers when he says that, albeit in
163

mystified form, Hegel grasps man as the product of his own labour, through alienation and
the overcoming of alienation.
Nevertheless, Marx holds that Hegels discussion of the problematics of alienation is
embedded in speculative illusions, and because of this it is a merely apparent criticism,
shading over into uncritical positivism. In this connection one must draw attention to the
sophisticated use of quotation by Kojve in the above-mentioned epigraph to the effect
that Hegel grasps labour as the essence. The passage from which Kojve quotes is as
follows (with Kojves quote stressed): Hegel adopts the standpoint of modern political
economy. He grasps labour as the essence, the self-confirming essence of man; he sees
only the positive and not the negative side of labour. Labour is mans coming to be for
himself within alienation [Entusserung] or as alienated man.
[34]

Why does Marx qualify his praise of Hegel in this way?
Firstly, despite the wealth of content in the Phenomenology, everything is treated
under the form of consciousness or self-consciousness. This means that a change in
consciousness abolishes estrangement because estrangement itself is understood only as an
attitude adopted by consciousness. This abolition leaves everything in reality as it is.
Thus the critical apparatus issues in uncritical positivism.
[35]

Secondly, since the subject of the movement is spirit, Hegel cannot conceive of
objectification except as resulting in estrangementhence he substitutes for the category
of objectification (Vergegenstndlichung) that of alienation (Entusserungwhich, like
Vergegenstndlichung, has the connotation of positing as objective but which also implies
the relinquishment of what is manifested, constituting therefore an alienation).
[36]

Nonetheless, Hegel sees something positive in this process
[37]
because in this alienation
spirit becomes objective to itself. It is an essential moment in spirits self-actualization and
self-awareness. Hegel is not, then, opposed to objectification, on the grounds that it leads
to estrangement. He certainly thinks that it does lead to estrangement, but this does not
mean that he thinks spirit should rest content in itself and avoid the misfortune of
alienation from itself. However, instead of a real historical solution we are provided with a
displacement of the problem into general philosophical reflection issuing in a solution
posed exclusively within philosophy, which preserves estrangement (otherness as such)
as a moment in the absolute. This is his merely apparent criticism (Marx
[38]
). In truth,
Hegels equation of objectification and alienation makes him uncritical of the
estrangement brought to life in spirits self-actualization. That is to say, Hegel, in common
with modern political economy, grasps labour as the essence of human development but
not as alienated from itself in capitalist society because, if one is unable to posit a genuine
historical negation of the negation, the existing conditions become the horizon which
blocks off the possibility of a critical standpoint. In fact, these conditions which twist and
distort the objectification of man in and through labour are endorsed as the necessary
groundwork within which the coming-to-be of man for himself must occur. The world of
estrangement is presented as labours absolute self-expression.
[39]

In conclusion, one can say that focus on the master-slave dialectic reflects two
biases. First: one must remark in Kojve, and Hyppolite, the beginnings of the
existentialist reading of the Phenomenology with its absurd over-emphasis on the life
and death struggle, and its outcome in Lordship and Bondageas if the remaining six
hundred pages of the Phenomenology were merely an afterthought! Second: while Marxist
discussion used to lean towards immediately political problems such as that of domination
and class struggle, the diffusion of texts such as the 1844 Manuscripts, the German
Ideology, and, more recently, the Grundrisse, has made possible a serious discussion of
ontological questions; hence the influence on Marx of Hegel, and of his Phenomenology,
must be differently interpreted.

Acknowledgements
Thanks are due to Jonathan Re and to Joe McCarney.
164

Footnotes
1. J.-P. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, London 1958, p. 237.
2. Marcuse in a review of Being and Nothingness says: Sartre makes reference to Marxs
early writings ... Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, March 1948. But in fact
there is no such reference. Marcuse probably has in mind this remark about the Master-
Slave influence on Marxa view held independently by Marcuse and which he had
already linked to Marxs early writings (see below).
3. A. Kojve, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel (1947), New York 1969.
4. J. Hyppolite, Genesis and Structure of Hegels Phenomenology of Spirit, Evanston
1974, p. 172. Also: the famous dialectic of the Master and Slave that became the
inspiration of Marxian philosophy. Studies on Marx and Hegel (1955), New York 1969,
1973, p. 29.
5. A typical example is George L. Kline who says Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Hyppolite
attended some of Kojves lectures and doubtless read the mimeographed versions of
those they did not attend. See The Existentialist Rediscovery of Hegel and Marx, in
Phenomenology and Existentialism, ed. E. N. Lee and M. Mandelbaum, Baltimore 1967, p.
120. He gives as his authority for this a book by Wilfred Desan: The Marxism of Jean-
Paul Sartre, New York 1965. This says early audiences ... including Sartre, Merleau-
Ponty, Hyppolite ... (p. 24); and again Sartre learned to study Hegel in the classes of
Kojve just before W.W.II (p. 50n). However, Desan gives no evidence. Mark Posters
Existentialist Marxism in Post-War France, Princeton 1975 is more cautious: It was even
said that Jean-Paul Sartre himself was enrolled, although his attendance at the classes was
not recalled (pp. 89).
6. Critique nos. 19596, 1963. The list is cited by Vincent Descombes in his Modern
French Philosophy, Cambridge 1980, p. 10n.
7. Interview with John Heckman. See his Introduction to Genesis ... p. xxvi. Heckman is
under the impression that Sartre attended: p. xxiii.
8. This throws an interesting light on Klines judgment (op. cit. p. 120): During the late
1930s Jean Hyppolite, under Kojves influence, began to publish articles on Hegel and
the Phenomenology; his 1946 commentary draws freely on both Wahl and Kojve ...
9. Republished by Queneau, In Place of an Introduction, as the first chapter of his Kojve
collection. The (partial) English translation (see note 3) includes it, also as chapter one.
(Note that the German Mensch or Menschen is non-gender specific, though difficult to
translate as other than man or men in English.)
10. H. Marcuse, Reason and Revolution (1941), London 1954, p. 115. R. Tucker,
Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx, Cambridge 1961, p. 147. D. Struik, Introduction to
Marxs Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, New York 1964, p. 36. W.
Desan, The Marxism of Jean-Paul Sartre, New York 1965, p. 34. M. Poster, Existentialist
Marxism in Post-War France, Princeton 1975, pp. 1316. Z. Hanfi, Introduction to The
Fiery Brook: Selected Writings of Ludwig Feuerbach, New York 1972, p. 42. R. Norman,
Hegels Phenomenology, London 1976, p. 53 and p. 73. G. A. Kelly, Hegels Retreat from
Eleusis, Princeton 1978, p. 30. J. Israel, The Language of Dialectic and the Dialectics of
Language, Brighton 1979, p. 122. M. Petry, Introduction to G. W. F. Hegel, The Berlin
Phenomenology, Dordrecht 1981, p. lxxxix. Allen W. Wood Karl Marx, London 1981 pp.
242-3.
11. See previous note. In fact Marcuse had already said in his 1932 review of the 1844
manuscripts that Marxs critical concepts point back to the ontological categories of
labour and domination and servitude developed by Hegel in his Phenomenology (From
Luther to Popper, London 1983 p. 13, 39). Pierre Naville gives prominence to Hegels
discussion but says that it is too simple to claim this was Marxs source (De LAlienation
la Jouissance, Paris 1957 p. 10).
12. K. Marx, Early Writings, Harmondsworth 1975, p. 385.
165

