Karl Marx

William D. Dennison

• Publisher: P Publishing
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781629951515
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Historische Biographien

Understanding Marx is essential for understanding the world we live in. Dennison offers a concise, rigorous synopsis and critique of the most influential political philosopher of the past 150 years.

1

MARXISM AND THE MARXIAN TRADITION

The Confusion Surrounding Marx

It is common to hear people say that Karl Marx founded socialism. However, that statement conveys the ignorance that many have about Marx. Even evangelical Christians can get caught up in such an erroneous observation. For many believers, any suggestion of Marx’s views on political theory and economics, like the mention of Darwin in discussions about origins, leads to offense. They may reject, without further thought, any statement made by a political figure or party that has any Marxist overtones. Nevertheless, while evangelical Christians must exercise biblical discernment in assessing any system of thought, they are also responsible for fairness and accuracy in their assessment. Investigation shows that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels viewed neither themselves as the founders of modern socialism, nor socialism as the goal of history. Engels referred to what he and Marx advocated as “scientific socialism”; they declared themselves to be beneficiaries of those whom they referred to as the “utopian socialists”: Henri de Saint-Simon (1760–1825), Charles Fourier (1772–1837), and Robert Owen (1771–1858). For Marx, socialism was a means to the end, but not the end itself. In his view of the movement of history, democratic capitalism is replaced by democratic socialism, which is replaced in the end by communism (a classless society).

What also may surprise many evangelical Christians is that Marx saw his view of communism as the most rational outworking of the principles of a democratic society advocated by the French Enlightenment. For Marx, the goal of a democratic society was not the constitutional government established in America. In his judgment, communism was the most consistent application of the trinitarian motto of the Enlightenment: liberty, equality, and fraternity. For Marx, a true republic would be established in the final period of history, when all human beings would be genuinely free, equal, and united as one people, and everyone would have everything in common. John Lennon (1940–80) offered a vision of such a world. In his song “Imagine,” he invoked the power and reality of imagination from the Romantic era to envision a world without heaven or hell, countries, religion, possessions, greed, or hunger. Instead, he imagined a life in which people truly live in the moment—a life of peace, oneness, brotherhood, and sharing all things in the world.¹ Lennon’s narrative reflects the Enlightenment’s motto as applied by Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto—the abolition of religion, countries/ nationalities, private property (possessions), and greed, leading to humanity’s peaceful sharing of lives of fraternal equality.

A question has emerged over the years as to the authentic understanding of Marx’s teaching. Evangelical Christians and the general populace may hastily judge a variety of perspectives as Marxist, but scholars have asked whether anyone is truly a follower of Marx’s teachings today. Simply put, is there a true Marxist anymore? This question was raised by a member of the analytical school of Marxism, social historian Jon Elster.² He raised the question in the 1970s and 1980s, an era when Marxist scholars were avidly debating Karl Marx’s philosophy of history. Elster, in fact, argued that significant intellectual and moral components of Marx’s thought were no longer plausible. Moreover, he maintained that Marx’s most cherished dogmas had been demolished by argument, by history, or by social systems based upon his political philosophy.³ On this basis, he pointed out that any well-intentioned Marxist in recent times has had to go through quite a transformation in order to hold on to any semblance of Marx’s ideas. Elster included himself in this analysis, noting that it was no longer possible for him to embrace all the beliefs that Marx cherished. At the same time, he admitted that some of his own most important notions could be traced back to Marx, such as “the dialectical method and the theory of alienation, exploitation, and class struggle, in a suitably revised and generalized form.”⁴ This struggle, embodied in Elster’s position, has become the focus of those who wish to retain and apply Marx’s ideas. Over more than a century, this area of scholarship has come to be recognized as Marxism or the Marxian tradition.

