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Classical bourgeois economists concern themselves with existing bourgeois society. They ingenuously regard society's basic relationships as having the immutable character of a genuine natural law, and are for just this reason unable to become aware of any other than this actually given form of society. Even when bourgeois social theorists appear to speak of other social forms, their real subject matter is the particular form of bourgeois society whose main characteristics they find duplicated in all other forms. When they speak of "society" in general, We can still, with only slight variations, recognize in that so-called general society the well-known, features of present-day bourgeois society. This is most evident in the writings of the 1 See Record of the Proceedings of the Conference of the "Sociological Society," held in Zurich in 1928. 47 KARL MARX great founders of bourgeois social science in the 17th and 18th centuries and their followers, the German idealistic philosophers from Kant to Hegel, who naively used not only the term "society," but even the term "civil society" as a timeless concept.1 Even when bourgeois investigators speak of an historical "development" of society, they do not step beyond the magic circle of bourgeois society. They consider all the earlier forms as "preliminary stages" leading up to its present fully developed form. They constantly apply to the preceding historical epochs the concepts drawn from the social conditions existing to-day. Right into the 19th century they described those phases of primitive history which can by no means be represented by the categories of modern bourgeois society, such as, property, State, family, etc., as not belonging to history proper, but merely "prehistoric." Even Johann Gotfried Herder, who stood in a much closer relation to real history than most of his contemporaries, wrote in his "Diary:" "How many ages may have passed by before we learned to know or think? The Phoenician ? The Ethiopian ? Or none of these ? Are we then, with our Moses, in the right place ?"2 Just as in their study of past conditions, so in their conception of the future, bourgeois social theorists remain tied to the bourgeois categories. They simply cannot conceive of any changes other than those set forth in due sequence by a further unfolding of the fundamental principles appearing in present-day bourgeois society. They regard all social revolutions as pathological interferences with "normal" social development.3 They
2 See J. G. Herder, Journal meiner Reise, 1769. 3 Thus Comte regarded revolutionary periods of society as an analogy to disease in the human body. He did not, for this reason, ignore them totally but rather, following the physician Broussais (who first subjected the phenomena of disease to the laws governing healthy bodies), proclaimed the study of that "pathologie sociale" as a possible substitute for the experimental method used by the physicists.
THE PRINCIPLE OF CHANGE expect, after the revolutionary "cycle" has run its full course, pre-revolutionary social conditions to be re-established as un-changed, as, according to a similar theory held by the politicians, the political conditions of the ancient régime are re-established in due course by the "Restoration." They hold all tendencies of revolutionary socialism and communism which aim at anything beyond, as mere "disturbances of healthy social progress" and theoretically "unscientific" fantasies. Marx's social science is opposed to all those traditional concepts of classical bourgeois theory. The contrast is, however, not so simple that it can be reduced to the biblical formula "Let your speech be yea, yea—nay, nay." It would be altogether wrong, for instance, to imagine that since the bourgeois theory is the doctrine of a "bourgeois society," Marx's socialist theory must of necessity be the doctrine of a "socialist society." As a matter of fact, scientific socialism is not at all concerned with the painting of a future state of society. Marx leaves that to the sectarians of the old and new Utopias. According to his materialistic principle, he deals with the real form of society which exists to-day, i.e., bourgeois society. As against the bourgeois "theorists" who continually tend to generalize in one way or another the facts they "discover," he more nearly approaches the method of the bourgeois "historians," from which, however, he keeps himself all the more aloof in another direction through his insistence on a strictly theoretical form of scientific knowledge. Nor is the bourgeois concept of developmental stages wholly repudiated by Marx. He distinguishes the historical forms of "Asiatic," "Antique" and "Feudal Society," and groups them, together with modern "Bourgeois Society," into a series of “progressive epochs of socio-economic formation." Although he no longer regards, as the bourgeois theorists had done, all previous forms of society as mere preliminary steps to its present and final 49 KAKL MARX formation, still he indulges in the statement that bourgeois society is the last "antagonistic" form of society and as such "concludes the pre-history of a really human society."1 While he objects to an arbitrary extension of concepts derived from the present bourgeois state of society, he sets forth the principle that bourgeois society, as the "most developed and most complex historical organization of production," furnishes a key to the understanding of earlier epochs of social and economic formation.2 He even endorsed, in his early years, the "correct idea" underlying that "common fiction of the 18th century which regarded the primitive state of man as the true state of human nature."3 As we shall see in our further investigation, Marx and Engels adopted a similar attitude in their dealing with the fresh impetus which that Rousseauan slogan of the 18th century had in the meantime received through the discovery of a so-called "primitive communism." From their socialistic point of view, they welcomed the assumption, supported by the leading investigators of the time, of a classless, communistic form preceding all hitherto known society. They did not, however, blindly accept the speculative implications of the new theory, but rather used the historical facts brought forth by Morgan and other explorers of ancient society as a further critical challenge to the "eternal truths" of the more fundamental aspects of the existing class-dominated society. There is, of course, a much greater difference between the Marxian and the traditional bourgeois approach to the future developments arising from the present state of society. While even the most progressive bourgeois thinkers of the 19th century set their hopes on the slow and gradual process of a so-called 1 See Preface 1859. 2 See Introduction, 1857; p. 776. 3 See The Philosophical Manifesto of the Historical School of Law in Rheinische geitung, 1842, No. 221, Supplement (MKGA, I, i, i, p. 251): "The correct idea underlying all these eccentricities (of the Historical School) is that those primitive conditions are naive 'Dutch pictures' of the true conditions."
