Abstract
Bloch’s early utopian philosophy has received little critical attention, although it throws light on the problem of his development and on the meaning of some of his most difficult concepts. Bloch tries to present his work as a unified whole; hence, the nonchronological listing of works in the Gesamtausgabe and the replacement of the original texts by revised editions. Nonetheless, it is important to note that Bloch formulated many of his fundamental ideas either before he became a Marxist or before Marxism became as central to his thought as it would later become.
Marxism therefore is not a non-utopia, but the genuine, concretely mediated and processually open one.
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Notes
For Bloch’s early articles on psycho-analysis, see A. Grinstein, The Index of Psychoanalytical Writings, vol. I, (New York: International Universities Press, 1956) pp. 186–7. These included:
A. Grinstein, ‘Ein Beitrag zur Freudschen Sexualtheorie der Neurosen’, Wiener klinische Wochenschrift, no. 52 (1907);
A. Grinstein, ‘Beitrag zu den Träumen nach Coitus interruptus’, Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse und Psychotherapie, no. 2 (1912) pp. 276–7;
A. Grinstein, ’Über Intelligenzprüfungen (nach der Methode von Binet und Simon) an normalen Volksschulkindern und Hilfsschulkindern’, Zeitschrift für die gesamte Neurologie und Psychiatrie, 17, (1) (1913);
A. Grinstein, ‘Freie Assoziationen bei Kindern’, Zentralblatt für Psychoanalyse und Psychotherapie, 3 (1913) pp. 208–9;
A. Grinstein, ‘über das noch nicht bewusste Wissen’, Die weissen Blätter, 2 (1919) p. 355.
ibid., p. 274. A form of subject utopianism can also be found in the works of some of the leading theoreticians of Expressionism, including Kurt Pinthus and Ernst Toller. Pinthus wrote of his generation as ‘those condemned to their aspirations, with nothing left but their hope in Man and their belief in Utopia’. See the famous Expressionist anthologies Menschheitsdämmerung (Rowohlt, 1919) and Die Erhebung (Fischer, 1919–20); and J. Willett, Expressionism (London: World University Library, 1970) pp. 145–7, 115–17, 124–9.
For the tendency to combine utopianism with eschatology in twentieth century German thought, see L. Bossle, Utopie und Wirklichkeit im politischen Denken von Reinhold Schneider (Mainz: Hase & Koehler Verlag, 1965)
and Tillich’s important essay ‘Critique and Justification of Utopia’ in F. E. Manuel (ed.), Utopias and Utopian Thought (London: Souvenir Press, 1973) pp. 296–309.
For a useful comparison of Bloch’s and Tillich’s fusions of utopianism and eschatology, see H-J. Gerhards, Utopie als innergeschichtlicher Aspekt der Eschatologie (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1973).
K. A. Kutzbach (ed.), Paul Ernst und Georg Lukacs. Dokumente einer Freundschaft (Düsseldorf: Paul Ernst Gesellschaft, 1973–4) p. 95, and Geist der Utopie (1918), GA, vol. 16, p. 337.
K. A. Kutzbach (ed.), Paul Ernst und Georg Lukacs, op. cit., p. 73, Lukacs to Ernst, 4 May 1915.
G. Lukacs, The Theory of the Novel, trans. A. Bostock (London: Merlin Press, 1971) pp. 45, 92, 63.
cf. Ferenc Fehér, ‘The Last Phase of Romantic Anti-Capitalism: Lukâcs’ Response to the War’, trans. J. Wikoff, in New German Critique, no. 10, Winter (1977) pp. 139–54.
A. Münster (ed.), op. cit., p. 107 and M. Lowy, ‘Interview with Ernst Bloch’ in New German Critique, no. 9, Fall (1976). p. 37.
G. Lukâcs, History and Class Consciousness, trans. R. Livingstone (London: Merlin Press, 1971) pp. 121–49.
ibid., p. 194. Lukâcs might also have applied his strictures on Moses Hess to Bloch see G. Lukács, ‘Moses Hess and the Problems of Idealist Dialectics’, Political Writings 1919–29 ed. R. Livingstone, trans. M. McColgan (London: N.L.B., 1972) pp. 181–223.
