The Relationship Between Bourgeois and Marxist Historiography - Ernst Nolte

Wesleyan University
The Relationship between "Bourgeois" and "Marxist" Historiography

Author(s): Ernst Nolte
Source: History and Theory, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Feb., 1975), pp. 57-73
Published by: Wiley for Wesleyan University
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THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN "BOURGEOIS" AND
"MARXIST" HISTORIOGRAPHY*
ERNST NOLTE
At many universities in the Western world today, there is hardly any topic
an historian will be asked to discuss more frequently than the relationship
between "bourgeois" and "Marxist" historiography. At the same time, he will
be obliged to define himself and his own work in terms of these two poles.
Discussion of the matter is difficult because the basis for scholarly inquiry
an objective relationship to one's subject - is lacking. The "bourgeois his-
torian" seems to look at the question differently from the "Marxist historian."
But we must not forget that in using the terms "bourgeois" and "Marxist"
we, too, are following Marxist practice. Our acceptance of the Marxist posi-
tion as a point of departure is clearly provisional, and as we proceed, we
shall see that the apparently irreconcilable opposition of "bourgeois" and
"Marxist" will prove not to be so irreconcilable after all. In making this
initial concession to the Marxist view, we shall be able to temper the military
metaphors both sides are so fond of using. I shall not roll out the heavy
artillery of Hegelian concepts, as Bernard Willms does in his valuable essay
Marxismus - Wissenschaft - Universitfit,' nor shall I open the attack on a
number of fronts, as the authors of issue number 70 of Das Argument do in
their "Kritik der biirgerlichen Geschichtswissenschaft."2 Instead, I shall try
to characterize the bourgeois and Marxist positions in historiography. This
will involve three steps: citing statements of purpose by major represen-
tatives of both schools, comparing the contents of leading bourgeois and
Marxist publications in the field, and describing the most extreme and what
have been to date the most usual types of exchange between the two camps.
I shall then expand the scope of our inquiry by examining Marx's and Engels'
* This essay is a slightly abridged version of an inaugural lecture at the Free Uni-
versity of Berlin. The lecture, announced as one in a series on the "Cold War," was
not delivered in the university because powerful student groups had called for a boycott
of it. This incident is not atypical of the current situation at the Free University.
1. Bernard Willms, Marxismus - Wissenschaft - Universitfit: Zw6lf Thesen (Diussel-
dorf, 1971).
2. "Kritik der birgerlichen GeschichtswissenschaftI," Das Argument: Zeitschrift fuir
Philosophie zind Sozialwissenschlaften, 70, Sonderband (Berlin, 1972).
58 ERNST NOLTE
views on scholarship in general and on historical scholarship in particular.

The insights derived from these first two steps should enable us to formulate,
in a third section, distinctions and results that will make our controversy look
very different from the way it did at the outset of our discussion.
I. THE "MARXIST" AND "BOURGEOIS" SCHOOLS OF HISTORIOGRAPHY
From 1953 on, the problem of defining the Marxist position in historiography
has been the subject of numerous contributions in the Zeitschrift ffur
Geschichtswissenschaft. Ernst Engelberg published essays on this theme in
1964, 1968, and 1971. In my remarks here, I shall draw primarily on his
work as well as on relevant studies by Ernst Diehl and Gerhard Lozek.3 The
argument - greatly condensed but not, I feel, in any way distorted - is as
follows:
Marxist historiography is concerned with the "arc of world history"4 that
reaches from classless primeval society to the communistic society of the
future. That is, Marxist historiography conceives of world history as a series
of class struggles -and of class alliances as well - that have arisen from
the one factor central to all previous history; man's exploitation of his fellow
man. In its research, Marxist scholarship always takes sides with the progres-
sive classes and parties that represent the future in the dialectical struggle
between the forces of production and the system of production. Only the
socially conscious advance guard of the working class, i.e., the Marxist-
Leninist party, has a comprehensive understanding of the social nature of
production, and without such understanding it is impossible to determine
unequivocally what is progressive and what is reactionary at any given time.
The advance guard is in a position to understand because it is the leading
element of a group that is not merely one historical group among others but
a group that potentially includes the great majority of all humanity or at
least the great majority of humanity's most progressive forces. If past history
has been no more than a sequence of events in which one form of exploita-
tion has replaced another in accordance with predictable laws, then this
progressive group has transcended history and already stands beyond it.
3. Ernst Engelberg, "Die Aufgaben der Historiker der DDR von 1964 bis 1970,"
Zeitschrift fiir Geschichtswissenischaft 12 (1964), 388-402; Uber Gegenstand und Ziel
der marxistisch-leninistischen Geschichtswissenschaft," ibid. (1968), 1117-45; "Qber
Theorie und Methode in der Geschichtswissenschaft," ibid. (1971), 1347-66; Ernst
Diehl, "Zu einigen Problemen und Aufgaben der Geschichtswissenschaft der DDR in
der gegenwiirtigenEtappe," ibid. (1969), 1393-1402; Gerhard Lozek, "Zur Methodologie
einer wirksarnen Auseinandersetzung mit der bUrgerlichen Geschichtsschreibung: Das
Problem der Strukturelemente und die Hauptrichtung der Auseinandersetzung,"ibid.
(1970), 608-616.
4. Engelberg (1968), 1129.
"BOURGEOIS" AND "MARXIST" HISTORIOGRAPHY 59
If Marxist historiography is biased, its bias differs fundamentally from the

