On Karl Marx

Ernst Bloch

• Publisher: Verso
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781786636065
• eBook ISBN: 9781786636089
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This study of Marx serves not only as an excellent introduction to that most influential of "worldly philosophers" but is also a significant resume of the central issues of Bloch's own profound and wide-ranging thought.

Special attention is given to the political maturation of the young Karl Marx and to his studies and intellectual relationship to important thinkers of his time. Bloch concludes with an insightful summons to the West to consider Marx anew as a thinker still vitally relevant to contemporary social issues, and not merely as the father of a sovietized political system.

CHANGING THE WORLD: MARX’S
THESES ON FEUERBACH

The Theses

1.

The main defect of all previous materialism (including that of Feuerbach) is that things, reality, the sensible world, are conceived only in the form of objects, or of observation, but not as sensuous human activity, praxis, not subjectively. Hence, in contradistinction to materialism, the active aspect of reality was developed abstractly by idealism, which, of course, does not recognize real sensuous activity as such. Feuerbach wants sensuous objects, really distinguished from objects of thought, but he does not understand human activity itself as objective activity. Hence, in The Essence of Christianity, he regards the theoretical attitude as the only genuinely human one, whereas practical activity is apprehended and fixed only in its dirty-Judaical manifestation. Consequently, he does not grasp the significance of “revolutionary,” “practical-critical,” activity.

2.

The question of whether human thinking can arrive at objective truth is not a theoretical but a practical question. Man has to prove the truth, that is, the reality and power, the “this-sidedness” of his thinking, in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking which is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic exercise.

3.

The materialist doctrine concerning the changing of circumstances and education forgets that circumstances are changed by men and that the educator has himself to be educated. Consequently, this doctrine is bound to divide society into two parts, one of which is superior to society. The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-transformation can be grasped and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice.

4.

Feuerbach starts from the fact of religious self-alienation, the duplication of the world into a religious and a secular one. His work consists in resolving the religious world into its secular basis. But the fact that the secular basis separates itself from itself and establishes an independent realm for itself in the clouds can be explained only by the self-cleavage and self-contradictions of this secular basis. Therefore, the latter must be understood in its contradictions and revolutionized in practice. Thus, for example, once the earthly family is discovered to be the secret of the holy family, the former must itself be destroyed both in theory and in practice.

5.

Feuerbach is not satisfied with abstract thought, and desires empirical observation. He does not, however, conceive sensuousness as practical human sensuous activity.

6.

Feuerbach resolves the essence of religion into the essence of man. But the essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each particular individual. In its reality the essence of man is the totality of social relations. As Feuerbach does not enter upon criticism of this real essence, he is therefore obliged:

a) to abstract from the historical process, to fix the religious sentiment as something by itself, and to postulate an abstract-isolated-human individual;

b) consequently, to conceive the essence of man only as a “genus,” as an inner, mute general quality which unites the many individuals in a purely natural way.

7.

Hence Feuerbach does not see that the “religious sentiment” is itself a social product, and that the abstract individual he analyzes belongs to a particular form of society.

8.

All social life is essentially practical. All the mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice.

9.

The highest point attained by contemplative materialism—materialism, that is, which does not conceive sensuousness as practical activity—is the contemplation of particular individuals and of civil society.

10.

The standpoint of the older type of materialism is civil society; the standpoint of the new materialism is human society or socialized humanity.

11.

The philosophers have only interpreted the world in different ways; the point is to change it.

Seeking the Essential

By virtue of an early flair for the essential, the nineteen-year-old Marx, as his letter to his father shows, was able to formulate sharply conceived basic propositions. This type of reasoning aims, from the very outset, at the core of the things, never permitting itself to deviate into the useless, at once ejecting the useless wherever it is recognized.

This ability to grasp the essential, regardless of the breadth of the view and the thoroughness of the analysis, always retains a striking and pointed form. That which is comprehended, which is enabled to be comprehended in such a fashion, provides pointers along the way. With them, and by means of them, the way ahead becomes clearer, so that even eventual detours serve it. Of course, such signposts are often more easily referred to than their consequences are predictable. Significant brevity is cohesive, for which reason its word is least of all expeditiously ready.

