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NOTE 7. Dialectical Materialism

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7. Dialectical Materialism

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1. Dialectics and Marxism

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Dialectical Materialism as taught by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels is the most popular

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metaphysical doctrine of our age. It is today the official philosophy of the Soviet Empire

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and of all the schools of Marxism outside of this empire. It dominates the ideas of

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When Marx was a young man, two metaphysical doctrines whose teachings were incompatible

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with one another dominated German thought.

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One was Hegelian spiritualism, the official doctrine of the Prussian state and of the

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Prussian universities.

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The other was materialism, the doctrine of the opposition bent upon a revolutionary overthrow

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of the political system of Metternich and of Christian orthodoxy as well as of private

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property.

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Marx tried to blend the two into a compound in order to prove that socialism is bound

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to come with the inexorability of a law of nature.

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In the philosophy of Hegel logic, metaphysics and ontology are essentially identical.

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The process of real becoming is an aspect of the logical process of thinking.

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In grasping the laws of logic by a prioristic thinking, the mind acquires correct knowledge

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of reality.

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There is no road to truth but that provided by the study of logic.

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The peculiar principle of Hegel's logic is the dialectic method.

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Thinking takes a triadic way.

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It proceeds from thesis to antithesis, that is, the negation of the thesis, and from antithesis

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to synthesis, that is, the negation of the negation.

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The same trinal principle of thesis, antithesis and synthesis manifests itself in real becoming.

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For the only real thing in the universe is Geist, mind or spirit.

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Matter has its substance not in itself.

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Natural things are not for themselves.

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But Geist is for itself.

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What, apart from reason and divine action, is called reality is viewed in the light of

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philosophy, something rotten or inert which may seem but is not in itself real.

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No compromise is possible between this Hegelian idealism and any kind of materialism. Yet

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fascinated by the prestige Hegelianism enjoyed in the Germany of the 1840s, Marx and Engels

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were afraid to deviate too radically from the only philosophical system with which they

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and their contemporary countrymen were familiar. They were not audacious enough to discard

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Hegelianism entirely, as was done a few years later, even in Prussia. They preferred to

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to Appear as Continuators and Reformers of Hegel, not as iconoclastic dissenters.

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They boasted of having transformed and improved Hegelian dialectics, of having turned it upside

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down or, rather, of having put it on its feet.

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They did not realize that it was nonsensical to uproot dialectics from its idealistic ground

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and transplant it to a system that was labeled materialistic and empirical.

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Paul was consistent in assuming that the logical process is faithfully reflected in the process

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going on in what is commonly called reality. He did not contradict himself in applying

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the logical a priori to the interpretation of the universe, but it is different with

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a doctrine that indulges in a naive realism, materialism and empiricism. Such a doctrine

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ought to have no use for a scheme of interpretation that is derived not from experience but from

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a priori reasoning.

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Engels declared that dialectics is the science of the general laws of motion, of the external

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world as well as of human thinking, two series of laws which are substantially identical

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but in their manifestation different in so far as the human mind can apply them consciously,

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while in nature and hitherto also to a great extent in human history, they assert themselves

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in an unconscious way as external necessity in the midst of an infinite series of apparently

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contingent events.

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He himself, says Engels, had never had any doubts about this. His intensive preoccupation

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with mathematics and the natural sciences, to which he confesses to have devoted the

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greater part of eight years, was, he declares, obviously prompted only by the desire to test

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The Validity of the Laws of Dialectics in Detail in Specific Instances

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These studies led angles to startling discoveries. Thus he found that the whole of geology is

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a series of negated negations. Butterflies come into existence from the egg through negation

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of the egg, they are negated again as they die, and so on. The normal life of barley

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is this. The barley corn is negated and is supplanted by the barley plant, the negation

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of the corn. The plant grows, is fructified and produces again barley corns and as soon

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as these are ripe, the ear withers away, is negated. As a result of this negation of the

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negation, we have again the original barley corn, however not plainly single, but in a

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and a quantity ten, twenty or thirty times larger.

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It did not occur to Engels that he was merely playing with words.

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It is gratuitous pastime to apply the terminology of logic to the phenomena of reality.

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Propositions about phenomena, events and facts can be affirmed or negated, but not the phenomena,

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events and facts themselves.

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But if one is committed to such inappropriate and logically vicious metaphorical language,

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It is not less sensible to call the butterfly the affirmation of the egg than to call it

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its negation.

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Is not the emergence of the butterfly the self-assertion of the egg, the maturing of

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its inherent purpose, the perfection of its merely passing existence, the fulfillment

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of all its potentialities?

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Engels's method consisted in substituting the term negation for the term change.

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There is, however, no need to dwell longer upon the fallacy of integrating Hegelian dialectics

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into a philosophy that does not endorse Hegel's fundamental principle, the identity of logic

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and ontology, and does not radically reject the idea that anything could be learned from

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experience, for in fact dialectics plays a merely ornamental part in the constructions

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of marks and angles without substantially influencing the course of reasoning.

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2.

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THE MATERIAL PRODUCTIVE FORCES

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The essential concept of Marxian materialism is the material productive forces of society.

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These forces are the driving power producing all historical facts and changes.

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In the social production of their subsistence, men enter into certain relations, production

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relations, which are necessary and independent of their will and correspond to the prevailing

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Not the consciousness, the ideas and thoughts, of men that determines their being, existence,

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but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.

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At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come

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into contradiction with the existing production relations or, what is merely a juridical expression

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for them, with the property relations, the social system of property laws, within the

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and the frame of which they have hitherto operated.

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From having been forms of development of the productive forces, these relations turn into

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fetters of them.

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Then comes an epoch of social revolution.

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With the change in the economic foundation, the whole immense superstructure slowly or

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rapidly transforms itself.

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In reviewing such a transformation, one must always distinguish between the material transformation

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of the Economic Conditions of Production, which can be precisely ascertained with the

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method of the natural sciences and the juridical, political, religious, artistic or philosophical

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— in short, ideological — forms in which men become conscious, aware of this conflict

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and fight it out.

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Such an epoch of transformation can no more be judged according to its own consciousness

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No social formation ever disappears before all the productive forces have been developed

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for which its frame is broad enough, and new, higher production relations never appear before

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for the material conditions of their existence have been hatched out in the womb of the old

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society.

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Hence, mankind never sets itself tasks other than those it can solve, for closer observation

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will always discover that the task itself only emerges where the material conditions

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of its solution are already present or at least in the process of becoming.

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The most remarkable fact about this doctrine is that it does not provide a definition of

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of its Basic Concept, Material Productive Forces. Marx never told us what he had in

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mind in referring to the material productive forces. We have to deduce it from occasional

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historical exemplifications of his doctrine. The most outspoken of these incidental examples

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is to be found in his book, The Poverty of Philosophy, published in 1847 in French. It

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reads, The hand mill gives you feudal society, the steam mill, industrial capitalism.

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This means that the state of practical technological knowledge or the technological

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quality of the tools and machines used in production is to be considered the essential

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feature of the material productive forces, which uniquely determine the production relations

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and thereby the whole superstructure.

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The production technique is the real thing, the material being that ultimately determines

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the social, political and intellectual manifestations of human life.

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This interpretation is fully confirmed by all other examples provided by Marx and Engels

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and by the response every new technological advance roused in their minds.

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They welcomed it enthusiastically because they were convinced that each new invention

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brought them a step nearer the realization of their hopes, the coming of socialism. Marx

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and some of his followers at times also included natural resources in the notion of material

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productive forces, but these remarks were made only incidentally and were never elaborated,

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obviously because this would have led them into the doctrine that explains history as

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determined by the structure of the people's geographical environment.

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There have been, before marks and after marks, many historians and philosophers who emphasized

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the prominent role the improvement of technological methods of production has played in the history

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of civilization.

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A glance into the popular textbooks of history published in the last 150 years shows that

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their authors duly stressed the importance of new inventions and of the changes they

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brought about.

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They never contested the truism that material well-being is the indispensable condition

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of a nation's moral, intellectual, and artistic achievement.

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But what Marx says is entirely different.

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In this doctrine, the tools and machines are the ultimate thing, a material thing, that

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is to say, the material productive forces.

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Everything else is the necessary superstructure of this material basis.

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This fundamental thesis is open to three irrefutable objections.

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First, a technological invention is not something material.

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It is the product of a mental process, of reasoning and conceiving new ideas.

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The tools and machines may be called material, but the operation of the mind which created

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them is certainly spiritual.

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Marxian materialism does not trace back super structural and ideological phenomena to material

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and Social Roots. It explains these phenomena as caused by an

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essentially mental process, namely, invention. It assigns to this mental process, which it

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falsely labels an original nature-given material fact, the exclusive power to beget all other

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social and intellectual phenomena. But it does not attempt to explain how inventions

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come to pass. Second, mere invention and designing of technologically new implements are not

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not sufficient to produce them.

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What is required, in addition to technological knowledge and planning, is capital previously

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accumulated out of saving.

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Every step forward on the road toward technological improvement presupposes the requisite capital.

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The nations today, called underdeveloped, know what is needed to improve their backward

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apparatus of production.

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Plans for the construction of all the machines they want to acquire are ready or could be

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be completed in a very short time, only lack of capital holds them up.

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But saving and capital accumulation presuppose a social structure in which it is possible

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to save and to invest.

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The production relations are thus not the product of the material productive forces

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but, on the contrary, the indispensable condition of their coming into existence.

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Capitalists of course cannot help admitting that capital accumulation is one of the most

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indispensable conditions for the evolution of industrial production.

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Part of his most voluminous treatise, Das Kapital, provides a history, wholly distorted,

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of capital accumulation.

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But as soon as he comes to his doctrine of materialism, he forgets all he said about

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this subject.

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Then, the tools and machines are created by spontaneous generation, as it were.

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Furthermore, it must be remembered that the utilization of machines presupposes social

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cooperation under the division of labor.

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No machine can be constructed and put into use under conditions in which there is no

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division of labor at all, or only a rudimentary stage of it.

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Division of labor means social cooperation, in other words, social bonds between men,

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Society How then is it possible to explain the existence

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of society by tracing it back to the material productive forces which themselves can only

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appear in the frame of a previously existing social nexus?

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Marx could not comprehend this problem.

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He accused Proudhon, who had described the use of machines as a consequence of the division

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of labor, of ignorance of history.

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It is a distortion of fact, he shouted, to start with the division of labor and to deal

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with machines only later.

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For the machines are a productive force, not a social production relation, not an economic

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category.

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Here we are faced with a stubborn dogmatism that does not shrink from any absurdity.

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We may summarize the Marxian doctrine in this way.

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In the beginning there are the material productive forces, that is, the technological equipment

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of human productive efforts, the tools and machines.

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No question concerning their origin is permitted.

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They are, that is all.

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We must assume that they are dropped from heaven.

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These material productive forces compel men to enter into definite production relations

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which are independent of their wills.

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These production relations, farther on, determine society's juridical and political superstructure

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as well as all religious, artistic, and philosophical ideas.

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3.

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THE CLASS STRUGGLE

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As will be pointed out shortly, any philosophy of history must demonstrate the mechanism

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by means of which the supreme agency that directs the course of all human affairs induces

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It requires individuals to walk in precisely the ways which are bound to lead mankind toward

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the goal set.

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In Marx's system, the doctrine of the class struggle is designed to answer this question.

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The inherent weakness of this doctrine is that it deals with classes and not with individuals.

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What has to be shown is how the individuals are induced to act in such a way that mankind

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finally reaches the point the productive forces want it to attain.

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Marx answers that consciousness of the interests of their class determines the conduct of the

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individuals.

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It still remains to be explained why the individuals give the interests of their class preference

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over their own interests.

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We may for the moment refrain from asking how the individual learns what the genuine

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interests of his class are.

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But even Marx cannot help admitting that a conflict exists between the interests of an

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individual and those of the class to which he belongs.

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Thus, we read in the Communist Manifesto, the organization of the proletarians into

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a class and consequently into a political party is at every instant again shattered

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by the competition between the workers themselves.

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He distinguishes between those proletarians who are class-conscious, that is, place the

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to wipe out the legal disabilities of their own caste.

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All slaves, for instance, are united in having a stake in the abolition of slavery.

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But no such conflicts are present in a society in which all citizens are equal before the law.

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No logical objection can be advanced against distinguishing various classes among the members of such a society.

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Any classification is logically permissible, however arbitrarily the mark of distinction

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may be chosen.

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But it is nonsensical to classify the members of a capitalistic society according to their

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position in the framework of the social division of labor, and then to identify these classes

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with the castes of a status society.

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In a status society, the individual inherits his caste membership from his parents.

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He remains through all his life in his caste, and his children are born as members of it.

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Only in exceptional cases can good luck raise a man into a higher caste.

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For the immense majority, birth unalterably determines their station in life.

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The classes which Marx distinguishes in a capitalistic society are different.

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Their membership is fluctuating.

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Class affiliation is not hereditary.

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It is assigned to each individual by a daily repeated plebiscite, as it were, of all the

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people.

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The public, in spending and buying, determines who should own and run the plants, who should

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play the parts in the theater performances, who should work in the factories and mines.

241
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Rich men become poor and poor men rich.

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The heirs, as well as those who themselves have acquired wealth, must try to hold their

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own by defending their assets against the competition of already established firms and

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of ambitious newcomers.

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In the unhampered market economy, there are no privileges, no protection of vested interests,

246
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no barriers preventing anybody from striving after any prize.

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Access to any of the Marxian classes is free to everybody.

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The members of each class compete with one another.

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They are not united by a common class interest and not opposed to the members of other classes

250
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by being allied either in the defense of a common privilege which those wronged by it

251
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want to see abolished or in the attempt to abolish an institutional disability which

252
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those deriving advantage from it want to preserve.

253
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The laissez-faire liberals asserted, If the old laws establishing status privileges and

254
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and Disabilities are repealed and no new practices of the same character, such as tariffs, subsidies,

255
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discriminatory taxation, indulgence granted for non-governmental agencies like churches,

256
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unions and so on to use coercion and intimidation, are introduced, there is equality of all citizens

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before the law.

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Nobody is hampered in his aspirations and ambitions by any legal obstacles.

259
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is free to compete for any social position or function for which his personal abilities

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qualify him.

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The Communists denied that this is the way capitalistic society as organized under the

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liberal system of equality before the law is operating.

