The Psychology of Marxian Socialism

Henry de Man, Chaiwat Satha-Anand, Henry de Man

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781138537934
• eBook ISBN: 9781000680027
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political History & Theory
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This classic work on the psychology of socialism carries for this edition a slightly refurbished title. By calling it The Psychology of Marxian Socialism, the work is sharply distinguished from an earlier work of the same title (written at a much earlier time) by Gustave LeBon. This book was written in the post-Bolshevik revolutionary era, at the height of the Weimar democracy in Germany; LeBon's represents a fin de siècle effort, reflecting earlier concerns in socialist theory. De Man's work derives its strength from a close and hard look at how socialism operated in one country. It is probably one of the greatest such efforts in the post-World War I period.

PART ONE
CAUSES

CHAPTER ONE

THE THEORY OF MOTIVES AS THE CENTRAL PROBLEM OF SOCIALISM

The task of historical materialism, as Marx understood it, was to explain how human beings can transform the circumstances of which they themselves are the products.

G. PLEHANOFF

IT is not surprising that socialism is in the throes of a spiritual crisis. The world war has led to so many social and political transformations that all parties and all ideological movements have had to undergo modification in one direction or another, in order to adapt themselves to the new situation. Such changes cannot be effected without internal frictions; they are always attended by growing pains; they denote a doctrinal crisis.

As far as Marxist socialism is concerned, its recent history shows signs of a crisis which cannot be interpreted as anything more than transient difficulties attending the process of adaptation to new conditions. The last ten years have merely served to emphasise a trend which had existed long before, have made plain to all observers the widening cleavage between Marxist theory and the practice of those labour parties which claim to embody it.

All over the world, the trade unions, the cooperatives, and the labour parties have been driven more and more by force of circumstances into a policy of compromise, of moderation, of defensive coalition with their adversaries of a little while back. By making casuistic distinctions between means and ends, a logical bridge between the traditional doctrine and the actual tactic can always be built. But a logical bridge is not a psychological one. Logically, a policy of class collaboration can invariably be justified by a doctrine of class struggle; yet there may be contradiction among emotional motives when there is no contradiction among intellectual motives. Now, the motives of the masses are essentially emotional. It is sometimes difficult to make the masses understand that, after the lapse of a few years, when circumstances have changed though the end remains the same, it may be right and proper to pursue this end by other means than those adopted heretofore. When, in such a case, new means are employed, there is grave risk that the rank and file may lose confidence in the leaders—that confidence which is the moral tie requisite for all manifestations of a collective political will. The leaders, therefore, do their utmost to demonstrate the continuity of motive by reiterated avowals of faith in time-honoured doctrines. Such avowals are symbolical rather than practical. Marxism no longer really inspires political activities, for these are now dominated by circumstances very different from those in which the doctrine originated. The function of Marxism to-day is merely to supply the socialist arsenal with propaganda formulas, above all with such as are likely to fan the enthusiasm of party members nourished upon the ancient traditions, and to confute communist accusations of treason to principles. Thus, the principles acquire a conservative function differing widely from their function in old days. Marxist doctrine, therefore, has come to play a part analogous to that played by religious rites in a church which has gained temporal power. Whereas it used to be the motive force of action, it has now become nothing more than an auxiliary means of propaganda. For instance, Marxist socialists, wishing to contest the communist claim to have a monopoly of Marxist orthodoxy, are accustomed to contrapose their “pure” Marxism, their Marxism of the elect, to the “vulgar” Marxism of the communists, the Marxism of the crowd. Well now, among the social democrats, the “purer” the Marxism voiced by the leaders, the more scrupulously “orthodox,” the better fitted is it to galvanise the energy of those rank-and-filers who are still inspired by the revolutionary idealism of former days. But if Marxism is to remain “pure,” it must isolate itself more and more from practical politics and from the actual trends, from the great currents, of intellectual life. Consequently, it turns more and more to textual criticism, to disputes about interpretation, to the discussion of abstract principles. Whenever it is concerned with actual practice, it degenerates into casuistry, always trying to justify the action by the system, and never trying to vivify the system by impregnation with the fact.

