Review of Tucker, Avineri and Lobkowicz

8/9/2019 Review of Tucker, Avineri and Lobkowicz

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RECENT STUDIES ON MARX

The Social & Political Thought of Karl Marx By Shlomo Avineri.

(Cambridge

: Cambridge University Press, 1968)

. Pp

. viii, 269.

$5 .50 cloth, $2

.45 paper.

Philosophy & Myth in Karl Marx By Robert C. Tucker. (Cam-

bridge : Cambridge University Press, 1961) . Pp. 263. $5 .50

cloth, $1

.95 paper.

Theory and Practice

: History

of a Concept f rom Aristotle to Marx.

By Nicolas Lobkowicz . (Notre Dame : Notre Dame University

Press, 1967) . Pp. xvi, 442

. $8 .95.

N

on-ideological analyses of Marx

'

s thought, of which the volumes

under review constitute a sample ; are free from the distorting

pressures of immediate political objectives

. This condition for ra-

tional discussion does not however mean there will be agreement

either as to the genesis or significance of Marx 's views. Any study

of the prehistory of his speculations presupposes an explicit or im-

plicit identification of what is central and what is peripheral, just as

any discussion of the body of Marx

'

s work must deal with its his-

torical antecedents . Marx is concerned with the perennial questions:

the relationship between man and man, between man and nature,

and between man and God . He also dealt with historically con-

tingent philosophical and social problems

; he inherited as well as

chose the Hegelian, or rather the Young Hegelian intellectual edifice,

the sentiments of romantic revolution, and the concerns of political

economy. Moreover, he left all three in a different state than he

found them

. Theoretical analyses of Marx '

s writings must be con-

cerned with both Marx s answer (or, in some instances, his non-

answer) to the perennial questions and with Marx

'

s place in the

stream of European intellectual history . Even if, in some measure,

such a treatment remains a desideratum, the modal interpretations

from which a comprehensive study could be fashioned have been

established : on the one hand it is argued that Marx is a com-

monsensical or even a philosophical analyst of individual and social

existence within the historical horizon provided by European and

North American industrialization

. On the other, it is said that he

is a primitive religious enthusiast, an activist mystic who proselytized

a dogma of human self-salvation


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186

THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER

Speaking very broadly, Avineri argues more for the first alterna-

tive while Tucker and Lobkowicz prefer the second.

I

Avineri begins his discussion with a consideration of the im-

portance of Hegel-in particular, of Hegel's

Philosophy of

Right,

because

it is from Hegel

s political philosophy that Marx works

toward the roots of the Hegelian system-and not the other way

round

.

What Marx objects to in Hegel

s political teaching is not

its intentions ( to bridge the gap between the rational and the

actual ), but rather its main institutional consequences,

which

invested empirical reality with a philosophic halo that it did not

deserve

. Hegel

'

s Idea,

which should have been a criterion for judg-

ing reality, turns out to be a mere rationalization ; it leads to a

quietistic acceptance of the socio-political situation as it is, and

elevates a contemporary phase of history arbitrarily into a philo-

sophic criterion

1

As early as March, 1843, Marx had mastered a

technique, originally invented by Feuerbach and known as the

transformative method, whereby the seemingly objectionable em-

pirical implications of Hegel's political views could be tackled with-

out destroying the entire system .' The result of Marx

's

Feuerbachian

transformation is the Critique

of Hegel

'

s Philosophy of

Right,

a care-

ful reading of which, as Avineri shows,

can demonstrate that the

distinctive patterns in Marx

's later thought had already taken shape

when he attacked Hegel in this work

Hegel

s error, according to Marx, was that he confused subject

and predicate

: sovereignty, the essence of the state, was conceived

as a subject while the real subject, the

concrete man,

was con-

ceived as a predicate of the state

. Marx does not deny this to be an

accurate observation of early nineteenth century German politics,

1 Avineri, pp

. 13, 9, 14

. Hegel has not lacked defenders against Marx

'

s charge

that he provided a rationalization of the status quo

. See, for example, the

articles by Knox, Pelczynski, and Avineri himself, in W

. Kaufmann, ed

. , Hegel

's

Political Philosophy (New

York,

1970) or the essays by Pelczynski, Shklar,

Ilting, and Berki in Z . A Pelczynski,

ed

.

Hegel's Political Philosophy : Problems

and Perspectives (Cambridge, 1971).

Z

Compare Marx s letter to Ruge, 20 March 1842 with his letter also to Ruge,

of 13 March 1843 . Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Werke

(Berlin, 1963), vol.

XXVII, pp. 401,417.

sAvineri, p

. 13


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88


the basis upon which the strata of civil society rests and move . '

That is, they are the very condition for the existence of civil society.

Avineri comments

The circle is thus complete

: since Hegel

s theory

ignores the human subject, it must ultimately reach an institution-

alization from which a whole stratum of human subjects will be

exluded 7 Even within civil society, classes which are politically

represented are not represented as subjects but as predicates of that

in virtue of which any social appearance at all is possible, namely

property . Furthermore, it is precisely entailed property, which Hegel

saw as providing an economic base sufficiently insulated from the

market forces of civil society to enable the nobility to devote them-

selves to the public bureaucracy, that Marx finds the most arbi-

trary of all

: the absoluteness of an entailed estate makes it a kind

of absolute subject and its aristocratic bureaucrat is a kind of

absolute predicate .' The state per se is

therefore both an epihe-

nomenon of real social forces and a means whereby real social forces

are hidden from sight.

The discovery of real classes in real conflict, with no dialectical

ascent (Aufhebung) to the universality of the state implies that civil

society and the activity carried on in civil society rather than the

political realm and political activity are the center of concern

. The

activity, of course, is economic, but Avineri is careful to point out

that the role of economics in Marx '

s scheme is perhaps more subtle

than it is often made out to be

: Marx does not postulate the aboli-

tion of class antagonisms because any economic mechanism points

in that direction . No economic analysis precedes his dictum about

the abolition of classes ; they will be abolished

(aufgehoben)

be-

cause historical development has brought the tension between the

general and the particular to a point of no return

The point of

no return has been achieved by capitalism, but capitalism, the es-

sence of which is infinite accumulation, was made possible only

through the emergence of civil society as an autonomous sphere of

economic activity devoid of political or religious restraints

. The

°Werke,

I, p

. 284

. Later in the

Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbiicher

Marx iden-

tified the proletariat as a class of civil society which is not a class of civil

society Early Writings, Tr. T . Bottomore (London, 1963),

p

58.

7 Avineri, p

26.

°Hegel, Philosophy of Right,

para

305-307 ; Marx, Werke

I, pp

. 303-05;

Avineri, pp

. 27-31.

°Avineri, p

.

59


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189

ecumenical expansion of capitalism which, as Marx puts it in the

Communist Manifesto,

batters down all Chinese walls,

has created

a new world of economic interdependence

1 0

Moreover, the geo-

graphic universality is complemented by a universality of depend-

ence : not, to be sure, the dependence of this individual man upon

this particular master but of all men upon all other men

. The

dynamics of the capitalist mode of production and the intricacies of

the division of labor have created, Marx said, a universal inter-

dependence of mankind

. Pointing to an inconspicuous passage in

Capital III,

Avineri shows how Marx, as early as 1864, described

certain structural modifications of entrepreneurial capitalism, later

called the

Managerial Revolution,

that resulted from the process

of production but which were both unintended and unforseen by

capitalists themselves or by other economists

.

1 2

Similarly, Marx

noted the change in British rule of its overseas empire in India from

the relatively straightforward economic exploitation, responsible to

Parliament, carried on by the East India Company to the almost

total anonymity of the later bureaucratic rule of India House 1 3

The above account of a few themes in Marx

s work which Avineri

treats seem to corroborate the view that Marx was first of all an

empirical social scientist or even a commonsense critic of Hegel.

For, was not what Marx said about capitalist production true? Had

it not established for the first time a worldwide economic structure?

