7. Dialectical Materialism
1. Dialectics and Marxism
Dialectical Materialism as taught by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels is the most popular
metaphysical doctrine of our age. It is today the official philosophy of the Soviet Empire
and of all the schools of Marxism outside of this empire. It dominates the ideas of
When Marx was a young man, two metaphysical doctrines whose teachings were incompatible
with one another dominated German thought.
One was Hegelian spiritualism, the official doctrine of the Prussian state and of the
Prussian universities.
The other was materialism, the doctrine of the opposition bent upon a revolutionary overthrow
of the political system of Metternich and of Christian orthodoxy as well as of private
property.
Marx tried to blend the two into a compound in order to prove that socialism is bound
to come with the inexorability of a law of nature.
In the philosophy of Hegel logic, metaphysics and ontology are essentially identical.
The process of real becoming is an aspect of the logical process of thinking.
In grasping the laws of logic by a prioristic thinking, the mind acquires correct knowledge
of reality.
There is no road to truth but that provided by the study of logic.
The peculiar principle of Hegel's logic is the dialectic method.
Thinking takes a triadic way.
It proceeds from thesis to antithesis, that is, the negation of the thesis, and from antithesis
to synthesis, that is, the negation of the negation.
The same trinal principle of thesis, antithesis and synthesis manifests itself in real becoming.
For the only real thing in the universe is Geist, mind or spirit.
Matter has its substance not in itself.
Natural things are not for themselves.
But Geist is for itself.
What, apart from reason and divine action, is called reality is viewed in the light of
philosophy, something rotten or inert which may seem but is not in itself real.
No compromise is possible between this Hegelian idealism and any kind of materialism. Yet
fascinated by the prestige Hegelianism enjoyed in the Germany of the 1840s, Marx and Engels
were afraid to deviate too radically from the only philosophical system with which they
and their contemporary countrymen were familiar. They were not audacious enough to discard
Hegelianism entirely, as was done a few years later, even in Prussia. They preferred to
to Appear as Continuators and Reformers of Hegel, not as iconoclastic dissenters.
They boasted of having transformed and improved Hegelian dialectics, of having turned it upside
down or, rather, of having put it on its feet.
They did not realize that it was nonsensical to uproot dialectics from its idealistic ground
and transplant it to a system that was labeled materialistic and empirical.
Paul was consistent in assuming that the logical process is faithfully reflected in the process
going on in what is commonly called reality. He did not contradict himself in applying
the logical a priori to the interpretation of the universe, but it is different with
a doctrine that indulges in a naive realism, materialism and empiricism. Such a doctrine
ought to have no use for a scheme of interpretation that is derived not from experience but from
a priori reasoning.
Engels declared that dialectics is the science of the general laws of motion, of the external
world as well as of human thinking, two series of laws which are substantially identical
but in their manifestation different in so far as the human mind can apply them consciously,
while in nature and hitherto also to a great extent in human history, they assert themselves
in an unconscious way as external necessity in the midst of an infinite series of apparently
contingent events.
He himself, says Engels, had never had any doubts about this. His intensive preoccupation
with mathematics and the natural sciences, to which he confesses to have devoted the
greater part of eight years, was, he declares, obviously prompted only by the desire to test
The Validity of the Laws of Dialectics in Detail in Specific Instances
These studies led angles to startling discoveries. Thus he found that the whole of geology is
a series of negated negations. Butterflies come into existence from the egg through negation
of the egg, they are negated again as they die, and so on. The normal life of barley
is this. The barley corn is negated and is supplanted by the barley plant, the negation
of the corn. The plant grows, is fructified and produces again barley corns and as soon
as these are ripe, the ear withers away, is negated. As a result of this negation of the
negation, we have again the original barley corn, however not plainly single, but in a
and a quantity ten, twenty or thirty times larger.
It did not occur to Engels that he was merely playing with words.
It is gratuitous pastime to apply the terminology of logic to the phenomena of reality.
Propositions about phenomena, events and facts can be affirmed or negated, but not the phenomena,
events and facts themselves.
But if one is committed to such inappropriate and logically vicious metaphorical language,
It is not less sensible to call the butterfly the affirmation of the egg than to call it
its negation.
Is not the emergence of the butterfly the self-assertion of the egg, the maturing of
its inherent purpose, the perfection of its merely passing existence, the fulfillment
of all its potentialities?
Engels's method consisted in substituting the term negation for the term change.
There is, however, no need to dwell longer upon the fallacy of integrating Hegelian dialectics
into a philosophy that does not endorse Hegel's fundamental principle, the identity of logic
and ontology, and does not radically reject the idea that anything could be learned from
experience, for in fact dialectics plays a merely ornamental part in the constructions
of marks and angles without substantially influencing the course of reasoning.
2.
THE MATERIAL PRODUCTIVE FORCES
The essential concept of Marxian materialism is the material productive forces of society.
These forces are the driving power producing all historical facts and changes.
In the social production of their subsistence, men enter into certain relations, production
relations, which are necessary and independent of their will and correspond to the prevailing
Not the consciousness, the ideas and thoughts, of men that determines their being, existence,
but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.
At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come
into contradiction with the existing production relations or, what is merely a juridical expression
for them, with the property relations, the social system of property laws, within the
and the frame of which they have hitherto operated.
From having been forms of development of the productive forces, these relations turn into
fetters of them.
Then comes an epoch of social revolution.
With the change in the economic foundation, the whole immense superstructure slowly or
rapidly transforms itself.
In reviewing such a transformation, one must always distinguish between the material transformation
of the Economic Conditions of Production, which can be precisely ascertained with the
method of the natural sciences and the juridical, political, religious, artistic or philosophical
— in short, ideological — forms in which men become conscious, aware of this conflict
and fight it out.
Such an epoch of transformation can no more be judged according to its own consciousness
No social formation ever disappears before all the productive forces have been developed
for which its frame is broad enough, and new, higher production relations never appear before
for the material conditions of their existence have been hatched out in the womb of the old
society.
Hence, mankind never sets itself tasks other than those it can solve, for closer observation
will always discover that the task itself only emerges where the material conditions
of its solution are already present or at least in the process of becoming.
The most remarkable fact about this doctrine is that it does not provide a definition of
of its Basic Concept, Material Productive Forces. Marx never told us what he had in
mind in referring to the material productive forces. We have to deduce it from occasional
historical exemplifications of his doctrine. The most outspoken of these incidental examples
is to be found in his book, The Poverty of Philosophy, published in 1847 in French. It
reads, The hand mill gives you feudal society, the steam mill, industrial capitalism.
This means that the state of practical technological knowledge or the technological
quality of the tools and machines used in production is to be considered the essential
feature of the material productive forces, which uniquely determine the production relations
and thereby the whole superstructure.
The production technique is the real thing, the material being that ultimately determines
the social, political and intellectual manifestations of human life.
This interpretation is fully confirmed by all other examples provided by Marx and Engels
and by the response every new technological advance roused in their minds.
They welcomed it enthusiastically because they were convinced that each new invention
brought them a step nearer the realization of their hopes, the coming of socialism. Marx
and some of his followers at times also included natural resources in the notion of material
productive forces, but these remarks were made only incidentally and were never elaborated,
obviously because this would have led them into the doctrine that explains history as
determined by the structure of the people's geographical environment.
There have been, before marks and after marks, many historians and philosophers who emphasized
the prominent role the improvement of technological methods of production has played in the history
of civilization.
A glance into the popular textbooks of history published in the last 150 years shows that
their authors duly stressed the importance of new inventions and of the changes they
brought about.
They never contested the truism that material well-being is the indispensable condition
of a nation's moral, intellectual, and artistic achievement.
But what Marx says is entirely different.
In this doctrine, the tools and machines are the ultimate thing, a material thing, that
is to say, the material productive forces.
Everything else is the necessary superstructure of this material basis.
This fundamental thesis is open to three irrefutable objections.
First, a technological invention is not something material.
It is the product of a mental process, of reasoning and conceiving new ideas.
The tools and machines may be called material, but the operation of the mind which created
them is certainly spiritual.
Marxian materialism does not trace back super structural and ideological phenomena to material
and Social Roots. It explains these phenomena as caused by an
essentially mental process, namely, invention. It assigns to this mental process, which it
falsely labels an original nature-given material fact, the exclusive power to beget all other
social and intellectual phenomena. But it does not attempt to explain how inventions
come to pass. Second, mere invention and designing of technologically new implements are not
not sufficient to produce them.