bias of any other form of historical scholarship. Its bias is not at odds with
objectivity, for "the basic interests of the working class are in harmony with
the conditions of objective reality."5
The basic interests of the bourgeoisie, on the other hand, cannot be in
harmony with the conditions of objective reality because the time has passed
in which exploiting classes could be progressive. What holds true for the
bourgeoisie obviously holds true for its advocate, the bourgeois histori-
ographer. Since bourgeois historiography is inextricably linked to a reac-
tionary economy and to reactionary politics, it can only obscure the truth.
"The questions an historian asks of history are determined by the interests of
the class with which he identifies."6 Bourgeois historiography is therefore
unscholarly by nature, even when it concerns itself with remote subjects. The
closer it comes to the present, the more obvious its defensive and reactionary
position becomes. It shrewdly offers, for example, a partial criticism of Bis-
marck and Hitler but at the same time obscures the very class structure that
made Bismarck's Reich and the Fascist regime possible.
Marxist-Leninist historiography, however, adheres to strict standards of
scholarship when it helps build the "intellectual arsenal" of peace and social-
ism, when it exposes the neo-colonial plans of West German militarists and
monopolists,7 and especially when it demonstrates that the German Demo-
cratic Republic (GDR) represents the high point of German history to date.8
There is no fundamental difference between state and party leadership on
the one hand and Marxist historians on the other because government in the
GDR "is based on a Marxist-Leninist view of history."9
Granted, Engelberg allows for a "dialectical tension between politics and
scholarship,"'10and Lozek does not deny that there are "certain practical and
methodological skills of historical scholarship on which class has no bear-
ing."'" In these respects, the Marxist and the bourgeois are not completely
at odds. As Engelberg expressed it in 1971, the Marxist-Leninist historian
can "learn within limits'12 from his bourgeois counterpart. And the two
schools seem to have some enemies in common, although these enemies do
not pose the same kind of threat to them both. Among these mutual oppo-
nents we find "left-wing opportunists," dogmatists, and "leftist-sectarian
adventurers." In the GDR it is sometimes openly said that these opponents
5. Engelberg (1964), 391.

6. Lozek, 611.
7. Engelberg (1964), 388 and 399.
8. Diehl, 1397.
9. Engelberg (1964), 388.
10. Ibid., 393.
11. Lozek, 613.
12. Engelberg (1971), 1360.
60 ERNST NOLTE
have still not freed themselves of bourgeois thinking. In the same issue of the
Zeitschrift ftir Geschichtswissenschaft (XII/ 1964) in which Engelberg out-
lines the historian's tasks in the GDR for the period 1964 to 1970, two
Soviet writers published an article entitled "Problems of Historiography in
the People's Republic of China," which sharply attacks certain "bourgeois-
nationalistic" tendencies observed in that country.13
Even at this early stage of our discussion it would seem that the relation-
ship between "bourgeois" and "Marxist" historiography and between "bour-
geois" and "socialistic" in general is much more complicated than the
customary language of the Zeitschrift fur Geschichtswissenchaft would lead
us to believe.
But now let us examine a representative statement of purpose by a "bour-
geois historian." I have chosen as my example a short essay by Friedrich
Meinecke. I realize that methodological objections could be made to this
choice, but I think it remains an appropriate one here nevertheless.
Meinecke's article, entitled "German Historiography and the Needs of the
Times," was first published in 1916 in Friedrich Naumann's Hilfe. It is now
available in volume IV of Meinecke's Werke, where it appears together with
other essays on the "Theory and Philosophy of History."14 Meinecke ad-
dresses himself to the criticism, which seems to have been frequently leveled
at historians during World War I, that contemporary historical scholarship
in Germany "concerned itself too little with the intellectual life of our times
and therefore offered it too little."15 Meinecke by no means takes this criti-
cism lightly. He notes, without polemical overtones, "the preoccupation of
our young scholars with problems of the nineteenth century."'6 He modestly
sees himself and his generation merely carrying on the tradition of the "great
epoch of Ranke, Burckhardt, and Treitschke.'17 With an obvious tone of
resignation, he points out that he and his contemporaries, too, like their great
predecessors, had been summoned to the battlefield of national struggle but
that in terms of "persuasive power" their manifestoes could not bear com-
parison with those of a man like Treitschke.18
For Meinecke, it was self-evident that historiography was closely con-
nected with the state and era that produced it, and an "ideological critique"
that demonstretad this interdependence would surely have contained no
surprises for him. But when he rejects the "dramatic and sweeping syntheses"
13. R. V. Vjatkin and S. L. Tichvinskij, "Vber einige Fragen der Geschichtswissen-

