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CHAPTER III THE MATERIALISTIC SCHEME OF SOCIETY AS early as 1843 it had become clear to Marx that Political Economy was the keystone to all social science. In the following years as a political exile in Paris and Brussels and during a first visit to London and Manchester from July to August 1845, he completed the first important portion of that Herculean task to which after a short interruption in 1848-50, he was to devote his energies throughout his life. This was not merely an investigation of particular economic topics resulting in a solution of particular economic problems. It was the initiation of a hitherto mainly politically interested philosopher into the newly discovered field of a really "materialistic" science. In the retrospective account given in the Preface to his Critique of Political Economy, 1859, he sums up the general result : In the social production of their means of existence human beings enter into definite and necessary relations which are independent of their will—production-relations which correspond to a definite stage in the development of their material forces of production. The aggregate of these production-relations constitutes the economic structure of society, the real basis on which a juridical and political superstructure arises, and to which definite forms of social consciousness correspond. The mode of production of the material life conditions the whole process of the social, political, and intellectual life. It is not men's consciousness that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of their development the material productive forces of society come into contradiction with the existing production-relations, or what is only a legal expression for them with the property-relations within which they hitherto moved. From being forms of development, those 183 KARL MARX relations turn into fetters upon the forces of production. Then a period of social revolution sets in. With the change in the economic foundation, the whole of the vast superstructure is more or less rapidly overturned. In considering such revolutionary processes one must always distinguish between the economic conditions of production whose material changes can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, artistic, or philosophical, in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. As one cannot judge an individual by what he thinks of himself, just as little can he judge such a revolutionary epoch by its own consciousness ; he must, on the contrary, explain that consciousness by the contradictions of its material life, by the existing conflict between the social forces of production and the production-relations. A formation of society never perishes until all the forces of production for which it is wide enough have been developed ; new and higher production-relations never come into being until the material conditions for their existence have ripened within the womb of the old society itself. Therefore mankind always sets itself such tasks only as it can solve ; for looking closer, we shall always find that the task itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already existent or, at least, in process of formation. In broad outline the Asiatic, the Antique, the Feudal, and the modern Bourgeois modes of production can be designated as epochs in progress of the economic formation of society. The bourgeois production-relations are the final antagonistic form of the social production-process — antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism, but as growing out of the social conditions determining the life of the individuals. The forces of production developing within the womb of bourgeois society create at the same time the material conditions for the solution of that antagonism. That is why with that formation of society the pre-history of human society comes to an end. 184 THE MATERIALISTIC SCHEME OF SOCIETY The foregoing propositions which Marx, after fifteen years of labours presented as the carefully tested principles of his materialistic research of society, give a clear insight into the connection established by the materialistic conception of history between the social conditions of life, their historical development, and their practical overthrow. The connection appears at first as a static connection linking together the different strata lying, as it were, above each other in a given socio-economico formation. That connection is alternately described as a similarity of "structure," a relation of "basis" and "superstructure," or a "correspondence" between those forms of social organization which directly spring from the process of material production and such other phenomena as arise from various other social, political and intellectual activities in any particular historical period. This apparently static connection is, however, simply a particular case of the dynamic connection through which all sections and cross-sections of social life are bound together in their development. In the various phases of the origin, rise, and fall of a given socio-economic formation and its revolutionary replacement by the new and higher production-relations of a further developed social formation, that particular connection between all social conditions which, at first, from a static approach, appeared as a "consensus"1 undergoes a change of form. From a harmonious "consensus" it is at a certain point transformed into a "dissensus." (To use the Hegelian formula : the "correspondence" already contains within itself the "contradiction" through whose further development the production-relations and, even more, the legal relations, 1 It is thus described, e.g., by H. Spencer, in his Principles of Sociology. 