Hence arises that general impression of a lack of intellectual vigour, which is not an indication of a crisis in growth, but, rather, of senile decay. We detect a loss of logical coherency and of self-confidence, such as must inevitably arise when the guardians of a doctrine are more concerned to prove that it is still alive than to use it for the conquest of the world. Young people are particularly sensitive to such a loss of moral stamina. As every one knows, they are apt to be a little intolerant in their demand for a view of life which shall be at one and the same time a philosophy and a guide to conduct. Young people, like intellectuals, always look upon politics as the realisation of an idea, as founded both upon the moral sense and upon reason. Especially nowadays, when wartime experiences have shattered confidence in so many ideals, the thoughtful members of the younger generation are yearning for a faith whose sincerity can be proved by its realisation in the practical life of the individual. This is the inner reason why our young people and our socialist intellectuals have an instinctive prejudice against Marxism, which they consider too rigid as a mode of thought and too easy-going as a rule of conduct.

In so far as these young people become acquainted with Marxism, it seems to them not so much erroneous as superfluous. They feel, more or less clearly, that Marxism, though it may be useful as an economic theory, provides no answers to the questions which chiefly occupy their minds. For these questions are no longer concerned with the mutual relationships between various economic forms, but with the relationship of individual human beings to economic life and to the community at large. Young people do not so much want a new economic theory or a new way of explaining history, as a new outlook on life, and indeed a new religion. Since Marxism does not offer them this, they turn away from it.

A critique of Marxism, therefore, now brings to the front questions very different from those raised by Bernstein when he set about criticising Marxism in the closing years of the nineteenth century. Bernstein wanted to “revise” certain parts of Marxist sociology, which seemed to him to conflict with the economic and social development of his days; he wanted to revise the theory of increasing misery, that of capitalist concentration, that of value and surplus value, that of economic crises, that of the intensification of the class struggle, and so on. But Bernstein’s criticism of these theories was substantially inspired by the same mode of thought as the theories he was attacking. He did not want to touch the philosophical foundations of Marxism, but only to “develop” the doctrine, by applying the old way of thinking to the new phenomena of economic and social life.

If the Marxism of the social democrats is no longer to-day the living doctrine of a live movement, this is not because a few of its formulas (such as that of the increasing misery of the proletariat, that of the concentration of capital, and that of the intensification of the class struggle) stand in need of revision. Even if Bernstein’s criticism of these formulas had been utterly fallacious, a much more important question would still remain to be answered. Supposing that the formulas are correct, can they serve to guide the march of socialism as Marx believed they could?

Thus, as far as the theoretical success of revisionism was concerned, it was of no moment whether Bernstein or Kautsky was right in the dispute as to the soundness of Marx’s theory about the concentration of capital. The crucial question was, not whether this concentration proceeds in the way described by Marx. The question was: first, whether the concentration of capital affects the social will in the manner predicted by Marx in his theory of social catastrophe; and, secondly and chiefly, whether the decay and disappearance of the middle class (supposing it to occur) would show that socialism was either necessary or desirable. Let me put the matter in another way. Of what use is it to prove that economic crises have assumed other forms than those foreseen by Marx? What matters to us is whether there really is, as Marx believed, a necessary connexion between economic crises and the social revolution. Again, even supposing that the theory of the increasing misery of the proletariat is true, what can this signify to one who does not consider that the socialist will of the masses is dependent upon the extremity of their poverty and distress? What, finally, can the intensification of the class struggle matter to one who does not believe that the fight on behalf of class interests will necessarily lead to socialism?

The vulnerable points disclosed in Marxism by these questionings do not relate to the question whether Marx’s economic and social inferences are sound or unsound; they relate to the way in which Marx and his followers try to change their method of interpreting history into a mode of action. The plane of criticism is thus transferred from inferences to methods. Now, our historical study of Marxism and the Marxist movement will show us that the method is rooted in the philosophical theories that were dominant during the middle decades of the nineteenth century, theories which may provisionally be summarised in the catchwords determinism, causal mechanism, historicism, rationalism, and economic hedonism.