This scholarly struggle among the self-described sympathizers of Marxist ideas extends beyond them. If Elster is correct that it is impossible to hold fully to Marxist ideas today, how can Christians and the general populace accurately interpret politicians, political parties, academics, and economists who have some connection with Marxist thought? In order for evangelical Christians to make intelligent assessments and reach fair critical judgments, they must (1) understand what Marx actually said on subjects in the context of his day and (2) understand how his teaching has been retooled over time by those who claim that they stand in his tradition. The first chapter of this brief work will meet those conditions—coming to a basic understanding of Marx’s position and also mapping out how his position has been amended in the Marxist tradition. This foundation will make it possible to think and speak intelligently about how scholars and politicians have transformed the ideas of Marx to serve their own situations and agendas.⁵

The Beginning of the Marxian Tradition

The Marxian tradition can be traced back to the republication of The Communist Manifesto in the nineteenth century. When it was originally published in 1848 as Manifesto of the Communist Party, the names Marx and Engels were absent from it. But when it was reissued in Leipzig in 1872, its introduction bore both of their signatures. Later, when a third edition appeared in 1883, Engels, the sole author of its introduction, claimed that the Manifesto was essentially the work of Marx. At the twilight of their lives, Marx and Engels were clearly identified as the originators of the foremost document of nineteenth-century socialism, with Engels giving supremacy to Marx. From that time on, Marx would be the focus of any discussion of socialism and its continuing effects.

Also significant was the document’s release in pamphlet form in 1872 by the editors of Der Volksstaat (The People’s State). This allowed wider distribution, especially among the proletariat. One of those editors, Wilhelm Liebkneckt (1826–1900), had accompanied Marx and Engels to London in 1849. Unlike them, however, Liebkneckt returned to Germany in 1862, where he focused on socialist political activities for workers. Together with August Bebel (1840–1913) and others, he influenced the development of Marxian thought and organized socialist workers’ parties on the basis of the Manifesto’s militant proletarian agenda. In 1890, this culminated in the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD) receiving 1,427,300 votes in the German federal election, more than any other party (though winning only a small number of seats in the Reichstag).⁶

Besides the linking of Marx’s name to any discussion of socialism, philosophical discourse became an important characteristic of the Marxist tradition, initiated by Marx’s dear friend and colleague, Friedrich Engels (1820–95). Although Marx was not an admirer of the discipline of philosophy, Engels maintained that Marx’s thought could be viewed within a philosophical framework. Indeed, after Engels died, “Marxism emerged as a comprehensive philosophy and political practice through which many of the twentieth century’s most important social and economic transformations were envisioned and pursued.”⁷ Philosophers began to critically evaluate Marx’s view of ethics, epistemology, and aesthetics, as well as open the door to critically assessing his ideas in the context of economic and social conditions.

If Marxism was to be seen as a comprehensive philosophical system, it was imperative in the expansive age of scientific inquiry for Marxist thinkers to develop a rigorous method for explaining what happens in the world. Engels proposed the method known as the laws of dialectics, which was revised by Marxists in the 1920s as dialectical materialism. In this construct, human beings are said to be able to know only the material world that surrounds them. This injection of scientific positivism does not reject Hegel’s influence on Marx.⁸ Rather, Marx transformed Hegel’s transcendental Geist (spirit, mind, consciousness) into a materialistic construct of how society moves dialectically in history. Marx characterized the methods of natural and human production (economic conditions) as the data that formed and transformed society as history progressed, following the dialectical paradigm of thesis-antithesis-synthesis. On the surface, much of Hegel’s thought can be placed and analyzed in this triadic pattern; however, nowhere did Hegel use this terminology to describe the dialectical movement of the Geist. Rather, Hegel’s own depiction of the movement was abstract to concrete, implicit to explicit, in itself to for itself, and potential to actual. Marx’s dialectic adapted the same pattern to his materialistic view of the Geist. Although Marx affirmed Hegel’s criticism of Kant’s view of the thing-in-itself (i.e., Hegel held, contra Kant, that the thing-in-itself can be known), he maintained that the thing-in-itself is limited to the material world of a politico-economic dialectical movement—in itself to for itself (for us).