THE PRINCIPLE OF CHANGE "evolution," Marx insisted on the inevitability, in a society based on class struggle, of a social revolution. Yet in a broader sense the evolutionary concept is not completely wiped out in the Marxian theory. Even the most violent and disruptive revolution remains, according to Marx, a mere step within an historical process through which the productive forces of man, and thus also the whole economic, political, and ideologic structure of society, "evolve" in a solemn and gigantic rhythm from revolution to revolution. Just as there is — in spite of all the intervening revolutions, and, in fact, realized by those revolutions — one progressive line of development leading up from the historic and "prehistoric" past to the contemporary form of bourgeois society, so will the socialist and communist society springing from the revolutionary action of the proletarian class, in spite of its break with the established bourgeois order, still remain a further outgrowth of the whole past and present history of an identical "subject" (mankind) acting upon and adapting itself to an identical "object" (nature).1 Apart from the revolutionary contents of the Marxian concept of development, there is another fundamental difference between the materialistic theory of the historical process and that metaphysical concept of "evolution" which was later, chiefly under the influence of Spencer, blindly accepted by such Orthodox Marxists as Kautsky2 and as blindly rejected by such heterodox Marxists as Georges Sorel, as a principle of scientific sociology.3 Marx recognized from the outset the delusive character of that so-called "historical evolution," according to which "the last stage regards the preceding stages as only preliminary to itself and, therefore, can only look at them one-sidedly.4 While "orthodox evolutionists" imagined, with 1 See Introduction, 1857; pp. 710 et seq. 2 See the author's The Materialistic Conception of History (A Critical Examination of the Work of Karl Kautsky), Leipzig, 1929, pp. 32 et et seq. 3 See Georges Sorel, Avant-propos to Introduction á l'economie moderne, 1903; also Illusions du progrés, third edition, pp. 239-44. 4 See Introduction, 1857, pp. 776-77. 51 KARL MARX Spencer, that they could explain the more complex organization of the higher types both of animal species and social forms by reference to the simpler organization of the lower, Marx shattered that illusion by the paradoxical statement that "the anatomy of man is a key to the anatomy of the ape."1 This critical consciousness breaks the magic spell of the metaphysical "law" of evolution. From an a priori valid axiom, it is reduced to a working hypothesis which must be empirically verified in each case. Even though bourgeois society does provide a "key" to earlier epochs, it does not follow that such categories as commodity, money, State, law, etc., must have the same meaning for ancient society and its mode of production as they have for modern capitalist production and for the bourgeois society which is based upon it. Thus, the path is made free for a strictly empirical research. Bourgeois society may contain the conditions of earlier societies in a further developed form. It may contain them as well in degenerate, stunted, and travestied forms. Thus the communal property of primitive times, according to Marx, was revived in a travestied form in the Russian "Mir."2 The present system of society likewise contains within itself the germs of its future developments, though by no means their complete determination. The false idealistic concept of evolution as applied by bourgeois social theorists, is closed on both sides, and in all past and future forms of society rediscovers only itself. The new, critical and materialistic Marxian principle of development is, on the contrary, open on both sides. Marx does not deal with Asiatic, Antique, or Feudal Society, and still less with those primitive societies which preceded all written history, merely as "preliminary stages" of contemporary society. He regards them, in their totality, as so many independent historical formations which are to be understood within their own categories. In the same way he defines the socialist and communist societies arising out of the prole- 1 See Introduction, 1857, p. 776. 2 Ibid.