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In their eyes, private ownership of the means of production conveys to the owners, the bourgeois

264
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or capitalists in Marx's terminology, a privilege virtually not different from those once accorded

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to the feudal lords.

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The bourgeois revolution has not abolished privilege and discrimination against the masses.

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It has, says the Marxian, merely supplanted the old ruling and exploiting class of noblemen

268
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by a new ruling and exploiting class, the bourgeoisie.

269
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The exploited class, the proletarians, did not profit from this reform.

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They have changed masters, but they have remained oppressed and exploited.

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What is needed is a new and final revolution which in abolishing private ownership of the

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means of production will establish the classless society.

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This socialist or communist doctrine fails entirely to take into account the essential

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difference between the conditions of a status or caste society and those of a capitalistic

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society.

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Feudal property came into existence either by conquest or by donation on the part of

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a conqueror.

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It came to an end either by revocation of the donation or by conquest on the part of

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a more powerful conqueror.

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It was property by the grace of God because it was ultimately derived from military victory

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which the humility or conceit of the princes ascribed to special intervention of the Lord.

282
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The owners of feudal property did not depend on the market.

283
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They did not serve the consumers.

284
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In the range of their property rights they were real lords, but it is quite different

285
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with the capitalists and entrepreneurs of a market economy.

286
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They acquire and enlarge their property through the services they have rendered to the consumers

287
00:24:41.340 --> 00:24:46.860
and they can retain it only by serving daily again in the best possible way.

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This difference is not eradicated by metaphorically calling a successful manufacturer of spaghetti

289
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the spaghetti king.

290
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Marx never embarked on the hopeless task of refuting the economist's description of the

291
00:25:00.460 --> 00:25:02.500
working of the market economy.

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Instead, he was eager to show that capitalism must in the future lead to very unsatisfactory

293
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conditions.

294
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He undertook to demonstrate that the operation of capitalism must inevitably result in the

295
00:25:15.820 --> 00:25:20.180
concentration of wealth and the possession of an ever-diminishing number of capitalists

296
00:25:20.180 --> 00:25:27.100
on the one hand, and in the progressive impoverishment of the immense majority on the other hand.

297
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In the execution of this task, he started from the spurious iron law of wages, according

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to which the average wage rate is that quantum of the means of subsistence which is absolutely

299
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required to enable the laborer to barely survive and to rear progeny.

300
00:25:43.140 --> 00:25:49.260
This alleged law has long since been entirely discredited, and even the most bigoted Marxians

301
00:25:49.260 --> 00:25:51.180
have dropped it.

302
00:25:51.180 --> 00:25:55.820
But even if one were prepared for the sake of argument to call the law correct, it is

303
00:25:55.820 --> 00:26:00.460
obvious that it can by no means serve as the basis of a demonstration that the evolution

304
00:26:00.460 --> 00:26:05.460
of capitalism leads to progressive impoverishment of the wage earners.

305
00:26:05.460 --> 00:26:10.300
If wage rates under capitalism are always so low that for psychological reasons they

306
00:26:10.300 --> 00:26:15.520
cannot drop any further without wiping out the whole class of wage earners, it is impossible

307
00:26:15.520 --> 00:26:19.840
It is possible to maintain the thesis of the Communist Manifesto that the laborer sinks

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00:26:19.840 --> 00:26:24.320
deeper and deeper with the progress of industry.

309
00:26:24.320 --> 00:26:30.840
Like all Marx's other arguments, this demonstration is contradictory and self-defeating.

310
00:26:30.840 --> 00:26:35.640
Marx boasted of having discovered the imminent laws of capitalist evolution.

311
00:26:35.640 --> 00:26:40.520
The most important of these laws he considered the law of progressive impoverishment of the

312
00:26:40.520 --> 00:26:42.480
wage-earning masses.

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It is the operation of this law that brings about the final collapse of capitalism and

314
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the emergence of socialism.

315
00:26:49.640 --> 00:26:54.200
When this law is seen to be spurious, the foundation is pulled from under both Marx's

316
00:26:54.200 --> 00:26:58.560
system of economics and his theory of capitalist evolution.

317
00:26:58.560 --> 00:27:03.600
Incidentally, we have to establish the fact that in capitalistic countries the standard

318
00:27:03.600 --> 00:27:09.300
of living of the wage earners has improved in an unprecedented and undreamt of way since

319
00:27:09.300 --> 00:27:14.900
This is the publication of the Communist Manifesto and the first volume of Das Kapital.

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00:27:14.900 --> 00:27:19.940
Marx misrepresented the operation of the capitalist system in every respect.

321
00:27:19.940 --> 00:27:25.580
The corollary of the alleged progressive impoverishment of the wage earners is the concentration of

322
00:27:25.580 --> 00:27:30.860
all riches in the hands of a class of capitalist exploiters whose membership is continually

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00:27:30.860 --> 00:27:32.360
shrinking.

324
00:27:32.360 --> 00:27:36.540
In dealing with this issue, Marx failed to take into account the fact that the evolution

325
00:27:36.540 --> 00:27:41.060
The growth of big business units does not necessarily involve the concentration of wealth

326
00:27:41.060 --> 00:27:42.960
in a few hands.

327
00:27:42.960 --> 00:27:48.420
The big business enterprises are almost without exception corporations, precisely because

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00:27:48.420 --> 00:27:52.700
they are too big for single individuals to own them entirely.

329
00:27:52.700 --> 00:27:58.380
The growth of business units has far outstripped the growth of individual fortunes.

330
00:27:58.380 --> 00:28:03.500
The assets of a corporation are not identical with the wealth of its shareholders.

331
00:28:03.500 --> 00:28:09.020
A considerable part of these assets, the equivalent of preferred stock and bonds issued and of

332
00:28:09.020 --> 00:28:15.220
loans raised, belong virtually, if not in the sense of the legal concept of ownership,

333
00:28:15.220 --> 00:28:22.100
to other people, namely, to owners of bonds and preferred stock and to creditors.

334
00:28:22.100 --> 00:28:26.500
Where these securities are held by savings banks and insurance companies and these loans

335
00:28:26.500 --> 00:28:31.220
were granted by such banks and companies, the virtual owners are the people who have

336
00:28:31.220 --> 00:28:52.840
Capitalism is essentially mass production to fill the needs of the masses, but Marx

337
00:28:52.840 --> 00:28:57.620
always labored under the deceptive conception that the workers are toiling for the sole

338
00:28:57.620 --> 00:29:00.620
and the Gold Benefit of an Upper Class of Idle Parasites.

339
00:29:00.620 --> 00:29:07.620
He did not see that the workers themselves consume by far the greater part of all the consumer's goods turned out.

340
00:29:07.620 --> 00:29:14.620
The millionaires consume an almost negligible part of what is called the national product.

341
00:29:14.620 --> 00:29:20.620
All branches of big business cater directly or indirectly to the needs of the common man.

342
00:29:20.620 --> 00:29:26.620
The luxury industries never develop beyond small-scale or medium-size units.

343
00:29:26.620 --> 00:29:31.340
The evolution of big business is in itself proof of the fact that the masses and not

344
00:29:31.340 --> 00:29:34.580
the nabobs are the main consumers.

345
00:29:34.580 --> 00:29:38.940
Those who deal with the phenomenon of big business under the rubric concentration of

346
00:29:38.940 --> 00:29:45.000
economic power fail to realize that economic power is vested in the buying public on whose

347
00:29:45.000 --> 00:29:48.900
patronage the prosperity of the factories depends.

348
00:29:48.900 --> 00:29:55.020
In his capacity as buyer, the wage earner is the customer who is always right.

349
00:29:55.020 --> 00:30:01.380
Marx declares that the bourgeoisie is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within

350
00:30:01.380 --> 00:30:03.980
his slavery.

351
00:30:03.980 --> 00:30:08.980
Marx deduced the excellence of socialism from the fact that the driving force of historical

352
00:30:08.980 --> 00:30:15.300
evolution, the material productive forces, is bound to bring about socialism.

353
00:30:15.300 --> 00:30:20.580
As he was engrossed in the Hegelian brand of optimism, there was to his mind no further

354
00:30:20.580 --> 00:30:23.900
need to demonstrate the merits of socialism.

355
00:30:23.900 --> 00:30:29.220
It was obvious to him that socialism, being a later stage of history than capitalism,

356
00:30:29.220 --> 00:30:31.760
was also a better stage.

357
00:30:31.760 --> 00:30:35.540
It was sheer blasphemy to doubt its merits.

358
00:30:35.540 --> 00:30:40.240
What was still left to show was the mechanism by means of which nature brings about the

359
00:30:40.240 --> 00:30:44.620
transition from capitalism to socialism.

360
00:30:44.620 --> 00:30:47.980
Nature's instrument is the class struggle.

361
00:30:47.980 --> 00:30:53.260
As the workers sink deeper and deeper with the progress of capitalism, as their misery,

362
00:30:53.260 --> 00:31:15.260
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.

363
00:31:15.260 --> 00:31:20.500
Why should the masses be inevitably driven to revolt when they could get more and better

364
00:31:20.500 --> 00:31:26.940
food, housing and clothing, cars and refrigerators, radio and television sets, nylon and other

365
00:31:26.940 --> 00:31:29.740
synthetic products?

366
00:31:29.740 --> 00:31:34.880
Even if for the sake of argument we were to admit that the workers are driven to rebellion,

367
00:31:34.880 --> 00:31:39.760
why should the revolutionary upheaval aim just at the establishment of socialism?

368
00:31:39.760 --> 00:31:44.260
The only motive which could induce them to ask for socialism would be the conviction

369
00:31:44.260 --> 00:31:49.340
that they themselves would fare better under socialism than under capitalism.

370
00:31:49.340 --> 00:31:55.260
But Marxists, anxious to avoid dealing with the economic problems of a socialist commonwealth,

371
00:31:55.260 --> 00:31:59.900
did nothing to demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism, apart from the

372
00:31:59.900 --> 00:32:05.220
circular reasoning that runs, socialism is bound to come as the next stage of historical

373
00:32:05.220 --> 00:32:06.980
evolution.

374
00:32:06.980 --> 00:32:13.540
Being a later stage of history than capitalism, it is necessarily higher and better than capitalism.

375
00:32:13.540 --> 00:32:15.700
Why is it bound to come?

376
00:32:15.700 --> 00:32:20.980
Because the laborers, doomed to progressive impoverishment under capitalism, will rebel

377
00:32:20.980 --> 00:32:23.460
and establish socialism.

378
00:32:23.460 --> 00:32:27.740
But what other motive could impel them to aim at the establishment of socialism than

379
00:32:27.740 --> 00:32:31.700
the conviction that socialism is better than capitalism?

380
00:32:31.700 --> 00:32:37.520
And this preeminence of socialism is deduced by Marx from the fact that the coming of socialism

381
00:32:37.520 --> 00:32:39.020
is inevitable.

382
00:32:39.020 --> 00:32:41.100
The circle is closed.

383
00:32:41.100 --> 00:32:46.300
In the context of the Marxian doctrine, the superiority of socialism is proved by the

384
00:32:46.300 --> 00:32:49.980
fact that the proletarians are aiming at socialism.

385
00:32:49.980 --> 00:32:54.460
What the philosophers, the utopians think, does not count.

386
00:32:54.460 --> 00:32:59.220
What matters is the idea of the proletarians, the class that history has entrusted with

387
00:32:59.220 --> 00:33:02.020
the task of shaping the future.

388
00:33:02.020 --> 00:33:08.180
The truth is that the concept of socialism did not originate from the proletarian mind.

389
00:33:08.180 --> 00:33:15.380
No proletarian or son of a proletarian contributed any substantial idea to the socialist ideology.

390
00:33:15.380 --> 00:33:21.140
The intellectual fathers of socialism were members of the intelligentsia, science of

391
00:33:21.140 --> 00:33:27.180
the bourgeoisie. Marx himself was the son of a well-to-do lawyer. He attended a German

392
00:33:27.180 --> 00:33:33.580
gymnasium, the school all Marxians and other socialists denounce as the main offshoot of

393
00:33:33.580 --> 00:33:38.220
The Bourgeois System of Education and his family supported him through all the years

394
00:33:38.220 --> 00:33:39.700
of his studies.

395
00:33:39.700 --> 00:33:42.860
He did not work his way through the university.

396
00:33:42.860 --> 00:33:45.780
He married the daughter of a member of the German nobility.

397
00:33:45.780 --> 00:33:50.660
His brother-in-law was Prussian Minister of the Interior and, as such, head of the Prussian

398
00:33:50.660 --> 00:33:52.060
police.

399
00:33:52.060 --> 00:33:57.220
In his household served a maid, Helene de Muth, who never married and who followed the

400
00:33:57.220 --> 00:34:03.760
The Marx Ménage in all its ships of residence, the perfect model of the exploited slave whose

401
00:34:03.760 --> 00:34:10.700
frustration and stunted sex life have been repeatedly depicted in the German social novel.

402
00:34:10.700 --> 00:34:16.060
Friedrich Engels was the son of a wealthy manufacturer and himself a manufacturer.

403
00:34:16.060 --> 00:34:22.860
He refused to marry his mistress Mary because she was uneducated and of low descent.

404
00:34:22.860 --> 00:34:27.540
After the death of Mary Engels took her sister Lizzie as mistress, he married her on her

405
00:34:27.540 --> 00:34:35.120
deathbed in order to provide her a last pleasure. He enjoyed the amusements of the British gentry

406
00:34:35.120 --> 00:34:42.900
such as riding to hounds. The workers were never enthusiastic about socialism. They supported

407
00:34:42.900 --> 00:34:49.500
the union movement whose striving after higher wages marks despised as useless. They asked

408
00:34:49.500 --> 00:34:54.860
for all those measures of government interference with business which Marx branded petty bourgeois

409
00:34:54.860 --> 00:34:56.420
nonsense.

410
00:34:56.420 --> 00:35:02.140
They opposed technological improvement in earlier days by destroying new machines, later

411
00:35:02.140 --> 00:35:06.380
by union pressure and compulsion in favor of featherbedding.

412
00:35:06.380 --> 00:35:12.980
Syndicalism, appropriation of the enterprises by the workers employed in them, is a program

413
00:35:12.980 --> 00:35:16.100
that the workers developed spontaneously.

414
00:35:16.100 --> 00:35:23.020
But socialism was brought to the masses by intellectuals of bourgeois background.