Did not governments pursue policies, both foreign and domestic,

designed to increase productivity? Are we today not all too familiar

with huge private bureaucracies that are capitalist only through

linguistic indulgence? And likewise we know public bureaucracies

that suffer so little public scrutiny as to make them indistinguishable

from private corporations

. Or again, when Marx called Hegel

s

'°Selected W orks (New Y o r k ,

1968), p

. 39.

1

'As a matter of fact, Hegel made precisely the same point but draws quite

different conclusions in a text unknown to Marx, the so-called Jenaer Real-

philosophie

See Avineri'

s discussion in

Labor, Alienation, and Social Classes

in Hegel

s Realphilosophie, Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol I No

. 1 (Fall,

1971), pp. 103 if.

1 2

Avineri, pp . 177-79

; the passages cited are from Capital, III, Ed

. F. Engels,

(New York, 1967), pp . 437-441 . See also the remarks of Ralf Dahrendorf,

Class & Class Conflict in Industrial Society

(Stanford, 1959), pp

. 41-48.

1 3

See The Government of India,

New York Daily Tribune, 20 July 1853, in

Avineri, ed

Karl Marx on Colonization and Modernization (New York, 1968),

pp. 110-115

Werke,

IX, pp. 181-87


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190


notion of

Mande

obsolete and argued that his bureaucracy was just

another particularistic group within civil society, is there not more

than a grain of truth in his assertion? Assuredly, much of what Marx

said was and may be still applicable to the real situation of actual

workers, actual bureaucrats, actual capitalists and so on

. But Marx

also implied that in Avineri

's words, a

point of no return

had been

reached, that the Hegelian project of reconciling particularity with

universality had broken down, but also that Hegel

'

s basic notion was

a sound one . What we would like to know, whatever the validity of

Marx'

s observations on economic, political and bureaucratic realities,

is what Marx thought of the significance of the facts he observed,

why he conceived them to constitute a point of no return, and what

lay ahead In short, is what Marx

meant

also applicable to

reality, or has he constructed a speculative reality of his own de-

vising, a

second reality

as it has been called

1 4

Avineri

'

s caution in

this regard is understandable

. If Marx not only told men what was

going on under our very eyes,

1

5

as he put it, but also provided

these facts with their real significance, that is one thing . One may

anticipate no extraordinary problems in textual explication

. But, if

Marx is constructing a speculative system which provides a meaning

to the phenomena he describes on the basis of his own imagination,

and if he employs a philosophical or economic language in such a

way as to disguise, as well as he can, his own non-recognition of

the meaning of the historical and social existence of man, then a

formidable task of decoding arises

. Avineri appears to fall between

these two fundamentally antithetical positions.

A closer scrutiny of one of Marx '

s more potently evocative sym-

bols may expose the difficulty . Marx argued that Hegel

's state was

an inverted reality

; the prescriptive trick therefore is obvious:

reality must be inverted once more by the transformative method:

man must be made again into a subject .

Y 8 In Marx'

s view, true

society

which, like Hegel

'

s, reconciled the particular with the uni-

versal, could be achieved not through integration by the state of the

1 4

E Voegelin,

Anamnesis

: Zur Theorie der Geschichte and Politik

(Munich,

1966), pp . 302-313 ; P

. Berger, The Problem of Multiple Realities : Alfred

Schutz and Robert Musil,

in M

. Natanson, ed

. Phenomenology and Social

Reality

:

Essays

in Memory

of

Alfred Schutz

(The Hague, 1970).

The quote is from the Communist Manifesto, Selected

Works,

pp. 46-47.

1 6

Avineri, p. 32


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191

particularity of civil society, but by the universalization of man who

abolishes both the property which makes of him a predicate and

the state which pretends to achieve universality

. For Marx, when the

distinction between the particular and the universal is overcome,

man will have actualized his true self,

which is identical with his

social self

. A society of true selves is a true society or, as

Marx sometimes terms it,

true democracy

.

Such a society is the

actualization of man's communist essence or socialized man .

1r

What one may reasonably expect from a political scientist giving

an exegesis of an argument such as the one Marx has made is a

concern with the meaning of the original Hegelian symbols such as

subject,

elf,

or reality which clearly do not have any com-

monly accepted conceptual significance

. What must

reality

be

if man can invert it? How can man be in a position to perform

this task? How can man be made again

? Is a

elf

still a human

being? And if not, who is this new Adam and who is his creator?

Moreover, we would expect a closer scrutiny of Hegel

'

s notions of

particular and universal,

and how they rely for their significance

upon a view of history whose validity Avineri leaves unstated and

unexamined

. Instead of a philosophical analysis of the symbols used,

Avineri accepts them at face value and passes on to an elemental

analysis of

true democracy

as if it were a perfectly ordinary term,

even though he shows that it has nothing to do with classical or

modern forms of government suggested by the word

. He then points

out that it occupies a place in Marx '

s speculation akin to the place

which Christianity occupies in Feuerbach

'

s . Here again, instead of

a critical exploration of Feuerbach

'

s tricks, he gives a straightforward

comparison : just as the appearance of Christianity implied its even-

tual disappearance as the need for religion was abolished and trans-

cended

(au

f gehoben) ,

so [true] democracy as conceived by Marx

poses the question whether it is not at the same time the apex and

the transcendence Aufhebung)

of the political constitution, i

.e . of

the state

. Not only the state disappears : civil society as a dif-

ferentiated sphere of interest disappears as well i 8 The resulting

true society

is one in which the contradiction between public and

private is ended . There is no inquiry either into what this

Au f hebung

17

W erke,

I, pp

. 283, 231

; Avineri, pp

. 31-34.

18Avineri, pp . 35-36


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192


des Staats

might likely mean as a pragmatic eventuality, nor is there

any theoretical analysis of the symbolism, its derivation, or its real

significance . This is surprising in the light of Avineri

'

s acute sug-

gestion that the generalization of the Greek polis under conditions

of modern society is more likely to achieve Hobbes

' Leviathan than

Pericles'

Athens

.

Avineri does provide us with an account of Marx

'

s appropriation

of Hegel's notion of universal class . As late as October, 1842, Marx

still wrote of

`

the poor

in a quite ordinary manner

;

20

it was only

after his reflections on Hegel

s political views that the significance of

the proletariat as the real universal class emerged

. The necessary

attributes of true universality are apparent from our earlier discus-

sion

: the class must be without political visibility and thus without

property

; it must have no particular interest but express, in the very

conditions of its existence, a human universality

; it must be totally

alienated from civil society

2

' When the condition of the proletariat

becomes coextensive with mankind there will be no more property,

no more particularism, no more civil society, and consequently no

more alienation

.

2 2

In the following chapter Avineri explains Marx

'

s teaching con-

cerning the relationship between man and nature, the anthropology

which sustains Marx

's dramatic vision

. He also answers a question

posed earlier, how Marx conceives of

reality

such that man can

invert

it. Marx

s epistemological materialism,

he says occupies

a middle position between classical materialism and classical ideal-

ism . . it synthesizes the two traditions, it transcends the classic

dichotomy between subject and object

723

Avineri amplifies this

opaque description by noting that Marx derived his view that

reality is not mere objective datum, external to man, but is shaped

by him through consciousness from Hegel's

Phenomenology, so

that epistemology

ceases to be a merely reflective theory of cog-

nition, and becomes the vehicle for shaping and moulding reality

And finally

To Marx reality is always human reality not in the

1 9 Avineri,

Labor, Alienation and Social Classes,

p . 110.

L O See his article in the

Rheinische Zeitung,

27

October 1842,

Werke,

I, p.

119 ; Avineri, p

57.

2 1

Marx, Early W ritings, pp

58-59,

132 133

2 2

Avineri, pp

59-60.

2 3

Avineri, p

. 69, cf Richard J. Bernstein, Praxis and Action

: Contemporary

Philosophies

of Human Activity (Philadelphia, 1971), pp . 43-45


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193

sense that man exists within nature, but in the sense that man shapes

nature

. This act also shapes man and his relations to other human

beings.

