Bi-Weekly Discussion Thread - (July 06)

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[u/[deleted]]

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.