Marxism constitutes one of the main currents of contemporary thought. By now, there is no counting the works that set out to expound, combat, or even 'supersede' it. It is already no easy task to find the path that cuts through this mass of polemical works and leads to the texts. Moreover, there are a great many of these texts. The (incomplete) French edition of the works of Marx and Engels published by Costes comprises some sixty volumes; that published by Editions Sociales more than twenty; the (incomplete) edition of Lenin's works includes some twenty volumes; the edition of Stalin's, some fifteen; and so on ... But the fact that there are so many texts is not the only problem. The Marxist canon spans an historical period that stretches from 1840 to the present, and raises problems that have fuelled polemics: the nature of Marx's early works; the problem of the Marxist tradition. Finally, the very nature of Marxism – a science and a philosophy closely bound up with (political or scientific) practice – represents an additional difficulty, perhaps the greatest of all. If one neglects the constant reference to practice, which Marx, Engels, and their followers insistently call to our attention, one is liable to misunderstand the significance of Marxism entirely, and to interpret it as an 'ordinary' philosophy. […]
Contemporary philosophers have played up Marx's early works. These are doubtless more accessible than Capital. Moreover, they are 'philosophical' works, marked by the pervasive influence of Hegel and Feuerbach.
The importance we assign these early texts (in some respects, Hegel's work already throws up the same problem) will command our general interpretation of Marxism. If we hold that they contain Marx's basic inspiration, then they become Marxism's criterion of validity and the principle that will inform our interpretation of Marxism. Thus, to take two different examples, M. Hyppolite has argued that Marx remains faithful to his original philosophical intuitions right down to Capital (see 'Marxism and Philosophy'; 'Marx's Critique of the Hegelian Philosophy of the State;' 'On the Structure and Philosophical Presuppositions of Marx's Capital', in Jean Hyppolite, Studies on Marx and Hegel, trans. John O'Neill, Basic Books, New York and London, 1969). Conversely, M. Gurvitch has defended the intuitions of the young Marx against his mature works, arguing that the inspiration of the latter is different and inferior (see 'La sociologie du jeune Marx', Cahiers international de sociologie, no. 4, 1948). The problem of the Marxist tradition and the evolution of Marxist thought is posed by way of these theses.
If, however, we hold that these early works reflect the interests of the young Marx, who, like all his fellow students, entered the arena of thought in a world dominated by Hegel's philosophy, but, with the help of internal criticism, historical experience, and scientific knowledge, put this point of departure behind him in order to work out an original theory, then we will regard these early works as transitional, and seek in them less the truth of Marxism than the intellectual trajectory of the young Marx. This is, grosso modo, the thesis defended by Mehring, and also by Auguste Cornu in Karl Marx, l'homme et 1'oeuvre: De 1'hégilianisme au matérialisme historique, 1815-1845 (Alcan, Paris, 1934).' From this standpoint, the philosophical influences of Marx's youth are, in Capital, simply starting points he has left behind to forge an original conception of things (Lenin adopts this thesis in Karl Marx [1914]). So regarded, the Marxist tradition does not confront us with the same question as before.
We do not wish to deal with this important question here; it is matter for a detailed historical study. Let us simply take note of the judgement Marx and Engels passed both on their own early works and on the influences to which they were subject.
[…] One word more about the implications of this problem of Marx's early works. It is certainly not irrelevant to our understanding of Marxism today. This is evident when one considers notions like the End of history, bound up in turn with the notion of alienation. If Marx and his followers do no more in their works than illustrate and corroborate the still philosophical theses of On the Jewish Question or the '1844 Manuscripts'; if they merely attempt to 'flesh out' the Hegelian philosophical notion of the end of alienation and the 'end of history', then their undertaking is worth what this notion is. And, in that case, Marxism sacrifices its scientific pretensions, to become, in some sort, the incarnation of an ideal, which, although certainly moving, is utopian, and, like any ideal, gets entangled in both theoretical contradictions and the 'impurity' of concrete means the moment it seeks to bend reality to its demands. Conversely, if Marxism has nothing to do with any 'philosophical' notion of this sort, if it is a science, it escapes the theoretical contradictions and practical tyranny of the ideal; the contradictions it runs up against are no longer those resulting from its philosophical pretensions, but simply the contradictions of reality itself, which it sets out to study scientifically and solve practically.
Historical materialism is precisely that science of history of which the early works are the 'philosophical' anticipation.
Here again, we would like to provide a few guideposts. Marxism has two aspects, which are profoundly united, yet distinct: dialectical materialism and historical materialism.