2 4

It may be possible to give an intelligible interpreta-

tation of Marx

s epistemology from what Schelling has called

meontological metaphysics, but this is doubtful

prima facie because

Marx confines his argument to what has been called man

s

natural

and historical

situations 2 6 Moreover, if we look carefully at

Marx

's own explanation of the meaning of his words, we find the

difference between

nature

and

history

eroded and we are left

in a confusion of contradiction

2 8

This confusion is present in Avi-

neri 's commentary as well.

On the one hand, it would seem that

reality

is the same as

nature

understood in a commonsense way as indicating external

things, rocks, trees and perhaps animals, in which case it makes a

kind of sense to say that man

shapes and moulds reality But in

order to labor upon nature, to

shape

it, man must also be

within

nature in the sense that he shares some of the characteristics of na-

ture-corporeity, for example . If men were without bodies there

would be no problem

; but if we are human rather than angelic, the

very condition for

shaping nature is that we exist within it . At

the same time, however, if we were simply shapers of nature we

would be unaware of ourselves as shapers If nevertheless, we are

aware of ourselves, even if it is simply an

artistic

awareness,

2 7

then human reality is not exhaustively described by saying that man

shapes

nature

. On the other hand, it would appear that

reality

means something quite different from

nature as can be seen in an

analysis of Avineri's account of the relationship between conscious-

ness and reality

Even with Hegel who attributed rather extra-

ordinary powers to consciousness or, more exactly, to the self-con-

sciousness of the wise man, the link to reflective

. . cognition was

never broken

2 8

With Marx, and also with Avineri

s explication,

there is a profound ambiguity

. No one would wish to dispute the

2 4

Avineri, pp

. 68, 71.

2 5

See Emil Fackenheim,

Metaphysics and Historicity

(Milwaukee, 1961), for

a concise elaboration of the problems involved.

2 8

See, for example, Marx

s play with the connotations of nature

in his

Early Writings, pp. 164-166, 206-207.

2 7

Avineri, pp . 73, 282.

2 8

Most emphatically in the famous passage of the Preface to the

Philosophy

of Right, pp . 12-13


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contention that external reality may be given significance through

the ability of consciousness to project

; indeed, what we mean by

instrumentally rational action is simply the ability to organize activity

in such a way as to achive a desired goal

. But if consciousness were

simply instrumental rationality, we would be unable to decide which

goals are better than others . Moreover, we would be unable to raise,

let alone understand, the question of the meaning of our projects.

At the very least, consciousness implies an ability to stand outside

of the endless chain of practical projects

; it is only by

standing

outside

that we can raise questions of goodness and meaning

. More-

over, if we ask questions concerning the whole project including

the instrumental consciousness that shapes each individual project,

then whatever . experience of reality follows, it cannot be simply an-

other project of consciousness but, on the contrary, it must be ex-

perienced as an

objective datum, external to man

The reason

is apparent enough

: if we knew that

reality

was simply a conse

-

quence of conscious activity, if, that is, we knew that the meaning

of the whole of our project could be derived from consciousness as

well as experienced in consciousness we would also know that it was

not the whole but quite obviously a part.

Rational consciousness, in the emphatic sense of apprehending

reality as meaning which is not created by instrumentally rational

consciousness, implies among other things the reality of limits to

human projects

. Contrarily, if there is no rational experience of the

externality of meaning, there is no intrinsic reason why there should

be any experience of the limitations of human projects, since all

apparent limits are simply the projects of conscious activity which

therefore can be transcended by further activity

. But the structure

of reality is not altered simply because it is unrecognized

. Rather,

such non-recognition exerts a kind of pressure on the argument

which is either to be resisted by dogmatic ukase or ignored by flights

of fancy prepared by

non-sequiturs,

unanalyzed terminology and so

on

In particular, the absence of a notion of limit, which re-

flectively expresses the reality that existence is not the whole of being,

is analyzed by Avineri in a passage from the 1844 manuscript where

Marx explains the genesis and transcendence of natural needs

.

2 9

Early Writings,

pp

. 206-07 ; A vineri, pp

. 79-81


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195

Needs are not simply natural in

the sense of biological require-

ments, they are also

social and historical

and therefore determined,

in the end, by man himself 3 Granted that there are certain bio-

logical aprioris, what is focal in Avineri '

s analysis is the

conscious-

ness that will see the need for these particular objects as

a human

need This consciousness is not apriori but rather is historically con-

tingent

. In a way this can only be true trivially

: Cicero could not

possibly consider an automobile to be a

human need But this

triviality hides a more fundamental ambiguity, masked in Avineri

s

presentation, which may be brought to light by the following ques-

tions : is there a distinction, in reality, between needs and wants or

desires? And if so, is this distinction better to be understood in terms

of changing objects of desire (e

.g

. chariots versus automobiles) or

changing conceptions of need (e

.g

. the automobile as a necessity)?

Or rather, is it not a more sound procedure to consign a need to

the realm of biology and examine desires, which presuppose the

satisfaction of needs, in terms of their inherent goodness and ra-

tionality? The example of Marx, cited by Avineri, of a small house

that seemed adequate until a palace was built nearby whence it was

seen as a mere

hut, shows that our desires and pleasures spring

from society

and thus are measured

by society and not by the

objects which serve for their satisfaction

.

3 1

Avineri's gloss main-

tains Marx s original equivocation :

Since historical development

enriched human wants, they cannot be measured without being re-

lated to the modes of production which created them

The point of

Marx and evidently of Avineri as well is not a prelude to an analysis

of base desires and wants, nor of the irrationality and uncertainty

of the measure provided by society, 3 2 and certainly not of the sig-

nificance of the tenth commandment

. Rather, Avineri concludes that

since wants or human needs are not naturalistic facts,

. they

can be consciously mastered and directed

We are blessed with an

implicit guarantee that if

human society can generate

a certain

level of needs, one needs only adequate social organization to satisfy

them

. If society had not reached that level of potential satisfaction,

3 Cf. The German Ideology,

E d

. S

Ryezanska, (Moscow, 1964), pp . 39 if.

3 1

The quote is from

Wage Labour and Capital, Selected Works, pp

84-85;

Avineri, p . 80.

See Avineri

's comments on Lindsay and Galbraith, p

. 81 fn

.1


12/32

196


the level of felt needs would not reach as high

.

3 3

On the basis of

this guarantee

all wants in principle can be satisfied because they

are all mediated through consciousness and therefore are human

The nihilistic implications of Marx

s teaching are overlooked by

Avineri and he passes on to a consideration of the necessary pre-

suppositions

: if there are no limits established independent of our

desires that can be apprehended by reason, if all wants are to be

measured by society, and yet if also and at the same time there is

a real meaning to be found in conscious activity, it necessarily fol-

lows that man both creates the world and himself .

3 4

What is as-

tonishing in all this is that while Avineri writes about Marx with a

straight face, as it were, he is also aware of the reason for Marx ' s

irrational refusal to recognize reality

:

Man as creator of himself

and of his world also provides a criterion for the analysis of the con-

ditions of his contemporary historical existence

. Had Marx lacked

such a criterion, he could not have liberated himself from a relativist

positivism which

. would of course have created an unbridgeable

gulf between history and philosophy, between the proletariat and the

revolution as the realization of man

'

s potentialities as homofaber

.

36

That is, if man were not creator of himself and his world, if there

were an

objective datum external to man

that situated and there-

fore limited man

qua

man, then indeed history would cease to be

the story of the coming of the proletarian revolution, the final

Au

f hebung

and the perfection of man

'

s self-creation.

Avineri is not always so uncritical . In both the Introduction and

the Epilogue he devotes a few excellent comments to what others

have seen as the centerpiece of Marx

's speculation,

turning the pos-

sibility of human redemption into an historical phenomenon about

to be realized here and now

. Moreover, Avineri indicates the

Hegelian origins of Marx

s

eschatology of the present.