13. That this choice of terminology was deliberate is seen when we find that in his Berlin
lecture on Herrschaft und Knechtschaft Hegel draws a distinction between der Sklave and
der Knecht. See: Hegels Philosophy of Subjective Spirit Vol. 3, ed. M. Petry,
Holland/Boston 1979, appendix pp. 34243 ( Phil Slater in a brief unpublished paper,
Objectification, alienation and labour: Notes on Hegel, Marx and Marcuse (1980), in the
context of polemics against Marcuses early work for confusing objectification in Hegel
and Marx.
14. Gesammelte Werke, Band 9, Phnomenologie des Geistes, Hamburg 1980, pp. 114-15
15. Phnomenologie p. 115
16. Loc. Cit.
17. Ibid p. 116
18. This is clearer in The Berlin Phenomenology, paras 434, 435.
19. Early Writings, pp. 385-86
20. Ibid, p. 386
21. See David McLellan Marx before Marxism, London 1970, p. 197.
22. Early Writings, pp. 386.
23. Phnomenologie p. 422.
24. Ibid, p. 18
25. This point is stressed by Phil Slater in his unpublished paper Objectification,
alienation and labour (1980)
26. Jonathan Re draws my attention to the fact that Hegel is not really discussing
individuality here, and a fortiori not social relationships. Hence there is no discussion of
mastermaster or slaveslave relations. We are concerned here with consciousness in
general as against objects.
27. Op. Cit., paras 43435. By contrast, in the Phnomenologie Hegel said: Albeit fear of
the lord is the beginning of wisdom, consciousness is not therein aware of being self-
existent. Through labour, however, it comes to itself (p. 115). And on the next page: For
the reflection of self into self the two moments, fear and service in general, as also that of
formative activity, are necessary... .
28. Norman is particularly good on the lack of a happy ending for the servant, and the
further dialectic (op. cit., ch. 3). See also Kojve, ch. 2.
29. Whether on the throne or in chains ... its aim is to be free. Op. cit., p. 117.
30. Ernest Mandel says (Formation of the Economic Thought of Karl Marx, London 1971)
that for Hegel material labour is alienating because labour is, by its nature, the
externalizing (Verusserung) of a human capacity, which means that man loses something
that previously belonged to him (p. 155). Mandel seems to have in mind para. 67 of
Hegels Philosophy of Right which deals with the Verusserung (= alienation in the sense
of sale) of human powers. If so, this is a complete misrepresentation of Hegels text. So far
from labour by its nature having an alienating import, Hegel again in the Philosophy of
Right gives the forming of things (para 56) a role in actualizing freedom. For Hegel,
however, human freedom is more real in alienating things through contracts. When he
faces the problem that freedom of alienation is used to sell human capacitiesphysical
and mental skills inherent in the personthis is achieved through the mediation of mind
which reduces its inner possessions to ... externality (para. 43). In virtue of the temporal
restriction on such alienation in wage-labour, the labour-power sold acquires an external
relation to the substance of the labourers personality and he remains a free subject
notwithstanding it (para. 67). It is clear, then, that Hegel does not say labour by its nature
as externalizing is alienating; rather, he says complex social mediations achieve
alienation through setting labour in an (artificial) external relation to the person. (For a full
treatment see my Personality and the dialectic of labour and propertyLocke, Hegel,
Marx Radical Philosophy 26, 1980.)
31. Op. cit., p. 385.
166

32. G. Lukcs, The Young Hegel (1948), London 1975, last chapter. Incidentally, Lukcs
does not refer Marxs 1844 Mss. to the MasterSlave.
33. As Marx says: Entfremdung constitutes the real interest of this Entusserung (op. cit.,
p. 384).
34. Op. cit., p. 386.
35. Ibid., p. 385.
36. Lukcs originated this understanding in The Young Hegel, p. 551. Hyppolite defends
Hegel on this pointsee the last section of his Commentary on G. Lukcss The Young
Hegel in Studies ... pp. 8690.
37. Phnomenologie, p. 422. See Marx, op. cit., p. 395.
38. Op. cit., p. 393.
39. This paragraph is a condensed version of an argument developed at length in my
Objectification and Alienation in Hegel and Marx, Radical Philosophy 30, Spring 1982.

167

Joseph McCarney
Ideology and False Consciousness

Source: Ideology and False Consciousness was written for Marx Myths and
Legends by Joseph McCarney in April 2005, and rights remain with the author, as per
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives Licence 2.0.

The myth to be discussed here was given its purest expression by John Plamenatz
when he asserted that Marx often called ideology false consciousness.
[1]
Not
surprisingly, Plamenatz cites no instances of this usage, as, in truth, Marx never calls
ideology false consciousness. Indeed, he never calls anything false consciousness, a
phrase that does not occur in his work. The standard of Marx scholarship in English has, it
must be admitted, greatly improved since Plamenatzs time. No serious commentator
today would propose a relationship in the terms he employs with such assurance. There is,
nevertheless, a sense in which the shadow of the false consciousness connection still looms
large over the subject. This may be illustrated by the work of two later writers, both of
whom recognise that Marx does not himself speak of false consciousness. Moreover,
both have been highly influential and are representative of distinct general tendencies.
Jorge Larrain, while eschewing the language of false consciousness, maintains that Marx
identifies ideology with cognitive distortion in the specific sense of the concealment of
social contradictions.
[2]
Terry Eagleton for his part believes that this language will serve to
characterise not Marxs sole conception of ideology but rather one he held among others.
[3]

In general, it may be suggested, the dominant view in the literature is that Marx should be
credited with an understanding of ideology as necessarily involving what is cognitively
defective or deficient, in being illusory, deceptive, partial, distorted or at any rate failing in
some way to present a veridical picture of the social world. This is the myth which the
present discussion seeks to expose.
It should be said by way of preliminary that the association of ideology and cognitive
deficiency is now so widespread that it must be assumed to serve a deep need of the age,
the need for a concept that collects items in virtue of just that sort of deficiency. No
objection will be raised here to the devising of such a concept, or to labelling it ideology.
What will be argued is simply that the ascription of the result to Marx is entirely
gratuitous. It has generated what may properly be called a myth in one familiar sense of
the term, a systematic, internally coherent, imaginative construction that lacks any rational
foundations. In matters of exegesis the foundations required are a grounding in the
testimony of the relevant texts. The discussion will show that there are no such grounds in
the present case. Thus, its aim is merely negative. It will not seek to put forward a positive,
and necessarily disputable, interpretation of what Marx means by ideology beyond
whatever is directly conveyed by the textual evidence that will be cited.
[4]

