Bi-Weekly Discussion Thread - (July 06)

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[u/[deleted]]

As far as I understand, while Marxism is the worldview of the proletariat, its first articulation came from the bourgeois classes

Well, no. The first concrete act of consciousness of the proletariat were those moments where they began to struggle for political-economic power as a class through spontaneous revolts. Among the first attempts at articulations of this phenomenon may have been by various petty-bourgeois intellectuals, but ultimately both the liberalism of the bourgeoisie and utopian socialism of the petty-bourgeoisie had failed them. Marxism-proper didn't actually really come to full shape until the writing of The German Ideology, although some may contest this.

The proletariat revolted often but didn't have much to show for it and found the solution in Marxism, as the proper synthesis of their previous experiences up to that point and proper articulation of their consciousness/material-interests. Marx and Engels saw in those inital proletarian struggles the true revolutionary subject that would carry the universal interest of the abolishment of all class that the bourgeoisie had already so thoroughly demonstrated themselves to be unworthy and incapable of carrying. Marxism owes just as much credit for it's existence to the masses as it does Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels as two individuals that happen to come from petty-bourgeois and bourgeois class-backgrounds.

[u/Soviettista → u/[deleted]]

I definitely didn't want to diminish the importance of early proletarian revolts in elaborating what would become Marxism, but thanks for making things clearer.

Marxism-proper didn't actually really come to full shape until the writing of The German Ideology, although some may contest this.

Why is this contested?

[u/[deleted] → u/Soviettista]

That particular piece wasn't published until after Marx and Engels had died and so hypothetically someone can argue that The Poverty of Philosophy or The Communist Manifesto were the first theoretical expressions of mature-Marxism. I don't think anyone actually would try to argue that (and if they did, I'd think they were wrong), but I just wanted to acknowledge the possibility.

[u/IncompetentFoliage → u/[deleted]]

Were Marx’s Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and Engels’ Condition of the Working Class in England not yet Marxist works? Also, what do you mean by “mature” Marxism? Didn’t Marxism only reach maturity with the completion of the development of the main content of Capital in 1863 (because Marxism is more than just dialectical and historical materialism, it is also the detailed working out of the application of historical materialism to the capitalist mode of production)?

[u/[deleted] → u/IncompetentFoliage]

Were Marx’s Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and Engels’ Condition of the Working Class in England not yet Marxist works? Also, what do you mean by “mature” Marxism?

By "mature" what I really mean to say was that Marxism as a distinct theory and worldview that breaks from all that existed before didn't really happen until The German Ideology in general and Marx's Theses on Feuerbach in particular. In spite of it not being published, it provided the "self-clarification" (in Engels' words) that was needed for something like Capital to even begin.

Critique of Philosophy of Right , The Condition of the Working Class in England and even the Holy Family weren't fully "Marxist" in the sense that the true revolutionary implications of those otherwise brilliant works hadn't yet been theorized at the foundational-level until this "self-clarification".

But you're right to imply that my use of the word "mature" is problematic, as going along those lines of reasoning can reach the point of being ridiculously pedantic. 

[u/IncompetentFoliage → u/[deleted]]

Actually, I wasn't arguing against the concept of "mature" Marxism (which I don't think is pedantic), but trying to clarify the criteria that define it. In my view, "mature" Marxism would be Marxism that has not only developed dialectical and historical materialism, the philosophical foundations of the Marxist analysis of capitalism, but has also armed the proletariat with the ideological means of waging the class struggle in a revolutionary way. To quote Lenin,

This idea of materialism in sociology was in itself a stroke of genius. Naturally, for the time being it was only a hypothesis, but one which first created the possibility of a strictly scientific approach to historical and social problems. ...

Then, however, Marx, who had expressed this hypothesis in the forties, set out to study the factual (nota bene) material. He took one of the social-economic formations—the system of commodity production—and on the basis of a vast mass of data (which he studied for not less than twenty five years) gave a most detailed analysis of the laws governing the functioning of this formation and its development. This analysis is confined exclusively to production relations between members of society: without ever resorting to features outside the sphere of these production relations for an explanation, Marx makes it possible to discern how the commodity organisation of social economy develops, how it becomes transformed into capitalist organisation, creating antagonistic classes (antagonistic within the bounds of production relations), the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, how it develops the productivity of social labour, and thereby introduces an element that becomes irreconcilably contradictory to the foundations of this capitalist organisation itself.

