Abstract
The authors outline the fundamental problematique of Marx’s theory that has been underestimated in previous research: The truth claim of Marx’s critique of society cannot be separated from its communist motivation and the aim of the revolutionary overthrow of its object, bourgeois society. What is more, this immanent relation between analysis and political engagement, between theoretical critique and revolutionary aims, between truth and revolution, constitutes the core of Marx’s science and is only therefore conceivable and understandable. The introduction is accompanied by a discussion of current international Marx research published in English. Although some international scholars also take into account the truth claims of Marx’s revolutionary perspective, the approach of Bohlender, Schönfelder, and Spekker stands out by taking seriously the scientific substantiation of this perspective. The strengths and limitations of Marx’s theory can be made productive for contemporary critique of society only if one understands his judgments as neither a positivist reflection of reality nor normative political thinking.
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Notes
- 1.
For some of the sources cited in the further course of our book, there exist no English translations so far. In these cases we have translated the quotations ourselves and indicate this in the following with the marking ‘o.t.’ for ‘own translation.’
- 2.
Horkheimer’s old companion Herbert Marcuse had already demonstrated in 1957, with his now almost forgotten analysis of Soviet Marxism, that the Marxism of Lenin and Stalin could be measured according to the theoretical premises developed by Marx and thus be subjected to a radical critique; see Marcuse (1961).
- 3.
Along with the contributions in the mentioned volume, see especially Bohlender (2016, 2019), Schönfelder (2016), and Spekker (2016, 2017).
- 4.
In this regard, one must also read the third thesis on Feuerbach: “The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-change can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice” (MECW 5, p. 4).
- 5.
The existing English translations of Marx’s and Engels’ works are in many cases inaccurate and not infrequently even so deficient that they distort the meaning of the text—and it’s hardly any better with texts by other authors. A key reason for this is certainly the fundamental problem that in different languages different traditions of thought are reflected and one cannot be directly translated into the other. This is especially true of Marx’s formulations and concepts, which often still echo their origins in German Idealism. Another reason, however, is certainly simply shallow translation. Be that as it may, we have corrected many quotations in the further course of our book and indicate that with ‘c.t.’ for ‘corrected translation’.
- 6.
Marx was aware of this, and it’s no coincidence that the second thesis on Feuerbach, which gets to the heart of this problem, is also chronologically located at the beginning of Marx’s party-building process.
- 7.
Horkheimer, of all people, had once been very aware of the indissoluble relation between truth directed toward liberated society and the, if necessary, violent formation of its subject. Thus, about three decades before his lecture Marx Today, in his programmatic essay Traditional and Critical Theory, he still wrote: “The course of the conflict between the advanced sectors of the class and the individuals who speak out the truth concerning it […], is to be understood as a process of interactions in which consciousness comes to flower along with its liberating but also its inciting, disciplining, aggressive forces [in the original Version Horkheimer speaks of ›violent‹ – gewaltsamen – forces]. The sharpness of the conflict shows in the ever present possibility of tension between the theoretician and the class which his thinking serves. The unity of the social forces from whom liberation is awaited […] exists only as a conflict which continually threatens the subjects caught up in it. This becomes clearly evident in the person of the theoretician; his critique is aggressive; not only against the conscious defenders of the status quo but also against distracting, conformist, or Utopian tendencies within his own ranks” (Horkheimer 1972b, pp. 215 f., c.t.).
- 8.
Astonishingly, Terrell Carver, in his research on the Eighteenth Brumaire (Carver 2002 and 2018, Chapter 4), claims conversely that Marx fundamentally demonstrated “how fragile democratic structures are, how easily they fall to authoritarian politicians by electoral demagoguery and coups d’état” (Carver 2018, p. 109): “What Marx identifies is a dynamic within liberal democracy that many commentators and theorists miss, preferring to see it as an aberration or inexplicable puzzle: why do people vote for populist authoritarians […]?” (ibid., p. 110) This is not correct as stated. Marx saw Bonaparte precisely not as an expression of a possibility inherent in democratic systems of their tipping over into populist, authoritarian rule, but rather as a historical exception to the rule according to which class interests are actually also politically represented by their bearers (and not vicariously by a populist ‘compromise candidate’). The problem with Carver’s reading is that, on the one hand, unlike Stedman Jones, he allows all of Marxʼs remarks in the Eighteenth Brumaire to stand unquestioned, but on the other hand, he attributes more to Marx (in this case, historically recent insights about authoritarianism) than is actually to be found here. Such distortions just go along with “a self-consciously constructed ‘Marx’”.
- 9.
By the way, the critique that Michael Heinrich, following Althusser’s claim of an ‘epistemological break,’ quite wrongly makes of the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, because he does not understand Marx’s concept of human essence at all (see Chapter 2.2 of the present book), ironically hits the mark in the case of the Open Marxists.
- 10.
Bonefeld distinguishes between different temporalities in a manner similar to Tomba and Wendling and emphasizes the specific “political economy of struggle for human co-operation, solidarity, dignity, and the democratic organisation of social time. The time of class struggle entails a different conception of time to that which holds that time is money” (Bonefeld 2004, p. 115).
- 11.
John Holloway, for his part, repeatedly drifts into Existentialism and kitsch with his philosophy of the scream. See also Holloway 2015 and the critique thereof in Chapter 2.4.
- 12.
Chris Arthur, too, explicitly takes issue with Postone’s remarks on the proletariat (see Arthur 2004). His critique of Postone’s understanding of abstract labor as its own self-mediating social ground does indeed hit a weak spot: “The conditioning sequence does not run: abstract labour → value → money, but the reverse. Money posits all commodities as values, and their positing as value brings about the abstract identity of the labours embodied in all products” (ibid., p. 99). But his assertion that Postone’s rejection of the standpoint of labor as the foundation of the critique of capitalism “disqualifies the proletariat from forming itself as a counter-subject to capital, and rebelling against wage-slavery” (ibid., p. 101) completely misses the point of what Postone means when he writes: “The logic of Marxʼs presentation does not support the notion that the proletariat is the revolutionary Subject” (Postone 1996, p. 325). Postone’s point is by no means the claim that workers per se can’t develop revolutionary consciousness; rather, the point is that they aren’t the ‘actual’ subject of economic development (keyword: reductio ad hominem) who must simply assert their proletarian subjectivity against private property. “Rather, the logical thrust of Marxʼs presentation clearly implies that this historical negation should be conceived as peopleʼs reappropriation of socially general capacities that are not ultimately grounded in the working class and had been constituted historically in alienated form as capital. Such reappropriation would be possible only if the structural basis of this process of alienation – value, hence, proletarian labor – were abolished” (ibid., p. 357).
- 13.
For an extensive treatment, see (only available in German, however) Spekker (2018) (also with reference to Starosta) as well as Bohlender (2018).
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Bohlender, M., Schönfelder, AS., Spekker, M. (2023). Introduction. In: Truth and Revolution in Marx's Critique of Society. Marx, Engels, and Marxisms. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-17358-5_1
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