schaft in der Volksrepublik China," Zeitschrift ffir Geschichltswissenschaft 12 (1964),
403-422.
14. IV, 172-180.
15. Ibid., 172.
16. Ibid., 173.
17. Ibid., 178
18. Loc. cit.
that an age hungering for "ever new sensations" demands,19 he is not only
censuring Lamprecht but also attacking "ruthless nationalism" and the idea
of a central Europe under German domination - all this in the midst of
World War 1.20 And when he insists on seeing things the way they really are,
seeing them in their own light and in their own context, his demand stems
from an awareness "that in the last analysis it is our own lifeblood we draw
on in our attempts to bring the spectres of the past to life."'21The rigorous
discipline and the deep respect for facts and sources that Meinecke demands22
clearly cannot be taken for granted. They do not represent a point of depar-
ture but are the results of arduous labor. The true value of these results is
that they help us gain distance and perspective on our strongest impulses.
And man's strongest impulses are the need for synthesis and the desire to
identify with a totality beyond ourselves.
So understood, bourgeois historiography is characterized by its remove
from its own time and its own nation. It is not at a remove - or is so only
in a few extreme and atypical cases - in the sense that it is by nature remote
from life but in the sense that it consciously seeks distance, has to seek it
anew in each new situation and in ever shifting constellations. It is clear that
Meinecke himself sometimes made misinterpretation inevitable by using ques-
tionable metaphors like "the island of pure scholarship,"23and the temptation
is certainly great to cite Treitschke as proof for the claim that bourgeois
historians identify unquestioningly with their governments. But a reading of
Treitschke's Berlin lectures on Politik, assuming that the reader is not exclu-
sively interested in collecting offensive-sounding quotations, will show that
such a claim can be upheld only with grave reservations. Furthermore,
Treitschke was not "bourgeois historiography" incarnate any more than
Meinecke was. Both of them occupied specific positions within the broad
spectrum of historians in the Second Reich, and the spectrum reached from
Treitschke to Mommsen, from Dietrich Schiafer to Ludwig Quidde.
Bourgeois scholarship, properly understood and practiced, cannot be de-
fined in terms of content and methodology at all. What characterizes it instead
is the extremely broad range of different views and approaches that maintain
a running dialogue with one another and that collectively assume both affinity
to and distance from the political and social realities in which they are rooted.
Their affinity to those realities is taken for granted; their distance from them
is not. This dual relationship gives bourgeois scholarship a certain degree of
autonomy. Bourgeois scholarship can isolate itself from development within
19. Ibid., 174.

20. Ibid., 173, 174, 179.
21. Ibid., 177.
22. Loc. cit.
23. Ibid., 172.
62 ERNST NOLTE
its society to some extent, but it can also be in advance of those developments.
Marxist scholarship - if I may anticipate my first conclusion - can do nei-
ther the one nor the other, nor does it want to, for in the Marxist view there
is no good reason to do either.
The difference between bourgeois and Marxist historiography becomes
eminently clear if we compare the subjects they choose to treat. The leading
bourgeois and Marxist periodicals in the field, the Historische Zeitschrift and
the Zeitschrift fur Geschichtswissenschaft, can provide us with pertinent
information. It is the editorial policy of both to publish articles covering the
entire range of world history. Our sampling is taken from the year 1962.
The Historische Zeitschrift published, among others, essays on the following
subjects: "Frankish Coronation Customs and the Problem of the Ceremonial
Coronation," "The Austro-Bavarian Treaty of Linz, September 11, 1534, as
recorded in Munich Archives," "Giovanni Giolitti and Italian Policy in the
First World War," "Structures and Personalities in History," "The Emperor-
ship of Otto the Great: A Reassessment after 1,000 Years," "The 'Kladder-
adatsch' Affair: A Note on the Domestic History of the Second Reich."
Some of the titles appearing in the Zeitschrift fur Geschichtswissenchaft
were as follows: "Modern Bourgeois Historiography's Attempts to Reha-
bilitate German Militarism," "Atomic Arms Policy in West German Imperial-
ism: From the MC 70 to the MC 96," "The Clerical-Imperialistic Ideology
of the Occident in the Service of German Imperialism." "Messianic Move-
ments in the Middle Ages," "The Theory and Policy of the Socialist Unity
Party of Germany on the National Question," "The Historical Mission of the
German Democratic Republic and the Future of Germany," "The Major
Class Conflict of Feudal Society as Reflected in Some Literary Sources from
the Eleventh through the Thirteenth Century," "Friedrich Meinecke - A
Precursor of the NATO Historians in West Germany," "Medieval Imperial
Policy as Reflected in Bourgeois Historiography of the Nineteenth and
Twentieth Centuries." Most significant of all, perhaps, is the fact that an essay
by Walter Ulbricht, "The Banner of the People's Democracy on German
Soil," is the lead article in the first issue of the year and that the entire sixth
issue is taken up with a reprint of Ulbricht's speech "A Historical Sketch
of the German Workers' Movement." We should also mention that in the
Historische Zeitschrift, under the heading "Miscellaneous Notes," there is
only one article for which it is essential to know the author's name. That is
Gerhard Ritter's "A New Thesis on War Guilt?", a critique of Fritz Fischer's
book Germany's Aims in the First World War.
Without conducting a detailed quantitative analysis of subjects treated and
methods employed, we can draw a few preliminary conclusions: In the His-
torische Zeitschrift, all major historical epochs are equally represented. There
are as many if not more studies of limited subjects as there are broad surveys.
"BOURGEOIS AND MARXIST HISTORIOGRAPHY 63
Theoretical discussions and articles on contemporary history appear rarely,