THE PRINCIPLE OF CHANGE tarian revolution not only as further developed forms of bourgeois society, but as a new type which is no longer to be basically explained under any of the bourgeois categories. Marx's quarrel with the Utopian socialists is not, as many have imagined, inspired by their idea of a future commonwealth totally different from the present state of contemporary bourgeois society. On the Contrary, the weakness of the Utopian socialists lies in the fact that, in attempting to portray a socialist future, they at bottom only idealized the existing conditions of society, leaving out the shadows. All such Utopian schemes will, when worked out in detail and put into practice, inevitably reproduce only the same old bourgeois form of society we know so well.1 On the other hand, Marxism, while carefully avoiding a detailed painting of future stages, nevertheless endeavours to find, within contemporary bourgeois society, the main tendencies of a further development leading up, first to that transitional stage opened by the proletarian revolution, and ultimately, to those further advanced stages which Marx called a completely developed communistic society. Communistic society in its "first phase," just emerging from the womb of bourgeois society after protracted labour pains, will still be determined in many ways in its economic, political, legal, intellectual, and moral structure by bourgeois principles. Communistic society in its "second phase," where it has already developed on its own basis, will be as far removed from the principles of present-day bourgeois society as is, in the other direction, the classless and Stateless "primitive Communism" of the earliest epochs of human society. Communistic society, when it is fully developed, will have left the narrow bourgeois horizon far behind and will ultimately realize the principle which, in an abstract manner, was first enunciated by the "Utopian" pioneers on the threshold of the 19th century: 1 See the third of the articles contributed by Marx to Neue Rheinische , Politisch-oekonomische Revue, Hamburg, 1850. 53 KARL MARX "From each according to his abilities ; to each according to his needs."1 To the philosophical dialectic of Hegel, which he otherwise regarded as the perfected instrument of a developmental investigation of society, Marx raised the objection that, although fraught with deep insight into the historical past, it did not genuinely accept the reality of historical change. Hegel, who glorified existing institutions and moderate progress within the narrow confines of the contemporary Prussian state,2 carefully restricted the validity of his dialectical principle to the past developments of society and consigned future progress in a purposely irrational manner to the "mole burrowing below the surface."3 Even in criticizing the so-called "Pre-formation Hypothesis," according to which all future forms are already physically contained in those that precede them, he emphasized at the same time the correctness of its main idea that social development "remains with itself in its process and that by such a development no new content is brought about, but only a change of form." Developmemt is, therefore, according to Hegel, "only to be regarded as if it were a play ; the something else which is set by it, is in fact nothing else."4 It is evident that from this standpoint which, in its unyielding Hegelian formula, amounts almost to an involuntary criticism of the principle of evolution as used by the bourgeois social investigators, there is no room for the conscious human-social act, which shall radically transform and overthrow the present order of society. Hegel said, concerning the real "purpose" of all historical action, that "it is already fulfilled in truth, and need not wait for us." Its actual performance, then, serves only "to remove the sem- 1 See Marx, Marginal Notes to the Program of the German Labour Party, 1875 (Neue Zeit, IX, i, p. 567). 2 See Hegel's Address to his Audience on the occasion of his Opening Lecture in Berlin, Oct. 22nd, 1818. 3 See the Peroration of Hegel's lectures on the History of Philosophy (1817-1830). 4 See Hegel, Encyclopedia, I, § 161 (1818-1827). 54 THE PRINCIPLE OF CHANGE blance as if it were not yet performed."1 Hence, in contrast to some of his followers, who later on actually tried to use his dialectical method as an instrument for revolution, Hegel considered the only purpose of his philosophy to be to "re-establish" the conviction from which "every unsophisticated consciousness starts :" "What is rational is real, and what is real is rational;" and thus to bring about a final "reconciliation" between "reason as self-conscious mind" and "reason as a given reality."2 It is here that we face the most important consequence of the total destruction of bourgeois evolutionary metaphysics which is implied in Marx's materialistic criticism of the Hegelian Idealist dialectic. Marx's study of society is based upon a full recognition of the reality of historical change. Marx treats all conditions of existing bourgeois society as changing or, more exactly, as conditions being changed by human actions. At the same time, he regards all, even the most general categories of social science, as categories changeable and to be changed. He dismisses all the concepts applied by bourgeois social theorists and historians, in which the present form of society is in any way withdrawn from the constant flux of things, whether the writer deals with present-day bourgeois conditions as "natural" and as having always existed ; or whether, on the contrary, he erects an impassable barrier between past social conditions and the present-day bourgeois state of society ; or whether, again, he recognizes a real change only with respect to previous history and closes the whole development of human society with the bourgeois state reached in the present age. Bourgeois society, then, is no longer in any sense a general entity which can be justified by another than the historical title. It is a transitory stage which has been reached in the present time, and is valid 1 See Hegel, Encyclopaedia. I, addition to § 212. 2 See Hegel, Preface to Philosophy of Law (1820). 