An important aspect of this evidence might be captured, without undue strain, by
remarking that Marx never calls ideology anything. We have to deal not just with the kind
of reticence that is evident in the case of such concepts as class and dialectic. The
difficulty here is still more basic in that Marx never manages even to set the scene for an
attempt at conceptual explication since the bare substantive ideology hardly figures at all
in his work. The noun is almost always accompanied by an epithet such as German,
republican, political or Hegelian, or by a qualifying phrase, as in the ideology of the
bourgeoisie or the ideology of the political economist. More typical in any case is the
adjectival usage in which such varied items as forms, expressions, phrases,
conceptions, deception, and distortion are said to have an ideological character.
Even more distinctive is the frequency, amounting to approximately half of all references
in the relevant range, of invocations of the ideologists, the creators and purveyors of the
ideological forms. It is in general almost impossible to exaggerate the concrete,
168

conjunctural nature of Marxs dealings with the ideological, in marked contrast to the
abstractions that characterise the later debates.
Thus, one should not expect to find in Marxs writings a definition, even in a veiled
form, of ideology. Nevertheless, it seems reasonable to assume that they will provide
some clues as to the nature of the general considerations that control his use of the term.
The most important of these is to be found in a text in which, it is generally agreed, he
reaches unusual heights of methodological self-consciousness, the Preface to A
Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. There he describes the conflict between
material forces and relations of production and goes on to refer to the legal, political,
religious, artistic or philosophic---in short, ideological forms in which men become
conscious of this conflict and fight it out.
[5]
What is most striking about this reference for
present purposes is that so far from associating ideology with cognitive deficiency it
associates it rather with cognitive achievement, the becoming conscious of the
fundamental social conflict. It is an association which, to put it mildly, has not been
allowed its due weight in the interpretative literature. Moreover, it is far from unique
among the occasions on which Marx offers some guidance as to the main lines of his
thinking in this area. Thus, in The Communist Manifesto we learn that, when the class
struggle nears its decisive hour, a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat,
and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the
level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.
[6]
The natural
reading is surely that these thinkers raise themselves to theoretical comprehension of the
historical movement as a whole just in their role as bourgeois ideologists. It also seems
natural to suppose that this achievement is what triggers their going over to the other side
in the class struggle, a move that presumably brings that role to an end.
In the light of these passages anyone suffering the burden of the prevailing myth
might be tempted to conclude that, so far as Marxs explicit guidance goes, ideology is
true consciousness. As a slogan this at least would have the merit of having some basis in
the evidence of the texts. By itself, however, it could never amount to more than a
misleading, if for a limited purpose salutary, paradox. This is shown, to look no further, by
Marxs all too frequent references to bourgeois ideologists who remain mired in
incomprehension of the historical movement as a whole. The correct conclusion is surely
that, for Marx, ideology is conceptually compatible with both theoretical comprehension
and incomprehension. This is to suggest that ideology is not, for him, an epistemological
category of any kind. In more concrete terms he is, it may be said, indifferent to questions
of truth status in deciding to designate items as ideological. To attempt to say more
positively what his linguistic practice is determined by would, however, go beyond the
limits of the present discussion.
What has been attempted here is a summary account of the direction in which the
textual evidence points. It is time to consider more closely the relationship between that
evidence and the view that was characterised above as mythical. For it is not to be
supposed that those who propagate, or fall victim to, that myth do so without some
reassuring sense that the weight of Marxs writings is to be reckoned on their side. Even if
this support is at best a matter of misleading appearances, the appearances still have to be
revealed as such and, so far as space allows, traced to their roots. They are rooted in part, it
might be suggested, in a degree of confusion. The confusion in question may itself arise
from another feature of Marxs dealings with the ideological, their overwhelmingly
forensic and polemical character. In practice, he tends almost exclusively to be concerned
with ideological forms he wishes to criticise and reject, above all with elements of the
ideology of the bourgeoisie. This is not quite uniformly the case. Thus, when he writes of
the ideological superstructure of the proletarians, one would need to be firmly in the
grip of myth to suppose that he intends a criticism.
[7]
Nevertheless, it may be that the rather
consistently hostile tone of his references to the manifestations of ideology has, so to
speak, tended to rub off on the concept itself, creating a negative aura around it. If so, this
169

could be only a matter of association and slippage of ideas, not of inference. For it is
plainly one thing to characterise particular ideological beliefs as deceptive or distorted and
quite another to conclude that ideology as such necessarily partakes of deception and
distortion, thereby inflating a contingent circumstance into a conceptual truth. Moreover,
so far from supporting such a conclusion, Marxs quite frequent references to ideological
deception and ideological distortion rather point away from it. For, if it were true, they
would have a pleonastic character from which they could be rescued only by supposing
that a contrast is intended on the occasions of their use with non-ideological deception
and distortion. Such a suggestion is, however, so lacking in vitality and resonance in the
context of Marxs work that it has never figured significantly in the literature. It seems that
the prevailing myth may be tacitly relying in some degree on vagueness and unclarity with
regard to the way the texts bear on it, on unexamined assumptions that turn out on
examination to be untenable.
A sense of there being massive support held in reserve, without needing to be called
up on any particular occasion, may help in some measure to explain a curious feature of
the prevailing view, the fact that so often its advocates seem to experience no need to
provide any textual warrant at all. It is any rate the case that it tends to be taken for
granted, not made the object of self-conscious scrutiny or seen as a contentious doctrine in
need of justification. Yet it would not be quite true to say that no attempt is ever made to
adduce evidence on its behalf. At this point, however, the task facing an attempt at the
exposure of myth can be drastically simplified. For over and over again, when, so to speak,
the pressure is too great to ignore, it is a particular passage that is called into service, the
well-known passage with the image of the camera obscura from The German Ideology. It
may be reduced to its working parts for present purposes in the form of a single sentence.
This is standardly translated as follows:
If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera
obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the
inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process.
[8]