3 7

What he

does not do, but what nevertheless ought to be done, is explain the

theoretical illegitimacy of applying symbols which pertain to a class

of experiences devoted to man's relationship to God to the realm of

mundane affairs . Indeed, properly speaking the transformation is not

3 S Avineri, p . 80.

34

Avineri, pp . 84-85

; cf Marx,

Early Writings,

p . 207.

3 6

Avineri, p

. 86.

3 6

Avineri, p . 250.

3 7 Avineri, pp

. 4, 250

.


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197

Tucker says, is understandable and even reasonable, but it is

erroneous

4 2

Moreover, Tucker disagrees with the presuppositions

that governed the

basic question in the mind of an older generation

of students and critics of Marx

'

s system

-namely,

is it true?

Such

a question implied that the

chief problem was one of verifica-

tion, and presupposed that Marx

'

s first concern was to provide an

account of empirical events

4 3

But this is the wrong question and it

is based on presuppositions which, Tucker says, are misleading:

Marxism

. did not arise out of an empirical study of economic

processes in modern society .

Although he documented [his con-

ception of capitalism] with materials from real economic history,

and thus made it

appear economically real to many people, it was

not, even in his own time, descriptive of an actual capitalist eco-

nomic system The view that Marx is now

obsolete,

which pre-

supposes the problem of verification, is also dismissed the assump-

tion that Marx '

s doctrine represented a successful effort to explain

the social-economic phenomena of his

time, that it was broadly

descriptive of the actual social world in which Marx lived

is super-

ficial

and erroneous

Marx,

Tucker concludes,

was

not a

social scientist

.

4 4

In developing his interpretation of Marx, Tucker

provides us with a justification of these claims . But whatever its

completeness appears to be, Tucker

's hermeneutical circle may be as

restricted as Avineri

'

s

; the answers he gives are reflected not just

in the questions he asks, but also in the presuppositions he accepts

and which may effectively obscure problems which Avineri con-

fronts.

Tucker begins with a question

: instead of Marx the philosophical

critic or empirical social scientist whose views are subject to verifi-

cation or disproof,

may [his work] not be comprehended basically

as an ethical or religious system? None too scrupulous about

connotative distinction, Tucker concludes that indeed

Marx is un-

questionably a moralist At the same time, he draws a very fine

distinction between a moralist

and a moral philosopher based

upon two criteria

: first, Marx does not follow the correct

form of

inquiry which proceeds from the Socratic tradition

and consists

4 2

Tucker, p

. 125.

Tucker, p

. 12.

44

Quotes from Tucker, pp

. 218, 234, 227.

4 5

Tucker, p

. 14


14/32

198


in

a methodical doubt, a suspension of commitment

as to what

constitutes the supreme good for man . Marx 's work violates this

criterion because

: It does not start by raising the question of the

supreme good for man or the criterion of right conduct

; these ques-

tions are not raised by Marx as

questions

. ' In addition to this pro-

cedural exclusion of Marx from the company of moral philos-

ophers,

Tucker excludes him because it is impossible to ascribe one

or another familiar ethical positions to him

. Marx is not an utili-

tarian because he criticized Bentham, nor is he a socialist because he

is not concerned with distributive justice . Nor again can Marx be

called a

moral futurist

as Popper argued .

47

The argument is then

refined

: Marx was a moralist of the religious kind The

eligious

essence

of Marxism is obscured by Marx s atheism, but, upon closer

examination, it turns out that Marx did have a notion of a

supreme

being after all, man

. Moreover, from a structural viewpoint

we can observe similarities between Marxism and

the Christian

religious system

. Specifically, both

provide an integrated, all-in-

clusive view of reality,

both view all existence under the aspect of

history,

both contain a scheme of redemption, and

. both conjoin

theory and practice

.

The most important aspect, however, the

master-theme of the system, which

corresponds to the master-

theme of salvation of the soul in the Christian theology of history, is

the idea of

a radical `change of self which produces a wholly

new man

48

There is a certain robust vigor to Tucker s argument that can-

not help but impress us

. At a time when the articulate are devious

and those who hold to their views are consumed by their passion, it

is refreshing to encounter a strong argument . An admiration for

Tucker

s frankness, however, cannot preclude us from drawing at-

tention to certain deficiencies in his presentation . We have already

noted his indiscriminate identification of ethics with moralism with

religion

. His rhetoric seems to say

: why not look at Marx as a

moralist or a religious thinker?

But then this conceptual liberality

contracts to a pinched stipulative precision as he distinguishes be-

tween moralist and moral philosopher

only

to broaden again as he

compares Marxism to

the Christian religious system

Tucker

' s

Tucker, pp. 15-16.

47

Tucker, pp. 16-20.

48

A11 quotes are from Tucker, pp . 22-25


15/32


199

presentation, to say the least, lacks technical sophistication . First of

all, the notion of a

Christian religious system ignores fundamental

theological differences among Christian groups

; moreover, it is ques-

tionable whether the term

system

has any meaning in a Christian

context

. He also fails to discuss what is meant by a structural view-

point

from which Marxism and Christianity appear as similar

systems It may be countered that such general objections to

Tucker

s argument simply reflect an aesthetic judgment upon his

rhetoric

. Surely, one might say, it is possible to recast his argument

in a more theoretically adequate vocabulary

. The criticism offered

here is not simply of his rhetoric however, but also of the concepts

expressed in it

; one objects to Tucker 's vocabulary precisely because

it is, upon close inspection, quite difficult to know what he means by

his use of words

. For example, does his persistent use of the adjective

medieval

in connection with Christianity imply any particular

theologian or philosopher, or any specific time period? Does it imply

perhaps that

modern

Christianity or Christianity without any

periodizing adjective is not, from a

structural viewpoint,

com-

parable to Marxism? One simply does not know.

Let us examine the argument which justifies the title of his book

so as to determine as clearly as possible the core of Tucker's thesis.

Hegel s philosophy,

he says, provides the background to Marx

'

s

work : Truly, Marxism may be seen as Hegelianism inverted.

Speaking very broadly, the relation between them may be described

as follows

: Hegel represents the universe as a subjective process;

Marx, turning the system around, ends up by representing a sub-

jective process as the universe-the social cosmos

Marx really had

gone beyond philosophy

but was it, as he claimed, to reality?

Now it is quite true that he had an arresting vision of something

real

. . But the reality that Marx apprehended and portrayed was

inner reality

The forces of which he was aware were subjective

forces, forces of the alienated human self, conceived, however, and

also perceived, as forces abroad in society

. Since the decisive char-

acteristic of mythic thought is

that something by nature interior

is apprehended as exterior, that a drama of the inner life of man is

experienced and depicted as taking place in the outer world, there-

fore, Marx

had gone beyond philosophy into that out of which

philosophy, ages ago, originated-myth

.

4 s

It would be a relatively

4 9 A11 quotations are from Tucker, pp

. 218-219


16/32

200


simple matter to call into question the adequacy of Tucker's under-

standing of the

decisive characteristic of mythic thought

5 0

but

such an exercise would hardly be worth the effort, for it turns out

that Tucker is not really interested in the phenomenology of mythic

reality so much as the metaphorical or connotative aspects of the

word . Thus, for example, he writes that

Marx

's W eltanschauung

has become a political mythology, a narrative associated with the

rites of single-party politics

s'

No doubt Marx can be conceived

as a

myth

maker, his system can be conceived as religious, and

Soviet party politics can be conceived as a

rite

It is plain, how-

ever, that in order to conceive the phenomena the way Tucker would

have us, we must appreciate his rhetoric and ignore his lack of con-

ceptual control

. Apart from the wholly vague counsel to accept a

structural viewpoint,

Tucker never tells us

w hy Marx ought be

conceived as a

religious moralist

In part, Tucker

s defective concepts appear only in light of the

more adequate theorizing about the relationship between secular

change and religious enthusiasm that has appeared since the pub-

lication of his book . We now possess an extensive and precise

vocabulary to analyze the phenomena involved

. Research on mille-

narian movements in the non-industrial world provides an indis-

pensable background for the re-examination of European and North

American social movements

6 2

Studies on the experiences and sym-

bolism of gnosticism, magic and alchemy as well as historical ac-

counts of the transmission of symbols,

6 3

studies on specific problems

Tucker mentions H. Frankfort et al ., Before Philosophy and

E

. Cassirer,

Language and Myth, though not directly in connection with his definition of

mythic thought (Tucker, p . 224 fn

.)