Marx and Engels use the term historical materialism to refer to the science of history, or the 'science of the development of societies' established by Marx. This term may seem questionable: we do not use the term 'physical materialism' to designate physics. In fact, Marx was using the term as a weapon. His aim was to counterpose his enterprise to the idealist conceptions of history of his day. He wished to found the science of history, not on men's 'self-consciousness' or the 'ideal objectives of history' (the 'realisation of freedom', the reconciliation of 'human nature' with itself, etc. – see, on this subject, The German Ideology, passim), but on the material dialectic of the forces of production and relations of production, the 'motor' that determines historical development 'in the final analysis' (see the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy).
In a little known, highly instructive essay, Lenin discusses the scientific method of Marx's work at length, using Marx's own terms (What 'The Friends of the People' Are, pp. 129ff.). Historical materialism, says Lenin, is not an arbitrary conception. The science of history was constituted as the other sciences were; although it possesses its own methods and principles, it must meet the same standards of rigour. 'This idea of materialism in sociology was in itself a piece of genius. Naturally, "for the time being" it was only a hypothesis, but it was the first hypothesis to create the possibility of a strictly scientific approach to historical and social problems.' This hypothesis (the explanation of history through the dialectic of forces and relations of production) makes it possible to introduce the criteria of science into history: objectivity, repetition, generalisation.
Now – since the appearance of Capital – the materialist conception of history is no longer a hypothesis, but a scientifically proven proposition. And until we get some other attempt to give a scientific explanation of the functioning and development of some social formation – social formation, mind you, and not the way of life of some country or people, or even class, etc. – another attempt just as capable of introducing order into the 'pertinent facts' as materialism is, that is, just as capable of presenting a living picture of a given formation, while giving it a strictly scientific explanation – until then the materialist conception of history will be synonymous with social science (ibid., p. 142; translation modified).
As such, Marxism cannot claim to do more than a science does:
And just as transformism does not at all claim to explain the 'whole' history of the formation of species, but only to place the methods of this explanation on a scientific basis, so materialism in history has never claimed to explain everything, but merely to indicate the 'only scientific', to use Marx's expression (Capital), method of explaining history (ibid., p. 146).
A few preliminary remarks may facilitate an approach to the Marxist conception of the dialectic.
For Marx, Engels, and their followers, the dialectic is the most advanced form of scientific method. Marxist theoreticians affirm that they are heir to 'the Hegelian dialectic'. A first problem: Marxism adopts the dialectic from Hegel, and yet Marx himself declares: 'My dialectical method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite' (second Preface to Capital [the Postface to the second German edition], International Publishers, New York, 1974, Vol. 1, p. 19). After Marx, first Engels (in Ludwig Feuerbach and Anti-Dühring) and then Lenin affirm that the Hegelian dialectic is acceptable only if 'put back on its feet'. What is meant by this 'direct opposite', this 'inversion' of the dialectic? We can find a precise answer in a number of different texts.
What Marx, Engels, and their followers reject in the Hegelian dialectic is its dogmatic meaning, role, and utilisation – in a word, the schematism for which Hegel himself criticised Schelling in a well-known passage of The Phenomenology of Spirit. This dogmatism does violence to reality in order to make it fit the dialectical schema at all costs. What if reality does not conform to the a priori structure of the dialectic? It is deformed to bring it into line. In certain cases, doubtless, reality may well conform to the Hegelian dialectical schema: this is why Marx distinguishes analyses that are of genuine scientific interest from 'the Hegelian hotchpotch' (for example, the conception of history as process, the critique of abstract ideals, the 'Beautiful Soul', and so on). Most of the time, however, the Hegelian dialectic is simply 'plastered onto' reality. This utilisation of the dialectic is intimately bound up with Hegel's absolute idealism. 'According to Hegel the development of the idea, in conformity with the dialectical laws of the triad, determines the development of the real world. And it is only in that case, of course, that one can speak of the importance of the triads, of the incontrovertibility of the dialectical process' (Lenin, What 'The Friends of the People' Are, p. 167). It is precisely this utilisation that Marx rejects: 'Responding to Dühring, who had attacked Marx's dialectics, Engels says that Marx never dreamed of "proving" anything by means of Hegelian triads. . .' (ibid., p. 163).