What is required, in addition to technological knowledge and planning, is capital previously
accumulated out of saving.
Every step forward on the road toward technological improvement presupposes the requisite capital.
The nations today, called underdeveloped, know what is needed to improve their backward
apparatus of production.
Plans for the construction of all the machines they want to acquire are ready or could be
be completed in a very short time, only lack of capital holds them up.
But saving and capital accumulation presuppose a social structure in which it is possible
to save and to invest.
The production relations are thus not the product of the material productive forces
but, on the contrary, the indispensable condition of their coming into existence.
Capitalists of course cannot help admitting that capital accumulation is one of the most
indispensable conditions for the evolution of industrial production.
Part of his most voluminous treatise, Das Kapital, provides a history, wholly distorted,
of capital accumulation.
But as soon as he comes to his doctrine of materialism, he forgets all he said about
this subject.
Then, the tools and machines are created by spontaneous generation, as it were.
Furthermore, it must be remembered that the utilization of machines presupposes social
cooperation under the division of labor.
No machine can be constructed and put into use under conditions in which there is no
division of labor at all, or only a rudimentary stage of it.
Division of labor means social cooperation, in other words, social bonds between men,
Society How then is it possible to explain the existence
of society by tracing it back to the material productive forces which themselves can only
appear in the frame of a previously existing social nexus?
Marx could not comprehend this problem.
He accused Proudhon, who had described the use of machines as a consequence of the division
of labor, of ignorance of history.
It is a distortion of fact, he shouted, to start with the division of labor and to deal
with machines only later.
For the machines are a productive force, not a social production relation, not an economic
category.
Here we are faced with a stubborn dogmatism that does not shrink from any absurdity.
We may summarize the Marxian doctrine in this way.
In the beginning there are the material productive forces, that is, the technological equipment
of human productive efforts, the tools and machines.
No question concerning their origin is permitted.
They are, that is all.
We must assume that they are dropped from heaven.
These material productive forces compel men to enter into definite production relations
which are independent of their wills.
These production relations, farther on, determine society's juridical and political superstructure
as well as all religious, artistic, and philosophical ideas.
3.
THE CLASS STRUGGLE
As will be pointed out shortly, any philosophy of history must demonstrate the mechanism
by means of which the supreme agency that directs the course of all human affairs induces
It requires individuals to walk in precisely the ways which are bound to lead mankind toward
the goal set.
In Marx's system, the doctrine of the class struggle is designed to answer this question.
The inherent weakness of this doctrine is that it deals with classes and not with individuals.
What has to be shown is how the individuals are induced to act in such a way that mankind
finally reaches the point the productive forces want it to attain.
Marx answers that consciousness of the interests of their class determines the conduct of the
individuals.
It still remains to be explained why the individuals give the interests of their class preference
over their own interests.
We may for the moment refrain from asking how the individual learns what the genuine
interests of his class are.
But even Marx cannot help admitting that a conflict exists between the interests of an
individual and those of the class to which he belongs.
Thus, we read in the Communist Manifesto, the organization of the proletarians into
a class and consequently into a political party is at every instant again shattered
by the competition between the workers themselves.
He distinguishes between those proletarians who are class-conscious, that is, place the
to wipe out the legal disabilities of their own caste.
All slaves, for instance, are united in having a stake in the abolition of slavery.
But no such conflicts are present in a society in which all citizens are equal before the law.
No logical objection can be advanced against distinguishing various classes among the members of such a society.
Any classification is logically permissible, however arbitrarily the mark of distinction
may be chosen.
But it is nonsensical to classify the members of a capitalistic society according to their
position in the framework of the social division of labor, and then to identify these classes
with the castes of a status society.
In a status society, the individual inherits his caste membership from his parents.
He remains through all his life in his caste, and his children are born as members of it.
Only in exceptional cases can good luck raise a man into a higher caste.
For the immense majority, birth unalterably determines their station in life.
The classes which Marx distinguishes in a capitalistic society are different.
Their membership is fluctuating.
Class affiliation is not hereditary.
It is assigned to each individual by a daily repeated plebiscite, as it were, of all the
people.
The public, in spending and buying, determines who should own and run the plants, who should
play the parts in the theater performances, who should work in the factories and mines.
Rich men become poor and poor men rich.
The heirs, as well as those who themselves have acquired wealth, must try to hold their
own by defending their assets against the competition of already established firms and
of ambitious newcomers.
In the unhampered market economy, there are no privileges, no protection of vested interests,
no barriers preventing anybody from striving after any prize.
Access to any of the Marxian classes is free to everybody.
The members of each class compete with one another.
They are not united by a common class interest and not opposed to the members of other classes
by being allied either in the defense of a common privilege which those wronged by it
want to see abolished or in the attempt to abolish an institutional disability which
those deriving advantage from it want to preserve.
The laissez-faire liberals asserted, If the old laws establishing status privileges and
and Disabilities are repealed and no new practices of the same character, such as tariffs, subsidies,
discriminatory taxation, indulgence granted for non-governmental agencies like churches,
unions and so on to use coercion and intimidation, are introduced, there is equality of all citizens
before the law.
Nobody is hampered in his aspirations and ambitions by any legal obstacles.
is free to compete for any social position or function for which his personal abilities
qualify him.
The Communists denied that this is the way capitalistic society as organized under the
liberal system of equality before the law is operating.
In their eyes, private ownership of the means of production conveys to the owners, the bourgeois
or capitalists in Marx's terminology, a privilege virtually not different from those once accorded
to the feudal lords.
The bourgeois revolution has not abolished privilege and discrimination against the masses.
It has, says the Marxian, merely supplanted the old ruling and exploiting class of noblemen
by a new ruling and exploiting class, the bourgeoisie.
The exploited class, the proletarians, did not profit from this reform.
They have changed masters, but they have remained oppressed and exploited.
What is needed is a new and final revolution which in abolishing private ownership of the
means of production will establish the classless society.
This socialist or communist doctrine fails entirely to take into account the essential
difference between the conditions of a status or caste society and those of a capitalistic
society.
Feudal property came into existence either by conquest or by donation on the part of
a conqueror.
It came to an end either by revocation of the donation or by conquest on the part of
a more powerful conqueror.
It was property by the grace of God because it was ultimately derived from military victory
which the humility or conceit of the princes ascribed to special intervention of the Lord.
The owners of feudal property did not depend on the market.
They did not serve the consumers.
In the range of their property rights they were real lords, but it is quite different
with the capitalists and entrepreneurs of a market economy.
They acquire and enlarge their property through the services they have rendered to the consumers
and they can retain it only by serving daily again in the best possible way.
This difference is not eradicated by metaphorically calling a successful manufacturer of spaghetti
the spaghetti king.
Marx never embarked on the hopeless task of refuting the economist's description of the
working of the market economy.
Instead, he was eager to show that capitalism must in the future lead to very unsatisfactory
conditions.
He undertook to demonstrate that the operation of capitalism must inevitably result in the
concentration of wealth and the possession of an ever-diminishing number of capitalists
on the one hand, and in the progressive impoverishment of the immense majority on the other hand.
In the execution of this task, he started from the spurious iron law of wages, according
to which the average wage rate is that quantum of the means of subsistence which is absolutely
required to enable the laborer to barely survive and to rear progeny.
This alleged law has long since been entirely discredited, and even the most bigoted Marxians
have dropped it.
But even if one were prepared for the sake of argument to call the law correct, it is
obvious that it can by no means serve as the basis of a demonstration that the evolution
of capitalism leads to progressive impoverishment of the wage earners.
If wage rates under capitalism are always so low that for psychological reasons they
cannot drop any further without wiping out the whole class of wage earners, it is impossible
It is possible to maintain the thesis of the Communist Manifesto that the laborer sinks
deeper and deeper with the progress of industry.
Like all Marx's other arguments, this demonstration is contradictory and self-defeating.
Marx boasted of having discovered the imminent laws of capitalist evolution.
The most important of these laws he considered the law of progressive impoverishment of the
wage-earning masses.
It is the operation of this law that brings about the final collapse of capitalism and
the emergence of socialism.
When this law is seen to be spurious, the foundation is pulled from under both Marx's
system of economics and his theory of capitalist evolution.