185 KARL MARX forms of State, and ideologies based upon them, in due course are turned from forms of development of the forces of production into fetters restraining the further development of such forces of production.) But this dynamic connection is not yet the final and definite form of the materialistic connection which forms the subject matter of the Marxian research. With all its apparent comprehensiveness the Marxian formula hitherto discussed in this Chapter does not aim at a complete description of the materialistic principle. It was inserted into the Preface of his main theoretical work (Critique of Political Economy or, as it was to be renamed later : Capital) for the definite purpose of disclosing to his readers the theoretical principles underlying his investigation of Political Economy as the "anatomy of bourgeois society." The historical development of society is, accordingly, represented here mainly as an objective process. History is explained as an objective development of the material forces of production at first corresponding to and then contradicting the existing production-relations, which thus from being forms of development are turned into fetters. The historical "subject" of that development is not mentioned in the formula. The production-relations of all hitherto existing economic forms of society are shown to be "antagonistic" forms of the social process of production, but the closer definition of this social antagonism as a class opposition and a class war is not given. The violent overthrow of the existing order of society by the oppressed class appears in the formula as an "epoch of social revolution" in which the superstructure of society is transformed with the change taking place in the economic foundation. And in striking contrast to the severe criticism previously raised by Marx and Engels against such a metaphysical language,1 we read here that "mankind" 1 See e.g., Holy Family (MEGA, I, iii, p. 265): "History does nothing, it possesses no immense wealth, it fights no battles ! It is rather man, real living man—who does everything, who possesses and fights; it is not History which uses men, as a means to carry out its ends as if it were a separate person, but it is nothing besides the activity of man in the pursuit of his ends." 186 THE MATERIALISTIC SCHEME OF SOCIETY sets itself certain tasks, and even the "epoch of transformation" itself possesses a consciousness. The aim of the whole development is not concretely defined as a transition to socialist and communist society, but is only implied in the description of present bourgeois society as being the conclusion of the "prehistory of human society." The full sense of the materialist investigation of society results from the statements by which Marx and Engels at other times and in other contexts opposed their materialistic principle to the various conflicting opinions with which they had to deal. The objective formula in the Preface to the Critique of Political Economy :
Only by taking into account this practical connection can the theoretical statements of the materialistic investigation of society be put to their fullest use. The theoretical fact that 187 KARL MARX according to the materialistic principle of Marx legal conditions and forms of State no longer form an independent subject matter which is to be understood by virtue of its inherent qualities or derived from a higher immaterial principle but, on the contrary, are rooted in the material conditions of existing bourgeois society, coincides with the practical fact that in modern bourgeois society, after the abolition of all the privileges of the superior orders of the feudal society, the inequalities destroyed in the political and legal sphere are preserved in the opposition of social classes arising from the material conditions of life. By a radical elucidation of this state of affairs Marx breaks through the ideological confusion with which the panegyrists of the modern democratic State distract the attention of the proletariat from its real position, as an economically oppressed and exploited class, and from the measures to be taken for a practical change of that basic condition. Furthermore, the materialistic exposure of the illusions of the State and the law, and of all other high-pitched ideologies of modern bourgeois society, serves as a caution for the revolutionary proletarian class to keep itself free, as far as possible, from those new illusions, with which, in earlier epochs, revolutionary parties concealed from themselves the real content of the conflicts they were engaged in. For this reason Marx instilled into the minds of the workers the materialistic lesson that their emancipation from the particular form of oppression and exploitation which they suffer in the present epoch cannot result from any change of the existing political, legal, and cultural conditions, but must be brought about by themselves through a social revolution penetrating to the economic basis of existing bourgeois society. 