The Time of Composition

Hence the mind must constantly prove itself anew against propositions of this type. This is done with exceptional originality in the extremely compact signpost statements of the almost telegraphically compressed Theses on Feuerbach. Marx wrote them in Brussels during April 1845, most probably in the course of preliminary work for The German Ideology. They were not published by Engels until 1888, as an appendix to his Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy. Engels edited the text lightly for style, since Marx had left some points practically in note form; but of course Engels made not the slightest change in the content. Concerning the Theses, Engels wrote in the Preface to his Ludwig Feuerbach: “These are notes to be elaborated later, written down in haste, and certainly not ready for the printer, yet invaluable as the first document in which the brilliant germ of the new world view is deposited.”

Feuerbach had called for a return from pure thought to sensuous perception, from spirit to man, with nature as his base. As is well known, this renunciation of Hegel, at once both “humanistic” and “naturalistic” (with man as the fundamental idea, and nature instead of mind as the base [Prius]), exercised a powerful influence upon the young Marx. Feuer-bach’s The Essence of Christianity (1841), followed by his Preliminary Theses toward the Reform of Philosophy (1842), and then by his Principles of the Philosophy of the Future (1843), were the more liberating in their effect, seeing that even the left-Hegelian school did not tear itself away from Hegel, and indeed did not progress beyond a merely intra-Hegelian criticism of the master of idealism. Looking back as much as fifty years later, Engels observed in his Ludwig Feuerbach: “The enthusiasm was general. For a moment we were all Feuerbachians. How enthusiastically Marx greeted the new view, and how, despite all critical reservations, he was influenced by it anyone can read in The Holy Family. The German youth of that period believed that finally they were seeing earth instead of heaven, in a human, this-worldly perspective.”

Nevertheless, Marx fairly soon dissociated himself from this all too vague this-worldly humanism. His activity on the Rheinische Zeitung had brought him into much closer contact with political and economic questions than was the case with the left-Hegelians or even the Feuerbachians. This contact led Marx to develop his criticism from one religion, to which Feuerbach confined himself, into a criticism of the State and even of social organization, which determined the form of the State, as was recognized in A Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of the State (1841-1843). In Hegel’s distinction between civil society and the State, as sharpened by Marx, there was already more economic awareness than in the imitators of Hegel, including the Feuerbachians. The separation from Feuerbach occurred respectfully and at first only as a correction or supplementation, yet the completely different viewpoint, namely, the social, is clear from the start. In a letter to Ruge of March 13, 1843, Marx observed: “Feuerbach’s aphorisms appear to me to be incorrect only when he directs too much attention to nature and too little to politics. This is, however, the only alliance whereby the philosophy of today may become a truth” (MEGA, I, 1/2, p. 308).

The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 still contain a significant celebration of Feuerbach, admittedly as a contrast to the cerebral fantasies of Bruno Bauer. Among Feuerbach’s achievements Marx praises above all “the establishment of authentic materialism and real science by making the relation ‘of man to man’ the fundamental principle of this theory” (MEGA, I, 3, p. 152). Yet the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts have gone further beyond Feuerbach than they would seem to indicate. Here the relation “of man to man” does not remain, as in Feuerbach, a mere abstract anthropological concept. The criticism of human self-alienation (carried over from religion to the State) already penetrates to the economic core of the alienation process. This occurs not least in the magnificent sections dealing with Hegel’s Phenomenology, in which the historically decisive role of labor is recognized, and in which Hegel’s work is interpreted in this regard.

At the same time, the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts criticize this work because it conceives of human labor as only mental, not material. The breakthrough to political economy, that is, away from Feuerbach’s generalized man, takes place in the first work undertaken in collaboration with Engels, namely, The Holy Family. In the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts one already finds: “Workers are themselves capital and a commodity” (MEGA, I,3, p. 103). All that remains here of the Feuerbachian humanism [Menschsein] is its negation in capitalism. The Holy Family expresses the view that capitalism itself is the source of this strongest and ultimate alienation. In place of the Feuerbachian generic man, with his unchangingly abstract natural status, there is now a complex of social relationships changing in the course of history, and above all one characterized by class stratifications and antagonisms. To be sure, alienation includes both the exploiting class and the exploited, especially in capitalism as the strongest form of this self-alienation and objectification. “But,” says The Holy Family, “the former class feels comfortable and confirmed in this self-alienation, knowing alienation to be its own power and possessing in it the appearance of a human existence. But the exploited class feels itself destroyed through alienation, in which it perceives its own impotence and the reality of an inhuman existence” (MEGA, I, 3, p. 206). The particular labor-divisive and class-based form of production and mode of exchange—above all the capitalist varieties—were shown to be the ultimate source of alienation.