415
00:35:23.020 --> 00:35:28.420
Dining and whining together in the luxurious London homes and country seats of late Victorian

416
00:35:28.420 --> 00:35:35.660
society, ladies and gentlemen in fashionable evening clothes concocted schemes for converting

417
00:35:35.660 --> 00:35:40.820
the British proletarians to the socialist creed.

418
00:35:40.820 --> 00:35:47.500
4. THE IDEOLOGICAL IMPRAGNATION OF THOUGHT

419
00:35:47.500 --> 00:35:53.100
From the supposed irreconcilable conflict of class interests, Marx deduces his doctrine

420
00:35:53.100 --> 00:35:59.740
of the ideological impregnation of thought. In a class society, man is inherently unfit

421
00:35:59.740 --> 00:36:05.900
to conceive theories which are a substantially true description of reality. As his class

422
00:36:05.900 --> 00:36:11.340
Affiliation, his social being determines his thoughts, the products of his intellectual

423
00:36:11.340 --> 00:36:18.840
effort are ideologically tainted and distorted, they are not truth but ideologies.

424
00:36:18.840 --> 00:36:24.920
An ideology in the Marxian sense of the term is a false doctrine which, however, precisely

425
00:36:24.920 --> 00:36:31.020
on the account of its falsity, serves the interests of the class from which its author stems.

426
00:36:31.020 --> 00:36:36.040
We may omit here dealing with many aspects of this ideology doctrine.

427
00:36:36.040 --> 00:36:40.760
We need not disprove anew the doctrine of polylogism, according to which the logical

428
00:36:40.760 --> 00:36:45.120
structure of mind differs in the members of various classes.

429
00:36:45.120 --> 00:36:49.580
We may further admit that the main concern of a thinker is exclusively to promote the

430
00:36:49.580 --> 00:36:55.460
interests of his class, even if these clash with his interests as an individual.

431
00:36:55.460 --> 00:37:00.480
We may finally abstain from questioning the dogma that there is no such thing as the disinterested

432
00:37:00.480 --> 00:37:05.760
Search for Truth and Knowledge and that all human inquiry is exclusively guided by the

433
00:37:05.760 --> 00:37:10.720
practical purpose of providing mental tools for successful action.

434
00:37:10.720 --> 00:37:15.840
The ideology doctrine would remain untenable even if all the irrefutable objections that

435
00:37:15.840 --> 00:37:21.180
can be raised from the point of view of these three aspects could be rejected.

436
00:37:21.180 --> 00:37:25.960
Whatever one may think of the adequacy of the pragmatist definition of truth, it is

437
00:37:25.960 --> 00:37:31.020
It is obvious that at least one of the characteristic marks of a true theory is that action based

438
00:37:31.020 --> 00:37:38.120
on it succeeds at attaining the expected result. In this sense, truth works, while untruth

439
00:37:38.120 --> 00:37:44.040
does not work. Precisely if we assume, in agreement with the Marxians, that the end

440
00:37:44.040 --> 00:37:50.120
of theorizing is always success in action, the question must be raised why and how an

441
00:37:50.120 --> 00:37:55.600
An ideological, that is, in the Marxian sense, a false theory should be more useful to a

442
00:37:55.600 --> 00:37:58.480
class than a correct theory.

443
00:37:58.480 --> 00:38:02.660
There is no doubt that the study of mechanics was motivated, at least to some extent, by

444
00:38:02.660 --> 00:38:05.320
practical considerations.

445
00:38:05.320 --> 00:38:10.680
People wanted to make use of the theorems of mechanics to solve various problems of engineering.

446
00:38:10.680 --> 00:38:15.680
It was precisely the pursuit of these practical results that impelled them to search for a

447
00:38:15.680 --> 00:38:21.120
— not for a merely ideological, false sense of mechanics.

448
00:38:21.120 --> 00:38:25.840
No matter how one looks at it, there is no way in which a false theory can serve a man

449
00:38:25.840 --> 00:38:31.000
or a class or the whole of mankind better than a correct theory.

450
00:38:31.000 --> 00:38:34.800
How did Marx come to teach such a doctrine?

451
00:38:34.800 --> 00:38:39.600
To answer this question we must remember the motive that impelled Marx to all his literary

452
00:38:39.600 --> 00:38:41.260
ventures.

453
00:38:41.260 --> 00:38:46.300
He was driven by one passion, to fight for the adoption of socialism.

454
00:38:46.300 --> 00:38:51.100
But he was fully aware of his inability to oppose any tenable objection to the economist's

455
00:38:51.100 --> 00:38:54.400
devastating criticism of all socialist plans.

456
00:38:54.400 --> 00:38:59.140
He was convinced that the system of economic doctrine developed by the classical economists

457
00:38:59.140 --> 00:39:03.900
was impregnable and remained unaware of the serious doubts which essential theorems of

458
00:39:03.900 --> 00:39:07.700
this system had already raised in some minds.

459
00:39:07.700 --> 00:39:10.620
Like his contemporary, John Stuart Mill, he believed,

460
00:39:10.620 --> 00:39:15.620
There is nothing in the laws of value which remains for the present or any future writer

461
00:39:15.620 --> 00:39:16.980
to clear up.

462
00:39:16.980 --> 00:39:20.540
The theory of the subject is complete.

463
00:39:20.540 --> 00:39:26.580
When in 1871 the writings of Carl Menger and William Stanley Jevons inaugurated a new

464
00:39:26.580 --> 00:39:32.300
epoch of economic studies, Marx's career as a writer on economic problems had already

465
00:39:32.300 --> 00:39:34.620
come to a virtual end.

466
00:39:34.620 --> 00:39:41.820
The first volume of Das Kapital had been published in 1867. The manuscript of the following volumes

467
00:39:41.820 --> 00:39:49.100
was well along. There is no indication that Marx ever grasped the meaning of the new theory.

468
00:39:49.100 --> 00:39:53.980
Marx's economic teachings are essentially a garbled rehash of the theories of Adam Smith

469
00:39:53.980 --> 00:40:00.740
and, first of all, of Ricardo. Smith and Ricardo had not any opportunity to refute socialist

470
00:40:00.740 --> 00:40:05.240
Doctrines, as these were advanced only after their death.

471
00:40:05.240 --> 00:40:07.840
So Marx let them alone.

472
00:40:07.840 --> 00:40:13.000
But he vented his full indignation upon their successors who had tried to analyze the socialist

473
00:40:13.000 --> 00:40:14.620
schemes critically.

474
00:40:14.620 --> 00:40:21.120
He ridiculed them, calling them vulgar economists and sycophants of the bourgeoisie.

475
00:40:21.120 --> 00:40:27.040
And as it was imperative for him to defame them, he contrived his ideology scheme.

476
00:40:27.040 --> 00:40:32.880
These vulgar economists are, because of their bourgeois background, constitutionally unfit

477
00:40:32.880 --> 00:40:35.240
to discover truth.

478
00:40:35.240 --> 00:40:40.720
What their reasoning produces can only be ideological, that is, as Marx employed the

479
00:40:40.720 --> 00:40:47.820
term ideology, a distortion of truth serving the class interests of the bourgeoisie.

480
00:40:47.820 --> 00:40:52.360
There is no need to refute their chains of argument by discursive reasoning and critical

481
00:40:52.360 --> 00:40:53.360
analysis.

482
00:40:53.360 --> 00:41:01.360
It is enough to unmask their bourgeois background and thereby the necessarily ideological character of their doctrines.

483
00:41:01.360 --> 00:41:04.360
They are wrong because they are bourgeois.

484
00:41:04.360 --> 00:41:09.360
No proletarian must attach any importance to their speculations.

485
00:41:09.360 --> 00:41:14.360
To conceal the fact that this scheme was invented expressly to discredit the economists,

486
00:41:14.360 --> 00:41:22.360
it was necessary to elevate it to the dignity of a general epistemological law valid for all ages and for all branches of knowledge.

487
00:41:22.360 --> 00:41:23.360
Research.

488
00:41:23.360 --> 00:41:29.800
Thus, the ideology doctrine became the nucleus of Marxian epistemology.

489
00:41:29.800 --> 00:41:35.720
Marx and all his disciples concentrated their efforts upon the justification and exemplification

490
00:41:35.720 --> 00:41:37.560
of this makeshift.

491
00:41:37.560 --> 00:41:40.240
They did not shrink from any absurdity.

492
00:41:40.240 --> 00:41:46.360
They interpreted all philosophical systems, physical and biological theories, all literature,

493
00:41:46.360 --> 00:41:50.440
music and art, from the ideological point of view.

494
00:41:50.440 --> 00:41:55.940
But of course they were not consistent enough to assign to their own doctrines merely ideological

495
00:41:55.940 --> 00:41:57.340
character.

496
00:41:57.340 --> 00:42:01.580
The Marxian tenets they implied are not ideologies.

497
00:42:01.580 --> 00:42:06.560
They are a foretaste of the knowledge of the future classless society which, freed from

498
00:42:06.560 --> 00:42:12.260
the fetters of class conflicts, will be in a position to conceive pure knowledge, untainted

499
00:42:12.260 --> 00:42:14.400
by ideological blemishes.

500
00:42:14.400 --> 00:42:21.040
Thus, we can understand the thymological motives that led Marx to his ideology doctrine. Yet

501
00:42:21.040 --> 00:42:26.520
this does not answer the question why an ideological distortion of truth should be more advantageous

502
00:42:26.520 --> 00:42:33.160
to the interests of a class than a correct doctrine. Marx never ventured to explain this,

503
00:42:33.160 --> 00:42:38.400
probably aware that any attempt to would entangle him in an inextricable jumble of absurdities

504
00:42:38.400 --> 00:42:40.760
and contradictions.

505
00:42:40.760 --> 00:42:45.760
There is no need to emphasize the ridiculousness of contending that an ideological, physical,

506
00:42:45.760 --> 00:42:51.580
chemical or therapeutical doctrine could be more advantageous for any class or individual

507
00:42:51.580 --> 00:42:53.780
than a correct one.

508
00:42:53.780 --> 00:42:58.340
One may pass over in silence the declarations of the Marxians concerning the ideological

509
00:42:58.340 --> 00:43:04.080
character of the theories developed by the bourgeois Mendel, Hertz, Planck, Heisenberg

510
00:43:04.080 --> 00:43:05.080
and Einstein.

511
00:43:05.080 --> 00:43:12.180
It is sufficient to scrutinize the alleged ideological character of bourgeois economics.

512
00:43:12.180 --> 00:43:18.000
As Marx saw it, their bourgeois background impelled the classical economists to develop

513
00:43:18.000 --> 00:43:22.860
a system from which a justification of the unfair claims of the capitalist exploiters

514
00:43:22.860 --> 00:43:25.200
must logically follow.

515
00:43:25.200 --> 00:43:32.120
In this he contradicts himself as he drew from the same system just the opposite conclusions.

516
00:43:32.120 --> 00:43:36.800
These theorems of the classical economists from which the apparent justification of capitalism

517
00:43:36.800 --> 00:43:42.800
could be deduced were the theorems which Marx attacked most furiously. That the scarcity

518
00:43:42.800 --> 00:43:48.040
of the material factors of production on which man's well-being depends is an inevitable

519
00:43:48.040 --> 00:43:53.640
nature-given condition of human existence. That no system of society's economic organization

520
00:43:53.640 --> 00:43:58.560
could create a state of abundance in which to everybody could be given according to his

521
00:43:58.560 --> 00:44:04.460
states that the recurrence of periods of economic depressions is not inherent in the very operation

522
00:44:04.460 --> 00:44:10.320
of an unhampered market economy but, on the contrary, the necessary outcome of governments

523
00:44:10.320 --> 00:44:15.080
interfering with business with the spurious aim of lowering the rate of interest and making

524
00:44:15.080 --> 00:44:18.360
business boom by inflation and credit expansion.

525
00:44:18.360 --> 00:44:25.440
But, we must ask, of what use, from the very Marxian point of view, could such a justification

526
00:44:25.440 --> 00:44:28.760
of Capitalism B for the Capitalists.

527
00:44:28.760 --> 00:44:33.600
They themselves did not need any justification for a system which, according to Marx, while

528
00:44:33.600 --> 00:44:37.440
wronging the workers, was beneficial to themselves.

529
00:44:37.440 --> 00:44:43.520
They did not need to quiet their own consciences, since, again, according to Marx, every class

530
00:44:43.520 --> 00:44:48.040
is remorseless in the pursuit of its own selfish class interests.

531
00:44:48.040 --> 00:44:52.240
Neither is it, from the point of view of the Marxian doctrine, permissible to assume that

532
00:44:52.240 --> 00:44:58.160
The service which the ideological theory originating from a false consciousness and therefore distorting

533
00:44:58.160 --> 00:45:03.440
the true state of affairs rendered to the exploiting class was to beguile the exploited

534
00:45:03.440 --> 00:45:09.680
class and to make it pliable and subservient and thereby to preserve or at least to prolong

535
00:45:09.680 --> 00:45:12.440
the unfair system of exploitation.

536
00:45:12.440 --> 00:45:13.920
4.

537
00:45:13.920 --> 00:45:19.600
According to Marx, the duration of a definite system of production relations does not depend

538
00:45:19.600 --> 00:45:22.320
and on any spiritual factors.

539
00:45:22.320 --> 00:45:27.080
It is exclusively determined by the state of the material productive forces.

540
00:45:27.080 --> 00:45:32.760
If the material productive forces change, the production relations, that is, the property

541
00:45:32.760 --> 00:45:37.680
relations, and the whole ideological superstructure must change, too.

542
00:45:37.680 --> 00:45:44.000
This transformation cannot be accelerated by any human effort, for, as Marx said, no

543
00:45:44.000 --> 00:45:49.300
social formation ever disappears before all the productive forces are developed for which

544
00:45:49.300 --> 00:46:06.980
This is by no means merely an incidental observation of Marx. It is one of the essential points

545
00:46:06.980 --> 00:46:11.860
of his doctrine. It is the theorem on which he based his claim to call his own doctrine

546
00:46:11.860 --> 00:46:18.340
scientific socialism as distinguished from the merely utopian socialism of his predecessors.

547
00:46:18.340 --> 00:46:23.340
The characteristic mark of the utopian socialists as he saw it was that they believed that

548
00:46:23.340 --> 00:46:28.980
the realization of socialism depends on spiritual and intellectual factors.