Incidentally, we have to establish the fact that in capitalistic countries the standard
of living of the wage earners has improved in an unprecedented and undreamt of way since
This is the publication of the Communist Manifesto and the first volume of Das Kapital.
Marx misrepresented the operation of the capitalist system in every respect.
The corollary of the alleged progressive impoverishment of the wage earners is the concentration of
all riches in the hands of a class of capitalist exploiters whose membership is continually
shrinking.
In dealing with this issue, Marx failed to take into account the fact that the evolution
The growth of big business units does not necessarily involve the concentration of wealth
in a few hands.
The big business enterprises are almost without exception corporations, precisely because
they are too big for single individuals to own them entirely.
The growth of business units has far outstripped the growth of individual fortunes.
The assets of a corporation are not identical with the wealth of its shareholders.
A considerable part of these assets, the equivalent of preferred stock and bonds issued and of
loans raised, belong virtually, if not in the sense of the legal concept of ownership,
to other people, namely, to owners of bonds and preferred stock and to creditors.
Where these securities are held by savings banks and insurance companies and these loans
were granted by such banks and companies, the virtual owners are the people who have
Capitalism is essentially mass production to fill the needs of the masses, but Marx
always labored under the deceptive conception that the workers are toiling for the sole
and the Gold Benefit of an Upper Class of Idle Parasites.
He did not see that the workers themselves consume by far the greater part of all the consumer's goods turned out.
The millionaires consume an almost negligible part of what is called the national product.
All branches of big business cater directly or indirectly to the needs of the common man.
The luxury industries never develop beyond small-scale or medium-size units.
The evolution of big business is in itself proof of the fact that the masses and not
the nabobs are the main consumers.
Those who deal with the phenomenon of big business under the rubric concentration of
economic power fail to realize that economic power is vested in the buying public on whose
patronage the prosperity of the factories depends.
In his capacity as buyer, the wage earner is the customer who is always right.
Marx declares that the bourgeoisie is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within
his slavery.
Marx deduced the excellence of socialism from the fact that the driving force of historical
evolution, the material productive forces, is bound to bring about socialism.
As he was engrossed in the Hegelian brand of optimism, there was to his mind no further
need to demonstrate the merits of socialism.
It was obvious to him that socialism, being a later stage of history than capitalism,
was also a better stage.
It was sheer blasphemy to doubt its merits.
What was still left to show was the mechanism by means of which nature brings about the
transition from capitalism to socialism.
Nature's instrument is the class struggle.
As the workers sink deeper and deeper with the progress of capitalism, as their misery,
The whole chain of this reasoning is exploded by the establishment of the fact that the progress of capitalism does not pauperize the wage earners increasingly, but on the contrary, improves their standard of living.
Why should the masses be inevitably driven to revolt when they could get more and better
food, housing and clothing, cars and refrigerators, radio and television sets, nylon and other
synthetic products?
Even if for the sake of argument we were to admit that the workers are driven to rebellion,
why should the revolutionary upheaval aim just at the establishment of socialism?
The only motive which could induce them to ask for socialism would be the conviction
that they themselves would fare better under socialism than under capitalism.
But Marxists, anxious to avoid dealing with the economic problems of a socialist commonwealth,
did nothing to demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism, apart from the
circular reasoning that runs, socialism is bound to come as the next stage of historical
evolution.
Being a later stage of history than capitalism, it is necessarily higher and better than capitalism.
Why is it bound to come?
Because the laborers, doomed to progressive impoverishment under capitalism, will rebel
and establish socialism.
But what other motive could impel them to aim at the establishment of socialism than
the conviction that socialism is better than capitalism?
And this preeminence of socialism is deduced by Marx from the fact that the coming of socialism
is inevitable.
The circle is closed.
In the context of the Marxian doctrine, the superiority of socialism is proved by the
fact that the proletarians are aiming at socialism.
What the philosophers, the utopians think, does not count.
What matters is the idea of the proletarians, the class that history has entrusted with
the task of shaping the future.
The truth is that the concept of socialism did not originate from the proletarian mind.
No proletarian or son of a proletarian contributed any substantial idea to the socialist ideology.
The intellectual fathers of socialism were members of the intelligentsia, science of
the bourgeoisie. Marx himself was the son of a well-to-do lawyer. He attended a German
gymnasium, the school all Marxians and other socialists denounce as the main offshoot of
The Bourgeois System of Education and his family supported him through all the years
of his studies.
He did not work his way through the university.
He married the daughter of a member of the German nobility.
His brother-in-law was Prussian Minister of the Interior and, as such, head of the Prussian
police.
In his household served a maid, Helene de Muth, who never married and who followed the
The Marx Ménage in all its ships of residence, the perfect model of the exploited slave whose
frustration and stunted sex life have been repeatedly depicted in the German social novel.
Friedrich Engels was the son of a wealthy manufacturer and himself a manufacturer.
He refused to marry his mistress Mary because she was uneducated and of low descent.
After the death of Mary Engels took her sister Lizzie as mistress, he married her on her
deathbed in order to provide her a last pleasure. He enjoyed the amusements of the British gentry
such as riding to hounds. The workers were never enthusiastic about socialism. They supported
the union movement whose striving after higher wages marks despised as useless. They asked
for all those measures of government interference with business which Marx branded petty bourgeois
nonsense.
They opposed technological improvement in earlier days by destroying new machines, later
by union pressure and compulsion in favor of featherbedding.
Syndicalism, appropriation of the enterprises by the workers employed in them, is a program
that the workers developed spontaneously.
But socialism was brought to the masses by intellectuals of bourgeois background.
Dining and whining together in the luxurious London homes and country seats of late Victorian
society, ladies and gentlemen in fashionable evening clothes concocted schemes for converting
the British proletarians to the socialist creed.
4. THE IDEOLOGICAL IMPRAGNATION OF THOUGHT
From the supposed irreconcilable conflict of class interests, Marx deduces his doctrine
of the ideological impregnation of thought. In a class society, man is inherently unfit
to conceive theories which are a substantially true description of reality. As his class
Affiliation, his social being determines his thoughts, the products of his intellectual
effort are ideologically tainted and distorted, they are not truth but ideologies.
An ideology in the Marxian sense of the term is a false doctrine which, however, precisely
on the account of its falsity, serves the interests of the class from which its author stems.
We may omit here dealing with many aspects of this ideology doctrine.
We need not disprove anew the doctrine of polylogism, according to which the logical
structure of mind differs in the members of various classes.
We may further admit that the main concern of a thinker is exclusively to promote the
interests of his class, even if these clash with his interests as an individual.
We may finally abstain from questioning the dogma that there is no such thing as the disinterested
Search for Truth and Knowledge and that all human inquiry is exclusively guided by the
practical purpose of providing mental tools for successful action.
The ideology doctrine would remain untenable even if all the irrefutable objections that
can be raised from the point of view of these three aspects could be rejected.
Whatever one may think of the adequacy of the pragmatist definition of truth, it is
It is obvious that at least one of the characteristic marks of a true theory is that action based
on it succeeds at attaining the expected result. In this sense, truth works, while untruth
does not work. Precisely if we assume, in agreement with the Marxians, that the end
of theorizing is always success in action, the question must be raised why and how an
An ideological, that is, in the Marxian sense, a false theory should be more useful to a
class than a correct theory.
There is no doubt that the study of mechanics was motivated, at least to some extent, by
practical considerations.
People wanted to make use of the theorems of mechanics to solve various problems of engineering.
It was precisely the pursuit of these practical results that impelled them to search for a
— not for a merely ideological, false sense of mechanics.
No matter how one looks at it, there is no way in which a false theory can serve a man
or a class or the whole of mankind better than a correct theory.
How did Marx come to teach such a doctrine?
To answer this question we must remember the motive that impelled Marx to all his literary
ventures.
He was driven by one passion, to fight for the adoption of socialism.
But he was fully aware of his inability to oppose any tenable objection to the economist's
devastating criticism of all socialist plans.
He was convinced that the system of economic doctrine developed by the classical economists
was impregnable and remained unaware of the serious doubts which essential theorems of
this system had already raised in some minds.
Like his contemporary, John Stuart Mill, he believed,
There is nothing in the laws of value which remains for the present or any future writer
to clear up.
The theory of the subject is complete.
When in 1871 the writings of Carl Menger and William Stanley Jevons inaugurated a new
epoch of economic studies, Marx's career as a writer on economic problems had already
come to a virtual end.