. A recent exposition of the complexities of

myth which, incidentally, takes issue with Tucker's authorities is G

S

. Kirk,

Myth

: Its Meaning and Function in Ancient and

Other Cultures

(Berkeley,

1971), pp. 101f, 263-268.

5 1

Tucker, p . 233.

5 2

Bibliographies can be found in any of the following representative works:

V

. Lanternari,

The

Religious of the Oppressed : A Study

of

Modern Messianic

Cults ,

Tr., L. Sergio (New Y ork , 1963) ; P. Worsley, The

Trumpet Shall Sound:

A Study

of

Cargo Cults in Melanesia,

2nd ed

. (New York, 1968)

; Sylvia L.

Thrupp, (ed .), Millennial Dreams and Action: Studies in Revolutionary R e-

ligious Movements

(New Y ork, 1970)

; W . E . Miihlmann et al. Chiliasmus and

Nativismus

(Berlin, 1961)

;

Archives des sociologies des religions, No

. 4 and 5,

(1957-58).

5s

In

this context one must mention the work of Hans Jonas,

The Gnostic

Religion,

2nd ed, (Boston, 1963) ; Mircea Eliade, The Forge and the Crucible


17/32


201

of modern politics in general and Marx

'

s speculation in the context

of modernity have provided the elements of a proper interpretation

of Marx as a religious thinker b

But, to return to our text, it turns

out that Tucker is not really interested in religion or even myth

but in psychology.

We quoted Tucker above to the effect that the reality involved

in Marx's arresting vision was an inner reality . More precisely,

it was the experience of an alienated human self

The origin of

Marx

'

s concept is still Hegel

'

s civil society

. Marx

sought the

`

anatomy

' of civil society in political economy, but the anatomy of

political economy, in turn, was given in the idea of ` political-

economic alienation . The consequence was the notion of

the

alienated species-man or the species of alienated men,

who ful-

filled the assigned roles in Marx

'

s dramatic conflict . That is, con-

flicting forces of the alienated self were thus conceived as external

social forces

.

Tucker objects to Marx projecting individual spirit

-

ual disorder onto society in general because, while all men are born

into society,

Man is not born alienated, although he is born with

a potentiality of becoming an alienated individual

. No matter how

many individual men may belong to this category, it is always an

individual matter .

es

Alienation may befall a man but it is not an

independent category of existence which somehow he inherits at

birth. Indeed, Tucker explains, alienation is an ancient psychiatric

term meaning loss of personal identity or the feeling of personal

identity 7

so that the individual is an accomplice of society in the

creation of the alienated self.

Again, the language Tucker employs is not, technically speaking,

(New

York, 1971) [French ed . 1956]

; A

. Koyre,

Mystiques, spirituals, alchem-

ists

du XVI

e

siecle allemand

(Paris, 1955)

; C .G

. Jung,

Collected Works,

vol, XII (Princeton, 1968)

; N

. Cohn, The Pursuit of the Milleinium, 2nd ed.

(New York,

1961).

Here we need mention the work of Karl Lowith,

Meaning in History

(Chicago, 1949) and

From Hegel to Nietzsche

(New York, 1969) [German

ed. 1941]

; Eric Voegelin, The New Science

of

Politics (Chicago 1952),

Science,

Politics and Gnosticism (Chicago, 1968) [German ed

. 1959] and

The Forma-

tion of the Marxian Revolutionary Idea, Review of Politics, 12 (1950), 275-

302

; J. L. Talmon, Political Messianism

(New York, 1960) ; Gerhart Nie-

meyer, Between Nothingness

and Paradise (Baton Rouge, 1971).

Tucker, pp

. 219-220.

Tucker, p. 240.

Tucker, p

. 144


18/32

202


the

best, but there is an important truth in what he says

. Everybody

has reason to be dissatisfied, from time to time, with his situation.

It is not quite so reasonable to impute the cause of dissatisfaction to

the world rather than to the individual

; nor, even if the world is

wrong,

or perhaps imperfect, does it necessarily follow that men

can do anything to make it

right

Tucker shows quite well the

psychological dynamics of alienation as they appear in Marx

s specu-

lation and points out that what Marx thought was the descriptive

analysis of a social fact was in truth a sophisticated description of

Marx

'

s own neurosis

. 6 8 Even so, we still must discover what Marx

considered to be the true reality in virtue of which existing affairs

could be conceived as the consequence of alienation.

It is somewhat tedious to spell things out, but Tucker never

places the constituitive elements in their properly intimate relation-

ship

. Class conflict is a reflection of the self-alienation of mankind

in so far as the world and the self created by labor-power are used

to maintain unnatural and inhuman institutions such as religion, the

state and so on

. The insight that the self and the world is created

by labor-power is the result of the Feuerbachian transformation of

Hegel 's notion which provided

Geist with the same task

. And how

was Geist

and its activities understood by Marx? As the apotheosis

of man

. Whether the joyful news that man had become divine was

expressed in the cryptic form of Hegel

s code, openly in Feuerbach

s

transformation of the code, or cryptically again in Marx's assimila-

tion of Feuerbach

'

s

humanism,

the experiential core which pro-

vides the trial from Hegel to Marx with its unity is retained

: man's

self-realization as a godlike being or, alternatively, as God

.

6 9

Marx

s spiritual problems now appear in a different light

: if he

learned from Hegel that man had become divine, and if he then

learned from Feuerbach that the divinity man achieved was imagi-

nary, it was his own contribution to discover that within this

imaginary self-divination a true divination was proceeding apace.

If we return to reality for a moment, the significance of Marx's

position, no less than that of Hegel is clear

: neither could abide the

condition of being human, neither could accept himself as creature.

Tucker, pp

. 1441f.

6 9

Tucker, p

. 31


19/32


2 3

Marx

'

s alienation is self-alienation indeed

.

6

It is the alienation of

a man possessed by an infinite desire to become God but whose de-

sire is constantly thwarted by reality

. Marx hailed Prometheus as his

patron but neglected to notice that Aeschylus considered Prometheus

stricken with no small madness.

III

Our main criticism of Tucker has been to point out a theoretical

sloppiness which can lead to a host of misleading conclusions even

when the general thrust of his argument is correct . His discussion

of Kant, for example, plays with the ambiguities of

reason

as a

commonsense term and as a highly specific technical term in Kant

'

s

philosophy

6 1

His identification of pride with something like original

sin is confusing, and his declaration that Hegelianism is simply an

apologia for pride ignores the dialectical subtlety of Hegel's posi-

tion which combines a monumental self-confidence with an equally

monumental humility

.

6 2 No similar comments can be made of the

third work under review . Lobkowicz is a master of classical, me-

dieval, and modern philosophy

. His tone is measured, his argument

precise . Unlike both Avineri and Tucker the title is excessively

modest so far as Marx is concerned

:

Theory and Practice provides

a lucid exposition of several of the major themes in Marx

'

s work be-

yond the notion of

the unity of theory and practice

Lobkowicz

' s

large book is the first part of an even larger account of the develop-

ment of the concept of practice in Soviet philosophy. Moreover, his

method is less the defence of a thesis than the recounting of a his-

tory, keeping as close as possible to the empirical materials . Oc-

casional explicitly critical passages serve to expose lacunae in an

argument, sophisms, inarticulate premises and so on . Such a presen-

6 6

The argument of this paragraph is in approximately the reverse order of

Tucker

'

s argument . That is, he concludes with a consideration of myth in

Part IV, gives the substance of his psychological translation of Marx

s myth

in Part III and provides us with the clinical, philosophical details of the

psychology of aggrandizement in Parts II and I.