but they are by no means excluded altogether. By contrast, the Zeitschrift
fur Geschichtswissenschaft strongly emphasizes the present and the immediate
past, giving considerable space to work on the history of the German Com-
munist Party or the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, particularly in their
relationship to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. A comparable
number of pages is given to critical and often fiercely polemical articles on
developments in the Federal Republic and in West German historiography.
By comparison, all the rest of human history assumes a relatively unimportant
position, but articles that do deal with other topics often command great
respect for the sophistication and energy with which they investigate pre-
viously neglected aspects of history. Needless to say, however, these articles,
too, follow a general line of inquiry that focuses on "class structures" in
any given society.
Social history, particularly as a statistical discipline, plays a surprisingly
minimal role in the Zeitschrift fair Geschichtswissenschaft. Ideas, whether
one's own or those of one's opponents, dominate the scene entirely. The level
of work differs far more widely than in the Historische Zeitschrift. Along
with well-documented, careful studies, there are always other essays that can
only be characterized as rhythmic hymns larded with ritualistic condem-
nations. But perhaps the most striking feature of all is that the contemporary
and the medieval studies, the careful and the shoddy ones, are all informed
by a single view that is accepted without reservation. The Historische Zeit-
schrift, too, has a fundamental position that no reader will be able to ignore.
But when compared with the informing principle of the Zeitschrift fMr
Geschichtswissenschaft, that of the Historische Zeitschrift looks like a pale
pastel next to a brilliant oil.
We must ask now what kind of exchange can take place between two types
of historical scholarship so different that they can hardly be subsumed under
the same general definition of "scholarship." I do not intend to present a
historical survey here. It is common knowledge that historians from the GDR
attended German Historical Conventions as late as 1958. They were expelled
from the meeting in Trier. There were good reasons for the expulsion, but
the nationalistic overtones of some of the arguments on which it was based
drew criticism not only in the GDR but in the Federal Republic as well.
From that point on, the attitude of historians in the West toward their col-
leagues in the GDR can best be summed up in the word neglect. Marxism
itself, of course, has not been neglected in the least, but to my knowledge
Historiography in the GDR was not the subject of a single essay in the West
until the new discipline of GDR studies became fashionable and devoted some
attention to it. The reverse trend among younger historians soon developed
into a movement that has managed to change the earlier picture entirely in
64 ERNST NOLTE
some fields of study. The situation in the GDR has been just the opposite.
It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that historians of the Federal
Republic receive more attention from the GDR than from any other country
in the world. The treatment West German historiography receives is, of
course, almost entirely negative and comes exclusively from historians of the
GDR. Their dominant attitude toward their colleagues in the West can be
summed up in one word, too, and that word is polemic. More often than not,
this polemic is grossly distorting. I recently called attention in print to a
typical instance in which a GDR historian, by citing a paraphrase written by
a like-minded colleague rather than the original text, was able to destroy a
political enemy.24 I was the victim of a similar distortion not long ago myself
when a quoted text of mine was so altered by ellipses that it came out mean-
ing precisely the opposite of what it had originally meant.25
We might state our first conclusion as follows: Correctness or, as the
modish term has it, "factology" is not the be-all and end-all of scholarship,
but whether bourgeois or Marxist, scholarship cannot do without correctness
or at least the effort to be correct. Obvious distortions, ellipses that change
the meaning of quotations, and outright falsifications of quotations deserve
our censure no matter what the circumstances that produced them, but the
more extreme the political situation is that forces the historian to be an
advocate for his society, the more understandable these distortions become.
II. MARX'S AND ENGELS' CONCEPT OF SCHOLARSHIP
We can move ahead now and ask whether Marx or Engels would have sub-
scribed to the position I have developed here. Or to put the question in more
general terms: What concept of scholarship did the founders of Marxism
hold?
We should note first that when contemporary Marxists criticize bourgeois
historiography, or least German historiography and its tradition, they can
justifiably cite Marx and Engels as their authority. Marx spoke scornfully
of that "dancing dwarf Ranke,"26 and Engels used the phrase "those two
schools of historical fabricators 27when he described the division of German
historians into those favoring a greater German confederation and those
favoring a limited one. But these two remarks should not be interpreted as
license for any and all gratuitous attacks. In the foreword to his Contribution
24. Cf. Ernst Nolte, "Ideologie, Engagement, Perspektive"in Geschichte Heute: Posi-
tionen, Tendenzen iind Problemne, ed. Gerhard Schulz (Gdttingen, 1973), 292.
25. Cf. Ludwig Elm, Hochsclzule und Neofaschismrus: Zeitgeschichtliclie Stiidien zur
Hochlscliulpolitik in der BRD (Berlin [Ost], 1972), 250ff.
26. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Werke (MEW) (Berlin, 1956ff.), XXX, 432.
27. Ibid., XXXII, 452.
to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx speaks of the conclusions he has

reached there as the "results of long and conscientious research."28 Marx
and Engels surely would not have called mere political pamphlets scholarly,
even if the pamphlets in question had served the interests of their own party.
And they would have been even less inclined to regard massive acceptance
of their ideas as a substitute for sound arguments. Engels takes it for granted
that in matters of scholarship there can be "no democratic forum."29He does
not even hesitate to use language that we would be obliged to describe as
traditional: "Whoever is led by an ideal cannot be a scholar, for his mind is
already made Up."311 Engels does not have just the ideals, prejudices, and party
interests of others in mind here; for in 1893, when Hermann Bahr asked him
to take a position on anti-Semitism, Engels replied that he could not do so
impartially because fellow party members in Germany were running for
election against some anti-Semitic candidates at the time.3'
Thirty years earlier, when Marx was treating Ricardo's and Malthus' ideas
in his Theories of Surplus Value, he formulated this same view in more gen-
eral terms: "I call any man a 'scoundrel' who tries to accommodate scholarship
(whatever its failings) to principles not inherent in it but derived from
interests external and alien to it."32
For Marx, even the immediate interests of the proletariat or of a mass
party are interests alien to scholarship. As a scholar, and even to a certain
extent as a politician, he by no means regards himself as the advocate of any
particular group. This is why he can say that he and Engels received their
call to represent the proletarian party from no one else but themselves,33
and this is also why he asserts without bitterness in a letter to Kugelmann
that scholarly attempts to revolutionize scholarship will never find a great
echo.:4 But the primacy of scholarly "rigor" in Marx's thinking is perhaps
nowhere more apparent than in his and Engels' ceaseless efforts to refute
Lujo Brentano's claim that in the inaugural address held at the International
Workers' Association Marx had quoted a sentence from Gladstone so as to
distort its meaning, indeed, so as "to falsify [it] grossly both in form and
content."35
German scholarship would be better off if everyone accused of distorting
quotations in the service of a particular party or in the course of a political
campaign would try to disprove the accusations leveled at him with even a
28. Ibid., XIII, 11.