549
00:46:28.980 --> 00:46:33.200
You have to convince people that socialism is better than capitalism and then they will

550
00:46:33.200 --> 00:46:36.460
substitute socialism for capitalism.

551
00:46:36.460 --> 00:46:40.580
In Marx's eyes, this utopian creed was absurd.

552
00:46:40.580 --> 00:46:45.440
The coming of socialism in no way depends on the thoughts and wills of men.

553
00:46:45.440 --> 00:46:50.240
is an outgrowth of the development of the material productive forces.

554
00:46:50.240 --> 00:46:56.760
When the time is fulfilled and capitalism has reached its maturity, socialism will come.

555
00:46:56.760 --> 00:47:00.480
It can appear neither earlier nor later.

556
00:47:00.480 --> 00:47:06.280
The bourgeois may contrive the most cleverly elaborated ideologies in vain.

557
00:47:06.280 --> 00:47:10.600
They cannot delay the day of the breakdown of capitalism.

558
00:47:10.600 --> 00:47:17.240
Some people, intent upon salvaging the Marxian ideology concept, would argue this way.

559
00:47:17.240 --> 00:47:21.020
The capitalists are ashamed of their role in society.

560
00:47:21.020 --> 00:47:27.600
They feel guilty at being robber barons, usurers and exploiters, and pocketing profits.

561
00:47:27.600 --> 00:47:32.040
They need a class ideology in order to restore their self-assertion.

562
00:47:32.040 --> 00:47:34.140
But why should they blush?

563
00:47:34.140 --> 00:47:38.920
There is, from the point of view of the Marxian doctrine, nothing in their conduct to be ashamed

564
00:47:38.920 --> 00:47:43.380
of Capitalism, in the Marxian view, is an indispensable

565
00:47:43.380 --> 00:47:46.700
stage in the historical evolution of mankind.

566
00:47:46.700 --> 00:47:51.120
It is a necessary link in the succession of events which finally results in the bliss

567
00:47:51.120 --> 00:47:52.900
of socialism.

568
00:47:52.900 --> 00:47:57.780
The capitalists, in being capitalists, are merely tools of history.

569
00:47:57.780 --> 00:48:04.140
They execute what, according to the pre-ordained plan for mankind's evolution, must be done.

570
00:48:04.140 --> 00:48:08.180
They comply with the eternal laws which are independent of the human will.

571
00:48:08.180 --> 00:48:14.780
They cannot help acting the way they do. They do not need any ideology, any false consciousness

572
00:48:14.780 --> 00:48:20.680
to tell them that they are right. They are right in the light of the Marxian doctrine.

573
00:48:20.680 --> 00:48:26.840
If Marx had been consistent, he would have exhorted the workers, don't blame the capitalists.

574
00:48:26.840 --> 00:48:34.220
In exploiting you, they do what is best for yourselves. They are paving the way for socialism.

575
00:48:34.220 --> 00:48:39.940
Wherever one may turn the matter, one cannot discover any reason why an ideological distortion

576
00:48:39.940 --> 00:48:46.220
of truth should be more useful to the bourgeoisie than a correct theory.

577
00:48:46.220 --> 00:48:48.620
5.

578
00:48:48.620 --> 00:48:52.860
The Conflict of Ideologies

579
00:48:52.860 --> 00:48:57.780
Class consciousness, says Marx, produces class ideologies.

580
00:48:57.780 --> 00:49:02.860
The class ideology provides the class with an interpretation of reality and at the same

581
00:49:02.860 --> 00:49:07.860
at the same time teaches the members how to act in order to benefit their class.

582
00:49:07.860 --> 00:49:12.460
The content of the class ideology is uniquely determined by the historical stage of the

583
00:49:12.460 --> 00:49:17.720
development of the material productive forces and by the role the class concerned plays

584
00:49:17.720 --> 00:49:20.300
in this stage of history.

585
00:49:20.300 --> 00:49:23.820
The ideology is not an arbitrary brainchild.

586
00:49:23.820 --> 00:49:29.980
It is the reflection of the thinker's material class condition as mirrored in his head.

587
00:49:29.980 --> 00:49:35.560
It is therefore not an individual phenomenon conditional upon the thinker's fancy.

588
00:49:35.560 --> 00:49:41.580
It is enjoined upon the mind by reality, that is, by the class situation of the man who

589
00:49:41.580 --> 00:49:42.740
thinks.

590
00:49:42.740 --> 00:49:47.220
It is consequently identical with all members of the class.

591
00:49:47.220 --> 00:49:52.700
Of course, not every class comrade is an author and publishes what he has thought.

592
00:49:52.700 --> 00:49:57.980
But all writers belonging to the class conceive the same ideas and all other members of the

593
00:49:57.980 --> 00:49:59.900
class approve of them.

594
00:49:59.900 --> 00:50:04.540
There is no room left in Marxism for the assumption that the various members of the same class

595
00:50:04.540 --> 00:50:08.240
could seriously disagree in ideology.

596
00:50:08.240 --> 00:50:13.560
There exists for all members of the class only one ideology.

597
00:50:13.560 --> 00:50:18.560
If a man expresses opinions at variance with the ideology of a definite class, that is

598
00:50:18.560 --> 00:50:22.400
because he does not belong to the class concerned.

599
00:50:22.400 --> 00:50:26.180
There is no need to refute his ideas by discursive reasoning.

600
00:50:26.180 --> 00:50:30.540
It is enough to unmask his background and class affiliation.

601
00:50:30.540 --> 00:50:32.720
This settles the matter.

602
00:50:32.720 --> 00:50:37.060
But if a man whose proletarian background and membership in the worker's class cannot

603
00:50:37.060 --> 00:50:43.060
be contested diverges from the correct Marxian creed, he is a traitor.

604
00:50:43.060 --> 00:50:48.020
It is impossible to assume that he could be sincere in his rejection of Marxism.

605
00:50:48.020 --> 00:50:52.700
As a proletarian, he must necessarily think like a proletarian.

606
00:50:52.700 --> 00:50:58.220
An inner voice tells him, in an unmistakable way, what the correct proletarian ideology

607
00:50:58.220 --> 00:50:59.220
is.

608
00:50:59.220 --> 00:51:04.900
He is dishonest in overriding this voice and publicly professing unorthodox opinions.

609
00:51:04.900 --> 00:51:09.060
He is a rogue, a Judas, a snake in the grass.

610
00:51:09.060 --> 00:51:13.740
In fighting such a betrayer, all means are permissible.

611
00:51:13.740 --> 00:51:18.740
Marx and Engels, two men of unquestionable bourgeois background, hatched out the class

612
00:51:18.740 --> 00:51:21.900
ideology of the proletarian class.

613
00:51:21.900 --> 00:51:27.300
They never ventured to discuss their doctrine with dissenters, as scientists, for instance,

614
00:51:27.300 --> 00:51:33.260
discussed the pros and cons of the doctrines of Lamarck, Darwin, Mendel and Weisman.

615
00:51:33.260 --> 00:51:39.340
As they saw it, their adversaries could only be either bourgeois idiots or proletarian

616
00:51:39.340 --> 00:51:40.620
traitors.

617
00:51:40.620 --> 00:51:46.040
As soon as a socialist deviated an inch from the orthodox creed, Marx and Engels attacked

618
00:51:46.040 --> 00:51:51.220
him furiously, ridiculed and insulted him, represented him as a scoundrel and a wicked

619
00:51:51.220 --> 00:51:53.780
and Corrupt Monster.

620
00:51:53.780 --> 00:51:58.660
After Engels' death, the office of supreme arbiter of what is and what is not correct

621
00:51:58.660 --> 00:52:02.380
Marxism, devolved upon Carl Kotsky.

622
00:52:02.380 --> 00:52:07.860
In 1917, it passed into the hands of Lenin and became a function of the chief of the

623
00:52:07.860 --> 00:52:09.340
Soviet government.

624
00:52:09.340 --> 00:52:13.700
While Marx, Engels and Kotsky had to content themselves with assassinating the character

625
00:52:13.700 --> 00:52:19.540
of their opponents, Lenin and Stalin could assassinate them physically.

626
00:52:19.540 --> 00:52:25.020
Step by step they anathematized those who once were considered by all Marxians, including

627
00:52:25.020 --> 00:52:31.700
Lenin and Stalin themselves, as the great champions of the proletarian cause, Kotsky,

628
00:52:31.700 --> 00:52:42.100
Max Adler, Otto Bauer, Plekhanov, Bukharin, Trotsky, Ryasenov, Radik, Sinoviev, and many

629
00:52:42.100 --> 00:52:43.680
others.

630
00:52:43.680 --> 00:52:48.840
Those whom they could seize were imprisoned, tortured, and finally murdered.

631
00:52:48.840 --> 00:52:52.340
Probably those who were happy enough to dwell in countries dominated by

632
00:52:52.340 --> 00:52:58.840
Pluto-democratic reactionaries survived and were permitted to die in their beds.

633
00:52:58.840 --> 00:53:04.480
A good case can be made from the Marxian point of view in favor of decision by the majority.

634
00:53:04.480 --> 00:53:10.160
If a doubt concerning the correct content of the proletarian ideology arises, the ideas

635
00:53:10.160 --> 00:53:15.360
held by the majority of the proletarians are to be considered those which truthfully reflect

636
00:53:15.360 --> 00:53:18.460
the genuine proletarian ideology.

637
00:53:18.460 --> 00:53:23.740
As Marxism supposes that the immense majority of people are proletarians, this would be

638
00:53:23.740 --> 00:53:27.820
tantamount to assigning the competence to make the ultimate decisions in conflicts of

639
00:53:27.820 --> 00:53:32.720
opinion to parliaments elected under adult franchise.

640
00:53:32.720 --> 00:53:37.960
But although to refuse to do this is to explode the whole ideology doctrine, neither Marx

641
00:53:37.960 --> 00:53:44.420
nor his successors were ever prepared to submit their opinions to majority vote.

642
00:53:44.420 --> 00:53:49.560
Throughout his career, Marx mistrusted the people and was highly suspicious of parliamentary

643
00:53:49.560 --> 00:53:52.620
procedures and decisions by the ballot.

644
00:53:52.620 --> 00:53:58.320
He was enthusiastic about the Paris revolution of June 1848, in which a small minority of

645
00:53:58.320 --> 00:54:02.740
Parisians rebelled against the government supported by a parliament elected under a

646
00:54:02.740 --> 00:54:05.680
universal manhood suffrage.

647
00:54:05.680 --> 00:54:11.940
The Paris Commune of the spring of 1871, in which again Parisian socialists fought against

648
00:54:11.940 --> 00:54:23.940
was still more to his liking. Here he found his ideal of the dictatorship of the proletariat,

649
00:54:23.940 --> 00:54:29.620
the dictatorship of a self-appointed band of leaders, realized. He tried to persuade

650
00:54:29.620 --> 00:54:34.440
the Marxian parties of all countries of Western and Central Europe to base their hopes not

651
00:54:34.440 --> 00:54:41.540
upon election campaigns, but upon revolutionary methods. In this regard, the Russian communists

652
00:54:41.540 --> 00:54:43.820
were his faithful disciples.

653
00:54:43.820 --> 00:54:49.220
The Russian parliament, elected in 1917 under the auspices of the Lenin government by all

654
00:54:49.220 --> 00:54:54.660
adult citizens had, in spite of the violence offered to the voters by the ruling party,

655
00:54:54.660 --> 00:54:58.740
less than 25% communist members.

656
00:54:58.740 --> 00:55:04.060
Three quarters of the people had voted against the communists, but Lenin dispersed the parliament

657
00:55:04.060 --> 00:55:10.020
by force of arms and firmly established the dictatorial rule of a minority.

658
00:55:10.020 --> 00:55:15.340
The head of the Soviet power became the supreme pontiff of the Marxian sect.

659
00:55:15.340 --> 00:55:20.460
His title to this office is derived from the fact that he had defeated his rivals in a

660
00:55:20.460 --> 00:55:23.040
bloody civil war.

661
00:55:23.040 --> 00:55:27.860
As the Marxians do not admit that differences of opinion can be settled by discussion and

662
00:55:27.860 --> 00:55:35.260
persuasion or decided by majority vote, no solution is open but civil war.

663
00:55:35.260 --> 00:55:40.780
The mark of the good ideology, that is, the ideology adequate to the genuine class interests

664
00:55:40.780 --> 00:55:46.460
of the proletarians, is the fact that its supporters succeeded in conquering and liquidating

665
00:55:46.460 --> 00:55:48.940
their opponents.

666
00:55:48.940 --> 00:55:51.580
6.

667
00:55:51.580 --> 00:55:55.260
IDEAS AND INTERESTS

668
00:55:55.260 --> 00:56:00.920
Marx assumes tacitly that the social condition of a class uniquely determines its interests

669
00:56:00.920 --> 00:56:06.400
and that there can be no doubt what kind of policy best serves these interests.

670
00:56:06.400 --> 00:56:10.240
The class does not have to choose between various policies.

671
00:56:10.240 --> 00:56:14.840
The historical situation enjoins upon it a definite policy.

672
00:56:14.840 --> 00:56:17.060
There is no alternative.

673
00:56:17.060 --> 00:56:22.600
It follows that the class does not act since acting implies choosing among various possible

674
00:56:22.600 --> 00:56:24.520
ways of procedure.

675
00:56:24.520 --> 00:56:29.740
The material productive forces act through the medium of the class members.

676
00:56:29.740 --> 00:56:35.780
Marx, Engels and all other Marxians ignored this fundamental dogma of their creed as soon

677
00:56:35.780 --> 00:56:41.740
as they stepped beyond the borders of epistemology and began commenting upon historical and political

678
00:56:41.740 --> 00:56:43.540
issues.

679
00:56:43.540 --> 00:56:48.980
Then they not only charged the non-proletarian classes with hostility to the proletarians,

680
00:56:48.980 --> 00:56:54.140
but criticized their policies as not conducive to promoting the true interests of their own

681
00:56:54.140 --> 00:56:55.740
classes.

682
00:56:55.740 --> 00:57:01.300
The most important of Marx's political pamphlets is the Address on the Civil War in France

683
00:57:01.300 --> 00:57:03.900
1871.