It may be that the quickest way to show how little support this sentence actually
lends the prevailing myth is to draw attention to a matter of translation. The key phrase
rendered above as in all ideology is in the original in der ganzen Ideologie.
[9]
On
linguistic grounds, however, it seems more natural to render this combination of definite
article, adjective and noun by some such phrase as in the whole ideology. Such a
rendering would make clear that what is in question here is the totality of a particular
ideology or that ideology taken as a whole. If read in this way there is only one possible
candidate, the ideology that is the central and, so to speak, eponymous concern of The
German Ideology. The reading fits well not just with the overall context of the work but
also with the specific thrust of the sentence in which the key phrase appears and with the
immediate context of that sentence. For Marx is concerned here not with cognitive defect
in general but with a specific, even if large-scale, error. This is the reversal in German
idealism of the true order of priority of ideas and material reality. The image of things
being upside-down, standing on their heads, (auf den Kopf gestellt) is a standard
recourse of Marx in characterising his relationship with Hegelianism, and indeed may be
taken as an echo of phrases in Hegels own work. Marx is far from thinking that the image
is serviceable in characterising a wide range of other thinkers such, for instance, as Adam
Smith, Ricardo, Bentham and the older French materialists, who, nevertheless, seem
uncontentiously to count for him as ideologists. Thus, he does not think of it as capturing a
defining feature even of bourgeois ideology, still less of ideology as such.
The sense of a specificity of reference is reinforced by the immediate continuation of
the sentence that was quoted above. It assures us that that In direct contrast to German
philosophy which descends from heaven to earth, here we ascend from earth to heaven.
This encourages the suggestion that the chief point of the key sentence may be condensed
as follows: Even if the entire German ideology gets things upside-down, this can be
170

explained in materialist terms. It might be thought that the kind of materialist explanation
on offer is fairly crude, and destined to be superseded in the course of Marxs
development, in view of the way it seems to assimilate a complex, socially mediated
process to a simple natural one. This does not, however, affect the conclusion to be drawn
for present purposes. This is that the camera obscura passage offers a reflection on a
feature of a particular ideology, not a conceptual remark about ideology as such. The
passage now falls back easily into its place within the consistent texture of the parent work
as a whole, no longer seeming to aspire to a meta-level of self-consciousness alien to it.
Any appearance of supporting the dominant view has thereby vanished and it is left
without a basis in Marxs work.
The discussion should seek by way of conclusion to trace the false consciousness
theme to its source. This is to be found beyond all question in Engels:
Ideology is a process accomplished by the so-called thinker consciously, it is true,
but with a false consciousness. The real motive forces impelling him remain unknown to
him; otherwise it simply would not be an ideological process. Hence he imagines false or
seeming motive forces.
[10]

It would be idle to deny that some conceptual connection is being proposed here
between ideology and false consciousness. Yet more needs to be said if its weight is to be
assessed correctly. The first point to make is that the proposal, Engelss only explicit
reference to false consciousness, comes from a letter written some ten years after Marxs
death. Moreover, Engels himself has a sharp sense of the division between private
correspondence and work intended for the public realm. A short time later he was to warn
another correspondent: Please do not weigh each word in the above too scrupulously I
regret that I have not the time to work out what I am writing to you so exactly as I should
be obliged to do for publication.
[11]
The conception that was sketched in his private
correspondence plays no part, it should be noted, in Engelss own use of the concept of
ideology in works written for publication, even in those of which he was the sole author.
[12]

Moreover, his warning has in one sense been thoroughly heeded. For very little attention
has been paid in the later literature to the particular shade of meaning he wished to attach
to the notion of false consciousness. What he seems to have had in mind is a quite specific
kind of cognitive failure on the part of an individual, a failure of self-awareness, a lack of
insight into the motive forces of their own thinking. What is generally in question later
under the rubric of false consciousness is, as was suggested above, some form of collective
illusion of much more general scope. Plainly this cannot claim even so much of the
authority of Engels as would otherwise attach to the contents of the false consciousness
letter.
It should be added that this letter is not the only source of guidance on the question
of ideology that Engels has to offer after Marxs direct influence on him was removed. In a
text Engels did intend for publication, and indeed over which he might be assumed to have
taken particular care, he speaks of the great law of motion of history, the law according to
which all historical struggles, whether they proceed in the political, religious,
philosophical or some other ideological domain, are in fact only the more less clear
expression of struggles of social classes.
[13]
This may surely be taken as a version of the
formulation of Marxs Preface that is helpfully more explicit in one important respect, its
reference to the struggles of social classes, than the earlier work could afford to be in its
own time. An attempt to develop a positive account of what ideology means to Marx and,
a lone aberration apart, to Engels also, could hardly do better than to start here. To do so
would be a more fitting tribute to Engelss intellectual legacy than that represented by the
pursuit of the spectre of false consciousness he so lightly conjured into existence.

Notes
1. J. Plamenatz, Ideology, London, Macmillan, 1970, p.23.
2. J. Larrain, Marxism and Ideology, London, Macmillan, 1983.
171

3. T. Eagleton, Ideology, London, Verso, 1991.
4. An attempt at such an interpretation is made in J. McCarney, The Real World of
Ideology, Brighton, Harvester, 1980.
5. K. Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Moscow, Progress
Publishers, 1970, p.21.
6. K. Marx and F. Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party, The Revolutions of 1848,
Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1973, p. 77.
7. K. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1965,
p.417.
8. German Ideology, p.37.
9. K. Marx and F. Engels, Die Deutsche Ideologie, Berlin, Dietz Verlag, 1960, p.22.
10. K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Correspondence, Moscow, Foreign Languages
Publishing House, n.d., p.541.
11. Selected Correspondence, p. 551.
12. The discussion of the ideological significance of religion in Ludwig Feuerbach and the
End of Classical German Philosophy is typical and instructive in this regard. See K.Marx
and F. Engels, Selected Works, vol.2, Moscow, Foreign Languages Publishing House,
1958, pp. 380- 402.
13. Preface to K. Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Moscow, Progress
Publishers, 1934, p.9.

172

Lawrence Wilde
The creatures, too, must become free:
Marx and the Animal/Human Distinction