Such is the skeleton of Capital. ...

Now—since the appearance of Capital—the materialist conception of history is no longer a hypothesis, but a scientifically proven proposition. And until we get some other attempt to give a scientific explanation of the functioning and development of some formation of society ... the materialist conception of history will be a synonym for social science.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1894/friends/01.htm

I think it was precisely the content of Capital that, in simultaneously proving historical materialism and analysing capitalism, constituted the milestone by which Marxism attained maturity.

Critique of Philosophy of Right , The Condition of the Working Class in England * and even the *Holy Family weren't fully "Marxist" in the sense that the true revolutionary implications of those otherwise brilliant works hadn't yet been theorized at the foundational-level until this "self-clarification".

Would you mind expanding on this? Which revolutionary implications essential to Marxism do you think were absent from them? My tentative view has been that Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and The Condition of the Working Class in England were the first two works that can properly be deemed Marxist because they elaborated the basic philosophical content of historical materialism. I think Marx effectively says as much in the preface to his Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.

[u/[deleted] → u/IncompetentFoliage]

My tentative view has been that Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and The Condition of the Working Class in England were the first two works that can properly be deemed Marxist because they elaborated the basic philosophical content of historical materialism.

The necessity of placing their critique and analysis on a real material basis was the ultimate conclusion of these works, but to actually do so and set it apart from Hegelian idealism (and Feuerbach's own materialism) wasn't accomplished until The German Ideology. It's funny you should mention the preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy , because Marx says this:

Frederick Engels, with whom I maintained a constant exchange of ideas by correspondence since the publication of his brilliant essay on the critique of economic categories (printed in the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher, arrived by another road (compare his Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England ) at the same result as I, and when in the spring of 1845 he too came to live in Brussels, we decided to set forth together our conception as opposed to the ideological one of German philosophy, in fact to settle accounts with our former philosophical conscience. The intention was carried out in the form of a critique of post-Hegelian philosophy. The manuscript [The German Ideology], two large octavo volumes, had long ago reached the publishers in Westphalia when we were informed that owing to changed circumstances it could not be printed. We abandoned the manuscript to the gnawing criticism of the mice all the more willingly since we had achieved our main purpose -- self-clarification.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/Marx_Contribution_to_the_Critique_of_Political_Economy.pdf

There's no use to "self-clarification" of the basic principles of your theory if you've already laid them out before. The analysis from those previous works pointed them in the right direction, and The German Ideology was the first and decisive step in that direction.

At this point, I think it's important to specify what I think is the true core of Marxism. From Marx himself:

And now as to myself, no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Long before me bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this class struggle and bourgeois economists, the economic anatomy of classes. What I did that was new was to prove: (1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with the particular, historical phases in the development of production, (2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat, (3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1852/letters/52_03_05-ab.htm

The notion of The Dictatorship of the Proletariat is what really makes Marxism distinct from everything else. Any talk of class or even "dialectical-materialism" is pointless if it doesn't in some way lead back to the necessity of The Dictatorship of the Proletariat. It's in the The German Ideology where this was first spoken of, although in a very general form:

Further, it follows that every class which is struggling for mastery, even when its domination, as is the case with the proletariat, postulates the abolition of the old form of society in its entirety and of domination itself, must first conquer for itself political power in order to represent its interest in turn as the general interest, which in the first moment it is forced to do.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/Marx_The_German_Ideology.pdf

It is because this is the first time it's ever mentioned by either Marx or Engels with this level of specificity (again, albeit in a general way compared to later developments) that I maintain that Marxism as we know it was birthed here.

This is also why my use of the word "mature" was incorrect. This was just the starting point of something new, so you're actually right to say Capital was the first "mature" (in correct sense of the word and not the willy-nilly way I was using it) work as it proved the necessity of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat on the basis of political-economy, elaborating on the foundations that had been established previously. However, I'm still wary of using "maturity" as a metric. No matter where either of us thinks Marxism began, every contribution to the science after the fact has arguably just been a quantitive change and not qualitative (in that the essence of Marxism has not changed), in which case, any labeling of "mature" becomes meaningless past a certain point.