29. Ibid., XXXIV, 286.
30. Ibid., XXXVI, 198.
31. Ibid., XXXIX, 79.
32. Ibid., XXVI, Part 2, p. 112.
33. Ibid., XXIX, 436.
34. Ibid., XXX, 640.
35. Ibid., XVIII, 89 and especially XXII, 93-185.
66 ERNST NOLTE
fraction of the diligence that Marx and Engels expended. There can be no
doubt whatsoever that rigor, conscientiousness, and objectivity were basic
principles of scholarship for Marx and Engels. The best intentions in the
service of the noblest party are no substitute for them, nor, of course, are
shouting and demonstrating.
So far we have dealt only with the external features of scholarship, with
its workmanlike aspects, if you will. If we turn now to Marx's view of its
content, we may often have the impression that he ascribes "faithfulness to
fact," and therefore true scholarly rigor, only to the natural sciences and
that he sees his own research as having scientific character in that it reveals
the workings of social and economic laws. He writes in a frequently quoted
passage from the foreword to his Contribution to the Critique of Political
Economy: "In studying such social changes, we must always distinguish be-
tween material changes in the conditions of economic production - changes
that can be precisely measured by scientific methods - and the legal, po-
litical, religious, artistic, or philosophical forms they take, i.e., the ideological
forms, through which people become aware of a conflict and within which
they fight it out."36 If we were concerned here with more than Marx's and
Engels' concept of scholarship, we would have to consider a number of other
questions at this point. We would have to inquire into the relationship between
dialectic and a linear concept of causality, into the question of whether we
can admit a concept of conflict that is independent of the circumstances in
which conflict is worked out, and into the meaning of the political character
of Marxism itself.
In our present discussion we will have to limit ourselves to asking whether
bourgeois thought has any relevance for the mode of inquiry and the method
characteristic of Marxism. The answer must be not only that bourgeois thought
is relevant to the Marxist approach, but that bourgeois thought created the
Marxist approach. In his well-known letter of March 5, 1852, Marx writes
to Weydemeyer: "As far as I am concerned, I cannot claim the honor of
having discovered either classes or class conflict in modern society. Bourgeois
historians had described the historical development of class struggle long
before I came along, and bourgeois economists had laid bare the economic
anatomy of this struggle. My contributions were to prove (1 ) that the exis-
tence of classes is directly linked to specific historical stages in production
methods, (2) that class struggle will inevitably lead to a dictatorship of the
proletariat, and (3) that this dictatorship itself forms only a transition to
the abolishment of classes and to a classless society."37 In other words, what
often goes under the name of Marxism today - demonstration of the exis-
tence of classes, structural analysis of societies, acceptance of the concept of
class struggle - all this is in fact, as Marx himself clearly stated, the product
36. Ibid., XIII, 9.
37. Ibid., XXVIII, 507ff.
of bourgeois thought, particularly as represented in French and English
writings.
It is well worth noting here, too, that in Marx's lifetime "classes" were a
very palpable reality, not, as they are today, a phenomenon we can hardly
perceive any more. It was against the law in Prussia as late as 1869 for
noblemen to marry women of the petite bourgeoisie, and the French bourgeois
thinkers Marx had in mind in the passage just cited above - Guizot, Mignet,
the Thierrys - were all followers of the eighteenth-century writers Dubos
and Boulainvilliers, a priest and a nobleman. And even if we take the nar-
rower of Marx's and Engels' two concepts of class as our basis, a concept
by which "estates" were not classes, what was more common usage in the
era of Louis Philippe, the Citizen King, than the contrast of bourgeoisie and
common people, indeed, of bourgeoisie and proletariat?
On the other hand, the elements of Marx's theory that he identified as his
own contributions are precisely the ones that bourgeois thinkers have to call
the undemonstrable, the political, the utopian, and the unscholarly tenets of
Marxism. We have finally come to a point where "bourgeois" and "Marxist"
scholarship differ radically and irreconcilably. But not even this difference is
absolute, for bourgeois thought cannot be identified with any one of its
manifestations, not with the historicism that most historians of the Second
Reich in Germany subscribed to, nor with the positivism that dominated in
the French Third Republic, nor with the pragmatism that characterizes most
English and American historians. Bourgeois thought can readily admit the
possibility that "class society" will be followed and replaced by a "post-class
society," just as class society followed and replaced a society based on estates.
Bourgeois thought can also accept as given the tendency to dislodge the ruling
groups of the past and to initiate an era dominated by the "common man"
or even by a broadly defined "proletariat." But it cannot believe that at any
time there will be a world society without inner differentiations, i.e., classes,
and without centers of power, i.e., states, a world society, furthermore, in
which individuals will no longer be subject to a division of labor. Skepticism
toward this idea of a classless society- an idea that is at the heart of
Marxism - forms the one real dividing line between bourgeois and Marxist
historiography. But both share the same methodological principles and they
may share certain procedural techniques, such as structural analysis, ideo-
logical critique, quantitative analysis in social history, and even economistic
analysis.
III. STATE MARXISM, FREE MARXISM, AND SCHOLARSHIP
Bourgeois historiography cannot, of course, offer any proof for its disbelief
because the future is not among its subjects of inquiry. But within its area of
68 ERNST NOLTE