Source: This article was originally published in Capital & Class, Issue no.72,
Autumn '00 , and is reproduced here with the author's permission as per Creative
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The clarion call for the liberation of animals quoted in the title of this paper is cited
approvingly by Marx in On the Jewish Question (Marx, 1975: 172). The words themselves
belong to Thomas Mnzer, the leader of the German Peasants Revolt in the early
sixteenth century, and what attracted Marx was Mnzers view that under the dominion of
private property and money, nature is treated in such a contemptuous way that it is
debased. Mnzer had conduded:
...all creatures have been turned into property, the fishes in the water, the birds in the
air, the plants on the earth; the creatures, too, must become free.
As far as I know there is no further evidence to suggest that Marx was a champion of
animal liberation, but his appreciation of Mnzers position should at least lead us to
expect from him a sympathetic view towards (non-human) animals. However, a number of
prominent commentators, chief among them Ted Benton and Jon Elster (Benton, 1988 and
1993; Elster, 1985), claim that Marx completely lacked respect for animals, thinking of
them as inferior beings. In this paper I will refute this position and argue that Marx has a
respectful attitude towards animals and non-human nature in general. This is an intrinsic
feature of his humanistic philosophy, which is grounded in defining the human essence by
comparing humans with other animals. Shortly after endorsing Mnzers sentiments Marx
characterises his own brand of communism as the equation of humanism and naturalism
(Marx, 1975: 296), but if Benton is correct in attributing a form of species imperialism to
Marx, it would seriously undermine his communist vision (Benton, 1993: 42).
I will argue that Marxs discussion of the difference between humans and animals is
entirely free of prejudice against animals and certainly does not treat them as inferior or
deficient beings. Further, Marxs brief discussions of animals, in particular his recognition
of their specific needs and capabilities, indicates that his humanism seeks a harmony
between humanity and nature, in which nature comprises both human and non-human
nature, as a number of commentators have appreciated (Grundmann, 1991; Vaillancourt,
1996; Wilde, 1998: ch.7). The primary political implication is that as the modern
maltreatment of animals reflects the extent to which the capitalist accumulation process
drives towards the disregard of all natural feelings, resistance to such maltreatment
constitutes resistance to the mode of production. Animal welfare activism is, therefore, an
antisystemic movement, albeit operating with a high degree of autonomy from anti
systemic movements which are either explicitly socialist or else focused on other particular
forms of oppression.
Marxs Essentialism
It is important to clarify just why Marx felt the need to raise the issue of the
distinction between humans and animals in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts
and then return to it in his mature political economy. One of the aspects of alienation
described in the Manuscripts is alienation from species being (Marx, 1975: 275-7), a
Feuerbachian term for human essence. Like Feuerbachs discussion of what it is that
makes us human (Feuerbach, 1986: 69-71), Marxs argument is couched in terms of what
distinguishes us from other animals. In fact the influence of Aristotles De Anima is clear
in the work of both Feuerbach (Wartofsky, 1977: 224, 374, 423) and Marx, who translated
the text into German as early as 1840 (Meikle, 1985: 58). Whereas Aristotle focuses on
173

reason as the defining human quality, and Feuerbach emphasises universality, Marx
argues for conscious life activity (Marx, 1975: 276). We will look more closely at
precisely what Marx means by this in the next section, but for now let us note that he
shares with Aristotle the view that the human being is essentially a social being, a zoon
politikon, and the human essence can be realised only in society (Aristotle, 1969: 5; Marx,
1986: 18). But the stress on activity introduces an emphasis on production which in turn
brings in a developmental or historical dimension which is not to be found in Aristotles
philosophy. Despite this important difference, both Aristotle and Marx should be regarded
as essentialists (Meikle, 1985; Wilde, 1998, chs.2, 3; Pike, 1999). When they define the
essence of the human species they are not simply making an empirical statement but also
implying that this essence ought to be fulfilled.
In Marxs case, he argues that it may be possible to define human uniqueness by
such things as consciousness or religion or anything else you like, but humans really
begin to distinguish themselves from other animals when they begin to produce their
means of subsistence (Marx,1976a: 31). In other words focusing on consciousness or even
language leaves us with the problem of understanding exactly what is going on when
animals really think or communicate verbally, whereas the difference in our capacities to
produce is tangible. In creating a world of objects humanity proves its species being, so
that, in Marxs view, the history of industry and the objective existence of industry
constitute the open book of mans essential powers (Marx,1975: 302). Marx views
human essence as creative social activity, something which is expressed throughout human
history, but always in distorted ways insofar as the producers themselves are not
experiencing work as their act of creation. Only in communist society would we see the
real appropriation of the human essence by and for man and the true resolution of the
strife between existence and essence (Marx, 1975: 296). Essentialism is roundly
condemned in (post)modern social theory, usually on the grounds that it obstructs the
recognition of difference and fails to grasp the rich pluralism of life (e.g. Young,1990:
ch.8). But there is nothing in the view that all people should be able to realise their social
creativity that stipulates any particular form which the free society should adopt.
I do not want to revisit the old arguments about whether the alienation theme persists
in the writings of the mature Marx, or what parts of it may persist, but at this stage we
should note that in his later writings Marx affirrns both the idea that there is a human
essence, or human nature in general, and that humans can be distinguished from animals in
the way they produce. It is absolutely clear in Capital that there are two sorts of human
nature, the general and the historically modified. Lambasting Benthams utilitarianism,
he argues that it is necessary to understand human nature in general (human essence) in
order to judge what is good for humans, just as if we are to know what is good for dogs we
need to study dog-nature (Marx, 1996: 605n). As for what constitutes quintessentially
human production, the discussion in one of Marxs final works, the marginal notes on
Adolph Wagners Lehrbuch der politischen conomie, closely follows that of the 1844
Manuscripts, as Terrell Carver has pointed out (Carver, 1975; 167). It is also very similar
to the discussion in part one of The German Ideology (Marx, 1976a 44). The emphasis is
again on the practical activities through which humans reveal their distinctiveness from
other animals. Marx is impatient with Wagners formulation that the human finds
himself in relation to the outside world as a means of satisfying his needs. He objects that
Wagners individualistic and idealistic conception of what it is to be human implies an
isolated juxtaposition with nature and pictures the human as a non-gregarious animal
(Marx, 1989: 538-9). They begin, like every animal, by satisfying their needs, but in
constantly developing their needs in interaction with each other and with non-human
nature they develop linguistic skills, naming goods because they are useful for themselves
and thereby conferring utility on those goods.
We can gain further insight into Marxs conceptualisation of the human-animal
distinction in two separate and apparently ambivalent comments in Capital on Benjamin
174