Yet although they thus reject the dogmatic utilisation of the dialectic along with its philosophical foundations – Marx and Engels retain its 'rational kernel', the general content of the dialectic (interaction, development, qualitative 'leaps', contradiction), which, in their view, constitutes a remarkable approximation of the most advanced positive scientific method.' This puts us in a position to specify the meaning of the famous 'inversion'. It is neither reliance on a particular philosophical system, nor a sort of intrinsic virtue, an absolute 'logical' necessity, that makes the dialectic indispensable to Marx and Engels. The dialectic is validated only by its concrete [positif] utilisation, by its scientific fecundity. This scientific use is the sole criterion of the dialectic. It alone makes it possible to speak of the dialectic as method. Marx, says Lenin, did not 'plaster' the dialectic onto reality:
Marx only studied and investigated the real process ... the sole criterion of theory recognised by him was its conformity to reality.... What Marx and Engels called the dialectical method – as against the metaphysical – is nothing else than the scientific method in sociology, which consists in regarding society as a living organism in a state of constant development (What 'The Friends of the People' Are, pp. 163-5).
Without a doubt, materialism is the aspect of Marxism that has elicited the sharpest criticisms (see, in particular, J.-P. Sartre's essay in Les Temps Modernes, no.s 9-10 June-July 1946; 'Materialism and Revolution', in Literary and Philosophical Essays, London, 1968, pp. 185-239).
Let us, first of all, try to avoid certain misconceptions.
Simply to mention the arguments of the 'vulgar materialism' denounced by Marx, which come down to denying the reality of thought, consciousness, and ideals, is to reject them. Marxist materialism refuses to assimilate thought to matter, and attributes a very important historical role to consciousness (see Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach, ch. Ill, in fine, the letter to Conrad Schmidt [of 5 August 18901, etc.).
But let us take a moment to consider another argument. Materialism, it is said, is a 'metaphysics of nature' that reconstitutes the world by starting out from a material element regarded as an absolute substance (atom, body, matter). In short, it is an 'Absolute Knowledge' in which matter plays the role of the Hegelian idea. Marx and Engels criticise this conception, which they call 'metaphysical materialism'. Lenin, for example, writes: 'The recognition of immutable elements, of the immutable essence of things", is not materialism, but metaphysical, i.e., anti-dialectical, materialism' (Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, p. 249). One of the essential features of dialectical materialism is precisely that it refutes all dogmatism grounded in 'Absolute Knowledge'. Materialism radically rejects the idea that there can be any "immutability", "essence", [or] "absolute substance", in the sense in which these concepts were depicted by the empty professorial philosophy' (ibid., p. 250). It is not for a metaphysics of nature to deduce the structure of reality; it is the role of the sciences to discover it. Thus only physics can determine and develop the physical notion of matter, with which the philosophical notion of matter must not be confused.
[…] The theses of materialism consequently do no more than articulate and consciously draw out the implications of the 'spontaneous practice' of the sciences, itself a particular instance of human practice. This practice involves confronting two terms joined in a profound unity: the ideas (or the consciousness) of scientists (of men) – and external reality. This confrontation entails recognition of the primacy of external reality over ideas or consciousness, which, in this practice, models itself on reality; and the recognition of the objectivity of the laws established, in this practice, by science. 'The recognition of the priority of nature, not mind, is the distinguishing feature of materialism par excellence,' says Lenin, who insists heavily on the 'epistemological' as opposed to the dogmatic aspect of that thesis: 'One only has to formulate the question clearly to realise what sheer nonsense the Machists talk when they demand that the materialists give a definition of matter which would not amount to a repetition of the proposition that matter, nature, being the physical – is primary, and spirit, consciousness, sensation, the psychical – is secondary' (Materialism and Empirio-Criticism, pp. 133-4). Ruling out all dogmatic definitions of matter, Lenin repeatedly affirms that 'the sole "property" of matter with whose definition philosophical materialism is bound up is the property of being an objective reality. . . .' (ibid., p. 248); ,matter is a philosophical category denoting ... objective reality' (ibid., p. 116). The basic significance of this 'epistemological', rather than dogmatic, conception of the primacy of existence over consciousness stands out even more clearly when Lenin underscores the 'limits' of this thesis: 'Of course, even the antithesis of matter and mind has absolute significance only within the bounds of the fundamental epistemological question of what is to be regarded as primary and what as secondary. Beyond these bounds the relative character of this antithesis is indubitable' (ibid., p. 134).
We hope that these all too brief remarks, however insufficient, will give some idea of the characteristics of Marxism, of its rigour and fecundity. 'A method for science', 'a guide to action', and 'a scientific and revolutionary theory', Marxism articulates the most exacting demands of scientific activity and, simultaneously, the living bond that unites them to human history and practice. These are amongst the reasons for the prestige of a doctrine that today deserves better than to 'be learned about by hearsay': it merits attentive and meticulous study.
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