competence it can ascertain that leftist Marxists have kept the ruling wing
of Marxism under sharp and constant attack from nearly the first day the
Communist Party came to power. Critics ranging from Rosa Luxemburg,
Hermann Gorter, and the Kronstadt sailors on through Arthur Rosenberg
and Trotsky and up to Ernst Bloch and a recent publication entitled Socialism
as a Ruling Political Power38 have all used Marxist terminology to attack
Marxist government. They have spoken of exploitation, class, the rule of a
minority over the majority, etc. The disillusioned Left of earlier times and
the New Left of the present and of the recent past have pointed out more
emphatically than any bourgeois historian ever has that the term "socialistic"
can be applied to the governments of the Soviet Union, its allies, and the
People's Republic of China only in quotation marks and only as a shorthand
term of convenience.
We have to distinguish, then, between state Marxism and free Marxism.
Both make use of Marxist terminology but in contexts of differing scope, and
we cannot help but notice that state Marxism is a "political science" in the
narrowest sense of the term. It lacks the critical distance toward its own state
and government that we find among bourgeois scholars, even among the most
determined representatives of "bourgeois class interests." Conversely, free
Marxism embodies the most radical and total form of critical distance and
consequently represents the purest development of bourgeois scholarship
imaginable. Where free Marxism can play an extremely stimulating and fruit-
ful role within the framework of the bourgeois society and scholarship that
nourish it, historiography under the wing of state Marxism is a discipline
without autonomy or initiative. Certain lines of inquiry are cut off by rigid
taboos that the discipline has made its own. Wherever tradition and special
circumstances have made resurgence of autonomy and spontaneity possible,
these impulses have been robbed of their vigor or suppressed by force. The
fate of historians in Czechoslovakia is a case in point.
But bourgeois historiography is both able and obliged to make still another
distinction within Marxism. There is not just one form of state Marxism, the
state Marxism of the Soviet Union or of the "Chinese-Soviet bloc." As early
as 1964 Pravda spoke of the "cold war" that the Chinese leadership was
waging against the Soviet Union,39 and by now the Sino-Soviet conflict has
long become a given factor in world politics, a factor that has more or less
split the communist parties of the world into two camps. Today, it is not
only appropriate but essential to ask whether Marxism is not more likely to
aggravate rather than lessen conflict between states, provided they are more
or less equal in strength. It would seem at least possible that a world divided
38. "Der Sozialismus als Staatsmacht: Ein Dilemma und fUnf Berichte," in Kursbuch,
30 (Berlin, 1972).
39. Europa-Archiv (1964), Chronology, under September 2, 1964.
"BOURGEOIS"5 AND "MARXIST" HISTORIOGRAPHY 69
up among four or five major Marxist powers would be futher removed from
unity than a bourgeois system of a hundred national states held together by
trade interests and also, of course, by what Marxists would call neoimperialism
and neocolonialism.
In addition to these distinctions, bourgeois historiography will have to note
still other features of Marxism and Marxist scholarship. It is easy to explain
the contrast between state and free Marxism because the Marxism of Marx
and Engels is primarily a synthesis of bourgeois faith in progress, including
an optimistic belief in expanding production, and the primitivism of the early
socialists. This primitivism was based in turn on the oldest elements of human
social order - tribal allegiance and village democracy - whose vestiges had
survived into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Along with statements
in Marx that represent his theory as the apotheosis of the Enlightenment,
there are others that would make Marxism appear to be the very essence of
Romantic reaction against the Enlightenment.40 These two elements, which
can only be brought together in an intellectual structure, necessarily fall apart
again as we leave the realm of the intellectual. In the last analysis, the con-
cept of a classless society as a kind of global clan democracy proves to be
nothing more, in Kant's terms, than a hypostatization of a regulative idea.
Bourgeois historiography is thus by no means a passive object of criticism
for Marxist historiography. On the contrary, it, too, fulfills a critical function
both comprehensive and fundamental in nature. It does so by refusing to
accept the oversimplified image of two major and equal schools of thought
standing in opposition to each other. Bourgeois and Marxist historiography
are not mutually exclusive. Their relationship to each other is much more
complicated than that, and within this relationship there is room for unity,
disagreement, and interdependence. Such a relationship corresponds, in a
somewhat different form, to the relationship between bourgeois and Marxist
states. We are clearly not dealing with any mere historical sequence here, as
a naive orthodoxy would have us believe. Lenin and Stalin after him were
both fully aware that the "socialism" of their country was a "different" and
more difficult path than that of the "advanced capitalistic states" but that it
did not represent a "higher stage" of development that left the bourgeois
states "behind by an entire historical epoch." The "capitalism" of the West
arose from specific historical premises. It has modified these premises, but
it has not altered them completely. Indeed, it depends on them for its very
existence. One of these premises was a political order based on the estates.
Otto Hinze called this order the precursor of representative government in
the history of the world. Another premise was the separation of church and
state. Still a third was the relative autonomy of intellectual life; a fourth, the
40. MEW, XXXII, 51.
70 ERNST NOLTE
growth of a relatively apolitical business community that was allowed to run

