Marxism, Religion and Ideology

Themes from David McLellan

David Bates, Iain MacKenzie, Sean Sayers

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780815370390
• eBook ISBN: 9781317531470
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Economy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

As austerity measures are put into place the world over and global restructuring is acknowledged by all as an attempt to bolster the economic system that lead to the crash, there is a great need to come to grips with the economic, political and philosophical legacy of Marx. Of particular interest are Marx's analyses of alienation and the cycles of boom and bust thought to be integral to the functioning of capitalism. Moreover, as the Cold War drifts into the history books, it is possible to reconsider the lasting impact of Marx's analyses without the shadows cast by the Soviet version of communism. Equally, though, scholars are increasingly turning to Marx for insight into the rise of religion and the corresponding demise of political ideologies that seems to mark the contemporary age. Are we witnessing 'the return of Marx'?

Few scholars have done as much to tease out the intricacies of Marx, ideology and religion and their overlapping concerns as the eminent writer and Marx biographer, Professor David McLellan. This book brings together a group of internationally renowned academics to reflect upon, develop and criticise McLellan's analyses of these three themes with a view to contributing more broadly to scholarly debates in these fields. This exciting and timely analysis will be of interest to scholars of political theory, the history of political thought (including historical methodology), Marx and Marxism, sociology of knowledge (particularly in relation to discussions of ideology), religion and theology more widely.

1 McLellan, Marx and Method

David Bates

David McLellan is most well-known for his work on Marx and Marxism. It is astonishing to note that most of the texts he wrote on these themes were completed in a period of just over a decade – 1969–80 (see the bibliography at the end of the final chapter of this book). He completed Marx before Marxism in 1970, Marx’s Grundrisse in 1971, Karl Marx: His Life and Thought in 1973, Marx for the Fontana Modern Masters Series in 1975, Engels for the Fontana Modern Masters Series in 1977, and Marxism after Marx in 1979. After this, McLellan moved on to religious and theological questions, particularly as they pertain to the nature of the relationship between religion and politics. Key writings here include Marxism and Religion from 1987; Simone Weil: Utopian Pessimist from 1989; and Unto Caesar: The Political Relevance of Christianity from 1993.

This chapter will focus particularly on McLellan’s writings on Marx and Marxism. However, I will also where appropriate draw comparisons between how McLellan writes on these themes, and the religious themes that are clearly of importance to his wider orientation and sense of selfhood.

A great deal of McLellan’s work is at the intersection between historical biography and political philosophy. Yet – despite the increasing significance of methodological concerns particularly from the late 1960s onwards – McLellan does not provide a great deal of explicit methodological reflection in his work.

The practice of McLellan’s work operates with what is I think an implicit methodology. Part of the task of this chapter will be – via a process of wider reflection – to make this implicit methodology explicit. I do this in part through an exploration of the methodological approaches set out particularly by Quentin Skinner, a number of which I also subject to criticism.¹

The chapter will also be concerned to tease out some of the value assumptions (political, ethical, religious) that, at least implicitly, shape McLellan’s orientation towards intellectual biography.

Methodological Principles: The Ethics of Intellectual Biography

Should Strong Evaluation Be Suspended?

In what follows I offer some reflections both on the scholarly ethic that drives McLellan’s work, along with the type of scholarly ethic that might be regarded as appropriate to the task of intellectual biography. It is clear that one’s biography to an extent governs one’s concerns. Historical abstraction is immediately a subjective process, governed by the contingencies of our mode of life.

Quentin Skinner writes: ‘the decisions we have to make about what to study must be our decisions, arrived at by applying our own criteria for judging what is rational and significant’.² Given Skinner’s ‘normative’ defence of history this comment may seem initially shocking.³ But of course, just as the writers with which Skinner has been concerned have their own starting point, so too must contemporary thinkers. The two must not be conflated. Skinner’s point also makes it clear that the textual/historical positivism, whereby ‘historical evidence’ assumes the status of neutral ‘data’ is immediately problematised. To this extent, there is a Kuhnian starting point to the process of historical abstraction – the intellectual historian operates in a quite different paradigm to her object of investigation. Kuhn writes:

Like the choice between competing political institutions, that between competing paradigms proves to be a choice between competing modes of community life. … As in political revolutions, so in paradigm choice – there is no standard higher than the assent of the relevant community.⁴

We can relate these comments to the realm of historical biography. For Kuhn’s Wittgensteinian stress on ‘modes of life’ is clearly one to which Skinner adheres. Given this apparent fact of incommensurability, the scholar must adopt an orientation best fitted to the task of historical analysis.⁵

Some would suggest that the incommensurability argument goes too far, thus undermining the conditions of possibility of the task of hermeneutics. Here it is better to regard the biographer as involved not in a task of translation, but rather in a conversation. As Gadamer makes clear, this conversation occurs across a range of complex ‘horizons’. Thus:

A person who has an horizon knows the relative significance of everything within this horizon, whether it is near or far, great or small. Similarly, working out the hermeneutical situation means acquiring the right horizon of inquiry for the question invoked by the encounter with tradition.⁶

Within any such horizon of inquiry, the orientation must necessarily be ethical. For we need to be aware of the status of our own voice in this conversation. There are a number of ways in which such ethical subjectivity may be understood. One is to view the intellectual biographer as an engaged party in a conversation – where we open up our own value horizon in the debate; this follows more clearly from Gadamer’s argument. A second is a Weberian approach. A neo-Kantian, and therefore no friend of positivist sociology, Weber held to the view that a logical separation could be made between fact and value. In practice, such a separation is subverted by his view that ‘value-freedom’ is an ethical orientation; that is, true ethical neutrality is an ideal-type, not achievable in practice. But the ideal-type should for the scholar become a form of utopian aspiration.⁷