684
00:57:03.900 --> 00:57:08.820
It furiously attacks the French government which, backed by the immense majority of the

685
00:57:08.820 --> 00:57:12.860
nation, was intent upon quelling the rebellion of the Paris Commune.

686
00:57:12.860 --> 00:57:18.660
It recklessly columniates all the leading members of that government, calling them swindlers,

687
00:57:18.660 --> 00:57:20.860
forgers and embezzlers.

688
00:57:20.860 --> 00:57:28.020
Jules Favre, it charges, was living in concubinage with the wife of a dipsomaniac, and General

689
00:57:28.020 --> 00:57:33.280
de Galifay profited from the alleged prostitution of his wife.

690
00:57:33.280 --> 00:57:38.920
In short, the pamphlet set the pattern for the defamation tactics of the socialist press,

691
00:57:38.920 --> 00:57:44.460
which the Marxians indignantly chastised as one of the worst excrescences of capitalism

692
00:57:44.460 --> 00:57:47.380
when the tabloid press adopted it.

693
00:57:47.380 --> 00:57:54.100
All these slanderous lies, however reprehensible, may be interpreted as partisan stratagems in

694
00:57:54.100 --> 00:57:58.020
the implacable war against bourgeois civilization.

695
00:57:58.020 --> 00:58:03.580
They are at least not incompatible with Marxian epistemological principles, but it is another

696
00:58:03.580 --> 00:58:09.000
thing to question the expediency of the bourgeois policy from the standpoint of the class interests

697
00:58:09.000 --> 00:58:11.000
of the bourgeoisie.

698
00:58:11.000 --> 00:58:17.440
The Address maintains that the policy of the French bourgeoisie has unmasked the essential

699
00:58:17.440 --> 00:58:23.880
teachings of its own ideology, the only purpose of which is to delay the class struggle.

700
00:58:23.880 --> 00:58:28.800
Henceforth it will no longer be possible for the class rule of the bourgeoisie to hide

701
00:58:28.800 --> 00:58:31.440
in a nationalist uniform.

702
00:58:31.440 --> 00:58:35.840
Henceforth there will no longer be any question of peace or armistice between the workers

703
00:58:35.840 --> 00:58:37.700
and their exploiters.

704
00:58:37.700 --> 00:58:42.100
The battle will be resumed again and again and there can be no doubt about the final

705
00:58:42.100 --> 00:58:45.700
victory of the working man.

706
00:58:45.700 --> 00:58:50.220
It must be noted that these observations were made with regard to a situation in which the

707
00:58:50.220 --> 00:58:54.700
majority of the French people had only to choose between unconditional surrender to

708
00:58:54.700 --> 00:58:59.060
a small minority of revolutionaries or fighting them.

709
00:58:59.060 --> 00:59:03.380
Neither Marx nor anybody else had ever expected that the majority of a nation would yield

710
00:59:03.380 --> 00:59:08.140
without resistance to armed aggression on the part of a minority.

711
00:59:08.140 --> 00:59:13.500
Still more important is the fact that Marx, in these observations, ascribes to the policies

712
00:59:13.500 --> 00:59:19.940
adopted by the French bourgeoisie a decisive influence upon the course of events.

713
00:59:19.940 --> 00:59:23.840
In this, he contradicts all his other writings.

714
00:59:23.840 --> 00:59:29.140
In the Communist Manifesto, he had announced the implacable and relentless class struggle

715
00:59:29.140 --> 00:59:34.140
without any regard to the defense tactics the bourgeois may resort to.

716
00:59:34.140 --> 00:59:39.020
He had deduced the inevitability of this struggle from the class situation of the exploiters

717
00:59:39.020 --> 00:59:41.420
and that of the exploited.

718
00:59:41.420 --> 00:59:45.580
There is no room in the Marxian system for the assumption that the policies adopted by

719
00:59:45.580 --> 00:59:52.260
the bourgeoisie could in any way affect the emergence of the class struggle and its outcome.

720
00:59:52.260 --> 00:59:58.800
If it is true that one class, the French bourgeoisie of 1871, was in a position to choose between

721
01:00:28.800 --> 01:00:33.160
Conducive to the real interests of a class meet with approval on the part of those who

722
01:00:33.160 --> 01:00:36.180
direct the policies of the class.

723
01:00:36.180 --> 01:00:40.760
It may happen that different ideas direct those policies and thus get an influence upon

724
01:00:40.760 --> 01:00:42.920
the course of events.

725
01:00:42.920 --> 01:00:47.920
But then it is not true that what counts in history are only interests and that ideas

726
01:00:47.920 --> 01:00:53.840
are merely an ideological superstructure uniquely determined by these interests.

727
01:00:53.840 --> 01:00:58.920
It becomes imperative to scrutinize ideas in order to sift those which are really beneficial

728
01:00:58.920 --> 01:01:03.480
to the interests of the class concerned from those which are not.

729
01:01:03.480 --> 01:01:09.120
It becomes necessary to discuss conflicting ideas with the methods of logical reasoning.

730
01:01:09.120 --> 01:01:14.080
The makeshift by means of which Marx wanted to outlaw such dispassionate weighing of the

731
01:01:14.080 --> 01:01:18.000
pros and cons of definite ideas breaks down.

732
01:01:18.000 --> 01:01:22.620
The way toward an examination of the merits and demerits of socialism which Marx wanted

733
01:01:22.620 --> 01:01:27.500
to Prohibit as Unscientific is Reopened.

734
01:01:27.500 --> 01:01:34.680
Another important address of Marx was his paper of 1865, Value, Price, and Profit.

735
01:01:34.680 --> 01:01:39.780
In this document, Marx criticizes the traditional policies of the labor unions.

736
01:01:39.780 --> 01:01:45.420
They should abandon their conservative motto, a fair day's wages for a fair day's work,

737
01:01:45.420 --> 01:01:50.020
and ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, abolition of the

738
01:01:50.020 --> 01:01:51.960
wages system.

739
01:01:51.960 --> 01:01:57.040
This is obviously a controversy about which kind of policy best serves the class interests

740
01:01:57.040 --> 01:01:58.980
of the workers.

741
01:01:58.980 --> 01:02:03.340
Marx in this case deviates from his usual procedure of branding all his proletarian

742
01:02:03.340 --> 01:02:05.060
opponents traders.

743
01:02:05.060 --> 01:02:10.140
He implicitly admits that there can prevail dissent even among honest and sincere champions

744
01:02:10.140 --> 01:02:15.180
of the class interests of the workers and that such differences must be settled by debating

745
01:02:15.180 --> 01:02:17.100
the issue.

746
01:02:17.100 --> 01:02:21.800
Perhaps on second thought he himself discovered that the way he had dealt with the problem

747
01:02:21.800 --> 01:02:41.800
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.

748
01:02:41.800 --> 01:02:47.440
The theme we are scrutinizing is not Marx's failure to cling consistently to his own doctrine

749
01:02:47.440 --> 01:02:51.260
and his lapses into ways of thinking incompatible with it.

750
01:02:51.260 --> 01:02:56.080
We have to examine the tenability of the Marxian doctrine and must therefore turn to the peculiar

751
01:02:56.080 --> 01:03:02.400
connotation the term interests has in the context of this doctrine.

752
01:03:02.400 --> 01:03:07.640
Every individual, and for that matter every group of individuals, aims in acting at the

753
01:03:07.640 --> 01:03:12.020
the Substitution of a State of Affairs that suits him better for a state of affairs that

754
01:03:12.020 --> 01:03:14.560
he considers less satisfactory.

755
01:03:14.560 --> 01:03:18.440
Without any regard to the qualification of these two states of affairs from any other

756
01:03:18.440 --> 01:03:23.680
point of view, we may say in this sense that he pursues his own interests.

757
01:03:23.680 --> 01:03:28.920
But the question of what is more desirable and what is less is decided by the acting

758
01:03:28.920 --> 01:03:30.000
individual.

759
01:03:30.000 --> 01:03:34.260
It is the outcome of choosing among various possible solutions.

760
01:03:34.260 --> 01:03:36.460
It is a judgment of value.

761
01:03:36.460 --> 01:03:40.580
It is determined by the individual's ideas about the effects these various states may

762
01:03:40.580 --> 01:03:43.300
have upon his own well-being.

763
01:03:43.300 --> 01:03:48.900
But it ultimately depends upon the value he attaches to these anticipated effects.

764
01:03:48.900 --> 01:03:55.980
If we keep this in mind, it is not sensible to declare that ideas are a product of interests.

765
01:03:55.980 --> 01:03:59.060
Ideas tell a man what his interests are.

766
01:03:59.060 --> 01:04:04.420
At a later date, looking upon his past actions, the individual may form the opinion that he

767
01:04:04.420 --> 01:04:10.120
He is erred, and that another mode of acting would have served his own interests better.

768
01:04:10.120 --> 01:04:14.780
But this does not mean that at the critical instant in which he acted he did not act according

769
01:04:14.780 --> 01:04:20.340
to his interests, he acted according to what he, at that time, considered would serve his

770
01:04:20.340 --> 01:04:22.800
interests best.

771
01:04:22.800 --> 01:04:29.280
If an unaffected observer looks upon another man's action, he may think, This fellow errs.

772
01:04:29.280 --> 01:04:33.540
What he does will not serve what he considers to be his interest.

773
01:04:33.540 --> 01:04:38.340
Another way of acting would be more suitable for attaining the ends he aims at.

774
01:04:38.340 --> 01:04:45.980
In this sense, a historian can say today, or a judicious contemporary could say in 1939.

775
01:04:45.980 --> 01:04:50.520
In invading Poland, Hitler and the Nazis made a mistake.

776
01:04:50.520 --> 01:04:55.120
The invasion harmed what they considered to be their interests.

777
01:04:55.120 --> 01:05:00.260
Such criticism is sensible so long as it deals only with the means and not with the ultimate

778
01:05:00.260 --> 01:05:02.080
ends of an action.

779
01:05:02.080 --> 01:05:08.000
The choice of ultimate ends is a judgment of value solely dependent on the judging individual's

780
01:05:08.000 --> 01:05:09.600
valuation.

781
01:05:09.600 --> 01:05:14.560
All that another man can say about it is, I would have made a different choice.

782
01:05:14.560 --> 01:05:20.000
If a Roman had said to a Christian doomed to be lacerated by wild beasts in the circus,

783
01:05:20.000 --> 01:05:25.160
''You will best serve your interests by bowing down and worshipping the statue of our Divine

784
01:05:25.160 --> 01:05:30.720
Emperor,'' the Christian would have answered, ''My prime interest is to comply with the precepts

785
01:05:30.720 --> 01:05:32.960
of My Creed.

786
01:05:32.960 --> 01:05:38.160
But Marxism, as a philosophy of history, claiming to know the ends which men are bound to aim

787
01:05:38.160 --> 01:05:43.520
at, employs the term interests with a different connotation.

788
01:05:43.520 --> 01:05:49.720
The interests it refers to are not those chosen by men on the ground of judgments of value.

789
01:05:49.720 --> 01:05:54.300
They are the ends the material productive forces are aiming at.

790
01:05:54.300 --> 01:05:58.760
These forces aim at the establishment of socialism.

791
01:05:58.760 --> 01:06:02.960
They use the proletarians as a means for the realization of this end.

792
01:06:02.960 --> 01:06:08.000
The superhuman material productive forces pursue their own interests, independently

793
01:06:08.000 --> 01:06:10.200
of the will of mortal men.

794
01:06:10.200 --> 01:06:14.240
The proletarian class is merely a tool in their hands.

795
01:06:14.240 --> 01:06:19.960
The actions of the class are not its own actions, but those which the material productive forces

796
01:06:19.960 --> 01:06:24.920
perform in using the class as an instrument without a will of its own.

797
01:06:24.920 --> 01:06:30.580
The class interests to which Marx refers are in fact the interests of the material productive

798
01:06:30.580 --> 01:06:36.860
forces which want to be freed from the fetters upon their development.

799
01:06:36.860 --> 01:06:41.620
Interests of this kind, of course, do not depend upon the ideas of ordinary men.

800
01:06:41.620 --> 01:06:47.180
They are determined exclusively by the ideas of the man Marx, who generated both the phantom

801
01:06:47.180 --> 01:06:53.240
of the material productive forces and the anthropomorphic image of their interests.

802
01:06:53.240 --> 01:06:59.840
In the world of reality, life, and human action, there is no such thing as interests independent

803
01:06:59.840 --> 01:07:04.440
of ideas preceding them temporally and logically.

804
01:07:04.440 --> 01:07:10.160
What a man considers his interest is the result of his ideas.

805
01:07:10.160 --> 01:07:13.960
If there is any sense in the proposition that the interests of the proletarians would be

806
01:07:13.960 --> 01:07:17.760
best served by socialism, it is this.

807
01:07:17.760 --> 01:07:24.240
The ends which the individual proletarians are aiming at will be best achieved by socialism.

808
01:07:24.240 --> 01:07:26.920
Such a proposition requires proof.

809
01:07:26.920 --> 01:07:32.260
It is vain to substitute for such a proof the recourse to an arbitrarily contrived system

810
01:07:32.260 --> 01:07:34.840
of philosophy of history.

811
01:07:34.840 --> 01:07:40.320
All this could never occur to Marx because he was engrossed by the idea that human interests

812
01:07:40.320 --> 01:07:46.300
are uniquely and entirely determined by the biological nature of the human body.

813
01:07:46.300 --> 01:07:51.500
Man, as he saw it, is exclusively interested in the procurement of the largest quantity

814
01:07:51.500 --> 01:07:53.500
of tangible goods.

815
01:07:53.500 --> 01:08:00.420
There is no qualitative, only a quantitative problem in the supply of goods and services.

816
01:08:00.420 --> 01:08:06.420
Wants do not depend on ideas but solely on physiological conditions.

817
01:08:06.420 --> 01:08:11.380
Blinded by this preconception, Marx ignored the fact that one of the problems of production

818
01:08:11.380 --> 01:08:15.220
is to decide what kind of goods are to be produced.

819
01:08:15.220 --> 01:08:19.600
with animals and with primitive men on the verge of starvation, it is certainly true

820
01:08:19.600 --> 01:08:24.740
that nothing counts but the quantity of edible things they can secure.

821
01:08:24.740 --> 01:08:29.180
There is no need to point out that conditions are entirely different for men even for those

822
01:08:29.180 --> 01:08:32.940
in the earliest stages of civilization.