6 1

Tucker, p . 38.

Tucker, pp

. 32, 67

. See Hegel'

s statement concerning the share of the

particular individual

in the advent of self-conscious spirit

Phanomenologie

des Geistes, e d . J . Hoffmeister (Hamburg, 1952), pp

. 58-59


20/32

204


tation no less than the sheer bulk and richness of narrative make a

complete analysis impossible

. We can only summarize Lobkowicz

'

s

major additions to our understanding of the genesis of Marx

'

s

notion.

The first section contains a collection of materials for a pre-

history to Marx

'

s treatment of theory and practice . It begins with

an account of the classical distinction between philosophical and

political dimensions of existence

. Neoplatonic degradation of political

praxis into a cathartic preparation for a non-

theoretical

and

strictly contemplative mystical ecstasy, subsequent alterations to

contemplation provided by Christian demands for charity, and the

post-theoretical practice of Duns Scotus provide the necessary

background for the characteristically modern view exemplified by

Bacon and Descartes

. For politics, the important factor was the

denial of the reality of tradition and practical knowledge : ethical

and political decisions, because they depended upon contingencies,

can never be taken on the basis of knowledge . This view is quite

different from Aristotle who argued that practical, that is, political

and ethical knowledge had a smaller degree of certainty because its

object was changing and contingent

: By reducing all knowledge

to one

kind Descartes commits himself to a radical irrationalism in

those areas, most significantly ethics and politics, where mathematical

knowledge is irrelevant . 6 3 Such a conclusion, despite the efforts

Spinoza, Malebranch, Leibniz, and even Locke to extend mathe-

matics to the ethical and political realm, greatly disturbed Kant

who was committed both to a genuine ethics and to Cartesian

natural philosophy.

Kant'

s well known solution was to divide reality in two

: non-

metaphysical appearance is mathematical and the non-appearing,

non-theoretical is metaphysical

. Knowledge having to do with the

natural world was theoretical

; knowledge having to do with the

truly real suprasensible world was

practical .

The one is studied

in terms of natural scientific concepts, the other is 'apprehended

through freedom

. Freedom places man in a world additional to the

world of nature, but, because he is first of all in the world of nature,

moral, that is,

practical

laws appear as

oughts Theoretical,

scientific laws deal with what is

An ought, an ideal, is by

definition remote from actual conduct, which is precisely Kant's

B 3

Lobkowicz, p . 119.


21/32


205

point : the laws of the intelligible world are not implemented, but

willed

. Hence Kant'

s famous aphorism that the only unqualified

good is a good will is based not upon the ontological status of the

good, but upon the status of will

. But the ontological law of the will

is freedom which makes a good will simply obedience to the very

nature of will . The vast inflation of the commonsense observation

that a person has some choice about the life he leads implies that

all except strictly physical laws are imposed upon man by him-

self,

since man is free in everything but physical laws to define

his own place in the world.

Hegel 's contribution, in this context, appears as a rather simple

one

: he treats will as a special mode of thought, in particular, as a

desire to have reality conform to reason . As history unfolds, the

importance of will and activity declines as reality achieves greater

and greater reasonableness

. Pragmatically, there is a good deal of

ambiguity in Hegel

s formula

: after all, all men may not describe

reality in terms of its reasonableness. Lobkowicz argues that, for

Hegel, the reasonableness of the present is simply not problematic;

it is a fact of history that must be recognized 6 5

. The notion, so

prominent in the preface to the

Philosophy of Right, that

the

future holds nothing new

is also found, as Kojeve has argued, in

the Phdnomenologie 8 8 When a thinker is of the opinion that history

has come to an end certain rather obvious psychological problems

arise that are less acute if the end of history is seen as a future

occasion . In particular, historical facts whose meaning is obvious to

everybody must be

reinterpreted so as to have them conform to

the imaginary millennial present . Hegel's method of achiving this

task, Lobkowicz argues, is to glorify the present by arguing that in

reality man is participating in God

s eternal life, to secularize Chris-

tian eschatalogical symbols, and to develop a science

which

comprehends the now secularized symbolisms in terms of the trans-

figured empirical events of actual history

.

6 7

6 4 Lobkowicz, p

. 135.

6 6 In

the

Phfinomenologie Hegel issues a kind of spiritual death warrant on

those

representatives

of the public who resist recognizing the reasonableness

of reality

Philnomenologie, p

. 58.

6 6

A

Kojeve,

Introduction

a

la Lecture de Hegel,

2nd ed

. (Paris, 1947), pp.

280 ff, 442 . Lobkowicz gives a brief account of the pre-history of the symbolism

o f

nothing new,

pp

. 166-73.

6 7

Lobkowicz, pp

. 174-181


22/32

206


What remained as the unshakeable experiential ground for the

speculations of Hegel's followers after the master'

s death in 1831

was the knowledge, vouchsafed to them in Hegel 's own words, that

man was in possession of absolute, all-embracing certainty . True

enough, the empirical world did not conform to absolute knowledge,

but that meant only that the activity which would transform reality

would literally save the world . The traditional political virtue, pru-

dence, had no place

. How could it? If one knows, past experience

is of no account, for

facts could be no real challenge to those who

knew ; they could always be reinterpreted or changed

.

6 8

The first

salvo was fired in 1833 with the publication of Friedrich Richter

' s

treatise on the Last Things which, inter alia, questioned the ade-

quacy of Christian eschatology from the perspective of absolute

knowledge afforded by Hegelianism

. Richter also pointed out that

the bliss provided by Hegelianism was purely speculative and had

nothing to do with the real world of men

. Nevertheless, he insisted

that if the transfiguration of reality was meaningful to the intellect

of philosophers, there was no reason in principle why it could not

be meaningful to the rest of mankind as well

. ° °

Once the secret was out, a whole new set of problems arose,

particularly for men who were dissatisfied with reality, who con-

sidered it irrational

.

The theological debate, which wound its

tortuous way through Strauss

proofs that the Gospel was myth

and Feuerbach

s

proofs

that man was God, are simply continua-

tions of what Richter began

. New vistas, however, were opened by

two men : Bruno Bauer and August von Cieszkowski

. Indeed,

Cieszkowski's small tract, the

Prolegomena Zur Historiosophie, is

considered the crucial link between the theological problems of

the early Hegelians and the political radicalism of thinkers such as

Hess and Marx. 70 Hegel

'

s error, Cieszkowski said, was to believe

that wisdom was only retrospective and absolute knowledge confined

to the past

.' Cieszkowski countered that if Hegel could bring Kant

' s

three absolutes of God, freedom and immortality within the purview

8 8

Lobkowicz, p

. 185.

8 9

Lobkowicz

's study of Richter is based upon J. Gebhardt, Politik and

Eschatologie : Studien zur Geschichte der Hegelschen Schule in den Jahren

1830-1840

(Munich, 1963), pp

71 if.

7 0

Lobkowicz, p. 202

; cf. Avineri, pp

. 124 ff.

7 1

The alternative formulation, favored by Kojcve, is that history had ended.