Implicitly it is the Weberian practical stance that best describes the ethical orientation taken by McLellan, both in his biographical work on Marx, and on Weil. McLellan often provides what would at first appear to be a relatively ‘objective’ form of exposition, largely avoiding statements even of critique. So, McLellan’s biography of Marx maps out in a mostly chronological fashion Marx’s life, personal relationships, ideas, and the wider historical context in which these are situated. So too, his biography of Weil. Most of the ‘criticisms’ McLellan makes of his subjects seem to be either for their stylistic approach, or for making errors of scholarship. So, for example, in his biography of Marx:

In his use of terms like ‘alienation’ and the ‘realisation of the human essence’ plainly show that Marx’s analysis was not a purely scientific one. Nor was it empirical, if this is taken to mean devoid of value judgements. For Marx’s description was full of dramatically over-simplified pronouncements that bordered on the epigrammatic.⁸

At this juncture, one might make an interesting comparison with the tone of McLellan’s biography of Weil. McLellan writes of Weil’s biblical scholarship:

Although she is right to detect Mesopotamian influences in the Book of Job, the idea that the first chapters of Genesis were of Egyptian origin is pure fantasy, as is her explanation of the rapid conquest of Canaan by Joshua. … Historico-critical methods of analysis were far enough advanced at that time to have prevented Weil from making such statements – had she cared to look at the history of Israel from this point of view.⁹

McLellan is at his most direct when his subjects violate scholarly standards for polemical purposes. The moments of strong critique are, however, rare indeed. It is worth comparing McLellan’s deliberately reserved tone to that of his PhD supervisor, Sir Isiah Berlin:

He [Marx in exile] met few Englishmen and neither understood nor cared for them or their mode of life. He was a man unusually impervious to the influence of environment: he saw little that was not printed in newspapers or books, and remained until after his death comparatively unaware of the quality of the life around him or of its social and natural background. So far as his intellectual development was concerned, he might just as well have spent his exile on Madagascar.¹⁰

Berlin here – without being explicit that this is what he is doing – restates an aspect of the typical liberal bourgeois critique of Marx with which any Marxist will be familiar. Marx is found wanting because he is not sufficiently ‘of the people’, and by curious association, the people – as embodied in the political project of the proletariat – are found wanting because they are unable effectively to elaborate their own theoretical self-consciousness; the standard of democratic purity required is high indeed, when compared with almost any other historical movement.

Though McLellan’s tone is therefore less expressly critical than that of, for example, Berlin, this in itself presents some challenges. First, appropriately focused critique, I think, enables the biographer to provide a deep level of analysis beyond readings that attempt to abstract from evaluation (though his contextual understanding is pretty much unparalleled in the field at least of Marx studies). Second, intellectual biographers need to be explicit about the value judgements leading them to adopt their scholarly orientation – and this is the case too with McLellan.

In relation to the first point, take McLellan’s biography of Weil. As one reads this text – and this is clearly in part a result of my own subjective orientation – one might become less and less sympathetic to Weil as a historical figure. The ethical basis of her actions – although often courageous – seem to be characterised largely by an atomistic self-absorption. Her ethical experimentation (though apparently having a clear philosophical basis) with factory work and farm labour (including the resulting physical hardship) seemed if anything to embody a form of selfishness, that is lacking fellow feeling with those groups with which she wished to engage. So too, when we read McLellan’s biography of Marx – even when noting the criticisms of Berlin above – we get a feeling for the man that is not always pleasant – a man who was often racist, frequently difficult and judgmental, and not particularly familiar with the life world of workers.

But even then, McLellan restrains from explicit critique. In a way, McLellan’s ‘distance’ brings this out more effectively than a polemic would. But then we are left with a need for an assessment of precisely what it is that comprises the objectionable qualities in Weil’s and Marx’s positions. It is not enough that we follow a Skinnerian revisionist line, whereby the values are so relativised that explicit critique comes to lack purchase. Our ethical orientation need not be one of complete evaluative restraint. Accordingly, we might ask ‘Why is it that we find these qualities more objectionable (and surprising!) than if such behaviours were displayed by a banker?’ Clearly because authenticity is a human value that we consider to be laudable.¹¹ We cannot really expect that our subjects will be ‘good’ people, although we might be pleased if it appears that they are.¹² But we can adopt strong evaluations in relation to their actions (and theories). Such evaluations will inevitably bring into conversation values with widely differing historical and subjective determinations. But as subjects of history, we ourselves cannot sidestep such evaluations. Accordingly, what is of interest is the orientation of values; and values can be orientated to critique in a way that does not violate their historical subject.

Moving to the second point, McLellan – although adopting this particular scholarly value stance – has clearly adopted the projects he has, to an extent, on the basis of the values he holds. Although a Marx scholar, McLellan is not a Marxist – although given that neither was Marx, he is in good company! McLellan is a former novice Jesuit, a Catholic and a social democrat – who sometimes stands for the Labour Party in local elections.¹³ But this makes his values appear as though they are lightly held. Anyone who has ever met David will know that he does not hold his beliefs lightly – beliefs and actions for him seem authentic, and internally related. In term...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 McLellan, Marx and Method
• 2 McLellan’s Marx:Interpreting Thought, Changing Life
• 3 The Concept of Alienation and the Development of Marx’s Thought
• 4 David McLellan and Continuity in Marx
• 5 Marx’s Confrontation with Free Market Dogma:The Latent Moral Argument in Capital
• 6 Where Marxist Humanism Went Wrong
• 7 Beyond the Narrow Horizon of Bourgeois Right
• 8 Rush Rhees on Simone Weil
• 9 Marx and Atheism
• 10 Ideology, Ideologies and Ideologues
• 11 Replies and Concluding Remarks
• Bibliography
• Index