823
01:08:32.940 --> 01:08:37.100
Civilized man is faced with the problem of choosing among the satisfactions of various

824
01:08:37.100 --> 01:08:42.260
needs and among various modes of satisfying the same need.

825
01:08:42.260 --> 01:08:48.420
His interests are diversified and are determined by the ideas that influence his choosing.

826
01:08:48.420 --> 01:08:53.220
One does not serve the interests of a man who wants a new coat by giving him a pair

827
01:08:53.220 --> 01:08:58.780
of shoes or those of a man who wants to hear a Beethoven symphony by giving him admission

828
01:08:58.780 --> 01:09:00.580
to a boxing match.

829
01:09:00.580 --> 01:09:06.420
It is ideas that are responsible for the fact that the interests of people are disparate.

830
01:09:06.420 --> 01:09:11.820
Incidentally, it may be mentioned that this misconstruing of human wants and interests

831
01:09:11.820 --> 01:09:17.980
prevented Marx and other socialists from comprehending the distinction between freedom and slavery,

832
01:09:17.980 --> 01:09:22.980
between the condition of a man who himself decides how to spend his income and that of

833
01:09:22.980 --> 01:09:28.580
a man whom a paternal authority supplies with those things which, as the authority thinks,

834
01:09:28.580 --> 01:09:30.620
he needs.

835
01:09:30.620 --> 01:09:35.320
In the market economy, the consumers choose and thereby determine the quantity and the

836
01:09:35.320 --> 01:09:37.660
quality of the goods produced.

837
01:09:37.660 --> 01:09:41.620
Under socialism, the authority takes care of these matters.

838
01:09:41.620 --> 01:09:45.900
In the eyes of Marx and the Marxians, there is no substantial difference between these

839
01:09:45.900 --> 01:09:52.220
two methods of want satisfaction, it is of no consequence who chooses, the paltry individual

840
01:09:52.220 --> 01:09:56.500
for himself or the authority for all its subjects.

841
01:09:56.500 --> 01:10:01.460
They fail to realize that the authority does not give its wards what they want to get,

842
01:10:01.460 --> 01:10:06.060
but what, according to the opinion of the authority, they ought to get.

843
01:10:06.060 --> 01:10:12.880
If a man who wants to get the Bible gets the Koran instead, he is no longer free.

844
01:10:12.880 --> 01:10:17.340
But even if for the sake of argument we were to admit that there is uncertainty neither

845
01:10:17.340 --> 01:10:23.080
concerning the kind of goods people are asking for, nor concerning the most expedient technological

846
01:10:23.080 --> 01:10:28.620
methods of producing them, there remains the conflict between interests in the short run

847
01:10:28.620 --> 01:10:31.020
and those in the long run.

848
01:10:31.020 --> 01:10:34.680
Here again the decision depends on ideas.

849
01:10:34.680 --> 01:10:38.960
It is judgments of value that determine the amount of time preference attached to the

850
01:10:38.960 --> 01:10:43.400
value of present goods as against that of future goods.

851
01:10:43.400 --> 01:10:46.800
Should one consume or accumulate capital?

852
01:10:46.800 --> 01:10:51.900
And how far should capital depletion or accumulation go?

853
01:10:51.900 --> 01:10:56.500
Instead of dealing with all these problems, Marx contented himself with the dogma that

854
01:10:56.500 --> 01:11:02.320
socialism will be an earthly paradise in which everybody will get all he needs.

855
01:11:02.320 --> 01:11:07.420
Of course, if one starts from this dogma, one can quietly declare that the interests

856
01:11:07.420 --> 01:11:13.480
of everybody, whatever they may be, will be best served under socialism.

857
01:11:13.480 --> 01:11:19.400
In the land of cocaine, people will no longer need any ideas, will no longer have to resort

858
01:11:19.400 --> 01:11:24.340
to any judgments of value, will no longer think and act.

859
01:11:24.340 --> 01:11:29.800
They will only open their mouths to let the roast pigeons fly in.

860
01:11:29.800 --> 01:11:34.640
In the world of reality, the conditions of which are the only object of the scientific

861
01:11:34.640 --> 01:11:40.760
search for truth, ideas determine what people consider to be their interests.

862
01:11:40.760 --> 01:11:45.660
There is no such thing as interests that could be independent of ideas.

863
01:11:45.660 --> 01:11:50.960
It is ideas that determine what people consider as their interests.

864
01:11:50.960 --> 01:11:54.600
Free men do not act in accordance with their interests.

865
01:11:54.600 --> 01:12:00.400
They act in accordance with what they believe furthers their interests.

866
01:12:00.400 --> 01:12:02.960
7.

867
01:12:02.960 --> 01:12:07.560
The Class Interests of the Bourgeoisie

868
01:12:07.560 --> 01:12:12.540
One of the starting points of the thinking of Karl Marx was the dogma that capitalism,

869
01:12:12.540 --> 01:12:17.360
while utterly detrimental to the working class, is favorable to the class interests of the

870
01:12:17.360 --> 01:12:23.560
bourgeoisie and that socialism, while thwarting only the unfair claims of the bourgeoisie,

871
01:12:23.560 --> 01:12:29.960
is highly beneficial to the whole of mankind. These were ideas developed by the French communists

872
01:12:29.960 --> 01:12:36.560
and socialists and disclosed to the German public in 1842 by Lorenz von Stein in his

873
01:12:36.560 --> 01:12:43.840
voluminous book Socialism and Communism in Present-day France. Without any qualms, Marx

874
01:12:43.840 --> 01:12:49.720
adopted this doctrine and all that was implied in it. It never occurred to him that its fundamental

875
01:12:49.720 --> 01:12:55.680
Social Dogma might require a demonstration and the concepts it employs a definition.

876
01:12:55.680 --> 01:13:01.360
He never defined the concepts of a social class and of class interests and their conflicts.

877
01:13:01.360 --> 01:13:06.320
He never explained why socialism serves the class interests of the proletarians and the

878
01:13:06.320 --> 01:13:11.640
true interests of the whole of mankind better than any other system.

879
01:13:11.640 --> 01:13:17.000
This attitude has been up to our time the characteristic mark of all socialists.

880
01:13:17.000 --> 01:13:22.160
We simply take it for granted that life under socialism will be blissful. Whoever dares to

881
01:13:22.160 --> 01:13:28.400
ask for reasons is by this very demand unmasked as a bribed apologist of the selfish class

882
01:13:28.400 --> 01:13:35.040
interests of the exploiters. The Marxian philosophy of history teaches that what brings about

883
01:13:35.040 --> 01:13:39.960
the coming of socialism is the operation of the imminent laws of capitalistic production

884
01:13:39.960 --> 01:13:46.060
itself. With the inexorability of a law of nature, capitalistic production begets its

885
01:13:46.060 --> 01:13:48.020
Own Negation.

886
01:13:48.020 --> 01:13:52.780
As no social formation ever disappears before all the productive forces are developed for

887
01:13:52.780 --> 01:13:58.420
which it has room, capitalism must run its full course before the time comes for the

888
01:13:58.420 --> 01:14:00.700
emergence of socialism.

889
01:14:00.700 --> 01:14:06.060
The free evolution of capitalism, not upset by any political interference, is therefore,

890
01:14:06.060 --> 01:14:11.900
from the Marxian point of view, highly beneficial to the, we would have to say, rightly understood

891
01:14:11.900 --> 01:14:16.420
or Long-Term Class Interests of the Proletarians.

892
01:14:16.420 --> 01:14:21.420
With the progress of capitalism on the way to its maturity and consequently to its collapse,

893
01:14:21.420 --> 01:14:26.600
says the Communist Manifesto, the laborer sinks deeper and deeper.

894
01:14:26.600 --> 01:14:29.020
He becomes a pauper.

895
01:14:29.020 --> 01:14:34.420
But seen sub specie aeternitatis, from the point of view of mankind's destination and

896
01:14:34.420 --> 01:14:40.260
the long-run interests of the proletariat, this mass of misery, oppression, slavery,

897
01:14:40.260 --> 01:14:46.220
Degradation and Exploitation is in fact to be regarded as a step forward on the road

898
01:14:46.220 --> 01:14:48.660
toward eternal bliss.

899
01:14:48.660 --> 01:14:54.660
It appears therefore not only vain but manifestly contrary to the rightly understood interests

900
01:14:54.660 --> 01:15:00.620
of the working class to indulge in necessarily futile attempts to improve the wage earner's

901
01:15:00.620 --> 01:15:04.700
conditions through reforms within the framework of capitalism.

902
01:15:04.700 --> 01:15:10.460
Hence, Marx rejected labor union endeavors to raise wage rates and to shorten the hours

903
01:15:10.460 --> 01:15:11.900
of work.

904
01:15:11.900 --> 01:15:17.260
The most orthodox of all Marxian parties, the German Social Democrats, voted in the

905
01:15:17.260 --> 01:15:23.460
80s in the Reichstag against all measures of Bismarck's famous Sozialpolitik, including

906
01:15:23.460 --> 01:15:27.260
its most spectacular feature, Social Security.

907
01:15:27.260 --> 01:15:32.980
Likewise, in the opinion of the Communists, the American New Deal was just a foredoomed

908
01:15:32.980 --> 01:15:39.220
Scheme to Salvage Dying Capitalism by Postponing its Breakdown and Thereby the Appearance

909
01:15:39.220 --> 01:15:41.900
of the Socialist Millennium.

910
01:15:41.900 --> 01:15:47.060
If employers oppose what is commonly called pro-labor legislation, they are consequently

911
01:15:47.060 --> 01:15:51.620
not guilty of fighting what Marx considered to be the true interests of the proletarian

912
01:15:51.620 --> 01:15:53.020
class.

913
01:15:53.020 --> 01:15:58.660
On the contrary, in virtually freeing economic evolution from the fetters by means of which

914
01:15:58.660 --> 01:16:04.100
Ignorant petty bourgeois, bureaucrats and such utopian and humanitarian pseudo-socialists

915
01:16:04.100 --> 01:16:10.460
as the Fabians plan to slow it down, they are serving the cause of labor and socialism.

916
01:16:10.460 --> 01:16:16.180
The very selfishness of the exploiters turns into a boon for the exploited and for the

917
01:16:16.180 --> 01:16:18.540
whole of mankind.

918
01:16:18.540 --> 01:16:24.380
Would not Marx, if he had been able to follow his own ideas to their ultimate logical consequences,

919
01:16:24.380 --> 01:16:30.560
had been tempted to say, with Mandeville, private vices, public benefits, or with Adam

920
01:16:30.560 --> 01:16:36.980
Smith, that the rich are led by an invisible hand, in such a way that they, without intending

921
01:16:36.980 --> 01:16:41.540
it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society.

922
01:16:41.540 --> 01:16:46.580
However, Marx was always anxious to bring his reasoning to an end, before the point

923
01:16:46.580 --> 01:16:51.060
beyond which its inherent contradictions would have become manifest.

924
01:16:51.060 --> 01:16:55.460
In this regard, his followers copied their master's attitude.

925
01:16:55.460 --> 01:17:01.980
The bourgeois, both capitalists and entrepreneurs, say these inconsistent disciples of Marx,

926
01:17:01.980 --> 01:17:05.660
are interested in the preservation of the laissez-faire system.

927
01:17:05.660 --> 01:17:10.920
They are opposed to all attempts to alleviate the lot of the most numerous, most useful,

928
01:17:10.920 --> 01:17:13.460
and most exploited class of men.

929
01:17:13.460 --> 01:17:16.300
They are intent upon stopping progress.

930
01:17:16.300 --> 01:17:21.340
They are reactionaries, committed to the, of course, hopeless task of turning history's

931
01:17:21.340 --> 01:17:23.340
clock back.

932
01:17:23.340 --> 01:17:28.060
Whatever one may think of these passionate effusions, repeated daily by newspapers, politicians

933
01:17:28.060 --> 01:17:33.140
and governments, one cannot deny that they are incompatible with the essential tenets

934
01:17:33.140 --> 01:17:35.000
of Marxism.

935
01:17:35.000 --> 01:17:40.460
From a consistent Marxian point of view, the champions of what is called pro-labor legislation

936
01:17:40.460 --> 01:17:46.580
are reactionary petty bourgeois, while those whom the Marxians call labor-baiters are progressive

937
01:17:46.580 --> 01:17:49.960
harbingers of the bliss to come.

938
01:17:49.960 --> 01:17:55.220
In their ignorance of all business problems, the Marxians fail to see that the present-day

939
01:17:55.220 --> 01:18:01.300
bourgeois, those who are already wealthy capitalists and entrepreneurs, are in their capacity as

940
01:18:01.300 --> 01:18:06.180
bourgeois not selfishly interested in the preservation of laissez-faire.

941
01:18:06.180 --> 01:18:10.700
Under laissez-faire, their eminent position is daily threatened anew by the ambitions

942
01:18:10.700 --> 01:18:13.660
of impecunious newcomers.

943
01:18:13.660 --> 01:18:18.180
Laws that put obstacles in the way of talented upstarts are detrimental to the interests of

944
01:18:18.180 --> 01:18:22.540
the consumers, but they protect those who have already established their position in

945
01:18:22.540 --> 01:18:25.980
business against the competition of intruders.

946
01:18:25.980 --> 01:18:30.700
In making it more difficult for a businessman to reap profit and in taxing away the greater

947
01:18:30.700 --> 01:18:35.900
part of the profits made, they prevent the accumulation of capital by newcomers and thus

948
01:18:35.900 --> 01:18:40.960
must remove the inducement that impels old firms toward the utmost exertion in serving

949
01:18:40.960 --> 01:18:43.320
the customers.

950
01:18:43.320 --> 01:18:47.560
Measures sheltering the less efficient against the competition of the more efficient and

951
01:18:47.560 --> 01:18:52.720
laws that aim at reducing or confiscating profits are from the Marxian point of view

952
01:18:52.720 --> 01:18:56.560
conservative, nay, reactionary.

953
01:18:56.560 --> 01:19:02.540
They tend to prevent technological improvement and economic progress and to preserve inefficiency

954
01:19:02.540 --> 01:19:04.600
and backwardness.

955
01:19:04.600 --> 01:19:11.080
If the New Deal had started in 1900 and not in 1933, the American consumer would have

956
01:19:11.080 --> 01:19:16.080
been deprived of many things today provided by industries which grew in the first decades

957
01:19:16.080 --> 01:19:22.860
of the century from insignificant beginnings to national importance and mass production.