The first volume of Das Kapital had been published in 1867. The manuscript of the following volumes
was well along. There is no indication that Marx ever grasped the meaning of the new theory.
Marx's economic teachings are essentially a garbled rehash of the theories of Adam Smith
and, first of all, of Ricardo. Smith and Ricardo had not any opportunity to refute socialist
Doctrines, as these were advanced only after their death.
So Marx let them alone.
But he vented his full indignation upon their successors who had tried to analyze the socialist
schemes critically.
He ridiculed them, calling them vulgar economists and sycophants of the bourgeoisie.
And as it was imperative for him to defame them, he contrived his ideology scheme.
These vulgar economists are, because of their bourgeois background, constitutionally unfit
to discover truth.
What their reasoning produces can only be ideological, that is, as Marx employed the
term ideology, a distortion of truth serving the class interests of the bourgeoisie.
There is no need to refute their chains of argument by discursive reasoning and critical
analysis.
It is enough to unmask their bourgeois background and thereby the necessarily ideological character of their doctrines.
They are wrong because they are bourgeois.
No proletarian must attach any importance to their speculations.
To conceal the fact that this scheme was invented expressly to discredit the economists,
it was necessary to elevate it to the dignity of a general epistemological law valid for all ages and for all branches of knowledge.
Research.
Thus, the ideology doctrine became the nucleus of Marxian epistemology.
Marx and all his disciples concentrated their efforts upon the justification and exemplification
of this makeshift.
They did not shrink from any absurdity.
They interpreted all philosophical systems, physical and biological theories, all literature,
music and art, from the ideological point of view.
But of course they were not consistent enough to assign to their own doctrines merely ideological
character.
The Marxian tenets they implied are not ideologies.
They are a foretaste of the knowledge of the future classless society which, freed from
the fetters of class conflicts, will be in a position to conceive pure knowledge, untainted
by ideological blemishes.
Thus, we can understand the thymological motives that led Marx to his ideology doctrine. Yet
this does not answer the question why an ideological distortion of truth should be more advantageous
to the interests of a class than a correct doctrine. Marx never ventured to explain this,
probably aware that any attempt to would entangle him in an inextricable jumble of absurdities
and contradictions.
There is no need to emphasize the ridiculousness of contending that an ideological, physical,
chemical or therapeutical doctrine could be more advantageous for any class or individual
than a correct one.
One may pass over in silence the declarations of the Marxians concerning the ideological
character of the theories developed by the bourgeois Mendel, Hertz, Planck, Heisenberg
and Einstein.
It is sufficient to scrutinize the alleged ideological character of bourgeois economics.
As Marx saw it, their bourgeois background impelled the classical economists to develop
a system from which a justification of the unfair claims of the capitalist exploiters
must logically follow.
In this he contradicts himself as he drew from the same system just the opposite conclusions.
These theorems of the classical economists from which the apparent justification of capitalism
could be deduced were the theorems which Marx attacked most furiously. That the scarcity
of the material factors of production on which man's well-being depends is an inevitable
nature-given condition of human existence. That no system of society's economic organization
could create a state of abundance in which to everybody could be given according to his
states that the recurrence of periods of economic depressions is not inherent in the very operation
of an unhampered market economy but, on the contrary, the necessary outcome of governments
interfering with business with the spurious aim of lowering the rate of interest and making
business boom by inflation and credit expansion.
But, we must ask, of what use, from the very Marxian point of view, could such a justification
of Capitalism B for the Capitalists.
They themselves did not need any justification for a system which, according to Marx, while
wronging the workers, was beneficial to themselves.
They did not need to quiet their own consciences, since, again, according to Marx, every class
is remorseless in the pursuit of its own selfish class interests.
Neither is it, from the point of view of the Marxian doctrine, permissible to assume that
The service which the ideological theory originating from a false consciousness and therefore distorting
the true state of affairs rendered to the exploiting class was to beguile the exploited
class and to make it pliable and subservient and thereby to preserve or at least to prolong
the unfair system of exploitation.
4.
According to Marx, the duration of a definite system of production relations does not depend
and on any spiritual factors.
It is exclusively determined by the state of the material productive forces.
If the material productive forces change, the production relations, that is, the property
relations, and the whole ideological superstructure must change, too.
This transformation cannot be accelerated by any human effort, for, as Marx said, no
social formation ever disappears before all the productive forces are developed for which
This is by no means merely an incidental observation of Marx. It is one of the essential points
of his doctrine. It is the theorem on which he based his claim to call his own doctrine
scientific socialism as distinguished from the merely utopian socialism of his predecessors.
The characteristic mark of the utopian socialists as he saw it was that they believed that
the realization of socialism depends on spiritual and intellectual factors.
You have to convince people that socialism is better than capitalism and then they will
substitute socialism for capitalism.
In Marx's eyes, this utopian creed was absurd.
The coming of socialism in no way depends on the thoughts and wills of men.
is an outgrowth of the development of the material productive forces.
When the time is fulfilled and capitalism has reached its maturity, socialism will come.
It can appear neither earlier nor later.
The bourgeois may contrive the most cleverly elaborated ideologies in vain.
They cannot delay the day of the breakdown of capitalism.
Some people, intent upon salvaging the Marxian ideology concept, would argue this way.
The capitalists are ashamed of their role in society.
They feel guilty at being robber barons, usurers and exploiters, and pocketing profits.
They need a class ideology in order to restore their self-assertion.
But why should they blush?
There is, from the point of view of the Marxian doctrine, nothing in their conduct to be ashamed
of Capitalism, in the Marxian view, is an indispensable
stage in the historical evolution of mankind.
It is a necessary link in the succession of events which finally results in the bliss
of socialism.
The capitalists, in being capitalists, are merely tools of history.
They execute what, according to the pre-ordained plan for mankind's evolution, must be done.
They comply with the eternal laws which are independent of the human will.
They cannot help acting the way they do. They do not need any ideology, any false consciousness
to tell them that they are right. They are right in the light of the Marxian doctrine.
If Marx had been consistent, he would have exhorted the workers, don't blame the capitalists.
In exploiting you, they do what is best for yourselves. They are paving the way for socialism.
Wherever one may turn the matter, one cannot discover any reason why an ideological distortion
of truth should be more useful to the bourgeoisie than a correct theory.
5.
The Conflict of Ideologies
Class consciousness, says Marx, produces class ideologies.
The class ideology provides the class with an interpretation of reality and at the same
at the same time teaches the members how to act in order to benefit their class.
The content of the class ideology is uniquely determined by the historical stage of the
development of the material productive forces and by the role the class concerned plays
in this stage of history.
The ideology is not an arbitrary brainchild.
It is the reflection of the thinker's material class condition as mirrored in his head.
It is therefore not an individual phenomenon conditional upon the thinker's fancy.
It is enjoined upon the mind by reality, that is, by the class situation of the man who
thinks.
It is consequently identical with all members of the class.
Of course, not every class comrade is an author and publishes what he has thought.
But all writers belonging to the class conceive the same ideas and all other members of the
class approve of them.
There is no room left in Marxism for the assumption that the various members of the same class
could seriously disagree in ideology.
There exists for all members of the class only one ideology.
If a man expresses opinions at variance with the ideology of a definite class, that is
because he does not belong to the class concerned.
There is no need to refute his ideas by discursive reasoning.
It is enough to unmask his background and class affiliation.
This settles the matter.
But if a man whose proletarian background and membership in the worker's class cannot
be contested diverges from the correct Marxian creed, he is a traitor.
It is impossible to assume that he could be sincere in his rejection of Marxism.
As a proletarian, he must necessarily think like a proletarian.
An inner voice tells him, in an unmistakable way, what the correct proletarian ideology
is.
He is dishonest in overriding this voice and publicly professing unorthodox opinions.
He is a rogue, a Judas, a snake in the grass.
In fighting such a betrayer, all means are permissible.
Marx and Engels, two men of unquestionable bourgeois background, hatched out the class
ideology of the proletarian class.
They never ventured to discuss their doctrine with dissenters, as scientists, for instance,
discussed the pros and cons of the doctrines of Lamarck, Darwin, Mendel and Weisman.
As they saw it, their adversaries could only be either bourgeois idiots or proletarian
traitors.
As soon as a socialist deviated an inch from the orthodox creed, Marx and Engels attacked
him furiously, ridiculed and insulted him, represented him as a scoundrel and a wicked
and Corrupt Monster.