Franklins definition of man as a tool-making animal. His first citation approvingly
acknowledges Franklins insight that our ability to make and use tools is a distinctively
human capacity, although Marx acknowledges that the germ of this ability can be found in
some other species (Marx, 1996: 189). Later on, however, he mocks Franklins definition
as being typical of Yankeedom (Marx, 1996: 331n). What is going on here? In the first
instance Marx agrees with Franklin that the use of tools is characteristic of purely human
productiveness, but ultimately he finds something profoundly wrong with the conclusion
that we are therefore to be regarded as tool-making animals. For Marx, it is not acceptable
to reduce the difference between humans and animals to a technical proclivity, for this
obscures the range of distinctively human needs which go with our difference.
Yankeedom signifies the most advanced and energetic form of capitalist endeavour
which drives towards the commodification of everything and, in the process, denies the
workers control over their lives. According to Franklins definition there is no necessary
problem with this, as long as our animal needs are met. For Marx, it represents an
alienation of the human essence and is incompatible with the realisation of human
freedom. However, it does not follow from this, as Benton suggests, that distinctively
human needs are superior to animal needs, or that animal needs within humans are
profaned and regarded as shameful residual features (Benton: 1993: 43-4). Unfortunately
such views have been common enough in the past but they are not shared by Marx, for
whom the different types of needs are not antagonistic, just different. I hope to make this
clearer by examining what Marx says about the human/animal distinction in the
Manuscripts, The German Ideology, and the first volume of Capital.
The Human-Animal Distinction in the Manuscripts
Let us take a closer look at what Marx says about the differences between humans
and animals in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts in the discussion of estranged
labour towards the end of the first manuscript. He begins by stating that as a result of
alienation the worker feels freely active only in animal functions such as eating, drinking
and procreating, while in his human functions he no longer feels himself to be anything
but an animal (Marx, 1975: 275-6). He accepts that eating and drinking are genuinely
human functions, but when they are separated from the sphere of all other human activity
and turned into sole and ultimate ends, they are animal functions. So, humans share
attributes with other animals, but to express their true humanity they must realise their
human essence of social creativity. When their conditions of existence prevent them from
doing so they experience a loss of self. Hence the prevailing discourse of the
Manuscripts is one of dehumanisation, implying that capitalist production denies them
something which is their due as human beings (Marx, 1975: 137, 212, 284, 303, 308).
Animals in their natural state do not feel this loss of self because the animal is
immediately at one with its life activity. Marx argues that humans make life activity the
object and will of their consciousness; conscious life activity distinguishes man
immediately from animal life activity (Marx, 1975: 276). He contrasts human production,
in its widest sense, with the way in which animals produce:
But an animal only produces what it immediately needs for itself or its young. It
produces one-sidedly, whilst man produces universally. It produces only under the
dominion of immediate physical need, whilst man produces even when he is free from
physical need and only truly produces in freedom therefrom. An animal produces only
itself, whilst man reproduces the whole of nature. An animals product belongs
immediately to its physical body, whilst man freely confronts his product. An animal
forms objects only in accordance with the standard and the need of the species to which it
belongs, whilst man knows how to produce in accordance with the standard of every
species, and knows how to apply everywhere the inherent standard to the object. Man
therefore also forms objects in accordance with the laws of beauty (Marx, 1975: 276).
The theme here is the uniqueness of human universality, the capacity to produce
according to plan on a grand scale, over and above what is required by natural necessity
175

and with the knowledge of how the other species produce. Later in the Manuscripts he
describes the specifically human natural being as a being for himself, manifested by
having a known history, a conscious self-transcending act of origin (Marx, 1975: 337)
Truly human production, then, transcends the instinctive response to immediate physical
needs, and we are able to create things in accordance with the standards of other species
and imbue our products with aesthetic qualities. The cave paintings of early homo sapiens
provide a good illustration of Marxs conception, for they were created beyond the
requirements for physical survival and they often depict the struggle for survival in our
relationships with other animals.
Marxs ruminations on the human/animal distinction seem to me to be entirely
without disrespect to animals, and, furthermore, as Erich Fromm has concluded, they
constitute perhaps the most significant definition of the species characteristic of the human
being (Fromm, 1968: 58, cf.Fromm, 1992, ch.4). However, it seems that any attempt to
establish human uniqueness is likely to provoke a hostile response from those who
consider that inevitably it degrades animals. Benton, for example, attributes to Marx
arguments referring to the merely animal or merely existing seven times within two
paragraphs of Natural Relations (Benton, 1993: 41), despite the fact that Marx does not
use the word mere. Marx intends no slight against animals when defining human
uniqueness, nor is it obvious that he operates from an underestimation of animal
capabilities and needs. Indeed, as we shall see in the next section Marx does have a view
on what constitutes natural needs for animals in general, but first we must deal with the
objection that Marxs emphasis on creative production does not work as a way of
distinguishing humans from other animals.
Benton argues that Marxs formulation ignores the wealth and complexity of social
life in other species. It also, he claims, ignores the adaptability of many species in their
relationships with the environment. Now it is clearly not Marxs intention to write a
disquisition on animal life, but his characterisations turn on the animals meeting of
immediate physical needs and their unmediated relationship with their environment. These
characterisations are not contradicted by any number of examples of co-operation and
ingenuity displayed by many species as long as that activity remained directed towards the
meeting of immediate needs. However, Marxs characterisation of animals would indeed
be refuted if Benton is correct in arguing that inventing, making, using and inter-
generational teaching of the use of tools are now well recognised as powers of non-human
primates (Benton, 1993: 36-7). The research cited by Benton, conducted by Jane Goodall
in Tanzania, refers to the use of stripped sticks to fish termites from their mounds. This
use of a stick as a tool is so rudimentary that it surely serves to confirm rather than rebut
the fact that humans produce in radically different ways from other animals. Jon Elster
falls into the same trap in seeking to minimise the differences in productive capacities
between humans and other animals (Elster, 1985: 62-8). In both cases the rhetorical
strategy is similar, citing a scientific source to blur the distinction in productive techniques
without genuinely getting to grips with Marxs argument. Do other animals fashion and
use tools in the same way as humans? Do they make tools to make other tools? The answer
to both questions is plainly no and it seems to me that to argue otherwise does animals no
favour.
[1]

As animal intelligence expert Stephen Budiansky points out, attempts to show that
animals can do some things almost like humans ignores the glaring discontinuities between
humans and animals:
To play the game of trying to smash the pedestal of human uniqueness by showing
that animals can, too (after a fashion), make tools, or create sentences or count, misses this
fundamental point (Budiansky, 1999: 18).
To argue that animals use tools almost like humans encourages the view to which
Benton rightly objects, that is, that animals are not properly human. Benton accepts that
there is no evidence of generation-by-generation cumulative development of collective
176