Orthodox Marxism

Upon Marx’s death (1883), as we have seen, Engels took it upon himself to expound and carry on the true teaching of his comrade. Engels has been called the first and greatest representative of “orthodox Marxism,”⁹ even though questions have surrounded his interpretation. Others who became identified with this view of Marx’s person and work include Karl Kautsky, Georgi Plekhanov, and Daniel De Leon—and later, the Bolsheviks Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Leon Trotsky. The movement focused upon the politico-sociological economics of Marx in the context of historical determinism (which posits that events are predetermined by various forces). In the year Marx died, Kautsky (1854–1938) founded and edited Die Neue Zeit, which became the chief theoretical interpreter of Marxist dogma throughout the world for nearly five decades. It focused on such subjects as historical determinism and democratic equality. At the same time, the Russian orthodox Marxist Plekhanov (1856–1918) focused his attention on the individual’s role and activity in history, especially in the context of revolution. He concluded that the great acts performed by an individual in history must always be viewed in the context of the socioeconomic forces of that person’s era.

Interestingly, one of the early controversies within orthodox Marxism can be found in both Kautsky and Plekhanov: the question of whether those who are members of a Marxist party should be the impetus of the socialist revolution, or whether that revolution will be an inevitable, spontaneous event because of the politico-economic conditions of society. Kautsky maintained that it is not important to instigate something that is inevitable. On this issue, Sidney Hook points out that Kautsky’s orthodox Marxist position seems to be invoking Hegel’s maxim from Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805), “Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht” (world history is the court of world judgment).¹⁰ In the context of quoting Schiller’s phrase, Hegel makes a controversial comment: “No people ever suffered wrong; what it suffered, it had merited.”¹¹ Hegel was not trying to justify suffering or persecution; rather, his point was that the act of suffering wrong must be viewed meritoriously as working toward the concrete achievement of freedom for humanity. Specifically, for orthodox Marxism, the suffering of the proletariat merits the inevitable movement to a classless society and humanity’s true freedom. Yet, a question remained: could those associated with orthodox Marxism be content with the inevitable? In Russia and beyond its borders, two different answers to the question arose in orthodox Marxism.

In Russia, the Socialist Democratic Party split into two groups in 1903: the Bolsheviks (majority) and the Mensheviks (minority). Lenin (1870–1924) was a key figure among the Bolsheviks, while Julius Martov (1873–1923) was the founder of the Mensheviks, being assisted by the intellectual professor Plekhanov, who set up the theoretical basis for the Mensheviks. The Bolsheviks were intent on seizing political power by revolution, resulting in the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Mensheviks believed that a proletarian revolution should be a gradual outworking of proletarian interests and democratic principles applied and embraced by the entire population of a nation. In 1905, the Mensheviks voiced the position that an initial revolution should be carried out by a coalition of proletarian and liberal bourgeois forces, replacing the czar with a bourgeois, democratic government. On the other hand, the Bolshevik Lenin believed that while a revolution in Russia had to be democratic in nature, it had to lead immediately to a dictatorship of both the proletariat and the peasants. He believed that a moderate path to socialism and communism through an initial bourgeois revolution would never bear the fruit that an initial proletarian revolution would accomplish, because it would get bogged down in power struggles between the bourgeois and the proletariat. Both the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks claimed to be the sole and rightful heir of Marx. And as the twentieth century progressed, the debate took on additional layers. In particular, was there truly a Leninist-Stalinist version of Marxism, or did Lenin and Stalin represent opposing versions of Marxism? We will return shortly to this question.

Departure from Orthodox Marxism

Meanwhile, other controversies arose. Some thinkers took issue with Engels’s formulation of scientific determinism. These Marxists were not convinced that Engels’s position, or, for that matter, Marx’s own position, did justice to the political and social dynamics of cultural development, especially since his deterministic construct did not seem to match the reality of historical movement (e.g., Eduard Bernstein, Antonio Labriola, Ernst Bloch, and Ge...