After Engels' death, the office of supreme arbiter of what is and what is not correct
Marxism, devolved upon Carl Kotsky.
In 1917, it passed into the hands of Lenin and became a function of the chief of the
Soviet government.
While Marx, Engels and Kotsky had to content themselves with assassinating the character
of their opponents, Lenin and Stalin could assassinate them physically.
Step by step they anathematized those who once were considered by all Marxians, including
Lenin and Stalin themselves, as the great champions of the proletarian cause, Kotsky,
Max Adler, Otto Bauer, Plekhanov, Bukharin, Trotsky, Ryasenov, Radik, Sinoviev, and many
others.
Those whom they could seize were imprisoned, tortured, and finally murdered.
Probably those who were happy enough to dwell in countries dominated by
Pluto-democratic reactionaries survived and were permitted to die in their beds.
A good case can be made from the Marxian point of view in favor of decision by the majority.
If a doubt concerning the correct content of the proletarian ideology arises, the ideas
held by the majority of the proletarians are to be considered those which truthfully reflect
the genuine proletarian ideology.
As Marxism supposes that the immense majority of people are proletarians, this would be
tantamount to assigning the competence to make the ultimate decisions in conflicts of
opinion to parliaments elected under adult franchise.
But although to refuse to do this is to explode the whole ideology doctrine, neither Marx
nor his successors were ever prepared to submit their opinions to majority vote.
Throughout his career, Marx mistrusted the people and was highly suspicious of parliamentary
procedures and decisions by the ballot.
He was enthusiastic about the Paris revolution of June 1848, in which a small minority of
Parisians rebelled against the government supported by a parliament elected under a
universal manhood suffrage.
The Paris Commune of the spring of 1871, in which again Parisian socialists fought against
was still more to his liking. Here he found his ideal of the dictatorship of the proletariat,
the dictatorship of a self-appointed band of leaders, realized. He tried to persuade
the Marxian parties of all countries of Western and Central Europe to base their hopes not
upon election campaigns, but upon revolutionary methods. In this regard, the Russian communists
were his faithful disciples.
The Russian parliament, elected in 1917 under the auspices of the Lenin government by all
adult citizens had, in spite of the violence offered to the voters by the ruling party,
less than 25% communist members.
Three quarters of the people had voted against the communists, but Lenin dispersed the parliament
by force of arms and firmly established the dictatorial rule of a minority.
The head of the Soviet power became the supreme pontiff of the Marxian sect.
His title to this office is derived from the fact that he had defeated his rivals in a
bloody civil war.
As the Marxians do not admit that differences of opinion can be settled by discussion and
persuasion or decided by majority vote, no solution is open but civil war.
The mark of the good ideology, that is, the ideology adequate to the genuine class interests
of the proletarians, is the fact that its supporters succeeded in conquering and liquidating
their opponents.
6.
IDEAS AND INTERESTS
Marx assumes tacitly that the social condition of a class uniquely determines its interests
and that there can be no doubt what kind of policy best serves these interests.
The class does not have to choose between various policies.
The historical situation enjoins upon it a definite policy.
There is no alternative.
It follows that the class does not act since acting implies choosing among various possible
ways of procedure.
The material productive forces act through the medium of the class members.
Marx, Engels and all other Marxians ignored this fundamental dogma of their creed as soon
as they stepped beyond the borders of epistemology and began commenting upon historical and political
issues.
Then they not only charged the non-proletarian classes with hostility to the proletarians,
but criticized their policies as not conducive to promoting the true interests of their own
classes.
The most important of Marx's political pamphlets is the Address on the Civil War in France
1871.
It furiously attacks the French government which, backed by the immense majority of the
nation, was intent upon quelling the rebellion of the Paris Commune.
It recklessly columniates all the leading members of that government, calling them swindlers,
forgers and embezzlers.
Jules Favre, it charges, was living in concubinage with the wife of a dipsomaniac, and General
de Galifay profited from the alleged prostitution of his wife.
In short, the pamphlet set the pattern for the defamation tactics of the socialist press,
which the Marxians indignantly chastised as one of the worst excrescences of capitalism
when the tabloid press adopted it.
All these slanderous lies, however reprehensible, may be interpreted as partisan stratagems in
the implacable war against bourgeois civilization.
They are at least not incompatible with Marxian epistemological principles, but it is another
thing to question the expediency of the bourgeois policy from the standpoint of the class interests
of the bourgeoisie.
The Address maintains that the policy of the French bourgeoisie has unmasked the essential
teachings of its own ideology, the only purpose of which is to delay the class struggle.
Henceforth it will no longer be possible for the class rule of the bourgeoisie to hide
in a nationalist uniform.
Henceforth there will no longer be any question of peace or armistice between the workers
and their exploiters.
The battle will be resumed again and again and there can be no doubt about the final
victory of the working man.
It must be noted that these observations were made with regard to a situation in which the
majority of the French people had only to choose between unconditional surrender to
a small minority of revolutionaries or fighting them.
Neither Marx nor anybody else had ever expected that the majority of a nation would yield
without resistance to armed aggression on the part of a minority.
Still more important is the fact that Marx, in these observations, ascribes to the policies
adopted by the French bourgeoisie a decisive influence upon the course of events.
In this, he contradicts all his other writings.
In the Communist Manifesto, he had announced the implacable and relentless class struggle
without any regard to the defense tactics the bourgeois may resort to.
He had deduced the inevitability of this struggle from the class situation of the exploiters
and that of the exploited.
There is no room in the Marxian system for the assumption that the policies adopted by
the bourgeoisie could in any way affect the emergence of the class struggle and its outcome.
If it is true that one class, the French bourgeoisie of 1871, was in a position to choose between
Conducive to the real interests of a class meet with approval on the part of those who
direct the policies of the class.
It may happen that different ideas direct those policies and thus get an influence upon
the course of events.
But then it is not true that what counts in history are only interests and that ideas
are merely an ideological superstructure uniquely determined by these interests.
It becomes imperative to scrutinize ideas in order to sift those which are really beneficial
to the interests of the class concerned from those which are not.
It becomes necessary to discuss conflicting ideas with the methods of logical reasoning.
The makeshift by means of which Marx wanted to outlaw such dispassionate weighing of the
pros and cons of definite ideas breaks down.
The way toward an examination of the merits and demerits of socialism which Marx wanted
to Prohibit as Unscientific is Reopened.
Another important address of Marx was his paper of 1865, Value, Price, and Profit.
In this document, Marx criticizes the traditional policies of the labor unions.
They should abandon their conservative motto, a fair day's wages for a fair day's work,
and ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, abolition of the
wages system.
This is obviously a controversy about which kind of policy best serves the class interests
of the workers.
Marx in this case deviates from his usual procedure of branding all his proletarian
opponents traders.
He implicitly admits that there can prevail dissent even among honest and sincere champions
of the class interests of the workers and that such differences must be settled by debating
the issue.
Perhaps on second thought he himself discovered that the way he had dealt with the problem
The theme involved was incompatible with all his dogmas, for he did not have printed this paper, which he had read on June 26th, 1865, in the General Council of the International Workingmen's Association. It was first published in 1898 by one of his daughters.
The theme we are scrutinizing is not Marx's failure to cling consistently to his own doctrine
and his lapses into ways of thinking incompatible with it.
We have to examine the tenability of the Marxian doctrine and must therefore turn to the peculiar
connotation the term interests has in the context of this doctrine.
Every individual, and for that matter every group of individuals, aims in acting at the
the Substitution of a State of Affairs that suits him better for a state of affairs that
he considers less satisfactory.
Without any regard to the qualification of these two states of affairs from any other
point of view, we may say in this sense that he pursues his own interests.
But the question of what is more desirable and what is less is decided by the acting
individual.
It is the outcome of choosing among various possible solutions.
It is a judgment of value.
It is determined by the individual's ideas about the effects these various states may
have upon his own well-being.
But it ultimately depends upon the value he attaches to these anticipated effects.
If we keep this in mind, it is not sensible to declare that ideas are a product of interests.
Ideas tell a man what his interests are.
At a later date, looking upon his past actions, the individual may form the opinion that he
He is erred, and that another mode of acting would have served his own interests better.
But this does not mean that at the critical instant in which he acted he did not act according
to his interests, he acted according to what he, at that time, considered would serve his
interests best.
