Abstract
In this chapter, Schulenberg discusses the early encounters between Marxism and pragmatism. He concentrates on Sidney Hook, Richard J. Bernstein, and the American Trotskyist George Novack. In his discussion of Hook, Schulenberg focuses on two questions. First, he asks whether it is possible to advance the idea that the version of Marxism that Hook developed in the 1930s can be called a “pragmatist Marxism.” Second, he endeavors to illuminate what exactly the pragmatist perspective is from which Hook discusses Marxism. In Praxis and Action (1971), Richard J. Bernstein offers a genuinely dialectical critique that proposes that American pragmatists might profit from discussing Marxism. By contrast, the notion of a pragmatist Marxism was not only scandalously oxymoronic to George Novack, it was anathema. Novack’s Pragmatism versus Marxism (1975) is a severe critique of Dewey’s pragmatism. Throughout his text, Novack maintains that pragmatism—which he reads as a middle-class, liberal philosophy—and Marxism are strictly incompatible.
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Notes
- 1.
In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels elaborate on a division of mental and manual labor. Their explanation of the creation of the idea of “pure” theory and philosophy reminds one of Dewey’s argument in The Quest for Certainty: “Division of labour only becomes truly such from the moment when a division of material and mental labour appears. From this moment onward consciousness can really flatter itself that it is something other than consciousness of existing practice, that it really represents something without representing something real; from now on consciousness is in a position to emancipate itself from the world and to proceed to the formation of ‘pure’ theory, theology, philosophy, morality, etc.” (1998: 50).
- 2.
Concerning the idea of “leaving the realm of philosophy,” Marx and Engels contend (referring to the Young Hegelians): “German criticism has, right up to its latest efforts, never left the realm of philosophy. It by no means examines its general philosophic premises, but in fact all its problems originate in a definite philosophical system, that of Hegel. Not only in its answers, even in its questions there was a mystification. This dependence on Hegel is the reason why not one of these modern critics has even attempted a comprehensive criticism of the Hegelian system, however much each professes to have advanced beyond Hegel” (1998: 34–35).
- 3.
According to West, theory for Marx does possess a scientific or objective status. However, this status does not entail an emphasis on processes of verification, the correspondence theory of truth, or the correctness of correspondence relations: “For Marx—and radical historicists—the scientific or objective status of theories is not linked to philosophic notions of verification or of correct correspondence relations (e.g., idea/object, words/things, propositions/states of affairs); rather, the status of the theories depends on the sensitivity expressed toward pressing problems, the solutions offered for urgent dilemmas, and openings made into new areas of self-criticism” (1991: 98). Again, this seems more like the description of an ideal, pragmatist, Marx who never existed in the first place.
- 4.
Crucially, West differentiates between Marx’s radical historicism and a more moderate historicism typical of Engels, Kautsky, and Lukács. West’s contention is that the texts of the latter three are governed by the quest for certainty and foundationalist (or archeo-teleological) gestures. Hence, there is a partial overlap between his argument and that developed in the present study: “Despite their radical historicist Marxist heritage, as I have pointed out, Engels, Kautsky, and Lukács adopt a moderate historicist viewpoint. They fail to put forward a radical historicist perspective primarily because they remain captive to the vision of philosophy as the quest for certainty, the search for foundations, because they retain foundationalist conceptions of epistemology and science that rest upon linking the foundations of knowledge to varying notions of philosophic necessity” (1991: 167). From what I have said so far it should be obvious that I disagree with Robert Westbrook when he claims that “West never adequately explains why he thinks it is so important to hang onto Marxism or, to put it better, never describes what it is that he believes remains valuable in Marxism” (2005: 209–210). Westbrook’s argument suffers from the fact that he only discusses West’s The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism (1989) and completely ignores the rest of his texts. West has repeatedly described what he thinks is still valuable in Marxism. Apart from The Ethical Dimensions of Marxist Thought one should mention his important piece, “Race and Social Theory,” Keeping Faith: Philosophy and Race in America (New York: Routledge, 1993), 251–270. Also important in this context is of course his early book, Prophesy Deliverance! An Afro-American Revolutionary Christianity (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002 [1982]); and “The Indispensability Yet Insufficiency of Marxist Theory” and “Fredric Jameson’s American Marxism,” The Cornel West Reader, ed. Cornel West (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 1999), 213–230 and 231–250.
- 5.
In this context, see Ulf Schulenberg, Lovers and Knowers: Moments of the American Cultural Left (Heidelberg: Winter, 2007).
- 6.