Erbschaft dieser Zeit, GA, vol. 4, pp. 104–126, especially p. 113. See Ernst Bloch, ‘Nonsynchronism and the Obligation to Its Dialectics’, trans. M. Ritter, in New German Critique, no. 11, Spring (1977) pp. 22–8. Bloch distinguishes between false and genuine, subjective and objective non-contemporaneity, and between contemporaneous, non-contemporaneous and over-contemporaneous contradictions, see Erbschaft dieser Zeit,pp. 116–20. I prefer to translate Ungleichzeitigkeit as non-contemporaneity, and not non-synchronism, because Bloch emphasises the non-contemporaneity of social strata with the now (Jetzt) even though such strata occupy the same synchronous formal time.
ibid., pp. 75–103, 126–52, 160–4, 202–4. See also A. Rabinbach, ‘Ernst Bloch’s “Heritage of Our Times” and Fascism’ in New German Critique, no. 11, Spring (1977) pp. 5–21.
See ‘Wiederkehr der Ideale’ in Vom Hasard zur Katastrophe op. cit., pp. 261–70, the interview ‘Über Ungleichzeitigkeit, Provinz und Propaganda’, in R. Traub and H. Wieser, op. cit., pp. 196–207; and Oskar Negt, ‘The Non-Synchronous Heritage and the Problem of Propaganda’ in New German Critique, no. 9, Fall (1976) pp. 46–70.
K. Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia, trans. L. Wirth and E. Shils (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976) pp. 177–9.
See for example K. Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies 4th ed., vol. I (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962) ch. 9. For general studies of utopia see F. E. Manuel, Utopias and Utopian Thought, op. cit.;
H. J. Krysmanski, Die utopische Methode (Cologne and Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1963);
A. Neusüss (ed.), Utopie: Begriff und Phänomen des Utopischen (Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1968);
R. Ruyer, L’Utopie et les utopies (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1950).
A. Schmidt, The Concept of Nature in Marx, trans. B. Fowkes (London: New Left Books, 1971) ch. 4, especially p. 133.
Marx-Engels, Selected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1969) vol. 1, p. 135.
Marx-Engels, Selected Correspondence, trans I. Lasker, (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975) p. 172.
F. Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, first English edition 1892 in Marx — Engels, Selected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1970) vol. 3, pp. 117, 119–20.
L. D. Easton and K. H. Guddat (ed. and trans.), Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society (New York: Anchor Books, 1967) p. 304.
A. Schmidt, The Concept of Nature in Marx, op. cit., ch. 4, cf. B. Oilman, ‘Marx’s Vision of Communism: A Reconstruction’ in Critique, no. 8, Summer (1976) pp. 4–41.
K. Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program (1875), in Manx-Engels, Selected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1970) vol 3, p. 19 and Das Prinzip Hoffnung, GA, vol. 5, p. 16–21.
See Philosophische Aufsätze, GA, vol. 10, pp. 406–11, and cf. J. Habermas, Theory and Praxis, trans. J. Viertel (London: Heinemann, 1974) pp. 239, 248.
ibid., p. 411. For an important study of the sympathies of the young Marx, see A. T. van Leeuwen, Critique of Heaven (London: Lutterworth, 1972). In a subsequent volume, van Leeuwen, like Bloch, finds an anti-mundane, qualitative stress in the older Marx, including borrowings from Boehme
see A. T. van Leeuwen, Critique of Earth (London: Lutterworth, 1974) ch. 1.
Zwischenwelten in der Philosophiegeschichte, GA, vol. 12, p. 316. For a fuller discussion, see D. Horster, Die Subjekt-Objekt-Beziehung im Deutschen Idealismus und in der Marxschen Philosophie (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 1979).
Das Prinzip Hoffnung, GA, vol. 5, pp. 1607–8, cf. H. F. Lefebvre, Karl Marx: sa vie, son oeuvre (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1964).
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© 1982 Wayne Hudson
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Hudson, W. (1982). Marxism and Utopia. In: The Marxist Philosophy of Ernst Bloch. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-04290-6_2
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