Marxism deduces the socialist objective from the laws of social evolution, which are assumed to have the inexorable necessity of the “laws of nature” formulated in physical science; to this extent, therefore, Marxism is determinist. The form in which these laws work is regarded as dialectical, this meaning that they conform to a type of causality in accordance with which (as we see in certain mechanical examples) a force can undergo a change of direction without undergoing any change in nature or intensity, so that it comes to produce an effect which is the converse of its original trend; to this extent, therefore, Marxism is mechanistic. It bases its knowledge of the laws of social evolution upon the history of the past, regarding the objectives of human volition as the outcome of certain environing situations (“relationships”). Man being thus reduced to the level of a mere object among the objects of his environment, and these external historical “relationships” being held to determine his volitions and to decide his objectives, we are justified in applying to the theory in question Nietzsche’s catchword of historicism. Nevertheless, Marx tells us that social evolution, though thus proceeding in accordance with law, does not fulfil itself spontaneously; it proceeds in virtue of the voluntary actions of human beings; these actions are the fruit of a knowledge of the circumstances which determine them; in the case of the fighting proletariat, moreover, they are to be the fruit of a knowledge of the Marxist laws of rational necessity; the Marxist belief that knowledge is the mainspring of social activity entitles us to describe Marxism as rationalistic. Marx held, and his followers continue to hold, that the knowledge which determines the social activity of the masses is knowledge of a peculiar kind; it is an awareness of the economic interests which arise out of the relationships of production, and especially out of the conflict of interests between the buyers and the sellers of labour power; thus, in the last analysis, the “relationships” which determine human actions are “relationships of production,” and the development of these depends in its turn upon advances in the technique of production; the Marxist belief that social happenings are the outcome of economic causation entitles us to describe Marxism as a variety of economic hedonism.

The theory of motives which underlies the whole chain of reasoning, the belief that social activities are determined by an awareness of economic interests, is the basis of the most important and most original positive contributions of Marxism, namely the coordination of the proletarian class struggle and of socialism into one and the same doctrinal system. In the days before Marx, socialism was utopian; the motive for establishing socialism was to be found in a recognition of the moral superiority of a socialist commonwealth. Marx wanted to escape the uncertainties involved in this dependence upon visions of the future, by proving that economic laws make the coming of socialism inevitable. The struggle of the working class on behalf of its own interests, as determined by the capitalist organisation of production, will (said Marx) necessarily culminate in the establishment of socialism.

It is this identification of the class struggle with socialism, this belief that there is a necessary connexion between the conflict of interests and the liberation of mankind, which has been increasingly called in question by the experiences of the last few decades. Since the day when Marx lived and wrote, it is true that the class consciousness of the workers, based on a recognition of their interests as a class, has grown ever more alert; and it is true that the class struggle has been unceasingly intensified in the industrial and political field: but the goal of a classless society seems farther away than ever. Doubts arise as to the inevitability of the transition to a new social order as the direct consequence of the proletarian struggle on behalf of the workers’ interests; and these doubts grow more and more urgent. Enough to point to the way in which the working class is tending to accept bourgeois standards and to adopt a bourgeois culture; to the gradual substitution of the reformist motive for the revolutionary motive; to the increasing intimacy of the ties connecting the workers with the political and economic institutions of the existing order; to the accentuation of national differentiations in the socialist labour movement; to the formation of a bureaucratic upper stratum within the labour organisations; and so on. The problems which are thus brought into the foreground of every discussion concerning the present value of Marxism, lead directly to the central question whether the Marxist doctrine of motives, the theory that the social activities of the masses are determined by their knowledge of their class interests, is still tenable.

Before going farther in the methodological and historical discussion of Marxist doctrine, it will be simpler to let facts speak for themselves—facts which can throw light on the real connexion between the proletarian struggle on behalf of working-class interests, on the one hand, and the socialist objective, on the other.

The first point we note is that the historical sequence of events conflicts with the rationalist theory of the adoption of a socialist objective as the outcome of an awakening to the knowledge of class interests. Socialist teachings are not a product of the awakening of class consciousness among the workers; on the contrary, they are an essential preliminary to such an awakening. Socialism existed (as an objective) before there was a labour movement, and even before there was a working class.

Socialist teachings, those of Marx and Engels not excepted, sprang from other sources than the class interest of the proletariat. They are products, not of the cultural poverty of the proletariat, but of the cultural wealth of instructed members of the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy. They spread from above downwards, not from below upwards. Among the great thinkers and the ardent enthusiasts who were pioneers in the field of socialist theory, hardly one proletarian can be named. Beyond dispute, socialism, though in course of time it has become the objective of the labour movement and supplies that movement with a program, is, historically considered, not so much a doctrine of the proletariat as a doctrine for the proletariat. Were we to accept the misleading terminology of Marxism, which tells us that every specific kind of social ideology is the expression of the outlook of some particular class, we should be compelled to describe socialism, including Marxism, as a bourgeois growth.