Either way the implications are the same. Cf

. Kojcve, pp

. 194, 284 f, 288f


23/32


2 7

of his

science,

why not time as well? He answered by the con-

struction of a view of universal history by means of a then current

trichotomy of historical progression. There were, he said, three ways

to know the future : by imagination, as with pre-Hegelian seers

and prophets,

by thought, as with Hegel, and by action which was

the direction,

of the future

The action involved was post-theoreti-

cal, it was the praxis of an absolute knower Man was now an

accomplice of the Absolute ; he could fulfill the aims of Providence

simply by acting according to reason, according to his

ow n

reason . 7 7 2 Where Hegel transformed Kant s absolute moral will into

absolute thought, Cieszkowski succeeded in transforming absolute

thought back into absolute will, only unlike Kant, he placed it not

beyond

theory but rather had it absorb theory on the way by

. This

was important for one reason

: if Rosenkranz was genuine in his

fear that the generation of philosophers which followed Hegel were

destined to be merely

gravediggers and monument builders,

7 3

it

was Cieszkowski

s great contribution to relieve the nervous anxiety

which the spectre of such occupations provoked in the young men

whose

libido dominandi was equal to that of the master

. For a man

such as Bruno Bauer however, even Cieszkowski would not do

. True,

Cieszkowski differed with Hegel

'

s view that the absolute knower

akin to Minerva

's Owl, but in his opinion that reality developed

alongside knowledge, Cieszkowski

s

post-theoretical practice

was

not critical

.

After having read Marx s sarcastic comments in the German

Ideology and

The Holy Family,

it is difficult to take Bauer s criti-

cism very seriously

. And yet, Bauer was simply a consistent He-

gelian ; the only difference between him and Hegel was that for

Hegel the world was rational and hence to be justified while for

Bauer it was not and hence to be criticized . Bauer is comical only

because the world he critically annihilated remained untouched.

But exactly the same was true of Hegel

'

s justified world

. Two

roads and two roads only were possible as the consequences of

critical destruction

became apparent

: either one could take the

road of Marx where criticism issued in political activity, or one

could remain faithful to criticism, secure in the knowledge that

7 2

Lobkowicz, p. 198.

Karl Rosenkranz,

Hegels Leben

(Berlin, 1844), p . xix


24/32

208


criticism alone was the way to truth

. But even Marx did not take

his final path immediately

; in the Critique of Hegel

'

s Philosophy of

Right

Marx is more realistic than Bauer only because he advocates

propaganda rather than an esoteric development of the truth, but

the premise, that the proper path lay in

criticism was not chal-

lenged 4 4

Even so, Marx was the first to suggest an answer for a

problem that had bothered him even in his dissertation

: if absolute

knowledge is not actualized, then it can hardly be absolute and if

criticism is necessary, then this fact is evidence that the critic

'

s knowl-

edge is less than absolute

7 5

Marx

'

s answer is that real or practi-

cal salvation may be attained in the deeds of an extraphilosophical

humanity, or a part of it,

which meets the theory half-way 7

If, as

Marx argued, salvation would come when humanity or its repre-

sentative accepted

criticism as its principle of action, then it

surely was possible to argue that such representatives had been des-

tined for their salvific role by history in much the same way that

history destined Hegel to achieve absolute knowledge.

In fact, it is upon the basis of Marx '

s knowledge that the

proletariat is the representative of mankind that his elaborate

speculation on alienation retains a degree of intelligibility

. We begin

with the knowledge

that the self-suppression of the proletariat as

a separate class establishes a socialist society, a society in which each

man acts as the representative of mankind

. In this sense, socialist

society is simply a

goal,

a Kantian ought But Marx also says

that proletarian self-suppression will be an Aufhebung of alienation,

a negation of a negation One can

'

t have it both ways ; if indeed

human history is the laborious self-actualization of man

'

s species-

being, then Aufhebung

must follow Aufhebung

to its dialectical in-

finity,

in

which case socialist society must appear as an arbitrary

and premature totalization

. On the other hand, the Kantian

ought

is non-dialectical

. The juxtaposition of dialectical and non-

dialectical elements is resolved to Marx

s satisfaction because he can

conceive of the self-development of mankind as dialectical while the

knowledge

of the telos of this process ensures that any merely

logical inconsistencies can be dismissed as

abstract Thus what

appears to be the premature totalization of an open dialectic is,

7 4 For example, Early W ritings,

p . 52.

See Lobkowicz, pp

239-247.

7 6

Lobkowicz, p 276


25/32


2 9

in reality, Marx says, the radical disjunction between

pre-history

and

history

. For socialist society, the past, and therefore all prior

societies and the self-actualization that went on in them, in funda-

mentally external

. No wonder that when Marx spoke of

socialist

man he demanded everyone else keep silent .

Marx

'

s knowledge

is also the inspiration for his furious po-

lemics against the other Left Hegelians, in particular against Bauer

and Stirner

. Against the first, his argument turns upon the relative

importance of economics and politics

; against the second, the truth

of Hegel's dialectical understanding of history and, as Lobkowicz

argues, it is important to keep both fronts distinct

. Thanks to En-

gels' Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy which Marx read

early in 1844,

Marx discovered that the proletariat

'

s role in the

history of human emancipation might be described as due to the

socioeconomic nature of mankind's self-development- a discovery

which obviously suggested that the philosopher

'

s role was far less

central than either he or his Left Hegelian colleagues had believed

.

7 8

It also suggested a new role for the critic and a new subject for his

critique : through a critique of the reflection of reality in the disci-

pline of political economy, Marx could seek to demonstrate that

the very principles of political economy imply the Auf

hebung of

the world order they reflect. Once this truth, hidden in the abstrac -

tions of bourgeois political economy, is exposed to the proletariat,

it will become conscious of its necessary task . It is from this per-

spective that Marx met Bauer's objection to mass action

. He agreed

that all previous revolutions were failures, but added that this was

because the men who carried them out were not truly representative

of mankind . Thus, the premise of Bauer's critique was false, and his

former friend was critically annihilated by showing that Left Hegel-

ianism generally was simply a reflection of an already condemned

world-order.

On the other front, Marx had to defend his position against the

7 7

Cf Early Writings,

pp

165-166. Lobkowicz

pp

. 359-372.

7 8

Lobkowicz, p 375.

7 9

Lobkowicz (p

. 382) indicates that in a second volume he intends to show

that, when faced with the obvious fact that the bourgeoisie too could become

conscious of Marx's

laws

and so

amend

them (p

. 376), that is, that the

real problem, pauperization of the proletariat, could be contained, if not exactly

solved

by the incorporation of the trade unions into industrial society, new

explanations of the respite given to the bourgeoisie had to be concocted


26/32

210


attack upon the entire Hegelian enterprise launched by

Stirner

s

odd book, The Ego and Its Own .

S

If we look upon the Hegelian

succession as a story of every-increasing profanation, from Hegel's

original reduction of the world-transcendent God to a world-im-

manent Geist, to the reduction of Christ by Strauss from the axis of

world history to a mythical symbol of the species divinity of man-

kind, to Feuerbach's transformation of God likewise into the divine

species and finally to the reduction of the divine humanity by Hess

and Marx to society, then

Stirner seems to have taken the next

logical step, and to have reduced everything from God, through

Mankind to Society, to the bare individual that each of us is .

81

For Stirner, everything from Hegel

s

Geist to Marx

's communism

was simply an ideal to be consumed by the insatiable individual

which alone retained reality

. Such an objection had to be met . Stir-

ner had gone too far in his eclipse of reality, for if everything were

simply a

divertissement

for an aggressive self, there was no point in

laboring to achieve socialism

. Prior to the

German Ideology, which

Lobkowicz suggests was aimed primarily at Stirner,

S Z

Marx had

never thought it necessary to argue why socialism was desirable;

the problem was always posed in terms of showing how socialism

was the

correct

consequence of Hegelianism

. Stirner

'

s attack on

Hegelianism in all its forms meant that the only reply that Marx

could make was to argue that the role of the proletariat was not

an ideal, and that his condemnation of the present world order

was simply a reflection of the laws of history, while everybody else's

was a reflection of the existing world-order . The answer to the

first problem was his notion of

historical materialism ; the answer

to the second was his notion of

ideology

8 O

Lobkowicz, p

. 391.

8 1

Lobkowicz,

Karl Marx and Max Stirner,

in F . J . Adelmann, S. J., ed.

Demythologizing Marxism, Boston College Studies in Philosophy, Vol. II

(Chestnut Hill and the Hague, 1969), p . 75.

