Marx's Construction of Social Theory (RLE Marxism)

J.M. Barbalet

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317499541
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Politique

This study, first published in 1983, explores the connections between Marx's philosophy and his empirical analysis of society and state, by showing the different meanings of many of Marx's concepts as their role in his theory changes and the theory itself develops. Beginning with an examination of Marx's search for a sound epistemological basis on which to build a social theory, Dr Barbalet then gives an analysis of the way in which Marx continually modifies the concepts he uses, and continues with an examination of the different functions they are given in different theoretical settings. Various nuances of Marx's thought, often obscured by the simplistic 'early-late' dichotomy, are revealed by Dr Barbalet's close attention to the progressive transformation of Marx's concepts and by his scrupulous analysis of them in not only their textual but also their theoretical context. Finally, the book examines the manner in which Marx's construction of social theory, by its very nature, means that some material is replaced by other theoretical fabric as the theoretical structure itself is in different ways dismantled and reorganised, as Marx's thought evolves and develops.

1 Epistemology

DOI: 10.4324/9781315713953-2

This first chapter deals with the epistemological foundations of Marx's thought. Beginning with Marx's first important early writing, the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, it is argued that the chronological foundation of Marx's work does not provide the final intellectual foundation of his later thought.

A close examination of the theory of knowledge of the Critique reveals that while Marx develops a forceful critique of Hegel's epistemology, he elaborates an alternative to it which nevertheless does not escape the general confines of idealism. The essentialist epistemology of the Critique employs a model of reality which is non-empirical and formalist. This contrasts sharply with the epistemology of Capital, for instance, which is at once empirical without being empiricist. In Capital a notion of essence is developed which avoids conceptualising the phenomenal form of social relations and makes accessible the inner relations of empirical social forces which give rise to their phenomenal form.

It will be shown below, then, that Marx's mature epistemology does not draw on his early thought, but contrasts sharply with it. The chapter begins by elucidating the idealist essentialism of Marx's early epistemology, and progresses to a discussion of the naturalist or scientific nature of his mature epistemology.

A crucial characteristic, which distinguishes Marx's science, is its critical dimension. In his scientific analysis of capitalism Marx both criticises capitalism intellectually and furnishes a revolutionary political movement with cognitive elements necessary for an insurrectionary strategy against capitalism. Marx's early idealist epistemology, too, is of a critical nature. But as it is in substance so it is in this regard quite dissimilar to the mature epistemology. These differences between the essentialism of the Critique on the one hand, and Capital on the other, are touched upon in the present chapter.

It will be attempted below to demonstrate over all that the epistemology of the Critique does not and could not furnish Marx's mature thought with an epistemological foundation, and that the epistemology employed in his later writings is not to be found in the Critique.

I

It is through Marx's notion of ‘true democracy’ and its attendant concepts that the Critique's epistemology can be most readily discerned, for it is in this notion that his assumptions concerning the intellectual conditions of knowledge most clearly operate.

While Marx accepted, with Hegel, that the state is a rational organism, he differs with Hegel on the question of the state's democratic element:¹

The direct participation of all individuals in deliberating and deciding on political matters of general concern is, according to Hegel, ‘tantamount to a proposal to put the democratic element without any rational form into the organism of the state, although it is only in virtue of the possession of such a form that the state is an organism at all’. That is to say that where the state organism is purely formal, the democratic element can enter into it only as a formal element. However, the democratic element should rather be the real element which confers a rational form on the organism of the state as a whole. If on the other hand it enters the organism or formalism of the state as a ‘particular’ element, its ‘rational form’ will be nothing more than an emasculation, an accommodation, denying its own particular nature, i.e. it will function purely as a formal principle.

For Marx, but not for Hegel, the democratic element is the element of ‘reality’ in the state, without which the state denies its own nature, denies its rational form.