Certainly from 1843 on, Marx was a materialist. The Holy Family gave birth to the materialistic conception of history and, with it, scientific socialism. The Theses, produced between The Holy Family of 1844-45 and The German Ideology of 1845-46, represent Marx’s formal departure from Feuerbach, and the heir’s highly original form of succession to his inheritance. Empirical political experience in his Rhine period plus Feuerbach rendered Marx immune to “spirit” [Geist]— even as construed by the left-Hegelian school. Having taken up the standpoint of the proletariat, Marx was able to search for the concrete cause, and was hence truly and fundamentally humanistic.

But of course the departure in this case was no complete break. Large areas of Marx’s work, even after the farewell marked by the Theses, still offer evidence of a link with Feuerbach. Closest to the abandoned territory, even on purely chronological grounds, is The German Ideology, which follows directly on the Theses. Many a critical formulation of the Theses recurs here, albeit the criticism leveled against Feuerbach is quite different from the murderous annihilation of the third-rate Hegelians. Feuerbach was still part of bourgeois ideology, so that any involvement in controversy with its pseudo-radical disintegrative manifestations (for example, Bruno Bauer and Stirner) necessarily brought him into The German Ideology. Yet occasionally, Feuerbach himself is, so to speak, the handle of the decisive weapon of Marx’s assault on him, and especially on the left-Hegelians. Accordingly, The German Ideology uses the name of Feuerbach and his critique of religion as a point of departure for a critique of a “supersession” of idealism that remained within the idealistic framework. “None of these philosophers thought of inquiring about the connection of German philosophy with German reality, or about the relation between its critique and its own material environment” (MEGA, I, 5, p. 10).

On the other hand, Marx emphasizes Feuerbach’s “great merit by comparison with the ‘pure’ materialists in that he perceived that man too is a ‘sensuous object’.” Actually, the importance of Feuerbach for the development of Marxism is shown as much by the aforementioned recognition, as it is indicated negatively by Marx’s criticism of his abstract and historical notion of man, which culminated in the un-Feuerbachian or even anti-Feuerbachian aspects of developed Marxism. Marx recognized that without seeing man as a “sensuous object” it would have been far more difficult materialistically to see the human factor as the root of all social matters. That is, Feuerbach’s anthropological materialism facilitated the transition from mere mechanical to historical materialism. Marx’s criticism of Feuerbach was that, without the concretization of the human factor as involving persons actually existing, and above all, socially active, with real relationships to one another and to nature, materialism and history would have remained forever sundered, despite all “anthropology.”

Nevertheless, for Marx, Feuerbach always remained significant, both as a transitional figure and as the only contemporary philosopher with whom argument was at all possible, and clarifying and productive into the bargain. The basic ideas to which Marx reacted critically, and beyond which he was to proceed productively, are contained in essence in Feuerbach’s major work, The Essence of Christianity (1841). Other writings of Feuerbach that are relevant in this respect are his Preliminary Theses toward the Reform of Philosophy (1842), and the Principles of the Philosophy of the Future (1843). The earlier writings of the philosopher could scarcely have been important for Marx, seeing that, at least until 1839, Feuerbach was not sufficiently original, being too much under the influence of Hegel. Only after 1839 did Feuerbach apply the Hegelian concept of self-alienation to religion, and state that his first idea had been God, his second, reason, and his third and last, man. Just as the Hegelian rationalistic philosophy had superseded religious faith, so now philosophy was to put man, with nature as his basis, in place of Hegel. For all that, Feuerbach was unable to find a way to reality; and he discarded the most important element in Hegel, namely, the dialectical method. The Theses first pointed a way from what was only an anti-Hegel road onto one leading toward a new, alterable reality; away from the materialism of what might be termed the base behind the lines, toward an active front.