55 KARL MARX temporarily for this particular epoch, yet to be replaced by another state in an historical movement. It is at the same time but the present result of an earlier phase, and the starting point of a new phase, of the social class struggle leading to social revolution. 56 CHAPTER V THE PRINCIPLE OF CRITICISM THE description of existing bourgeois conditions as specific conditions of a transitory phase in an historical process, assumes a further importance as a theoretical basis for a critical examination of the structure of present society as a particular historical type of socio-economic formation. Just as in actual history every revolutionary movement of the bourgeoisie bred, as an undercurrent, independent stirrings of that class which was more or less the undeveloped predecessor of the modern proletariat, there have been even in the infancy of bourgeois thought some isolated thinkers who anticipated the criticism of the bourgeois principles which had not as yet been put into practice. Apart from these exceptional cases, a real theoretical understanding of the historical process and the self-criticism bound up with it did not arise in bourgeois thought until the very end of its classical epoch, when the revolutionary fight of the bourgeoisie against feudal society had come to its end and a new divergence of classes had begun to manifest itself within the hitherto united industrial society. It was not a criticism, but in fact a glorification when, in the middle of the 17th century, Hobbes described the existing state of bourgeois society (or, as he imagined in conformity with the prevailing delusion of contemporary thinkers, of "society" in general) as a "bellum omnium contra omnes" or "a war of every man against every man," which is only effectively and finally brought to a close by "a common Power to keep them all in awe," i.e., by the iron dictatorship of the State. Again, it was a glorification of bourgeois society when, 50 years later, Mandeville spoke of its peculiar construction, purposely devised
KARL MARX by an "all-cunning" Providence, in his paradoxical equation "Private vices—public benefits." Once more, it was a glorification when, at the close of the 18th century, Kant discovered the "antagonism of unsocial sociality" by which eventually "the first true steps from uncouthness to culture, and the agreement to live in a society, are pathologically thrust upon man." "All culture and art which adorn mankind, the most beautiful social order, are fruits of that unsociality which by its own nature is compelled to discipline itself and thus fully to develop the germs of nature through an art forced upon it from without."1 While the Darwinian formula of a "struggle for existence" along with the older formula of I Hobbes, had been misapplied by the eulogists of capitalism as a cosmic substructure of a so-called universal law of "free competition," Darwin himself had conversely borrowed his general concept from contemporary bourgeois economics. In the Introduction to the second edition of his famous work he said: "This is the doctrine of Malthus as applied to the whole realm of animal and plant life."2 Indeed, the specific historical form of the division of labour which results from the competition of the isolated commodity producers within present bourgeois society is so far from being an unchangeable law of human nature that it can be best understood as a brute unconscious form of social self-preservation in contrast to the conscious organization of the division of labour within a really co-operative society. In that sense "civil society" had already been characteristically described by Hegel as a "geistiges Tierreich" ("the animal world reproduced in the world of the mind").3 The analogy was further developed by Marx in Capital when he described the division of labour pre- 1 See Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651; Mandcville, The Fable of the Bees: Private Vices, Public Benefits, 1706; Kant, Idea of a Universal History Conceived under a Cosmopolitan Aspect, 1784. 2 See Darwin, On the Origin of Species, etc., second edition London, 1860. See also Marx, Theories of Surplus Value, II, i, p. 315. 3 See Hegel, Phenomenology of the Mind (Sämtliche Werke, II, edition 1832, pp. 295-314
THE PRINCIPLE OF CRITICISM vailing within present capitalistic society, as an organization which "confronts independent commodity producers one with another, who recognize no authority other than that of competition, that is, the coercion exercised upon them by the pressure of their reciprocal interests, just as in the animal kingdom the 'war all against all' maintains, more or less, the conditions of existence all species."1 It would be preferable, perhaps, in a strictly socio-economic research, to avoid altogether such parallels which never quite fit. However, the manner in which Darwin projects into nature, as an absolute law, the Competitive Struggle in bourgeois society, and in which Kropotkin equally, unwarrantably transforms the opposite principle of co-operation prevailing in communist society into an absolute Law of Mutual Help in the Animal and Human World, are both quite different in calibre from the recent attempt by a former orthodox Marxist to project a self-invented pacifistic and evolutionary principle of a so-called Natural Equilibrium from present-day society, where it does not apply, to the whole animal and plant world, where it likewise does not apply.2 The fundamental weakness of all the more significant interpretations of society in this epoch (inclusive of Rousseau's teaching, the bourgeois novel of Robinson Crusoe, and the whole of the new bourgeois science of Political Economy) consists in unhistorical manner in which they deal with the specific conditions of bourgeois society, its mode of production, its State, and its law, as final; regarding them as a natural and rational society at last attained and now in its main features unchangeable or, what practically amounts to the same, as being capable of unlimited perfection. When Marx (in the "Seventh and last Observation" of his Anti-Proudhon) denounced this thoughtless procedure as applied by the economists, he hit the Yüklə 0,99 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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