Implicit in Marx's claim that the reality of the rational state is its democratic element is the further claim that undemocratic states, while not devoid of empirical existence, are nevertheless ‘unreal’ in so far as they lack a democratic element, for such states lack also a rational form. It is precisely in terms of their incompleteness in this regard, in their absence of democracy, that Marx describes the state when it takes the monarchic or the republican form.² Indeed, it is on this basis that Marx contrasts ‘the political state’ with ‘the real state’, the former being deficient of the rational form which is manifest in the latter.³ As an existing state may be less than ‘real’, so may existing democracy be less than ‘true’. The political state, as it is understood in Marx's terminology, is able to attain no more than a ‘formal democracy’, as opposed to ‘real democracy’. Formal democracy is characterised by the fact that under its regime man leads a merely legal rather than a fully human existence.⁴ The condition for existence of the ‘real state’, on the other hand, is ‘true democracy’, in which ‘the constitution [is] founded on its true ground: real human beings and the real people; not merely implicitly and in essence, but in existence and in reality’.⁵ The principle defect of the modern age, according to Marx, and this point summarises and unifies his comments on the state and democracy, is the separation of man from his objective essence.⁶ This condition of estrangement is sanctioned, according to Marx, in Hegel's refusal to acknowledge that the reality of the state as the rational organism is in its true democracy.

The full force of Marx's account of the state of true democracy relies upon a distinction between man's condition of alienated legal existence and the associated ‘existing’ structure of the state on the one hand, and the ‘reality’ of man's human existence in the rational state on the other. For Marx assumes that what exists, or appears to exist, may be neither real nor true. Marx also assumes, and this is crucial to his argument, that ‘reality’ is immanent in ‘existence’, that existing conditions – undemocratic and without rationality though they may be – nevertheless contain unrealised ‘reality’. For Marx argues that while the objective essence of man is denied its full expression when the state takes a purely political form, it nevertheless abides in man as a dormant or unrealised determinant.⁷ The potential for reality, therefore, is in existence itself. Marx says, for instance, that the contradiction between civil society and the state which is manifest in the merely partial participation in the state ‘symbolise[s] the demand that this contradiction be resolved.’⁸

The transformation of existence into reality, according to these tenets, is the result of a progressive unfolding of the essence inherent in man and inherent in the state as constituted by the people in true democracy. In differentiating existence and reality Marx is not postulating, therefore, an ideal reality of a normative nature which is independent of empirical existence and which functions as an external principle of moral criticism. ‘Existence’ and ‘reality’ are for Marx but distinct phases in the state's development as the rational organism. In the state's phase of pre-historical existence, in its political form, the universality proper to it is absent. At this stage man's essence is suppressed in legal or political existence. In the real state, on the other hand, man's essence is realised with true democracy; the state then is a truly universal and rational organism.

The concept ‘true democracy’ serves at least three purposes in the Critique. Firstly, in demonstrating that the political state is not the real state ‘true democracy’ acts as a critical measure which is held against Hegel's idea of the state. While Hegel attempts to prove that the constitutional monarchy, the political state, represents the fulfilment of the ideal of the rational state, Marx shows the exact opposite. That which Hegel applauds Marx proclaims illusory; the idealist vision is not yet realised. This raises the second purpose of the concept. By showing that the real state is one of true democracy Marx constructs the theoretical base from which he is able to engage the Prussian state in a revolutionary polemic. It is in the letters published in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher, written during and just after the drafting of the Critique, rather than in the Critique itself, that this polemic is conducted. But its theoretical basis is in the Critique, and as Marx (sometimes unfairly) regards Hegel's ideal as thoroughly Prussian, his Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right serves as an implicit critique of the Prussian state. Marx does not criticise the existing (Prussian) state for moral default and he does not appeal to such principles as equality and justice. Rather, he argues that the state is inevitably doomed which censors, promulgates tendentious laws and in other ways restricts the full participation of the people in its affairs. In the progressive unfolding of man's inherent essence the Prussian state, therefore, will be democratised out of existence into reality. Finally, the concept ‘true democracy’ signifies an epistemological position. As ‘reality’ is not the same as ‘existence’, but merely immanent in it, knowledge of reality, of what is true, cannot be acquired from experience. This is because one can experience only what exists. Experience cannot give rise to knowledge of the real state, for ‘in the modern world the idea of the state can appear only in the abstraction of the “merely political state”.’⁹ In order to claim knowledge of the real state, in order to know what is true and therefore what is not true about existence, Marx requires the concept ‘true democracy’. Marx's commitment to democracy in the Critique is as much an epistemological stance as a revolutionary political one.

The political functions and epistemological content of ‘true democracy’ are interrelated and it is therefore difficult, in particular, to separate the epistemological from the other aspects of the notion. Even more than his polemic against the Prussian state Marx's epistemology is implicit rather than clearly stated in the Critique. Its strands have to be extracted from the text and reconstructed ab extra.