the economy, or at least major portions of it, as though national economy
were private enterprise.
From the essentially accidental and unplanned combination of these factors
developed that overwhelming, world-encompassing, and - to the unsophis-
ticated mind - "unnatural" force that constitutes the basic premise of all
modern history and that Marxism, grossly oversimplifying, identifies as
''capitalism." But the fact that the business community has not to this day
become a political class, that it has never really ruled but has remained one
faction among many and one that could be divided against itself at that -
this is precisely what characterizes all the strengths and weaknesses of a social
order that is the most unusual and complex in the history of the world. By
contrast, the Marxist states have been and continue to be phenomena of
social concentration and mobilization. They are led by a new class, a "tiny
seed," as Lenin put it,41 that means to transform and will transform everything.
We could describe this class as a substitute bourgeoisie or, better yet, as a
political bourgeoisie whose power is unchecked, undisguised, and publicly
sanctioned. The historiography of state Marxism serves as its mouthpiece.
My considerations thus far may have created the impression that I would
like to see Marxist historiography's claim to infallibility give place to that
of bourgeois historiography and that I am developing a doctrinaire apology
for my own society and state in imitation of the united front that Marxist
historiography and the Marxist state present. Nothing could be further from
the truth. It is obvious, of course, that in considering the history of its own
society bourgeois historiography will not be animated by boundless indig-
nation at social exploitation; and despite the recognition that some Marxist
writers take of "progressive tendencies" in bourgeois society, this indignation
remains the informing pathos of all Marxist historiography. The informing
impulse of bourgeois historiography, on the other hand, is the need to under-
stand, for this Marxist pathos is closely linked to the aspect of Marxism that
most inspires the bourgeois historian's skepticism - utopian faith in the
coming of a classless society and the resulting priority of political practice
over the. cognitive act. Bourgeois historiography is also informed by the
insight that isolated and unmitigated "exploitation" has occurred only in cer-
tain historical periods, that as a rule any kind of organization or leadership
will produce exploitation, and that the achievements of the "ruling classes"
therefore have to be evaluated above and beyond their relationship to any
antiseptically isolated and constantly shifting body of "progressive ideas."
"Bourgeois scholarship" is even less a Platonic and immutable entity than
its Marxist counterpart. Today, for example, historians of the Federal Re-
public, unlike their predecessors in the nineteenth century, work closely
41. W. I. Lenin, Werke, XXXIII (Berlin, 1966, 3rd ed.), 428.
BOURGEOIS AND MARXIST HISTORIOGRAPHY 71
together with American historians and form, in some respects, a single com-
munity of scholars with them. Gerhard Lozek was not wholly arbitrary in
his judgment when he spoke of NATO historians and designated Friedrich
Meinecke as their precursor, but I think we can be legitimately proud of the
fact that even at the height of the Cold War the corresponding term of
"Warsaw-Pact historians" never appeared, to my knowledge, in any of our
scholarly publications. In our present circumstances an unobjective glorifi-
cation of the Bismarck government is an impossibility, and the critical atti-
tudes that have long been dominant in American studies of Bismarck's Reich
have now been widely accepted by German historians. The same is true to
an even greater extent of current attitudes toward the Third Reich and the
Fascist era.
But the difficulty and the importance of our task lies in resisting the tempta-
tion merely to celebrate the break with the past or to decry the past's continu-
ing influence on our present life. It is our job to accept both the break and
the continuity as given and to illuminate them intellectually. No statesman,
Russian or American, and no foreign historian can relieve us, as German
bourgeois historians, of this obligation. We will never be able to meet it to
our full satisfaction, and we will inevitably make mistakes, sometimes very
grave ones. But it is precisely the difficulty of this task that makes it appealing
to the mind and worthy of the mind's best efforts.
Free Marxism, with the help of its Archimedian point, has a less complex
task, and we would do well to keep free Marxism constantly in view to orient
ourselves by. State Marxism has before it a task comparable to ours if it is
to make Stalinism and western Social Democracy subjects of serious inquiry.
To do so, it will have to rid itself of those totally un-Marxian phrases it has
been wont to use: the unfortunate cult of personality and the despicable
treachery of corrupt working-class leaders. It is important for us to keep
these parallels in mind.
IV. CONCLUSIONS -AND THEIR RELEVANCE FOR THE FREE