For a discussion of Hook’s oeuvre, see the following two collections: Paul Kurtz, ed., Sidney Hook: Philosopher of Democracy and Humanism (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Press, 1983); and Matthew J. Cotter, ed., Sidney Hook Reconsidered (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Press, 2004). In the chapter “Sidney Hook: The Deweyan Political Intellectual” in The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), Cornel West offers a good overview of Hook’s career from early radicalism to later anti-Stalinism and cold war social democracy (114–124). For an interpretation of the theoretical development of the early Hook, see Christopher Phelps’s “Historical Introduction” to the 2002 edition of Towards the Understanding of Karl Marx (35–66), as well as Phelps’s “Foreword to the Morningside Edition” of From Hegel to Marx (xi–xxx). In addition, see Lewis S. Feuer’s essay, “From Ideology to Philosophy: Sidney Hook’s Writings on Marxism,” and the chapter “Philosophers and Revolutionists” in Alan M. Wald, The New York Intellectuals: The Rise and Decline of the Anti-Stalinist Left from the 1930s to the 1980s (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1987), 101–127. Also valuable in this context is the chapter “The Partisan Mind: Political Turns” in Alexander Bloom, Prodigal Sons: The New York Intellectuals and Their World (New York: Oxford UP, 1986), 98–120.
- 7.
In this context, see Richard H. Pells’s comment on Hook: “Sidney Hook’s theory combined a Marxist sensitivity to social and cultural conditioning, a Pragmatic [sic] emphasis on individual consciousness and will, and an existential perception of the ways in which man’s activities gave meaning to an otherwise absurd world. The resulting blend was marvelously unorthodox. For this he was attacked by liberals and communists alike. But he had come closer than anyone else to fashioning an ideology that corresponded to the needs of depression America” (1998: 140).
- 8.
Lewis S. Feuer uses the term “epistemological activism” in this context. He writes: “Hook in the first phase of his thought was the spokesman of what might be called ‘epistemological activism.’ His argument was an adaptation of John Dewey’s instrumentalism; unlike European Marxism, it was suffused with a sense of the open universe of possibilities whose realization depended on human decision and action. It was an interpretation of Marxism which placed a tremendous meaning on Marx’s now celebrated eleventh thesis on Feuerbach” (2002: 421–422).
- 9.
Regarding the question of Marxism and method, it is crucial to see that the later Hook maintains that contemporary Marxist movements do not have anything to do with the idea of scientific method anymore. In Marxism and Beyond, for instance, Hook writes: “What passes for Marxism today is largely a mélange of doctrines that differ from Marx’s leading ideas and that he would have scornfully disowned for all their sentimental socialist fervor” (1983: 54). Further below, he formulates even more vehemently: “Regardless of the reasons for the revival of Marxist allegiance, what all expositors and adherents have in common is a conception of Marx that makes his doctrines impervious to empirical confirmation or refutation. None of the recent Marxists—whether in history, politics, economics, psychology, or sociology—meet the criterion of scientific significance formulated a long time ago by Charles S. Peirce, the father of American pragmatism” (1983: 56). In Reason, Social Myths and Democracy (1940), Hook calls attention to the unscientific and metaphysical thought of (most) Marxists: “Despite their vaunted scientific philosophy, Marxists never scrutinized their professed goals in terms of the programs and methods which they claimed the situation exacted from them, never criticized their ends-in-view by the consequences of their means in action. […] The ideal of socialism, therefore, functioned as an absolute, as something that could always be saved despite the appearances” (2009: 109). The chapter “What Is Living and Dead in Marxism” in Reason, Social Myths and Democracy is interesting in so far as the author shows that he is no longer a Marxist, yet at the same time he is not yet capable of radically rejecting Marxism. This precarious state of the in-between makes reading this piece a stimulating experience. Hook writes, for instance: “Marxism as a movement is dying, and in many countries is already dead. Yet there is a living kernel in the thought and ideas it failed to develop. As a program of scientific activity in behalf of socialist ideals, fortified by the lessons of experience, rearmed with deeper moral and psychological insights, and prepared to learn what it really means to be scientific, these ideas still constitute a promising social philosophy” (2009: 141). In this context, see also the first part of Marx and the Marxists: The Ambiguous Legacy (Mansfield Centre, CT: Martino Publishing, 2011), which was published in 1955. As far as Hook’s rejection of Marxism is concerned, The Hero in History: A Study in Limitation and Possibility (New York: Cosimo, 2008), first published in 1943, is undoubtedly one of his most important texts. In order to highlight a Nietzschean undercurrent of American pragmatism, it would be interesting to discuss this monograph together with William James’s “Great Men and Their Environment,” one of his most thought-provoking essays, and Rorty’s Bloomian notion of the strong poet.
- 10.