If an unaffected observer looks upon another man's action, he may think, This fellow errs.
What he does will not serve what he considers to be his interest.
Another way of acting would be more suitable for attaining the ends he aims at.
In this sense, a historian can say today, or a judicious contemporary could say in 1939.
In invading Poland, Hitler and the Nazis made a mistake.
The invasion harmed what they considered to be their interests.
Such criticism is sensible so long as it deals only with the means and not with the ultimate
ends of an action.
The choice of ultimate ends is a judgment of value solely dependent on the judging individual's
valuation.
All that another man can say about it is, I would have made a different choice.
If a Roman had said to a Christian doomed to be lacerated by wild beasts in the circus,
''You will best serve your interests by bowing down and worshipping the statue of our Divine
Emperor,'' the Christian would have answered, ''My prime interest is to comply with the precepts
of My Creed.
But Marxism, as a philosophy of history, claiming to know the ends which men are bound to aim
at, employs the term interests with a different connotation.
The interests it refers to are not those chosen by men on the ground of judgments of value.
They are the ends the material productive forces are aiming at.
These forces aim at the establishment of socialism.
They use the proletarians as a means for the realization of this end.
The superhuman material productive forces pursue their own interests, independently
of the will of mortal men.
The proletarian class is merely a tool in their hands.
The actions of the class are not its own actions, but those which the material productive forces
perform in using the class as an instrument without a will of its own.
The class interests to which Marx refers are in fact the interests of the material productive
forces which want to be freed from the fetters upon their development.
Interests of this kind, of course, do not depend upon the ideas of ordinary men.
They are determined exclusively by the ideas of the man Marx, who generated both the phantom
of the material productive forces and the anthropomorphic image of their interests.
In the world of reality, life, and human action, there is no such thing as interests independent
of ideas preceding them temporally and logically.
What a man considers his interest is the result of his ideas.
If there is any sense in the proposition that the interests of the proletarians would be
best served by socialism, it is this.
The ends which the individual proletarians are aiming at will be best achieved by socialism.
Such a proposition requires proof.
It is vain to substitute for such a proof the recourse to an arbitrarily contrived system
of philosophy of history.
All this could never occur to Marx because he was engrossed by the idea that human interests
are uniquely and entirely determined by the biological nature of the human body.
Man, as he saw it, is exclusively interested in the procurement of the largest quantity
of tangible goods.
There is no qualitative, only a quantitative problem in the supply of goods and services.
Wants do not depend on ideas but solely on physiological conditions.
Blinded by this preconception, Marx ignored the fact that one of the problems of production
is to decide what kind of goods are to be produced.
with animals and with primitive men on the verge of starvation, it is certainly true
that nothing counts but the quantity of edible things they can secure.
There is no need to point out that conditions are entirely different for men even for those
in the earliest stages of civilization.
Civilized man is faced with the problem of choosing among the satisfactions of various
needs and among various modes of satisfying the same need.
His interests are diversified and are determined by the ideas that influence his choosing.
One does not serve the interests of a man who wants a new coat by giving him a pair
of shoes or those of a man who wants to hear a Beethoven symphony by giving him admission
to a boxing match.
It is ideas that are responsible for the fact that the interests of people are disparate.
Incidentally, it may be mentioned that this misconstruing of human wants and interests
prevented Marx and other socialists from comprehending the distinction between freedom and slavery,
between the condition of a man who himself decides how to spend his income and that of
a man whom a paternal authority supplies with those things which, as the authority thinks,
he needs.
In the market economy, the consumers choose and thereby determine the quantity and the
quality of the goods produced.
Under socialism, the authority takes care of these matters.
In the eyes of Marx and the Marxians, there is no substantial difference between these
two methods of want satisfaction, it is of no consequence who chooses, the paltry individual
for himself or the authority for all its subjects.
They fail to realize that the authority does not give its wards what they want to get,
but what, according to the opinion of the authority, they ought to get.
If a man who wants to get the Bible gets the Koran instead, he is no longer free.
But even if for the sake of argument we were to admit that there is uncertainty neither
concerning the kind of goods people are asking for, nor concerning the most expedient technological
methods of producing them, there remains the conflict between interests in the short run
and those in the long run.
Here again the decision depends on ideas.
It is judgments of value that determine the amount of time preference attached to the
value of present goods as against that of future goods.
Should one consume or accumulate capital?
And how far should capital depletion or accumulation go?
Instead of dealing with all these problems, Marx contented himself with the dogma that
socialism will be an earthly paradise in which everybody will get all he needs.
Of course, if one starts from this dogma, one can quietly declare that the interests
of everybody, whatever they may be, will be best served under socialism.
In the land of cocaine, people will no longer need any ideas, will no longer have to resort
to any judgments of value, will no longer think and act.
They will only open their mouths to let the roast pigeons fly in.
In the world of reality, the conditions of which are the only object of the scientific
search for truth, ideas determine what people consider to be their interests.
There is no such thing as interests that could be independent of ideas.
It is ideas that determine what people consider as their interests.
Free men do not act in accordance with their interests.
They act in accordance with what they believe furthers their interests.
7.
The Class Interests of the Bourgeoisie
One of the starting points of the thinking of Karl Marx was the dogma that capitalism,
while utterly detrimental to the working class, is favorable to the class interests of the
bourgeoisie and that socialism, while thwarting only the unfair claims of the bourgeoisie,
is highly beneficial to the whole of mankind. These were ideas developed by the French communists
and socialists and disclosed to the German public in 1842 by Lorenz von Stein in his
voluminous book Socialism and Communism in Present-day France. Without any qualms, Marx
adopted this doctrine and all that was implied in it. It never occurred to him that its fundamental
Social Dogma might require a demonstration and the concepts it employs a definition.
He never defined the concepts of a social class and of class interests and their conflicts.
He never explained why socialism serves the class interests of the proletarians and the
true interests of the whole of mankind better than any other system.
This attitude has been up to our time the characteristic mark of all socialists.
We simply take it for granted that life under socialism will be blissful. Whoever dares to
ask for reasons is by this very demand unmasked as a bribed apologist of the selfish class
interests of the exploiters. The Marxian philosophy of history teaches that what brings about
the coming of socialism is the operation of the imminent laws of capitalistic production
itself. With the inexorability of a law of nature, capitalistic production begets its
Own Negation.
As no social formation ever disappears before all the productive forces are developed for
which it has room, capitalism must run its full course before the time comes for the
emergence of socialism.
The free evolution of capitalism, not upset by any political interference, is therefore,
from the Marxian point of view, highly beneficial to the, we would have to say, rightly understood
or Long-Term Class Interests of the Proletarians.
With the progress of capitalism on the way to its maturity and consequently to its collapse,
says the Communist Manifesto, the laborer sinks deeper and deeper.
He becomes a pauper.
But seen sub specie aeternitatis, from the point of view of mankind's destination and
the long-run interests of the proletariat, this mass of misery, oppression, slavery,
Degradation and Exploitation is in fact to be regarded as a step forward on the road
toward eternal bliss.
It appears therefore not only vain but manifestly contrary to the rightly understood interests
of the working class to indulge in necessarily futile attempts to improve the wage earner's
conditions through reforms within the framework of capitalism.
Hence, Marx rejected labor union endeavors to raise wage rates and to shorten the hours
of work.
The most orthodox of all Marxian parties, the German Social Democrats, voted in the
80s in the Reichstag against all measures of Bismarck's famous Sozialpolitik, including
its most spectacular feature, Social Security.
Likewise, in the opinion of the Communists, the American New Deal was just a foredoomed
Scheme to Salvage Dying Capitalism by Postponing its Breakdown and Thereby the Appearance
of the Socialist Millennium.
If employers oppose what is commonly called pro-labor legislation, they are consequently
not guilty of fighting what Marx considered to be the true interests of the proletarian
class.
On the contrary, in virtually freeing economic evolution from the fetters by means of which
Ignorant petty bourgeois, bureaucrats and such utopian and humanitarian pseudo-socialists
as the Fabians plan to slow it down, they are serving the cause of labor and socialism.
The very selfishness of the exploiters turns into a boon for the exploited and for the
whole of mankind.
Would not Marx, if he had been able to follow his own ideas to their ultimate logical consequences,
had been tempted to say, with Mandeville, private vices, public benefits, or with Adam
Smith, that the rich are led by an invisible hand, in such a way that they, without intending
it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society.