Arrangement of the Theses

The problem of the arrangement of the Theses is an old, yet also a new problem. Pedagogic suasions have influenced many attempts to change the order of the theses by grouping those that seem to belong together. On the other hand, the numerical sequence is sometimes left as it is, on the assumption that it is possible to organize the theses consecutively. A consecutive arrangement would produce something like the following result: Theses 1,2, and 3 would be subsumed under “the unity of theory and practice in thought”; Theses 4 and 5 under “the understanding of reality in contradictions”; Theses 6,7,8, and 9 under “reality itself in contradictions”; Theses 10 and 11 under “the place and function of dialectical materialism in society.”

This is an ordering according to numbers. But any classification of this type treats the series both too seriously, as though forever fixed, like the Roman Tables or the Decalogue, and too lightly and formalistically, like a series of postage stamps.

But numeration is not systematization, and Marx least of all requires such a substitute. The theses should be grouped in accordance with a philosophical and not an arithmetical pattern, that is, the sequence of the theses must be dictated by their themes and contents. So far as is known, there is as yet no commentary on the Theses. Yet only by the aid of one emerging from the common concern itself will the creative connection of the brevity and depth of the Theses become clear: first, an epistemological group relating to perception and activity (Theses 5, 1, and 3); second, an anthropological-historical group dealing with self-alienation, its real cause and true materialism; third, the synoptic or theory-practice group relating to proof and confirmation (Theses 2 and 8); last, the most important thesis, the slogan as a consequence of which the spirits not only finally depart, but cease to be anything other than spirits (Thesis 11). Appropriately, the epistemological group would properly open with Thesis 5, and the an thropological-historical one with Thesis 4—for these theses represent the two basic doctrines of Feuerbach, which Marx recognizes (relatively), and from which he moves forward in the remaining theses of the respective groups. The basic tenet accepted in Thesis 5 is the rejection of abstract thought, and that in Thesis 4 the rejection of human self-alienation. And, corresponding to the first principle of materialist dialectics signified here, between the individual theses within the respective groups there is a free movement of complementary voices; just as there is a permanent interchange of relationships between the groups: a cohesive and integral whole.

The Epistemological Group—Perception
and Activity: Theses 5, 1, and 3

These propositions express the recognition that even in thinking one must start from sense data. Perception, and not the concept deduced from it, is the beginning by which all materialistic cognition expresses itself. It was Feuerbach who recalled attention to this fact at a time when every academic street corner still resounded with “spirit,” “concept,” and again “concept.” Thesis 5 stresses this achievement: Feuerbach is “not satisfied” with cerebral existence: he wants his feet on the ground he is observing. Yet Thesis 5, and then, above all, Thesis 1, make clear that with a contemplative sensuousness (the only sort known to Feuerbach), the feet are not yet able to walk, and the ground itself remains impassable. Indeed, he who contemplates in this manner will not even try to move, and will remain set in a posture of satisfaction. Hence Thesis 5 teaches that mere perception “does not… conceive sensuousness as practical human sensuous activity.” Furthermore, Thesis 1 reproaches all previous materialism for interpreting perception “only in the form of objects,” “but not as sensuous human activity, praxis, not subjectively.” So it appears that the active aspect of reality, in contrast to materialism, “was developed abstractly by idealism which, of course, does not recognize real sensuous activity as such.” In place of inert contemplation, the approach in which all previous materialism, including that of Feuerbach, persisted, there was now the factor of human activity, already within the process of sensuous and therefore immediate, basic-incipient cognition. Sensuousness as knowledge, as the real basis of knowledge, is therefore in no way the same as contemplative perception.

This emphasis of Thesis 1 on the concept of activity does indeed derive from idealistic epistemology, notably the particular form developed in the modern bourgeois period. This concept presupposed as its basis a society in which the ruling class saw or deserved to see itself in activity, that is, in labor—or at least would have liked to do so. But this holds true in capitalist society only to the extent that labor (or, more correctly, the appearance of labor round about the ruling class) is no longer shameful but actually honored, in contrast to all pre-bourgeois societies. This phenomenon results from the necessity of...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Marx as a Student
• Karl Marx and Humanity: The Material of Hope
• Man and Citizen in Marx
• Changing the World: Marx’s Theses on Feuerbach
• Marx and the Dialectics of Idealism
• The University, Marxism, and Philosophy
• The Marxist Concept of Science
• Epicurus and Karl Marx
• Upright Carriage, Concrete Utopia