skills, but he claims this is a purely contingent matter; just because other animals have
not shown this capability there is no a priori reason why they might not at some stage in
the future (Benton, 1993: 41). Similarly Elster concedes that there are no documented
cases of animals making tools to make other tools, but suggests that such cases might yet
be found (Elster, 1985: 66). This is sheer sophism. Marxs claim that there is a qualitative
difference in the productive capacities of humans and other animals does not mean that
there is no development whatsoever in animal capabilities, as this passage from Capital
makes clear:
The use and fabrication of instruments of labour, although existing in the germ
among certain species of animals, is specifically characteristic of the human labour process
(Marx, 1996: 188).
The fact that the germ is present in other animals does not detract in the slightest
from the force of Marxs argument that, according to available empirical evidence, humans
and other animals can be distinguished in essence by the way in which they produce. This
carries no connotations of deficiency on the part of animals. Indeed his characterisation of
the animal as immediately one with its life activity suggests a simplicity and integrity
which many humans might envy. It is possible to view any comparison of closely related
forms in terms of inferiority or superiority, but it is not necessary to do so. If we compare a
sparrow with an eagle and describe some of the differences in terms of size, speed, and
physical power, this should not be taken to suggest that the sparrow is an inferior being. To
identify a capability in humans by comparing them with animals does not imply a
disability in animals; it states merely that they are different in essence. I think that is
Marxs position and that this is clearly demonstrated in the language he employs.
Animal Needs
Although Marx argues that animals live under the dominion of immediate physical
need, this carries no implication that their needs are not to be respected. In the third
manuscript of the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts there is another reference to
animals and their needs which is pertinent to the discussion. Marx launches into an
indignant description of the way in which the satisfaction of those needs which we share
with other animals is frequently denied to workers in capitalism.
The dwelling in the light, recognised by Prometheus as one of the greatest boons to
humanity, is no longer available for the worker; light, air etc.the simplest animal
cleanliness ceases to be a need for man (Marx, 1975: 307-8). He then cites the plight of
the Irish poor, forced to exist on a diet comprised exclusively of scabby potatoes,
commenting that it is not only that man has no human needseven his animal needs
cease to exist. He goes on to say that animals have at least the need to hunt, to roam, and
to have companionship. The point of these remarks is to highlight the cruel insensitivity to
human needs which capitalist production metes out to its workers, but there is a clear
description of animal needs which have been systematically disregarded by twentieth
century capitalist production methodslight, air, a varied diet, the freedom to roam and
companionship. Marx is not simply concerned to emphasise the difference between
humans and other animals but also to demonstrate the extent to which the needs they share
are brutally disregarded even in a system devised by humans. The reference to hunting as a
need for some animals also reminds us that the needs of different species are often
incompatible.
In The German Ideology Marx provides examples in which the development of
modern production methods prevents animals from meeting their essential needs. He
discusses the effects of the pollution of a river, using an essentialist language which owes
much to his Aristotelian philosophical background:
The essence of the freshwater fish is the water of a river. But the latter ceases to be
the essence of the fish and is no longer a suitable medium of existence as soon as the
river is made to serve industry, as soon as it is polluted by dyes and other waste products
177

and navigated by steamboats, or as soon as its water is diverted into canals where simple
drainage can deprive the fish of its medium of existence (Marx, 1976a: 58).
The context of these remarks is important, for the point Marx is making is that
Feuerbachs abstract naturalism tends to identify the essence of things, including the
human essence, without reference to their historical evolution and their social context.
Feuerbach is accused of failing to grasp that essences can be understood only in relation to
existence. It is only by recognising the historicity and universality of human activity that
we can begin to understand and change the nature of things. He considers that Feuerbachs
philosophy views problems such as the plight of the freshwater fish as inevitable
abnormalities rather than problems which can be resolved through radical change. A little
further on in the German Ideology he argues that human needs are developed uniquely as
part of a historical process, by which he means through the conscious creation of the
means of production and exchange. He begins by saying that sheep and dogs are not
historical in that way, but then says that in their present form, in spite of themselves, they
are products of a historical process (Marx, 1976a: 82). In other words the physical forms
of these animals is altered by human intervention in their breeding. The object of these
remarks is not to denounce human interference in nature per se, but to emphasise that what
we term nature is not pristine, that we are part of nature and have the unique ability to
reconstruct our relationship with it. This refers to our relationship with our own nature as
well as with non-human nature.
Lost in Translation
So far we have looked only at Marxs comments on the human animal relationship
made relatively early in his life, but we can identify a continuity of theme in two passages
from his mature political economy. In the first volume of Capital Marx introduces his
discussion of the labour process by arguing that although humans initially laboured
instinctively like other animals, through social interaction with their environment they
develop the exclusively human characteristic of conscious life activity whereby they are
able to plan their work. I have argued that Marxs formulations in the early writings do not
impute a disability to animals when comparing their production to humans, but this
reading is thrown in doubt when we read the popular Moore and Aveling translation of this
part of Capital. They translate Wir haben es hier nicht mit den ersten tierartig
instinktmassigen Formen derArbeitzu tun (Marx, 1970: 192-3) as We are not now
dealing with those primitive instinctive forms of labour that remind us of the mere animal
(Marx, 1996: 187). In fact Marx does not use the words primitive or mere and the
speciesist connotations are entirely the product of the translators. The superior translation
of Ben Fowkes has Marx talking about those first instinctive forms of labour which
remain on the animal level, but this reference to a lower animal level is not how Marx
chose to express himself (Marx, 1976b: 283). The translation by Eden and Cedar Paul
gives us those primitive and instinctive forms of labour which we share with other
animals, and despite the insertion of primitive this at least captures Marxs
acknowledgment that there is much we share with other animals (Marx, 1957: 169). A
more reliable translation suggested to me by Terrell Carver has Marx saying We are not
dealing here with the first forms of labour bounded by instincts as animals are. Marx did
not consider that the instinct-bound production of animals rendered them deficient, but the
Moore and Aveling misreading of Marx is unfortunately all too common. It is diffficult for
people who have known nothing other than the intensely competitive ethos of capitalist
society to grasp that to establish a difference does not have to imply a deficiency on one
side.
Indeed the different capacities of humans might well suggest that we are lacking
some of the skills which develop in instinct bound production. Marx argues that the
productions of spiders and bees put to shame the equivalent efforts of weavers and
architects, but what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the
architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality (Marx, 1996:
178

188). Marx selects the most intricate of animal productions to make his point, and in so
doing reveals a respect for their endeavours and their nature. However, his concern in
Capital is to explain what happens to human beings in the capitalist mode of production.
Specifically, his purpose in the chapter on the labour process is to show how money was
transformed into capital through the extraction of surplus value in the process of
exploitation. The controlling power in the labour process shifts from the producer to
capital. The formally free individuals enter a contract which deprives the producers of the
freedom to exercise the creative power which defines their humanity. In the chapter on
cooperation Marx reverts to his earlier humanist discourse when he contrasts this alienated
world with the image of a cooperative, planned society, in which the worker strips off the
fetters of his individuality, and develops the capabilities of his species (Marx, 1996: 334).
This is very close to his 1844 articulation of communism as the real appropriation of the
human essence by and for humanity.
Marx argues that the ineluctable contradictions inherent in capitalism provide the
opportunity to construct a social system in which humanity is able to fulfil its creative
potential.
[2]
But of course Marx is no starry-eyed optimist. The sort of mastery of nature
displayed in capitalism amounts to a tragic perversion of our species potential, as he
laments in a speech given for the anniversary of the Peoples Paper:
At the same pace that mankind masters nature, man seems to become enslaved to
other men or to his own infamy... All our invention and progress seem to result in
endowing material forces with intellectual life, and in stultifying human life into a material
force (Marx, 1980: 655-6).
Clearly for Marx mastery of nature is not liberating until such time as we master our
own nature and, in so doing, take sensitive and responsible control of the management of
the interchange between human nature and non-human nature, including other animals.
For Marx, humanity is always part of nature (Marx, 1975: 276). In the third volume of
Capital he speaks of humanity achieving freedom within the realm of natural necessity,
whereby the associated producers govern the interchange with nature in a rational way
under conditions most worthy and appropriate for their human nature (Marx, 1981: 959)
What does he mean by this? We fulfil our nature when we realise our potential for social
creativity, when we create a world in which life is sustained harmoniously. It is
unimaginable that we could manage our interchange with nature in a truly humane way
without actualising our sense of compassion, through which we empathise with the
suffering of other species and in doing so manifest our own uniqueness.
Political Implications
The tendency of advanced capitalism to stultify the lives of humans into nothing
more than a material force has long been the fate of many species of animals. The logic of
accumulation is indifferent to the feelings of the producers and the produced, and the
inhumane treatment of animals in the production process bears this out. However, Marx
did not simply reveal the logic of capitalist accumulation, he identified the contradictions
within it and the social forces which could intervene in order to hasten its end. More often
than not socialist resistance has been associated with direct confrontation with capital on
economic issues or with the activities of socialist parties in the political sphere. Today, in
addition to struggles of this sort, protest movements have developed on a range of issues
conventionally termed non-class issues. However, it seems to me that the emergence of
these issues and the mobilisation which has taken place as a result should be regarded as
important phenomena from a socialist perspective. This is certainly true when it comes to
the politics of animal protection.
The first set of issues raised is a particular form of the contradiction between the
forces of production and the relations of production whereby the drive to accumulation
actually destroys the very basis of production itself. Marx noted this in relation to soil
exhaustion and was very interested in the scientific work in this area conducted by von
Liebig and Fraas (Marx, 1996: 506-8; Marx, 1987: 558-9). With animal products it is not
179