However, Marx was always anxious to bring his reasoning to an end, before the point
beyond which its inherent contradictions would have become manifest.
In this regard, his followers copied their master's attitude.
The bourgeois, both capitalists and entrepreneurs, say these inconsistent disciples of Marx,
are interested in the preservation of the laissez-faire system.
They are opposed to all attempts to alleviate the lot of the most numerous, most useful,
and most exploited class of men.
They are intent upon stopping progress.
They are reactionaries, committed to the, of course, hopeless task of turning history's
clock back.
Whatever one may think of these passionate effusions, repeated daily by newspapers, politicians
and governments, one cannot deny that they are incompatible with the essential tenets
of Marxism.
From a consistent Marxian point of view, the champions of what is called pro-labor legislation
are reactionary petty bourgeois, while those whom the Marxians call labor-baiters are progressive
harbingers of the bliss to come.
In their ignorance of all business problems, the Marxians fail to see that the present-day
bourgeois, those who are already wealthy capitalists and entrepreneurs, are in their capacity as
bourgeois not selfishly interested in the preservation of laissez-faire.
Under laissez-faire, their eminent position is daily threatened anew by the ambitions
of impecunious newcomers.
Laws that put obstacles in the way of talented upstarts are detrimental to the interests of
the consumers, but they protect those who have already established their position in
business against the competition of intruders.
In making it more difficult for a businessman to reap profit and in taxing away the greater
part of the profits made, they prevent the accumulation of capital by newcomers and thus
must remove the inducement that impels old firms toward the utmost exertion in serving
the customers.
Measures sheltering the less efficient against the competition of the more efficient and
laws that aim at reducing or confiscating profits are from the Marxian point of view
conservative, nay, reactionary.
They tend to prevent technological improvement and economic progress and to preserve inefficiency
and backwardness.
If the New Deal had started in 1900 and not in 1933, the American consumer would have
been deprived of many things today provided by industries which grew in the first decades
of the century from insignificant beginnings to national importance and mass production.
The culmination of this misconstruction of industrial problems is the animosity displayed
against big business and against the efforts of smaller concerns to become bigger. Public
Ludwig opinion, under the spell of Marxism, considers bigness one of the worst vices of
business and condones every scheme devised to curb or to hurt big business by government
action.
There is no comprehension of the fact that it is solely bigness in business which makes
it possible to supply the masses with all those products the present-day American common
man does not want to do without.
Luxury goods, for the few, can be produced in small shops.
The goods for the many require big business.
Those politicians, professors and union bosses who curse big business are fighting for a
lower standard of living.
They are certainly not furthering the interests of the proletarians.
And they are, precisely also from the point of view of the Marxian doctrine, ultimately
enemies of progress and of improvement of the conditions of the workers.
8. THE CRITICS OF MARXISM
The materialism of Marx and Engels differs radically from the ideas of classical materialism.
It depicts human thoughts, choices, and actions as determined by the material productive forces,
tools, and machines. Marx and Engels fail to see that tools and machines are themselves
products of the operation of the human mind. Even if there are sophisticated attempts to
to Describe All Spiritual and Intellectual Phenomena, Which They Call Superstructural.
As produced by the material productive forces had been successful, they would only have
traced these phenomena back to something which in itself is a spiritual and intellectual
phenomenon.
Their reasoning moves in a circle.
Their alleged materialism is in fact no materialism at all.
It provides merely a verbal solution of the problems involved.
Occasionally, even Marx and Engels were aware of the fundamental inadequacy of their doctrine.
When Engels, at the grave of Marx, summed up what he considered to be the quintessence
of his friend's achievements, he did not mention the material productive forces at all.
Said Engels, As Darwin discovered the law of evolution of organic nature, Marx discovered
the law of mankind's historical evolution.
That is the simple fact, hitherto hidden beneath ideological overgrowth, that man must first
of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing before they can pursue politics, science,
art, religion, and the like.
That consequently, the production of the immediately required foodstuffs, and therewith the stage
of economic evolution attained by a people or an epoch, constitute the foundation out
of which the governmental institutions, the ideas about right and wrong, art, and even
Even the religious ideas of men have been developed and by means of which they must
be explained, not as hitherto had been done the other way round.
Certainly no man was more competent than Engels to provide an authoritative interpretation
of dialectic materialism, but if Engels was right in this obituary, then the whole of
Marxian materialism fades away.
It is reduced to a truism known to everybody from time immemorial and never contested by
anybody.
It says no more than the worn-out aphorism, primum vivere de inde filosofari.
As an heuristic trick, Engels's interpretation turned out very well.
As soon as somebody begins to unmask the absurdities and contradictions of dialectical materialism,
The Marxians retort, Do you deny that men must first of all eat? Do you deny that men
are interested in improving the material conditions of their existence? Since nobody wants to
contest these truisms, they conclude that all the teachings of Marxian materialism are
unassailable. And hosts of pseudo-philosophers fail to see through this non sequitur.
The main target of Marx's rancorous attacks was the Prussian state of the Hohenzollern
Dynasty. He hated this regime not because it was opposed to socialism, but precisely
because it was inclined to accept socialism. While his rival, LaSalle, toyed with the idea
of realizing socialism in cooperation with the Prussian government led by Bismarck, Marx's
International Working Men's Association sought to supplant the Hohenzollern. Since in Prussia,
the Protestant Church was subject to the government and was administered by government officials,
Marx never tired of vilifying the Christian religion too. Anti-Christianism became all
the more a dogma of Marxism in that the countries whose intellectuals first were converted to
Marxism were Russia and Italy. In Russia, the church was even more dependent on the
government than in Prussia. In the eyes of the Italians of the 19th century, anti-Catholic
bias was the mark of all who opposed the restoration of the Pope's secular rule and the disintegration
of the Newly Won National Unity.
The Christian churches and sects did not fight socialism.
Step by step they accepted its essential political and social ideas.
Today they are, with but few exceptions, outspoken in rejecting capitalism and advocating either
socialism or interventionist policies which must inevitably result in the establishment
of socialism.
But of course, no Christian church can ever acquiesce in a brand of socialism which is
is hostile to Christianity and aims at its suppression.
The churches are implacably opposed to the anti-Christian aspects of Marxism.
They try to distinguish between their own program of social reform and the Marxian program,
the inherent viciousness of Marxism they consider to be its materialism and atheism.
However, in fighting Marxian materialism, the apologists of religion have entirely missed
the point.
Many of them looked upon materialism as an ethical doctrine teaching that men ought only
to strive after satisfaction of the needs of their bodies and after a life of pleasure
and revelry, and ought not to bother about anything else.
What they advance against this ethical materialism has no reference to the Marxian doctrine and
no bearing on the issue and dispute.
No more sensible are the objections raised to Marxian materialism by those who pick out
definite historical events, such as the rise of the Christian creed, the crusades, the
religious wars, and triumphantly asserts that no materialist interpretation of them could
be provided.
Every change in conditions affects the structure of demand and supply of various material things
and thereby the short-run interests of some groups of people.
It is therefore possible to show that there were some groups who profited in the short-run
and others who were prejudiced in the short run.
Hence, the advocates of Marxism are always in a position to point out that class interests
were involved and thus to annul the objections raised.
Of course, this method of demonstrating the correctness of the materialist interpretation
of history is entirely wrong.
The question is not whether group interests were affected.
They are necessarily always affected, at least in the short run.
The question is whether the striving after lucre of the groups concerned was the cause
of the event under discussion.
For instance, were the short-run interests of the munitions industry instrumental in bringing
about the bellicosity and the wars of our age?
In dealing with such problems, the Marxians never mention that where there are interests
pro, there are necessarily also interests con.
They would have to explain why the latter did not prevail over the former.
But the idealist critics of Marxism were too dull to expose any of the fallacies of dialectical
materialism.
They did not even notice that the Marxians resorted to their class interest interpretation
only in dealing with phenomena which were generally condemned as bad, never in dealing
with phenomena of which all people approve.
If one ascribes warring to the machinations of munitions capital and alcoholism to machinations
In the early days of the liquor trade, it would be consistent to ascribe cleanliness
to the designs of the soap manufacturers and the flowering of literature and education
to the maneuvering of the publishing and printing industries.
But neither the Marxians nor their critics ever thought of it.
The outstanding fact in all this is that the Marxian doctrine of historical change has
never received any judicious critique.