958
01:19:22.860 --> 01:19:28.540
The culmination of this misconstruction of industrial problems is the animosity displayed

959
01:19:28.540 --> 01:19:34.100
against big business and against the efforts of smaller concerns to become bigger. Public

960
01:19:34.100 --> 01:19:40.180
Ludwig opinion, under the spell of Marxism, considers bigness one of the worst vices of

961
01:19:40.180 --> 01:19:45.540
business and condones every scheme devised to curb or to hurt big business by government

962
01:19:45.540 --> 01:19:47.000
action.

963
01:19:47.000 --> 01:19:51.740
There is no comprehension of the fact that it is solely bigness in business which makes

964
01:19:51.740 --> 01:19:56.540
it possible to supply the masses with all those products the present-day American common

965
01:19:56.540 --> 01:19:59.800
man does not want to do without.

966
01:19:59.800 --> 01:20:03.880
Luxury goods, for the few, can be produced in small shops.

967
01:20:03.880 --> 01:20:08.060
The goods for the many require big business.

968
01:20:08.060 --> 01:20:13.240
Those politicians, professors and union bosses who curse big business are fighting for a

969
01:20:13.240 --> 01:20:15.480
lower standard of living.

970
01:20:15.480 --> 01:20:19.680
They are certainly not furthering the interests of the proletarians.

971
01:20:19.680 --> 01:20:25.180
And they are, precisely also from the point of view of the Marxian doctrine, ultimately

972
01:20:25.180 --> 01:20:30.640
enemies of progress and of improvement of the conditions of the workers.

973
01:20:30.640 --> 01:20:35.820
8. THE CRITICS OF MARXISM

974
01:20:35.820 --> 01:20:41.920
The materialism of Marx and Engels differs radically from the ideas of classical materialism.

975
01:20:41.920 --> 01:20:48.000
It depicts human thoughts, choices, and actions as determined by the material productive forces,

976
01:20:48.000 --> 01:20:54.400
tools, and machines. Marx and Engels fail to see that tools and machines are themselves

977
01:20:54.400 --> 01:20:59.400
products of the operation of the human mind. Even if there are sophisticated attempts to

978
01:20:59.400 --> 01:21:05.060
to Describe All Spiritual and Intellectual Phenomena, Which They Call Superstructural.

979
01:21:05.060 --> 01:21:09.820
As produced by the material productive forces had been successful, they would only have

980
01:21:09.820 --> 01:21:14.860
traced these phenomena back to something which in itself is a spiritual and intellectual

981
01:21:14.860 --> 01:21:16.620
phenomenon.

982
01:21:16.620 --> 01:21:19.420
Their reasoning moves in a circle.

983
01:21:19.420 --> 01:21:24.120
Their alleged materialism is in fact no materialism at all.

984
01:21:24.120 --> 01:21:28.340
It provides merely a verbal solution of the problems involved.

985
01:21:28.340 --> 01:21:34.140
Occasionally, even Marx and Engels were aware of the fundamental inadequacy of their doctrine.

986
01:21:34.140 --> 01:21:38.900
When Engels, at the grave of Marx, summed up what he considered to be the quintessence

987
01:21:38.900 --> 01:21:44.760
of his friend's achievements, he did not mention the material productive forces at all.

988
01:21:44.760 --> 01:21:51.160
Said Engels, As Darwin discovered the law of evolution of organic nature, Marx discovered

989
01:21:51.160 --> 01:21:54.660
the law of mankind's historical evolution.

990
01:21:54.660 --> 01:22:00.260
That is the simple fact, hitherto hidden beneath ideological overgrowth, that man must first

991
01:22:00.260 --> 01:22:06.140
of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing before they can pursue politics, science,

992
01:22:06.140 --> 01:22:08.660
art, religion, and the like.

993
01:22:08.660 --> 01:22:13.800
That consequently, the production of the immediately required foodstuffs, and therewith the stage

994
01:22:13.800 --> 01:22:18.780
of economic evolution attained by a people or an epoch, constitute the foundation out

995
01:22:18.780 --> 01:22:24.420
of which the governmental institutions, the ideas about right and wrong, art, and even

996
01:22:24.420 --> 01:22:29.060
Even the religious ideas of men have been developed and by means of which they must

997
01:22:29.060 --> 01:22:35.780
be explained, not as hitherto had been done the other way round.

998
01:22:35.780 --> 01:22:40.180
Certainly no man was more competent than Engels to provide an authoritative interpretation

999
01:22:40.180 --> 01:22:46.300
of dialectic materialism, but if Engels was right in this obituary, then the whole of

1000
01:22:46.300 --> 01:22:49.440
Marxian materialism fades away.

1001
01:22:49.440 --> 01:22:55.440
It is reduced to a truism known to everybody from time immemorial and never contested by

1002
01:22:55.440 --> 01:22:56.640
anybody.

1003
01:22:56.640 --> 01:23:04.000
It says no more than the worn-out aphorism, primum vivere de inde filosofari.

1004
01:23:04.000 --> 01:23:09.060
As an heuristic trick, Engels's interpretation turned out very well.

1005
01:23:09.060 --> 01:23:14.800
As soon as somebody begins to unmask the absurdities and contradictions of dialectical materialism,

1006
01:23:14.800 --> 01:23:20.400
The Marxians retort, Do you deny that men must first of all eat? Do you deny that men

1007
01:23:20.400 --> 01:23:25.800
are interested in improving the material conditions of their existence? Since nobody wants to

1008
01:23:25.800 --> 01:23:31.000
contest these truisms, they conclude that all the teachings of Marxian materialism are

1009
01:23:31.000 --> 01:23:37.580
unassailable. And hosts of pseudo-philosophers fail to see through this non sequitur.

1010
01:23:37.580 --> 01:23:42.640
The main target of Marx's rancorous attacks was the Prussian state of the Hohenzollern

1011
01:23:42.640 --> 01:23:48.600
Dynasty. He hated this regime not because it was opposed to socialism, but precisely

1012
01:23:48.600 --> 01:23:54.760
because it was inclined to accept socialism. While his rival, LaSalle, toyed with the idea

1013
01:23:54.760 --> 01:24:00.120
of realizing socialism in cooperation with the Prussian government led by Bismarck, Marx's

1014
01:24:00.120 --> 01:24:06.220
International Working Men's Association sought to supplant the Hohenzollern. Since in Prussia,

1015
01:24:06.220 --> 01:24:11.720
the Protestant Church was subject to the government and was administered by government officials,

1016
01:24:11.720 --> 01:24:17.160
Marx never tired of vilifying the Christian religion too. Anti-Christianism became all

1017
01:24:17.160 --> 01:24:22.100
the more a dogma of Marxism in that the countries whose intellectuals first were converted to

1018
01:24:22.100 --> 01:24:28.500
Marxism were Russia and Italy. In Russia, the church was even more dependent on the

1019
01:24:28.500 --> 01:24:34.420
government than in Prussia. In the eyes of the Italians of the 19th century, anti-Catholic

1020
01:24:34.420 --> 01:24:40.460
bias was the mark of all who opposed the restoration of the Pope's secular rule and the disintegration

1021
01:24:40.460 --> 01:24:43.540
of the Newly Won National Unity.

1022
01:24:43.540 --> 01:24:47.860
The Christian churches and sects did not fight socialism.

1023
01:24:47.860 --> 01:24:52.100
Step by step they accepted its essential political and social ideas.

1024
01:24:52.100 --> 01:24:57.360
Today they are, with but few exceptions, outspoken in rejecting capitalism and advocating either

1025
01:24:57.360 --> 01:25:02.460
socialism or interventionist policies which must inevitably result in the establishment

1026
01:25:02.460 --> 01:25:04.160
of socialism.

1027
01:25:04.160 --> 01:25:08.880
But of course, no Christian church can ever acquiesce in a brand of socialism which is

1028
01:25:08.880 --> 01:25:13.120
is hostile to Christianity and aims at its suppression.

1029
01:25:13.120 --> 01:25:18.340
The churches are implacably opposed to the anti-Christian aspects of Marxism.

1030
01:25:18.340 --> 01:25:23.840
They try to distinguish between their own program of social reform and the Marxian program,

1031
01:25:23.840 --> 01:25:29.400
the inherent viciousness of Marxism they consider to be its materialism and atheism.

1032
01:25:29.400 --> 01:25:35.520
However, in fighting Marxian materialism, the apologists of religion have entirely missed

1033
01:25:35.520 --> 01:25:37.480
the point.

1034
01:25:37.480 --> 01:25:42.200
Many of them looked upon materialism as an ethical doctrine teaching that men ought only

1035
01:25:42.200 --> 01:25:47.080
to strive after satisfaction of the needs of their bodies and after a life of pleasure

1036
01:25:47.080 --> 01:25:52.040
and revelry, and ought not to bother about anything else.

1037
01:25:52.040 --> 01:25:57.560
What they advance against this ethical materialism has no reference to the Marxian doctrine and

1038
01:25:57.560 --> 01:26:00.740
no bearing on the issue and dispute.

1039
01:26:00.740 --> 01:26:05.440
No more sensible are the objections raised to Marxian materialism by those who pick out

1040
01:26:05.440 --> 01:26:11.040
definite historical events, such as the rise of the Christian creed, the crusades, the

1041
01:26:11.040 --> 01:26:16.320
religious wars, and triumphantly asserts that no materialist interpretation of them could

1042
01:26:16.320 --> 01:26:19.000
be provided.

1043
01:26:19.000 --> 01:26:24.880
Every change in conditions affects the structure of demand and supply of various material things

1044
01:26:24.880 --> 01:26:29.200
and thereby the short-run interests of some groups of people.

1045
01:26:29.200 --> 01:26:33.640
It is therefore possible to show that there were some groups who profited in the short-run

1046
01:26:33.640 --> 01:26:36.440
and others who were prejudiced in the short run.

1047
01:26:36.440 --> 01:26:41.640
Hence, the advocates of Marxism are always in a position to point out that class interests

1048
01:26:41.640 --> 01:26:46.040
were involved and thus to annul the objections raised.

1049
01:26:46.040 --> 01:26:50.060
Of course, this method of demonstrating the correctness of the materialist interpretation

1050
01:26:50.060 --> 01:26:52.560
of history is entirely wrong.

1051
01:26:52.560 --> 01:26:55.760
The question is not whether group interests were affected.

1052
01:26:55.760 --> 01:26:59.680
They are necessarily always affected, at least in the short run.

1053
01:26:59.680 --> 01:27:04.480
The question is whether the striving after lucre of the groups concerned was the cause

1054
01:27:04.480 --> 01:27:06.840
of the event under discussion.

1055
01:27:06.840 --> 01:27:11.800
For instance, were the short-run interests of the munitions industry instrumental in bringing

1056
01:27:11.800 --> 01:27:15.440
about the bellicosity and the wars of our age?

1057
01:27:15.440 --> 01:27:20.040
In dealing with such problems, the Marxians never mention that where there are interests

1058
01:27:20.040 --> 01:27:24.460
pro, there are necessarily also interests con.

1059
01:27:24.460 --> 01:27:28.860
They would have to explain why the latter did not prevail over the former.

1060
01:27:28.860 --> 01:27:34.500
But the idealist critics of Marxism were too dull to expose any of the fallacies of dialectical

1061
01:27:34.500 --> 01:27:35.500
materialism.

1062
01:27:35.500 --> 01:27:40.660
They did not even notice that the Marxians resorted to their class interest interpretation

1063
01:27:40.660 --> 01:27:45.820
only in dealing with phenomena which were generally condemned as bad, never in dealing

1064
01:27:45.820 --> 01:27:48.940
with phenomena of which all people approve.

1065
01:27:48.940 --> 01:27:54.840
If one ascribes warring to the machinations of munitions capital and alcoholism to machinations

1066
01:27:54.840 --> 01:27:58.800
In the early days of the liquor trade, it would be consistent to ascribe cleanliness

1067
01:27:58.800 --> 01:28:03.600
to the designs of the soap manufacturers and the flowering of literature and education

1068
01:28:03.600 --> 01:28:07.080
to the maneuvering of the publishing and printing industries.

1069
01:28:07.080 --> 01:28:11.200
But neither the Marxians nor their critics ever thought of it.

1070
01:28:11.200 --> 01:28:16.880
The outstanding fact in all this is that the Marxian doctrine of historical change has

1071
01:28:16.880 --> 01:28:20.280
never received any judicious critique.

1072
01:28:20.280 --> 01:28:26.800
It could triumph because its adversaries never disclosed its fallacies and inherent contradictions.

1073
01:28:26.800 --> 01:28:31.840
How entirely people have misunderstood Marxian materialism is shown in the common practice

1074
01:28:31.840 --> 01:28:38.320
of lumping together Marxism and Freud's psychoanalysis. Actually no sharper contrast can be thought

1075
01:28:38.320 --> 01:28:44.540
of than that between these two doctrines. Materialism aims at reducing mental phenomena

1076
01:28:44.540 --> 01:28:51.220
to Material Causes. Psychoanalysis, on the contrary, deals with mental phenomena as with

1077
01:28:51.220 --> 01:28:58.140
an autonomous field. While traditional psychiatry and neurology tried to explain all pathological

1078
01:28:58.140 --> 01:29:03.080
conditions with which they were concerned as caused by definite pathological conditions

1079
01:29:03.080 --> 01:29:08.940
of some bodily organs, psychoanalysis succeeded in demonstrating that abnormal states of the

1080
01:29:08.940 --> 01:29:12.740
The body are sometimes produced by mental factors.

1081
01:29:12.740 --> 01:29:17.860
This discovery was the achievement of Charcot and of Joseph Breuer, and it was the great

1082
01:29:17.860 --> 01:29:25.780
exploit of Sigmund Freud to build upon this foundation a comprehensive systematic discipline.

1083
01:29:25.780 --> 01:29:29.780
Psychoanalysis is the opposite of all brands of materialism.