To recapitulate briefly: Marx argues that the truth of the state's reality cannot be known from experience of the existing state, for the idea of the real state cannot be obtained from the abstraction of the political state. Marx also maintains that reality is immanent in existence. It is from this latter point that Marx is able to surmount the difficulties presented by the former. The empirical reality of man's essence, although denied its full expression in the political state, provides Marx with evidence of the full nature of reality.

The involvement of individuals in offices of the political state, says Marx, indicates an essential quality in the incumbent. He goes on to criticise Hegel for contending that such offices have only an external and contingent link with the particular individuals engaged in state activity. Hegel forgets, continues Marx,¹⁰

that particular individuality is a human function and that the activities and agencies of the state are likewise human functions; he forgets that the essence of the ‘particular person’ is not his beard and blood and abstract Physis, but his social quality, and that the affairs of state are nothing but the modes of action and existence of the social qualities of men.

It is in this sense that the ‘political state is the mirror of truth which reflects the disparate moments of the concrete state.’¹¹ Instead of abstracting from the political state Marx develops his idea of the real state by projecting from man's essence. Rather than starting with the political state to arrive at a conception of the real state Marx claims the empirical reality of man's essential sociality, from which the faculties of state derive.

But in proving his conception of the real state Marx is no more prepared to abstract from the empirical reality of man's essence than he is prepared to abstract from the political state in which man's essence is evident. While Marx finds evidence for the truth of the real state in man's sociality – it is the mirror of truth when expressed in offices of state – the proof of man's sociality is in democracy, and democracy is the form of the real state. Any apparent confusion in all of this results from the interdependence of true democracy, the real state and man's essential sociality, any one of which must be understood in terms of the other two. What is clear, however, and what must resolve any confusion, is the epistemological primacy of the concept ‘true democracy’ over the concepts ‘real state’ and ‘man's essence’. Democracy is Marx's guarantee of truth, including the truth of man's essence; it is also, therefore, the foundation of his knowledge of the state and man. He says, for instance, that ‘all forms of the state … are untrue to the extent that they are not democracy.’¹² And when discussing the real state, in which ‘the people is itself the universal concern’, Marx is ‘thus concerned with a will which can achieve its true existence as species-will only in the self-conscious will of the people.’¹³ Marx's position, then, can be summarised thus: It is the self-conscious will of the people which is denied in the political state, as the full participation of the people is there prevented. The universality of the real state is constituted in the people's self-conscious will, the true existence of which is found only in the real state, and the truth of its existence can be known only in democracy. Marx's commitment to democracy is therefore a commitment to epistemological guarantees.

Marx's commitment to democracy as a guarantee of truth is not unique to the Critique. The same principle is found in his article ‘On a Proposed Divorce Law’, published in the Rheinische Zeitung of December 1842, where it is claimed that ‘The guarantee … [that law express] reliable knowledge and universal insight … will be present only when law is the conscious expression of the will of the people, created with and through it.’¹⁴ Here, as in the Critique, the assumption which informs Marx's assertion is that given the opportunity of full participation in the state the people consciously express a will which is rational.¹⁵ It can be confirmed that this is also Marx's position in the Critique by recalling that when quoting from that work above we saw Marx hold that the condition or state of true democracy, in which popular will is consciously expressed, ‘confers a rational form on the organism of the state as a whole’. This is the final card in Marx's epistemological pack. The truth of democracy and the rationality of the state are connected through the essential sociality of man when fully expressed in self-conscious popular will. In summary: Democracy guarantees true knowledge of man and the state because man's essential sociality ensures a self-conscious popular will, expressed and proved in democracy, which is rational. The rationality of popular will, in turn, ensures the reality of the state as a rational organism. This reality of rationality in democracy, for Marx, is the final stage in the development or evolution of the state organism.

This final point returns the discussion to Marx's agreement with Hegel that the state is the rational organism and, implicitly, to Marx's contention that the contemporary separation of man from his objective essence is sanctioned in Hegel's failure to acknowledge that the reality of the state as the rational organism is in true democracy. Before going on to a fuller discussion of th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Epistemology
• 2 Feuerbach
• 3 Society
• 4 Capitalism
• 5 Human emancipation
• 6 Politics
• 7 Conclusion
• Notes and references
• Index