188 CHAPTER IV NATURE AND SOCIETY MARX comprised in his materialistic investigation of society all the phenomena of a comprehensive field of experience which until then had been dealt with by a number of altogether different, old and new, sciences. On the one hand he recognized no "higher" spheres of a so-called "spiritual" life which would be exempted from the crude material necessities of the historical and social spheres. All juridical, political, religious, philosophical and artistic conceptions, the whole of the so-called "consciousness" of man and all its philosophical disguises as, for example, the Hegelian terms of an "objektiver" and "absoluter Geist," the Kantian concepts of "Gattungsvernunft," and "Bewusstsein iiberhaupt," the philosophical "idea" generally, and all other, even the most "universal" categories of thought exist only as given forms of a "social consciousness," temporary products of a continuous development, attributes of a definite historical epoch and of a definite economic order of society. To all "legal conditions and forms of the State" there applies the materialistic principle that they can neither be understood (as the exponents of dogmatic jurisprudence and political science believe) "out of themselves" nor (as the philosophers had believed) "out of the so-called general development of the human mind," but are rooted in the material conditions of the present-day bourgeois society. To all forms of social consciousness there applies the two-fold antithesis formulated by Marx in contrast both to the philosophical idealism of Kant, Fichte and Hegel, and to the naturalistic materialism of Feuerbach: "It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence but, on 189 KARL MARX the contrary, their social existence which determines their consciousness.”1 On the other hand, Marx comprised in his materialistic formula also the natural foundation of all historical and social phenomena and, for this purpose, conceived and represented even nature itself in the terms of a strictly historical and social science as "Industry," "Economy," or "Material Production." In spite of a genuine recognition of the "priority of external nature"2 he does not derive the historical development of society from any kind of extra-historical and extra-social natural factors like climate, race, struggle for existence, man's physical and mental powers, etc., but from a "nature" which has itself been already "modified" by an historical and social process or, more distinctly, from the historically and socially conditioned developments of material production. The materialist philosopher Plechanov, in supporting his contrary opinion, reminds us, that "Hegel had already noted in his Philosophy of History the important part played by the geographical foundations of the world history."3 He did not see that the scientific advances made by Marx's historical and social materialism over the idealism of Hegel and the materialism of Feuerbach consists just in this difference that he conceived of "matter" itself in historical terms, while all his philosophical predecessors, both the idealistic and the materialistic brand had conceived of "matter" as a dumb, dead or, at the utmost, biologically animated nature only. While according to Hegel "physical nature, indeed, exerts a direct effect upon world history,"4 Marx started from an altogether different viewpoint from the outset. Physical nature
2 See MEGA, I, v, p. 33. 3 See Plechanov, The Fundamental Problems of Marxism, VI. 4 See Hegel, Philosophy of History, General Introduction, II, i (a); and Special Introduction, II, "The natural connection or the geographical basis of world history." 190 NATURE AND SOCIETY according to him, does not directly enter into history. It does so by indirection, i.e., as a process of material production which goes on not only between man and nature, but at the same time between man and men.1 Or, to use a phraseology which will be clear even to the philosophers, in the strictly social research of Marxian materialism that "pure" nature which is presupposed to all human activity (the economic natura naturans) is replaced everywhere by a "nature" mediated and modified through human social activity, and thus at the same time capable of a further change and modification by our own present and future activity, i.e., by nature as material production (or the economic natura naturata).2 Being "social," nature has a specifically historical character varying in the different epochs. As an historical and social nature it has above all, a distinct class character. For example, as emphasized by Marx in his controversy with Feuerbach, that cherry tree before the philosopher's window, whose ancestors were "artificially" transplanted to Europe a few hundred years ago, is thereby for the modern European no nature-given growth;3 just as, on the same grounds, the potato is no "nature-given" food for the modern European poor, or, at most, only in the same sense as the adulterated bread and the "sophisticated" wine sold in the back streets are "nature-given" products of the modern capitalist mode of production.4 The den of the modern poor is even less than the lair of the wild beast a "nature-given" shelter in which he can move at ease like the fish in the water. It is not a house where he can feel at home, but it is the house of his landlord who will evict him when he cannot afford to pay his rent.5 "My house is my castle" originating from the world 1 See Holy Family (MEGA, I, iii, p. 19), and Wage-Labour and Capital (MEGA, I, vi, pp. 482 et seq.). 2 See for a more detailed discussion, Marx's Economico-philosophical MSS. of 1844 (MEGA, I, iii, p. 121-23) and German Ideology (MEGA I, v, pp. 10-11, et seq.). 3 See MEGA, I, v, pp. 32-33. 4 See Capital, I, pp. 137, 210-13, 565. 5 See MEGA, I, iii, pp. 135-36