1084
01:29:29.780 --> 01:29:35.100
If we look upon it not as a branch of pure knowledge but as a method of healing the sick,

1085
01:29:35.100 --> 01:29:45.620
Freud was a modest man. He did not make extravagant pretensions regarding the importance of his

1086
01:29:45.620 --> 01:29:51.220
contributions. He was very cautious in touching upon problems of philosophy and branches of

1087
01:29:51.220 --> 01:29:56.500
knowledge to the development of which he himself had not contributed. He did not venture to

1088
01:29:56.500 --> 01:30:01.720
attack any of the metaphysical propositions of materialism. He even went so far as to

1089
01:30:01.720 --> 01:30:06.960
To admit that one day science may succeed in providing a purely physiological explanation

1090
01:30:06.960 --> 01:30:10.520
of the phenomena psychoanalysis deals with.

1091
01:30:10.520 --> 01:30:16.640
Only so long as this does not happen, psychoanalysis appeared to him scientifically sound and practically

1092
01:30:16.640 --> 01:30:17.920
indispensable.

1093
01:30:17.920 --> 01:30:22.300
He was no less cautious in criticizing Marxian materialism.

1094
01:30:22.300 --> 01:30:25.560
He freely confessed his incompetence in this field.

1095
01:30:25.560 --> 01:30:30.040
But all this does not alter the fact that the psychoanalytical approach is essentially

1096
01:30:30.040 --> 01:30:36.040
and Substantially Incompatible with the Epistemology of Materialism.

1097
01:30:36.040 --> 01:30:40.600
Psychoanalysis stresses the role that the libido, the sexual impulse, plays in human

1098
01:30:40.600 --> 01:30:41.600
life.

1099
01:30:41.600 --> 01:30:48.000
This role had been neglected before by psychology as well as by all other branches of knowledge.

1100
01:30:48.000 --> 01:30:52.940
Psychoanalysis also explains the reasons for this neglect, but it by no means asserts that

1101
01:30:52.940 --> 01:30:58.400
sex is the only human urge seeking satisfaction and that all psychic phenomena are induced

1102
01:30:58.400 --> 01:30:59.400
by it.

1103
01:30:59.400 --> 01:31:04.260
Its preoccupation with sexual impulses arose from the fact that it started as a

1104
01:31:04.260 --> 01:31:08.520
therapeutical method and that most of the pathological conditions it had to deal

1105
01:31:08.520 --> 01:31:13.560
with are caused by the repression of sexual urges. The reason some authors

1106
01:31:13.560 --> 01:31:17.800
linked psychoanalysis and Marxism was that both were considered to be at

1107
01:31:17.800 --> 01:31:23.440
variance with theological ideas. However, with the passing of time, theological

1108
01:31:23.440 --> 01:31:26.880
schools and groups of various denominations are adopting a different

1109
01:31:26.880 --> 01:31:29.680
Evaluation of the Teachings of Freud.

1110
01:31:29.680 --> 01:31:33.540
They are not merely dropping their radical opposition as they have already done before

1111
01:31:33.540 --> 01:31:38.560
with regard to modern astronomical and geological achievements and the theories of phylogenetic

1112
01:31:38.560 --> 01:31:41.260
change in the structure of organisms.

1113
01:31:41.260 --> 01:31:46.360
They are trying to integrate psychoanalysis into the system and the practice of pastoral

1114
01:31:46.360 --> 01:31:47.880
theology.

1115
01:31:47.880 --> 01:31:53.240
They view the study of psychoanalysis as an important part of the training for the ministry.

1116
01:31:53.240 --> 01:31:57.300
Of course, few theologians would be prepared to endorse the interpretation of an eminent

1117
01:31:57.300 --> 01:32:02.520
Catholic historian of medicine, Professor Petro L. Entralgo, according to which Freud

1118
01:32:02.520 --> 01:32:08.160
has brought to full development some of the possibilities offered by Christianity.

1119
01:32:08.160 --> 01:32:12.720
As conditions are today, many defenders of the authority of the Church are guideless

1120
01:32:12.720 --> 01:32:18.060
and bewildered in their attitude toward philosophical and scientific problems. They condemn what

1121
01:32:18.060 --> 01:32:21.020
that they could or even should endorse.

1122
01:32:21.020 --> 01:32:25.860
In fighting spurious doctrines, they resort to untenable objections which, in the minds

1123
01:32:25.860 --> 01:32:30.540
of those who can discern the fallaciousness of the objections, rather strengthen the tendency

1124
01:32:30.540 --> 01:32:34.120
to believe that the attacked doctrines are sound.

1125
01:32:34.120 --> 01:32:39.780
Being unable to discover the real flaw in false doctrines, these apologists for religion

1126
01:32:39.780 --> 01:32:43.100
may finally end by approving them.

1127
01:32:43.100 --> 01:32:47.620
This explains the curious fact that there are nowadays tendencies in Christian writings

1128
01:32:47.620 --> 01:32:53.820
to Adopt Marxian Dialectical Materialism. Thus, a Presbyterian theologian, Professor

1129
01:32:53.820 --> 01:33:00.120
Alexander Miller, believes that Christianity can reckon with the truth in historical materialism

1130
01:33:00.120 --> 01:33:05.660
and with the fact of class struggle. He not only suggests, as many eminent leaders of

1131
01:33:05.660 --> 01:33:10.320
various Christian denominations have done before him, that the church should adopt the

1132
01:33:10.320 --> 01:33:16.280
essential principles of Marxian politics. He thinks the church ought to accept Marxism

1133
01:33:16.280 --> 01:33:20.280
as the Essence of a Scientific Sociology.

1134
01:33:20.280 --> 01:33:26.360
How odd to reconcile with the Nicene Creed a doctrine teaching that religious ideas are

1135
01:33:26.360 --> 01:33:30.680
the superstructure of the material productive forces.

1136
01:33:30.680 --> 01:33:33.120
9.

1137
01:33:33.120 --> 01:33:37.080
Marxian Materialism and Socialism

1138
01:33:37.080 --> 01:33:42.000
Like many frustrated intellectuals and like almost all contemporary Prussian noblemen,

1139
01:33:42.000 --> 01:33:47.760
Social Servants, Teachers and Writers, Marx was driven by a fanatical hatred of business

1140
01:33:47.760 --> 01:33:49.560
and businessmen.

1141
01:33:49.560 --> 01:33:54.300
He turned toward socialism because he considered it the worst punishment that could be inflicted

1142
01:33:54.300 --> 01:33:56.900
upon the odious bourgeois.

1143
01:33:56.900 --> 01:34:01.140
At the same time, he realized that the only hope for socialism was to prevent further

1144
01:34:01.140 --> 01:34:04.320
discussion of its pros and cons.

1145
01:34:04.320 --> 01:34:10.400
People must be induced to accept it emotionally without asking questions about its effects.

1146
01:34:10.400 --> 01:34:15.560
In order to achieve this, Marx adapted Hegel's philosophy of history, the official creed

1147
01:34:15.560 --> 01:34:18.920
of the schools from which he had graduated.

1148
01:34:18.920 --> 01:34:23.560
Hegel had arrogated to himself the faculty of revealing the Lord's hidden plans to the

1149
01:34:23.560 --> 01:34:24.760
public.

1150
01:34:24.760 --> 01:34:29.640
There was no reason why Dr. Marx should stand back and withhold from the people the good

1151
01:34:29.640 --> 01:34:33.240
tidings that an inner voice had communicated to him.

1152
01:34:33.240 --> 01:34:38.440
Socialism, this voice announced, is bound to come because this is the course that destiny

1153
01:34:38.440 --> 01:34:39.740
is steering.

1154
01:34:39.740 --> 01:34:44.380
There is no use indulging a debate about the blessings or ills to be expected from a socialist

1155
01:34:44.380 --> 01:34:49.500
or communist mode of production. Such debates would be reasonable only if men were free

1156
01:34:49.500 --> 01:34:55.220
to choose between socialism and some alternative. Besides, being later in the succession of

1157
01:34:55.220 --> 01:35:01.760
stages of historical evolution, socialism is also necessarily a higher and better stage,

1158
01:35:01.760 --> 01:35:06.540
and all doubts about the benefits to be derived from it are futile.

1159
01:35:06.540 --> 01:35:11.380
The scheme of philosophy of history that describes human history as culminating and ending in

1160
01:35:11.380 --> 01:35:18.180
socialism is the essence of Marxism, is Karl Marx's main contribution to the pro-socialist

1161
01:35:18.180 --> 01:35:20.100
ideology.

1162
01:35:20.100 --> 01:35:26.300
Like all similar schemes, including that of Hegel, it was begot by intuition.

1163
01:35:26.300 --> 01:35:32.620
Marx called it science, wissenschaft, because in his day no other epithet could give a doctrine

1164
01:35:32.620 --> 01:35:34.740
higher prestige.

1165
01:35:34.740 --> 01:35:40.880
In pre-Marxian ages it was not customary to call philosophies of history scientific. Nobody

1166
01:35:40.880 --> 01:35:46.660
ever applied the term science to the prophecies of Daniel, the revelation of St. John, or

1167
01:35:46.660 --> 01:35:54.580
the writings of Joachim of Flora. For the same reasons Marx called his doctrine materialistic.

1168
01:35:54.580 --> 01:36:00.740
In the environment of left-wing Hegelianism in which Marx lived before he settled in London,

1169
01:36:00.740 --> 01:36:05.660
Materialism was the accepted philosophy. It was taken for granted that philosophy and

1170
01:36:05.660 --> 01:36:12.660
science admit of no treatment of the mind-body problem but that taught by materialism. Authors

1171
01:36:12.660 --> 01:36:18.240
who did not want to be anathematized by their set had to avoid being suspected of any concession

1172
01:36:18.240 --> 01:36:25.100
to idealism. Thus Marx was anxious to call his philosophy materialistic. In fact, as

1173
01:36:25.100 --> 01:36:30.660
has been pointed out earlier, his doctrine does not deal at all with the mind-body problem.

1174
01:36:30.660 --> 01:36:35.660
It does not raise the question of how the material productive forces come into existence

1175
01:36:35.660 --> 01:36:42.760
and how and why they change. Marx's doctrine is not a materialist but a technological interpretation

1176
01:36:42.760 --> 01:36:48.740
of history. But, from a political point of view, Marx did well in calling his doctrine

1177
01:36:48.740 --> 01:36:55.100
scientific and materialistic. These predicates lent it a reputation it would never have acquired

1178
01:36:55.100 --> 01:37:00.460
without them. Incidentally it must be noted that Marx and Engels made no effort to establish

1179
01:37:00.460 --> 01:37:04.500
Research, the validity of their technological interpretation of history.

1180
01:37:04.500 --> 01:37:09.140
In the earlier days of their careers as authors they enunciated their dogmas in clear-cut

1181
01:37:09.140 --> 01:37:14.180
challenging formulations such as the earlier quoted dictum about the hand mill and the

1182
01:37:14.180 --> 01:37:15.740
steam mill.

1183
01:37:15.740 --> 01:37:19.200
In later years they became more reserved and cautious.

1184
01:37:19.200 --> 01:37:24.620
After the death of Marx, Engels occasionally even made remarkable concessions to the bourgeois

1185
01:37:24.620 --> 01:37:27.440
and idealistic point of view.

1186
01:37:27.440 --> 01:37:32.580
But never did Marx or Engels or any of their numerous followers try to give any specifications

1187
01:37:32.580 --> 01:37:37.100
about the operation of a mechanism which would out of a definite state of the material productive

1188
01:37:37.100 --> 01:37:43.600
forces bring forth a definite juridical, political and spiritual superstructure.

1189
01:37:43.600 --> 01:37:50.720
Their famous philosophy never grew beyond the abrupt enunciation of a piquant apperçu.

1190
01:37:50.720 --> 01:37:56.500
The heuristic tricks of Marxism succeeded very well and enrolled hosts of pseudo-intellectuals

1191
01:37:56.500 --> 01:37:59.460
in the Ranks of Revolutionary Socialism.

1192
01:37:59.460 --> 01:38:04.300
But they did not discredit what economists had asserted about the disastrous consequences

1193
01:38:04.300 --> 01:38:07.300
of a socialist mode of production.

1194
01:38:07.300 --> 01:38:12.580
Marx had tabooed the analysis of the operation of a socialist system as utopian, that is,

1195
01:38:12.580 --> 01:38:19.060
in his terminology, as unscientific, and he as well as his successors smeared all authors

1196
01:38:19.060 --> 01:38:21.680
who defied this taboo.

1197
01:38:21.680 --> 01:38:26.380
Yet these tactics did not alter the fact that all Marx contributed to the discussion on

1198
01:38:26.380 --> 01:38:32.180
and Socialism was to disclose what an inner voice had told him, namely that the end and

1199
01:38:32.180 --> 01:38:38.620
aim of mankind's historical evolution is expropriation of the capitalists.

1200
01:38:38.620 --> 01:38:43.540
From the epistemological point of view, it must be emphasized that Marxian materialism

1201
01:38:43.540 --> 01:38:47.560
does not accomplish what a materialist philosophy claims to do.

1202
01:38:47.560 --> 01:38:52.860
It does not explain how definite thoughts and judgments of value originate in the human

1203
01:38:52.860 --> 01:38:53.860
mind.

1204
01:38:53.860 --> 01:38:58.940
The exposure of an untenable doctrine is not tantamount to confirmation of a doctrine conflicting

1205
01:38:58.940 --> 01:39:00.020
with it.

1206
01:39:00.020 --> 01:39:04.660
There is need to state this obvious fact, because many people have forgotten it.

1207
01:39:04.660 --> 01:39:10.140
The refutation of dialectical materialism implies, of course, invalidation of the Marxian

1208
01:39:10.140 --> 01:39:12.580
vindication of socialism.

1209
01:39:12.580 --> 01:39:17.520
But it does not demonstrate the truth of the assertions that socialism is unrealizable,

1210
01:39:17.520 --> 01:39:22.180
that it would destroy civilization and result in misery for all, and that its coming is

1211
01:39:22.180 --> 01:39:24.340
is not inevitable.

1212
01:39:24.340 --> 01:39:28.980
These propositions can be established only by economic analysis.

1213
01:39:28.980 --> 01:39:33.700
Marx and all those who sympathize with his doctrines have been aware that an economic

1214
01:39:33.700 --> 01:39:39.560
analysis of socialism will show the fallacy of the pro-socialist arguments.

1215
01:39:39.560 --> 01:39:45.260
The Marxists cling to historical materialism and stubbornly refuse to listen to its critics

1216
01:39:45.260 --> 01:39:48.380
because they want socialism for emotional reasons.