It could triumph because its adversaries never disclosed its fallacies and inherent contradictions.
How entirely people have misunderstood Marxian materialism is shown in the common practice
of lumping together Marxism and Freud's psychoanalysis. Actually no sharper contrast can be thought
of than that between these two doctrines. Materialism aims at reducing mental phenomena
to Material Causes. Psychoanalysis, on the contrary, deals with mental phenomena as with
an autonomous field. While traditional psychiatry and neurology tried to explain all pathological
conditions with which they were concerned as caused by definite pathological conditions
of some bodily organs, psychoanalysis succeeded in demonstrating that abnormal states of the
The body are sometimes produced by mental factors.
This discovery was the achievement of Charcot and of Joseph Breuer, and it was the great
exploit of Sigmund Freud to build upon this foundation a comprehensive systematic discipline.
Psychoanalysis is the opposite of all brands of materialism.
If we look upon it not as a branch of pure knowledge but as a method of healing the sick,
Freud was a modest man. He did not make extravagant pretensions regarding the importance of his
contributions. He was very cautious in touching upon problems of philosophy and branches of
knowledge to the development of which he himself had not contributed. He did not venture to
attack any of the metaphysical propositions of materialism. He even went so far as to
To admit that one day science may succeed in providing a purely physiological explanation
of the phenomena psychoanalysis deals with.
Only so long as this does not happen, psychoanalysis appeared to him scientifically sound and practically
indispensable.
He was no less cautious in criticizing Marxian materialism.
He freely confessed his incompetence in this field.
But all this does not alter the fact that the psychoanalytical approach is essentially
and Substantially Incompatible with the Epistemology of Materialism.
Psychoanalysis stresses the role that the libido, the sexual impulse, plays in human
life.
This role had been neglected before by psychology as well as by all other branches of knowledge.
Psychoanalysis also explains the reasons for this neglect, but it by no means asserts that
sex is the only human urge seeking satisfaction and that all psychic phenomena are induced
by it.
Its preoccupation with sexual impulses arose from the fact that it started as a
therapeutical method and that most of the pathological conditions it had to deal
with are caused by the repression of sexual urges. The reason some authors
linked psychoanalysis and Marxism was that both were considered to be at
variance with theological ideas. However, with the passing of time, theological
schools and groups of various denominations are adopting a different
Evaluation of the Teachings of Freud.
They are not merely dropping their radical opposition as they have already done before
with regard to modern astronomical and geological achievements and the theories of phylogenetic
change in the structure of organisms.
They are trying to integrate psychoanalysis into the system and the practice of pastoral
theology.
They view the study of psychoanalysis as an important part of the training for the ministry.
Of course, few theologians would be prepared to endorse the interpretation of an eminent
Catholic historian of medicine, Professor Petro L. Entralgo, according to which Freud
has brought to full development some of the possibilities offered by Christianity.
As conditions are today, many defenders of the authority of the Church are guideless
and bewildered in their attitude toward philosophical and scientific problems. They condemn what
that they could or even should endorse.
In fighting spurious doctrines, they resort to untenable objections which, in the minds
of those who can discern the fallaciousness of the objections, rather strengthen the tendency
to believe that the attacked doctrines are sound.
Being unable to discover the real flaw in false doctrines, these apologists for religion
may finally end by approving them.
This explains the curious fact that there are nowadays tendencies in Christian writings
to Adopt Marxian Dialectical Materialism. Thus, a Presbyterian theologian, Professor
Alexander Miller, believes that Christianity can reckon with the truth in historical materialism
and with the fact of class struggle. He not only suggests, as many eminent leaders of
various Christian denominations have done before him, that the church should adopt the
essential principles of Marxian politics. He thinks the church ought to accept Marxism
as the Essence of a Scientific Sociology.
How odd to reconcile with the Nicene Creed a doctrine teaching that religious ideas are
the superstructure of the material productive forces.
9.
Marxian Materialism and Socialism
Like many frustrated intellectuals and like almost all contemporary Prussian noblemen,
Social Servants, Teachers and Writers, Marx was driven by a fanatical hatred of business
and businessmen.
He turned toward socialism because he considered it the worst punishment that could be inflicted
upon the odious bourgeois.
At the same time, he realized that the only hope for socialism was to prevent further
discussion of its pros and cons.
People must be induced to accept it emotionally without asking questions about its effects.
In order to achieve this, Marx adapted Hegel's philosophy of history, the official creed
of the schools from which he had graduated.
Hegel had arrogated to himself the faculty of revealing the Lord's hidden plans to the
public.
There was no reason why Dr. Marx should stand back and withhold from the people the good
tidings that an inner voice had communicated to him.
Socialism, this voice announced, is bound to come because this is the course that destiny
is steering.
There is no use indulging a debate about the blessings or ills to be expected from a socialist
or communist mode of production. Such debates would be reasonable only if men were free
to choose between socialism and some alternative. Besides, being later in the succession of
stages of historical evolution, socialism is also necessarily a higher and better stage,
and all doubts about the benefits to be derived from it are futile.
The scheme of philosophy of history that describes human history as culminating and ending in
socialism is the essence of Marxism, is Karl Marx's main contribution to the pro-socialist
ideology.
Like all similar schemes, including that of Hegel, it was begot by intuition.
Marx called it science, wissenschaft, because in his day no other epithet could give a doctrine
higher prestige.
In pre-Marxian ages it was not customary to call philosophies of history scientific. Nobody
ever applied the term science to the prophecies of Daniel, the revelation of St. John, or
the writings of Joachim of Flora. For the same reasons Marx called his doctrine materialistic.
In the environment of left-wing Hegelianism in which Marx lived before he settled in London,
Materialism was the accepted philosophy. It was taken for granted that philosophy and
science admit of no treatment of the mind-body problem but that taught by materialism. Authors
who did not want to be anathematized by their set had to avoid being suspected of any concession
to idealism. Thus Marx was anxious to call his philosophy materialistic. In fact, as
has been pointed out earlier, his doctrine does not deal at all with the mind-body problem.
It does not raise the question of how the material productive forces come into existence
and how and why they change. Marx's doctrine is not a materialist but a technological interpretation
of history. But, from a political point of view, Marx did well in calling his doctrine
scientific and materialistic. These predicates lent it a reputation it would never have acquired
without them. Incidentally it must be noted that Marx and Engels made no effort to establish
Research, the validity of their technological interpretation of history.
In the earlier days of their careers as authors they enunciated their dogmas in clear-cut
challenging formulations such as the earlier quoted dictum about the hand mill and the
steam mill.
In later years they became more reserved and cautious.
After the death of Marx, Engels occasionally even made remarkable concessions to the bourgeois
and idealistic point of view.
But never did Marx or Engels or any of their numerous followers try to give any specifications
about the operation of a mechanism which would out of a definite state of the material productive
forces bring forth a definite juridical, political and spiritual superstructure.
Their famous philosophy never grew beyond the abrupt enunciation of a piquant apperçu.
The heuristic tricks of Marxism succeeded very well and enrolled hosts of pseudo-intellectuals
in the Ranks of Revolutionary Socialism.
But they did not discredit what economists had asserted about the disastrous consequences
of a socialist mode of production.
Marx had tabooed the analysis of the operation of a socialist system as utopian, that is,
in his terminology, as unscientific, and he as well as his successors smeared all authors
who defied this taboo.
Yet these tactics did not alter the fact that all Marx contributed to the discussion on
and Socialism was to disclose what an inner voice had told him, namely that the end and
aim of mankind's historical evolution is expropriation of the capitalists.
From the epistemological point of view, it must be emphasized that Marxian materialism
does not accomplish what a materialist philosophy claims to do.
It does not explain how definite thoughts and judgments of value originate in the human
mind.
The exposure of an untenable doctrine is not tantamount to confirmation of a doctrine conflicting
with it.
There is need to state this obvious fact, because many people have forgotten it.
The refutation of dialectical materialism implies, of course, invalidation of the Marxian
vindication of socialism.
But it does not demonstrate the truth of the assertions that socialism is unrealizable,
that it would destroy civilization and result in misery for all, and that its coming is
is not inevitable.
These propositions can be established only by economic analysis.
Marx and all those who sympathize with his doctrines have been aware that an economic
analysis of socialism will show the fallacy of the pro-socialist arguments.
The Marxists cling to historical materialism and stubbornly refuse to listen to its critics
because they want socialism for emotional reasons.