8 2 His argument is inherently plausible

: Marx and Engels both had more

interesting things on their minds than a return to what Engels called

this

theoretical twaddle

After the publication of The Holy Family, there would

seem to be no reason critically to destroy

Bauer and Company all over again.

But the publication of Stirner

s book after The Holy Family

demanded, if not

a public reply, then at least a private refutation, as indeed Marx called

The

German Ideology

some years later, Preface to

The Critique

of

Political

Economy,

in Selected W orks,

p 184 .

Lobkowicz,

Theory and Practice, pp.

403 ff

; cf . E

. Voegelin,

The Eclipse of Reality

in Natanson, ed ., op

. cit.,

pp

188-89


27/32


211

This was surely an ingenious answer to Stirner, but it contains

a fundamental ambiguity. Marx claimed, early in the text of the

German Ideology, that the premises from which he began were not

dogmatic but real

Consequently,

these premises can be verified

in a purely empirical way

8 3

If Marx is, as he claimed, simply

describing reality, then what he is describing as history

is,

ab initio,

revolutionary

. There is no need for ideals because reality is

already revolutionary

; but this is surely as unsatisfactory as Hegel

'

s

claim that reality was

rational

On the other hand, if there is a

truly revolutionary practice which is not simply what happens

anyhow, there must also be an ideal

in precisely the sense that

Stirner criticized

. Lobkowicz summarizes this

hopeless

ambiguity:

if ideas formed in the human mind are `materially prescribed,

nothing but the expression of objective necessities, then there is no

need to urge people to be ` practical, ' to act

. On the other hand, if

there really is a

`

point

'

in purposefully revolutionizing the existing

world, if it matters whether people

`practically attack the change

given things

'

-that is, freely decide to do it rather than do it under

the pressure of existing circumstances-then undoubtedly there must

exist ideals which are more than only a reflection of circumstances

themselves

S 4

Again, one cannot have it both ways : communism

cannot both be necessary and be the object of deliberation and

action . Either Stirner is right, and Marx is a strict determinist or

Stirner is wrong, and Marx 's attempt to translate his ideal of com-

munism into a historical necessity is self-contradictory.

Lobkowicz

s narrative concludes with this brief discussion of the

genesis of historical materialism, and we must await a more

thorough analysis of the concept in a subsequent volume

8 6 As it

stands, Theory and Practice is

clearly a major contribution to Marx

8

German Ideology,

p

. 31.

84

Lobkowicz, p . 422. This objection to the dilemma of revolutionary praxis

is not, it should be noted, a criticism of Marx

s theory

about

practice . Indeed,

there is a good deal of truth in Marx

s observation that because of the con-

tingencies of one

s situation, history, in the sense of

what men do, depends

upon the conscious, rational intentions of men, but this same contingency can

subvert their intentions and provide men with consequences quite antithetical to

what they sought

. Thus, for example, there is nothing but an obvious empirical

truth in the observation that circumstances make men just as much as men

make circumstances The

German Ideology, p

. 51

. Cf

. Lobkowicz, pp . 415,

417, 426.

8 5

Lobkowicz, pp

. 408-409, 426


28/32

212

THE

POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER

research, and one hesitates indeed to offer even a mild disclaimer to

an intellectual edifice of such imposing significance

. Nevertheless, a

few critical observations are demanded . A relatively minor point is

the question of what it takes to be a Left or Young Hegelian . At

one point, only Bauer is, properly speaking,

a Left Hegelian and

yet,

between 1839 and 1843 they all [i .e ., Bauer, Hess and Ruge]

were occupied with the same problem : what it meant to translate

absolute theory into practice

.

8 0

The only unique characteristic about

Bauer is that he managed to attain a university post 8

7

More serious

perhaps than the question of who is and who is not a Young He-

gelian, is a metaphysical problem which, given the stated purpose

of the book, need not be raised but which, if raised by a meta-

physician of Lobkowicz 's stature, should be thoroughly explored . An

earlier reviewer described Lobkowicz

'

s metaphysics as Thomist

in

the perjorative sense of the term

; 8

there is some justice in the identi-

fication, one suspects, but little in the innuendo

. The problem is of

metaphysical significance because Marx and, more importantly,

Hegel denied the reality of human nature while, at least in the

example of Hegel, upholding the reality of metaphysics, specifically

a metaphysics of self-actualization which does not necessarily dissolve

into a mystical gnosticism and alchemy 8 9

A consideration of a

meontological metaphysics of selfhood might provide a more ade-

quate analysis of what has been called

authentic existence

which,

in the context of alienation, may be the significance of the

human

potentiality

which alienation reveals

.

9

A final comment concerns

Lobkowicz

s criticism of Hannah Arendt

'

s view of Marx . Arendt

argued that Marx

s paradoxical view, that labor is both what con-

stitutes man as man and that which will be abolished with the con-

B °Lobkowicz, p

. 215.

s ''Lobkowicz, p

. 239

. I might add, in passing, that a recent study by William

J

. Brazil],

The Y oung Hegelians (New Haven, 1970), places the religious

question as the central concern of the Young Hegelians . This principle of selec-

tion, despite its justification, has the unfortunate consequence of excluding

Marx, Engels and even Hess.

George Lichtheim, New York Review of Books

(11 April 1968), p

. 27.

Cf. Fackenheim,

op

. cit ., and also his study of Hegel, The Religious Dimen-

sion in Hegel

s

Thought

(Bloomington, Ind ., 1967).

so

Cf . Lobkowicz, p

. 315

. This is not to say that Lobkowicz

'

s treatment of

alienation as developed by Marx is deficient but only to suggest that beneath

Marx

s deficient symbolism, logical inconsistency and so on there may be a

metaphysical and not just a psychological thesis


29/32


213

summation of history, is the result of a failure to distinguish between

the truly different activities of labor

A rbeit) and work Her-

stellen)

9 1

Lobkowicz comments that Marx is not confused

: What

he wants to say is in fact quite simple

: the labor of our body can

achieve so radical a transformation of man and his world that it

ceases to be a burden and becomes a full expression of man's free-

dom

` Labor is man

'

s coming-to-be for himself within alienation or

as alienated man

; it transforms man

s condition to the extent that

eventually man will no longer have to labor in order to satisfy his

needs

. As far as I can see, Marx never intimated how this might

happen

. But one has only to imagine that one day man will produce

machines which service and even reproduce themselves to acknowl-

edge that this idea is far from being wildly Utopian

9 2

It is not

at all clear that Arendt

'

s objection and her argument are met by

Lobkowicz

s observation

: while machines can surely ease the pain

of labor, it is by no means clear that they can satisfy biological

needs

. Moreover, Arendt

'

s understanding of the significance of

man 's world and its relationship to the stability of man

s works

which constitute his world makes it more than dubious that the

world is a burden, or that freedom could ever be the consequence

of a world no longer a burden Indeed it may well be the

very threat of a

worldless activity of painless labor, perhaps tend-

ing the machines that reproduce themselves, that Arendt finds dis-

quieting. What is

wildly Utopian

is the notion that eventually

man will no longer have to labor

in order to satisfy his needs be-

cause labor is precisely the activity which satisfies needs

. Lobkowicz' s

comments, and the readiness to blur the distinction between labor

and work,

9 3

are particularly surprising in the light of his own very

careful initial distinctions .

9 4

IV

Of the three books under review, Lobkowicz

s is clearly the best.

He substantiates with sound philosophical and theological argument

the cruder, psychologically based opinions of Tucker . Moreover, he

9 1

H

. Arendt. The

Human Condition

(Chicago, 1958), pp . 104-105.

Lobkowicz, p

. 348

; the quotation is from Marx

s

Early Writings, p

. 203.

Cf. Lobkowicz, pp

. 333, 334, 338, 342.

9 4

Cf

. Lobkowicz, pp

. 3-15

Documents

Review of Tucker, Avineri and Lobkowicz