KARL MARX of simple commodity production, holds good for the slum barracks of our big cities no more than it did for the cots of the English farm-labourers of 1860, as described in Capital.1 Modern "hunger," which satisfies itself with cooked meat, eaten with knife and fork, is quite another thing than that hunger which "swallowed raw meat with the aid of hand, nail and tooth."2 So do those "normal" periods of hunger natural to primitive hordes, that have been artificially reintroduced in modern capitalist society for those sections of the unemployed who, for some reason or another, have been taken off the dole, represent a vastly different thing from the hunger, be it ever so great, that may occasionally, by the accident of a temporary stoppage of their regular food supplies, cause a "thrilling" sensation to the idle rich. None of those things, in the definite forms, in which they appear in present bourgeois society or for that matter in any earlier or later epochs, comes from "nature" alone. They depend upon the existing historical conditions of material production and can be changed with the change of those conditions. This happens through an historical development, which may take a shorter or longer time, but which is nowhere stopped by any absolute barrier, through an objective process which is at the same time a struggle between social classes. This viewpoint of a strictly social, that is of an historical and practical science dominated from the very beginning the whole novel system of concepts which Marx and Engels built up in their controversy with the then existing idealistic and materialistic currents of thought. The existence of physical man, the external world in which he moves, and the natural objective development of those natural conditions in large periods of "cosmological time," independent of that altogether different development of the social forms which is accomplished by man's action in "historical time," all these "real presuppositions" of
2 See Introduction, 1857, p. 717. 192 NATURE AND SOCIETY history and society are, of course, real presuppositions also for the materialistic research of Marx. They do not, however, appear as theoretical premises within the system of the new social science which starts from its own materialistic principles defined in historical and social terms. This is no way contradicted but, on the contrary, even more clearly demonstrated by the terms of so-called "naturally grown forms of society" and of so-called “social laws of nature” which are continually used by Marx in the presentation of his theory. The concept of "natural growth" as applied to historical forms, has with Marx an altogether different meaning than it had with the historians, poets, and philosophers of the "Romanticist School" who in a conscious opposition to the preceding period of Enlightenment and Revolution glorified everything "naturally grown." Marx, on the contrary, used the term in a negative sense for the description of such conditions, relations, connections which have not as yet been subjected to a conscious human action. In this sense Marx speaks in his Critique of the German Ideology and twenty years later, in Capital, of the "nature-grown" ("naturwuechsige") forms of division of labour,1 of a worldwide historical connection between individuals,2 of the State,3 of legal conditions,4 of language,5 and of such apparently immutable differences as the variations of race.6 In all these cases the "naturwüchsige" form of a social relation is in contrast to those other forms which this relation assumes in the course of social development when it is either consciously maintained and further worked out, or changed to a greater or lesser extent by a conscious human action. The "naturwuechsige" forms are thus described as social forms which have arisen historically just as all other, more or less consciously created forms and are therefore capable of a further change both in the present and the 1 See MEGA, I, v, pp. 12, 20-22, 41-42, 49-50, 55 et seq., and Capital, I pp. 316, 321, 329, etc. 2 See MEGA, I, v, pp. 26-7. 3 Ibid, p. 325. 4 Ibid. p. 342. 5 Ibid. pp. 404-405. 6 Ibid. p. 403. 193 KARL MARX future. Thus they are not eternal forms of all social life but can be overthrown by the united individuals in a deliberate action, which will finally strip them of their present crude and oppressive "nature-grown" character. One sees at first glance the positive bearing of this thought not only on the theoretical extension of the realm of social knowledge but also on the practical socialistic and communistic tendencies which are necessarily bound up with this knowledge.1 The same holds good for the other apparently nature-bound term of the new Marxian science, which we have already discussed when dealing with the economic law of value, i.e., the so-called "social laws of nature." Here again we have to deal with a term which is at first defined in a negative manner only.2 The economic laws prevailing in the capitalistic mode of production do not have within the new materialistic science of society that positive and final meaning which the real "laws of nature" have for the physicist3 and which, according to then first discoverers and inventors, pertained also to those "natural" laws which would in future govern the new "civil" mode of existence emerging from the artificial fetters of mediaeval feudalism. They are even less what Marx and Engels in their earlier, philosophical, period called a "law of the mind" as opposed to a "mere law of nature"4 and what recurs in their later writings when they speak of a "leap from the realm of necessity into the realm of freedom"5 and of the "true realm of freedom blossoming out of the realm of necessity in the fully developed Communist Society of the future."6 Yüklə 0,99 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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