In reality, the undoubted fact that the originators of socialist doctrines have almost invariably been bourgeois intellectuals, shows that psychological motives are at work, motives which have nothing whatever to do with class interests. The peculiarities and diversities of these doctrines only become intelligible in the light of an analysis of the spiritual motives which underlie the views of every socialist thinker, or at any rate of every socialist thinker who has a claim to originality. Of course this psychoanalytical biography cannot dispense with a consideration of the social and economic environment of the thinker. We must take into account, not only his general social background, but also his individual economic and social position—which, for instance, is “bourgeois” alike in the case of Marx, university trained and primarily designed for an academic career; in that of Owen, the factory owner; and in that of Saint-Simon, the aristocrat. If, however, leaving the field of individual biography, we pass on to attempt a psychoanalysis or to formulate a sociology of socialist thought in general, we find that socialist doctrine becomes explicable, not as an adaptive reaction of the proletariat to its class situation, but as an antagonistic reaction of cultured bourgeois and aristocrats to the circumstances of their cultural environment. Socialist creative thought, thus envisaged, is seen to take its rise in an affect, or rather in an almost infinite multiplicity of affects, derived from cultural, ethical, and aesthetic sources. These affects, and the resultant thought processes out of which the doctrines arise, are no more to be explained as the outcome of class interests and the class struggle, than the beauty of a painting by Rembrandt is to be explained in terms of a chemical analysis of the pigments and the canvas—though “in the last analysis” the picture consists of nothing more than canvas and paint. In so far as science has anything to say in the matter, the only science that is of any use here is one which ignores economic interests, and brings the intellectual and moral personality into high relief. Here we need the aid of biography, ranging from the description of the personal environment to psychoanalysis and portraiture; for thoughts are the outcome of personality, not of a parallelogram of social forces as displayed in mass movements.

Agreed that social forces, as generated and brought into clash during the class struggle, turn thoughts to account. The more accurately social processes have been reflected in the brain of a socialist thinker, the more trustworthy his perception of the longings of the masses, the sooner and the more heartily will the masses accept the teachings which embody their desires. Then, what the individual has thought, becomes the symbol of the volitions and feelings of millions upon millions. But the origin of the two elements whereof this compound of will and idea consists, is as diverse as that of the meal and the yeast out of whose union bread is made. The nature of the process of fermentation which finds expression in the socialist labour movement can only be understood by one who realises that the working masses are the dough, whereas the ideas of non-proletarian intellectuals are the yeast.

Marxism obstinately ignores this multiplicity of socialist motivation, refuses to see the complicated nature of the issues. Otherwise the Marxists would lose their faith in the necessary connexion between class interests and ways of thinking. When we study the origin of Marxism itself, we see that the position of the working class (a very different thing, by the by, from the interests of the working class) has served merely to arouse an affective predisposition for the use of ideas which, for their part, had their source in far nobler cultural motives than the desire of talented intellectuals to gain some personal advantage. We are told that the bourgeois and aristocratic pioneers in the advocacy of socialist ideals were but exceptions to the general rule that socialist doctrine is of proletarian origin—whereas the facts show clearly enough that these “bourgeois exceptions” are really the rule. To substantiate their illusion, the Marxists begin the history of socialism with Marx, repudiating the great forerunners, whose portraits would give the picture gallery a too obviously non-proletarian stamp. In doing this, Marxism does grievous wrong to itself. We gravely underestimate the value of personality, if we reduce the highest form of mental production to a non-personal process, if we regard it as nothing more than a link in the chain of economic determinism, wherein the creative personality is but an epiphenomenon devoid of independent causal significance.

The recognition of this truth, however, must not lead us to the opposite extreme of underestimating those motive forces of the labour movement which find expression, not as individual thought processes, but as psychological mass phenomena. One such mass phenomenon is the affective reaction of the working class which makes the workers responsive to the ideas formulated by intellectuals.

Here, likewise, Marxism is incompetent to explain how this mass affect originates. The rationalist foundations of the doctrine impose an obstacle. To the Marxists it seems that the class struggle, the struggle for surplus value which expands into a struggle for socialisation, is the direct and necessary consequence of a particular mode of production, of an economic category. They regard the struggle as, in a way, an end in itself. It is not fought under the impulsion of variable motives, and to secure variable ends; from the moment when the working masses realise that their interests are fundamentally opposed to those of the possessing classes, it is directed towards an aim previously inherent and henceforward self-evident—that of the social revolution. For Marx, knowledge, awareness, was the primary determinant, the class will was the outcome of class consciousness. We are confronted with a kind of mystical revelation: a revolutionary necessity hovers in the air, as a scientifically demonstrated principle inherent in the developmental laws of the capitalist method of production; the workers, the “mid...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Introduction
• Table of Contents
• Author’s Foreword to the English Translation
• Preface to the First Edition of the German Original
• Part One: Causes
• Part Two: Aims
• Part Three: The Movement
• Part Four: Doctrine