As far as Hook’s attempt to bring Marx and Dewey together is concerned, one of his most illuminating comments and explanations can be found in his autobiographical essay, “Experimental Naturalism” (1935). From his unfortunate formulation, “All I have asserted is that their fundamental metaphysical and logical positions are the same […]” (as if this were not enough and did not go very far), one can see how affected he was by various critiques of his theoretical endeavor. The passage is worth quoting in full: “Since many critics have insinuated that I have read Dewey into Marx, I wish to point out that nowhere and at no time have I claimed that Dewey was a Marxist or Marx the John the Baptist of pragmatism. Their social and political philosophies are quite different in spirit and emphasis. All I have asserted is that their fundamental metaphysical and logical positions are the same but developed as differently as we would expect a great social revolutionist and a great professional philosopher to develop them. From a naturalistic point of view agreement upon fundamental metaphysical doctrines does not univocally determine any one social doctrine, and certainly not a specific class allegiance. And as for the fundamental agreement between Marx and Dewey, I need only point here to their common left-Hegelian derivation and naturalization of the Hegelian dialectic, common criticism of atomism, sensationalism, Platonism and formalism, and a common wholehearted acceptance of the philosophical implications of Darwinism” (1935: 44).
- 11.
Michael Bacon offers a particularly stimulating discussion of Bernstein’s version of pragmatism in the chapter “Between Europe and America: Jürgen Habermas and Richard J. Bernstein,” in his Pragmatism: An Introduction (Malden, MA: Polity, 2012), 122–146.
- 12.
In this context, see Vincent Colapietro, “Engaged Pluralism: Between Alterity and Sociality,” The Pragmatic Century: Conversations with Richard J. Bernstein, ed. Sheila Greeve Davaney and Warren G. Frisina (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2006), 39–68. See also, in the same volume, Mary Doak, “Bernstein among the Prophets? Justice, Public Life, and Fallibilistic Pluralism,” 155–170. For an illuminating discussion of Bernstein’s reading of Dewey, see Colin Koopman, “Dewey as a Radical Democrat and a Liberal Democrat: Considerations on Bernstein on Dewey,” Richard J. Bernstein and the Pragmatist Turn in Contemporary Philosophy: Rekindling Pragmatism’s Fire, ed. Judith M. Green (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 112–125.
- 13.
In his interesting piece, “Theses on Bernstein,” William D. Hart states: “Where Rorty remains obsessed by the epistemological tradition, with an endless round of circumvention, deconstruction, and evasion, Bernstein makes an effort to go beyond the obsession with objectivism and relativism to a notion of praxis that stands somewhere between Marx and Dewey” (2006: 29).
- 14.
In the context of Bernstein’s interpretation of Marxism, see also the chapters “Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis” (45–49) and “Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: The Practical Task” (223–231) in Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983). Bernstein’s reading of Marxism might also stimulate one to reread his essay, “Why Hegel Now?,” in his Philosophical Profiles (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986), 141–175. In addition, see his “Hegel and Pragmatism” in The Pragmatic Turn (Malden, MA: Polity, 2010), 89–105.
- 15.
In his first monograph John Dewey, which is still one of the best introductions to the oeuvre of this philosopher, Bernstein comments on the Deweyan notion of inquiry as follows: “Dewey does not mean simply that we discover logical forms when we reflect upon inquiry, but that in the course of inquiry, standards and norms are evolved, tested, and refined, and serve to guide further inquiry. There is nothing sacrosanct about these norms. While we cannot question everything in every inquiry, and must indeed presuppose guiding principles in order to engage in inquiry, these principles themselves can be refined and altered or even abandoned by the ‘self-corrective process of inquiry’” (1966: 102–103). It is crucial to note that Dewey’s understanding of inquiry as a self-corrective process would become central to Wilfrid Sellars’s Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind (1956). In a central passage Sellars writes: “For empirical knowledge, like its sophisticated extension, science, is rational, not because it has a foundation but because it is a self-correcting enterprise which can put any claim in jeopardy, though not all at once” (1997: 79).
- 16.
In his “Introduction,” Novack characterizes Dewey’s version of pragmatism as follows: “But the basic ideas of this ‘progressive’ philosophy can less and less satisfy the aspirations and aims of the most progressive forces in our country. They do not correspond to the real conditions of the national and international situation today nor give a correct accounting of them. As a method of thought and a movement of ideas, instrumentalism is out of step with the march of world events and has more and more fallen behind the latest developments in science and society, above all in the science of society. […]/Dewey’s work pushed the fundamental notions of the liberal middle-class outlook as far as they could go within the boundaries of American capitalism” (1975: 12–13).
- 17.
In this context, see the chapters “Revolutionary Socialist Humanism” (145–162) and “Socialism and the Meaning of Life” (163–180) in Novack’s Humanism and Socialism (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1973).
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Schulenberg, U. (2019). Early Encounters: Sidney Hook, Richard J. Bernstein, and George Novack. In: Marxism, Pragmatism, and Postmetaphysics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11560-9_2
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