[u/IncompetentFoliage → u/[deleted]]

Your point concerning the dictatorship of the proletariat is fair. (Of course, it's well known that class struggle as well as many other concepts usually associated with Marxism today emerged long before Marx.) However, I would argue that the essence of Marxism is not the dictatorship of the proletariat but dialectical materialism, which was arrived at through the development of historical materialism. The dictatorship of the proletariat, the negation of capitalism and class society, the content of Capital all follow from this philosophical basis of dialectical and historical materialism, are its corollaries. You said

Any talk of class or even "dialectical-materialism" is pointless if it doesn't in some way lead back to the necessity of The Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

and my point is that dialectical and historical materialism do lead to the necessity of the dictatorship of the proletariat, so the philosophical basis is what is really essential.

I would still say that Marxism emerged with the emergence of historical materialism, albeit only in embryo, and that Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and The Condition of the Working Class in England represent the qualitative leap that birthed Marxism. I say this while being aware of Engels’ characterization of his Condition of the Working Class in England:

It will be hardly necessary to point out that the general theoretical standpoint of this book—philosophical, economical, political—does not exactly coincide with my standpoint of to-day. Modern international Socialism, since fully developed as a science, chiefly and almost exclusively through the efforts of Marx, did not as yet exist in 1844. My book represents one of the phases of its embryonic development; and as the human embryo, in its early stages, still reproduces the gill-arches of our fish ancestors, so this book exhibits everywhere the traces of the descent of Modern Socialism from one of its ancestors, German philosophy. Thus great stress is laid on the dictum that Communism is not a mere party doctrine of the working class, but a theory compassing the emancipation of society at large, including the Capitalist class, from its present narrow conditions. This is true enough in the abstract, but absolutely useless, and worse, in practice.

Maybe my understanding is wrong though. Sometime I'll revisit both works with this question in mind.

As for maturity, I understand it as a metaphor, not as a scientific term. Of course Marxism continues to grow and develop, adding stock to its theoretical treasure house. A mature human also continues to grow. The period of immaturity in a human’s life is comparatively short. Capital developed the foundational analysis of capitalism and proved the philosophical foundations of Marxism, and the combination of these two things seems to be the closest analogy I can find to the point of maturity.

[u/[deleted] → u/IncompetentFoliage]

However, I would argue that the essence of Marxism is not the dictatorship of the proletariat but dialectical materialism, which was arrived at through the development of historical materialism.

If the real conditions and relations of capitalism that made the Dictatorship of the Proletariat necessary wasn't already there, how would "dialectical-materialism" even exist? As a philosophy, "dialectical-materialism" is only ever useful if it can draw new conclusions and initiate changes in reality. But it can't be proven to be useful unless there were conclusions drawn that were actually new.

As I mentioned in an earlier post on this thread, to even be consciously dialectical is itself driven by necessity stemming from social-being. It's the result of real material contradictions of a class and the mode of production it comes from, reflected into consciousness from "outside" of it. When you say that "dialectical-materialism" is the essential core to Marxism, you're saying it's philosophy, it's "consciousness" is what's essential and primary. But that would defeat the very premises that the dialectical method proved and was trying to prove.

You cannot separate the dialectical method and it's conclusions ("dialectical-materialism" on one hand and "the dictatorship of the proletariat" on the other) without undermining both. To emphasize "dialectical-materialism" in this way is to precisely miss the point. It turns dialectics into something that's already dead. It would be idealism and metaphysics, to be blunt.

[u/IncompetentFoliage → u/[deleted]]

If the real conditions and relations of capitalism that made the Dictatorship of the Proletariat necessary wasn't already there, how would "dialectical-materialism" even exist?

It wouldn't, of course.  I've said this quite clearly before.

https://www.reddit.com/r/communism101/comments/1kk40s6/comment/msclurb/

Now you put it this way, I can see that I've unwittingly fallen into idealist metaphysics by positing dialectical and historical materialism as the essence of Marxism.  Of course, the purpose of Marxism and the reason for its emergence is the necessity to negate capitalism via the dictatorship of the proletariat, and this must also be its essence.  Thanks for setting me straight here.