simply the animals who are killed but also some consumers. In the drive to minimise the
cost of production unsafe feeding methods lead to disease breaking out on a wide scale, as
in the recent examples of the salmonella and bovine spongiform encephalopathy. The beef
crisis in Britain was not exceptional, it was the all-too predictable outcome of a scramble
for profits. It carries with it a survivalist deregulatory ideology of frightening irrationality,
expressed by one farmer in a radio interview who asked why should we have to put up
with all these regulations when the French get away with feeding their animals on shit?.
The logic of accumulation determines that capitalist farmers will go to any lengths to
cheapen their product and increase profitability. That these lengths include the violation of
natural laws and the chronic disregard for the natural needs of animals has now become a
public issue. What is exposed in this instance is the vacuity of the usual justification for
efficient production. In this case there is no shortage of meat in the developed world and
there is a limit to how much of it people can be persuaded to buy, there is simply no need
for this disgusting perversion of nature.
A range of groups have attacked the cruelty inherent in all instances of factory
farming, in which the natural needs of animals as described by Marx and others are
disregarded. These groups, which have expanded dramatically in size since the 1970s,
have used a variety of methods, including legal and illegal direct action (Garner, 1993, chs.
2 and 8). Sometimes the issues are raised in campaigns which are specifically aimed at the
insidious nature of corporate power, as when the McLibel campaign exposed the appalling
suffering of battery chickens. The furious response of corporations and the state to these
campaigns indicates the extent to which the economic and political elites recognise that
what is being questioned here are the rights of the owners of the means of production.
The second set of issues is around cruelty to animals outside the horrors of factory
farming induding blood sports and circuses (Garner, 1993: 170-4 and 83-4). The campaign
to have fox hunting banned has attracted widespread publicity in recent years, and
although this issue may seem peripheral to some socialists, its greater significance lies in
the challenge to the values which society is prepared to tolerate. Interestingly, on this issue
of compassion the battle lines are drawn along old-fashioned class lines, despite the claims
of the Countryside Alliance to be up holding the interests of poor rural workers. Again, the
sentences meted out to hunt saboteurs reveal the class nature of the legal system, just as
the pusillanimous backpedalling of the Labour Government shows the mysterious strength
of a pro-hunting lobby with little popular support. Other instances of pastime cruelty such
as animal circuses, shooting birds and other animals, and bull fights have elicited
opposition in recent years. From an essentialist philosophical standpoint, not only do those
taking part show no respect for the essence of the animals concerned, but in doing so they
betray their own human essence by failing to recognise the cruelty of what they are
involved with.
The third set of issues is to do with experiments on animals (Singer, 1990, ch.2). On
the question of animal experimentation for potentially life-saving treatments for humans
there is an assumption on the humanist side that this is justified. But there can be no
justification for all those experiments on animals conducted for other purposes, such as
cosmetics. The relationship between humans and animals could never be rendered entirely
non-conflictual. Marxs formulation of communism in the Economic and Philosophical
Manuscripts as the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature and
between man and man (Marx, 1975: 296) perhaps promises too much. Herbert Marcuse
pointed out that the myth of Orpheus, who tamed the wild beasts by the power of his
music, is not a realisable goal when it comes to complex matters about our relations with
nature. Nevertheless, operating within a Marxist humanist framework, Marcuse asserts that
no free society is imaginable which does not...make the concerted effort to reduce
consistently the suffering which man imposes on the animal world (Marcuse, 1972: 68).
If resistance to cruelty to animals in the production process is regarded as a struggle
against that production process, then in a strong sense the groups involved in those
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struggles are new antisystemic movements. However, like many of the old antisystemic
movements, those involved may not see the wider picture and may not be able to link with
movements concerned with different forms of oppression such as racism, sexism, or
economic exploitation. However, in states where the electoral system permits New Left
parties to participate in parliament, the politics of animal welfare occupies an important
placeDie Grunen in Germany are perhaps the best example. The development of these
political forces, and their uneasy and uncertain links with older movements of the Left, is
crucial to the development of a long, pluralistic movement for the democratic control of
the regulation of all production, which will be a feature of the struggle of all humane
forces against capital in the coming century. Marxs conception of communist society was
that of an ethical community operating democratically through free and equal individuals
no longer under the tutelage of the law of value. To achieve the consciousness necessary to
create this new world, Marx claimed that the alteration of humanity on a mass scale was
required. When he talked of revolution it was an ethical as well as a social revolution,
through which humanity rid itself of the muck of all ages and became fitted to found
society anew (Marx, 1976a: 52-3). The realisation of our sense of compassion in our
dealings with animals is a necessary part of that revolution.

Notes
1. Benton admits that there are profound differences in production techniques between
humans and other species, but tries to reduce the force of this argument by saying that
there are profound differences between different groups of humans (p. 37). As Marx is
talking about essential difference between whole species Bentons objection is jejune.
There are profound differences.
2. Of course we have a potential to be destructive, and Benton complains that Marx
ignores this potential for evil. But, as Erich Fromm argues, this potential must be
regarded as a secondary potentiality which develops when creativeness is thwarted
(Fromm, 1991, 37-8for a detailed analysis see Fromm, 1997).

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