UNIVERSITY OF BERLIN IN THE "POST-COLD-WAR" PERIOD
Let me sum up my argument and draw a few final conclusions. Bourgeois

and Marxist historiography are not opposites like black and white or even
like black and not black. They share essential methodological similarities
that justify describing them both as "scholarly." On another level, they are
divided by a difference that is essential and irreconcilable. They are related
in their origins, but the fact that Marxist historiography is an offshoot of
Western thought will make bourgeois historical scholarship appear to be the
more original, comprehensive, and complex discipline. Both stand in peculiar
and differing relationships to the societies in which they occur. An advantage
of the "bourgeois" order rooted in liberal European society is evident in the
72 ERNST NOLTE
fact that one school of Marxism belongs to this order and can only exist
within it. A comparable situation has not evolved in Marxist societies. But
this liberal European order is not, to cite Marx again, "frozen in immutable
crystalline forms."42Its capacity for change derives in part from the fact that
it fosters relatively autonomous scholarship that calls both itself and the
society in which it is based into question. The line of questioning it pursues
is not absolute in intent, but it suffices for an understanding and, to a certain
degree, for a justification of society.
The scholarship of state Marxism has always been up to now the scholar-
ship of a hard-pressed state caught up in the arduous process of "self-
assertion" and "catching up" with rival states. In this condition approxi-
mating military mobilization, the serenity was lacking that is crucial for the
existence of anything like autonomous scholarship. But state Marxism, like
free Marxism, has always - in principle at least - clung to the universal
perspective that makes Marxism of any stamp superior to a bourgeois scholar-
ship that isolates itself in its own national state or limited methodology.
I am presenting these ideas at a specific time and in a specific place. I
would not offer a series of lectures on the Cold War if I were not convinced
that those who consider the Cold War over now are at least in some sense
correct. The essential feature of the Cold War was that a special constellation
of events, opinions, and actions created in the Western world a state of
tension and general ideological unity comparable to those which had always
been taken for granted under state Marxism. Up to a certain point in the
Cold War, free Marxism fought in the front lines for the Western cause. But
this tension, this new Thirty Years' War, was alien to the Western system
and therefore gradually eased. This university, which was founded at the
height of the Cold War and is a product of it, was to feel this change more
acutely than any other institution in our society, and no other is in a more
difficult situation during this period that is no longer one of war but is not
yet one of peace. The following conclusions seem to me inescapable:
Free Marxism has its legitimate place in this university and in other uni-
versities of the Western world. But it must realize that the very fragmentary
freedom bourgeois society provides is at the same time very real in its im-
perfection, and for free Marxism it is, in a much more precise and inviolable
-ense than it was for the workers' movement, what Engels described as "air,
light, and room to grow in."43 Free Marxism must also commit itself to a
clearly defined position. It must try to be beyond both major social orders,
and within the one in which it is based it must surely remain provocative,
but it should not be critical only of "the other side."
We should grant state Marxism and its adherents a voice and guest status
42. MEW, XXIII, 16.

43. Ibid., XXXV, 270.
1
"BOURGEOIS AND "MARXIST ' HISTORIOGRAPHY 73
at our universities, but full reciprocity is not yet possible, although it would
seem justified in the abstract. A certain amount of exchange seems essential
to me, but we should take up a dialogue only with those historians of the GDR
or the Soviet Union whose work meets scholarly standards. The examples
cited at the beginning of our discussion suggest what constitutes both accept-
able and non-acceptable standards.
These views may well elicit astonishment; they will also elicit objections
from many - and not just from Marxists. I understand and appreciate the
great concern that weighs on many people and many scholars now as they
consider the new shift in our political situation and the possible effects of
that shift. There are clearly great risks involved if bourgeois and Marxist
scholars, if men primarily interested in historical truth and others primarily
interested in the effects of political activity, come together in this part of the
city, regardless of what form their meeting takes, while in the other part of
this same city there is no possibility of their meeting at all. But I think we
can put our confidence in the power of thought. Thought quickly demon-
strated that the polarity with which we began our considerations here does
not in fact apply. And what else is thought but the human instrument by
which we, as finite, historical beings, constantly redefine our relationship to
history as a whole? A theory that seeks to codify this relationship for all time
and for some perfect and post-historical being cannot be valid. Marxism does
not propose such a theory, but one element of the tradition that forms an
integral part of Marxism would have it so. Thought will alter Marxism, just
as the course of history will alter the nature of Marxist states.
In the coming years, free Berlin and its Free University could assume a
role every bit as important as the one they assumed during the Cold War,
provided they remain alert and are not guided by naive trust. They could
provide an arena in which new developments could arise and in which poli-
ticians and historians of the GDR might even dare to admit - as Friedrich
Engels did eighty years ago44- that history had proved them wrong in some
important respects. But I do not want to create the impression here that I
am out to find political dodges and subtle tactics designed to weaken the
other side. What I do want to say can perhaps be best summed up as follows:
The history of this century has so shaken us all, both bourgeois and Marxist
historians of every conceivable variety, and so thoroughly toppled our most
cherished assumptions that we would all do well to relinquish our dogmatism
and join forces as thinking men.
[Translated by ROBERT and RITA KIMBER]
44. Ibid., VII, 514 and 516.

The Relationship Between Bourgeois and Marxist Historiography - Ernst Nolte

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The Relationship Between Bourgeois and Marxist Historiography - Ernst Nolte

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Wesleyan University

The Relationship between "Bourgeois" and "Marxist" Historiography

views on scholarship in general and on historical scholarship in particular.

I. THE "MARXIST" AND "BOURGEOIS" SCHOOLS OF HISTORIOGRAPHY

If Marxist historiography is biased, its bias differs fundamentally from the

5. Engelberg (1964), 391.

13. R. V. Vjatkin and S. L. Tichvinskij, "Vber einige Fragen der Geschichtswissen-

19. Ibid., 174.

Theoretical discussions and articles on contemporary history appear rarely,

II. MARX'S AND ENGELS' CONCEPT OF SCHOLARSHIP

to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx speaks of the conclusions he has

28. Ibid., XIII, 11.

III. STATE MARXISM, FREE MARXISM, AND SCHOLARSHIP

40. MEW, XXXII, 51.

growth of a relatively apolitical business community that was allowed to run

41. W. I. Lenin, Werke, XXXIII (Berlin, 1966, 3rd ed.), 428.

IV. CONCLUSIONS -AND THEIR RELEVANCE FOR THE FREE

Let me sum up my argument and draw a few final conclusions. Bourgeois

42. MEW, XXIII, 16.

44. Ibid., VII, 514 and 516.

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