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Western Marxism before World War Two (1918-1939/45): Part I

Introduction: Marxism’s “Dangerous Friends”

Here, I provide a short review of Western Marxism and its influence on the development of German Critical Theory, restoring to this history the basic historical context in which they were made and outlining the central role the critique of Marxism played in the making of modern theoretical debate. This is the first part of the history of Western Marxism, which focuses on the period of The Third International: Soviet Union and Germany (1919-1939/43), focusing on the basic ideas of Lukas and Horkheimer and their transformation of the basic ideas of 19th century Marxism.

Karl Marx died on March 14th of 1883, and on March the 17th, Engles provided his eulogy. In it, he summarizes the life and work ”the revolutionist,” whose ”real mission in life was to contribute, in one way or another, to the overthrow of capitalist society…” This was the purpose of Marxism, which provides a label for the work he produced with Engles from 1844 to 1883. It bears repeating: The purpose of Marx’s Marxism was the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. This was Marx’s central desire and belief. From and for this end, Marx developed his philosophy of knowledge (epistemology), commonly labeled the dialectic. Marx believed his dialectical philosophy provided the foundation of a new form of revolutionary knowledge, a science constructed out of critique, which is useful and productive for the working-class (i.e. the proletariat).

According to both Marx’s and Engles, Marx made two central scientific discoveries (i.e. explanatory theories within the paradigm of 19th century natural history) in his life:

According to Marx, Engles, Lenin, and Luxemburg, these are central theoretical contributions to the science of history and society. Thus, Marx can be said to have contributed the (A) Theory of Historical Materialism and (B) the Dual-Labor Theory of Value.

Historical Materialism: The production of material needs of life in different stages of development explains the consequent development of political / social society, because contradictions in the modes of production cause consequent forms of social / political (r)evolution.

The Dual-Labor Theory of Value: The contradictions inherent to the different form of labor used to produce use-value and exchange-value reveals the real nature of labor embedded in the production of capitalist value (i.e. surplus-capital). Historically, this fact can be seen in the development of use-value and exchange-value. The latter is seen in the evolution of the commodity, which Marx posits begins as the simple commodity and progresses to the eventual development of the money commodity.

In its simplest form, Marx, Engles, and Luxemburg’s Marxism entailed (1) the political philosophy of revolutionary socialism (the goal of which was the overthrow of capitalism and the creation of international socialism) (2) the philosophy of dialectical critique (the goal of which was to show that liberal economics entailed its own destruction), and (3) the socialist science of human history, which offered a social anthropology qua political economy based on Marx’s central ideas: (a) Historical Materialism and (b)The Dual Labor Theory of Value.

Most academic ‘Marxists’ since world war two have found these central tenets insufficient on political, ethical, and scientific grounds and this makes it very difficult to untangle the ideas of Marxism in the 19th and early 20th century. Nonetheless, a basic understanding of these ideas (most if not all of which have failed to be refuted in open and serious debate) is central in order to understand the development of Western Marxism and its influence today. It is extremely important to look at how Marx’s ideas have been effaced, transformed, and critiqued in the last 150 years. In doing so, one must pay close attention to Marx’s (1) political goal, (2) philosophy, and (3) scientific theory of (a) history and (b) labor.

Before Marx’s death, Engles wrote individual works on scientific socialism and the philosophy of the dialectic: Herr Eugen Dühring’s Revolution in Science (1878), and Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (1880), the latter of which if largely responsible for the popularization of Marxist ideas. After Marx’ death in 1883, Engles continued to work on all three areas of Marxism’s purpose, epistemology, and science. Whether or not his ideas remain faithful or unfaithful is an important debate. Above all he developed the philosophy of the dialectic and the theory of historical materialism: Dialectics of Nature (1883) [but first published in the Soviet Union in 1925], and The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884).

In 1890s, Engles had become frustrated by what he called the ”dangerous friends” of Marxism, who sought to ”make use of the phrase historical materialism” to the construction of facile ideologies. He writes,

In general, the word ”materialistic” serves many of the younger writers in Germany as a mere phrase with which anything and everything is labeled without further study, that is, they stick on this label and then consider the question dis- posed of. But our conception of history is above all a guide to study, not a lever for construction after the manner of the Hegelian. All history must be studied afresh, the con- ditions of existence of the different formations of society must be examined individually before the attempt is made to deduce them from the political, civil law, aesthetic, philo- sophic, religious, etc., views corresponding to them. Up to now but little has been done here because only a few peo- ple have got down to it seriously. In this field we can utilize heaps of help, it is immensely big, anyone who will work seri- ously can achieve much and distinguish himself. But instead of this too many of the younger Germans simply make use of the phrase historical materialism (and everything can be turned into a phrase) only in order to get their own relatively scanty historical knowledge — for economic history is still as yet in its swaddling clothes! — constructed into a neat sys- tem as quickly as possible, and they then deem themselves something very tremendous. And after that a Barth can come along and attack the thing itself, which in his circle has indeed been degraded to a mere phrase. [Engles, ”Letter to Conrad Schmidt,” 1890].

According to Engles, Marx’s materialism needed scholars to do the difficult labor of economic history. Instead, it was in danger of becoming just ”a phrase.” History did not prove his concerns unfounded. In the history of Marxist-Socialist political thought, Marx and Engles’ Marxism served to define the debates on scientific and utopian, revolutionary and reform socialism within the The First International (1864-1871/76) and The Second International: German Socialist Party (1889-1914/16).

The great debates were between Marx and Lassalle, then Rosa Luxemburg and Edward Berstein. In the three periods that followed, the debates became empty phrases. This paper will briefly outline the two most important periods and the major Marxist theorists that defined the definition of Marxism within them. I will provide a brief overview of the ”dangerous friends,” who transformed Marx’s materialism into the phrases of their concerns and generations.

I. The Third International: Soviet Union and Germany (1919-1939/43)

In the Soviet period and Stalinist period the most influential transformations took place, many of which have been almost completely mis- understood and variously misrepresented. The influence of Stalinism is hard to properly understand because of the profound influence it had on Western Marxism, Critical Theory, and Substantivism. Almost invariably, these schools are presented as critical alternatives to the “scienticism” inherent to Stalinism, but in fact they were directly developed out of dialectical materialism. It is an uncomfortable fact of history that each major figure in the development the “Western” and anti-Stalinist Marxist tradition were in fact political advocates for Stalin in their early careers (most before 1938). Frequently, the critique of the ”dead wood” of Marx’s Stalinist determinism is made by the very intellectuals who defended and even spied for Stalin. This has done intellectual history an extraordinary disservice. Above all, Western Marxism, which was developed out two central works by the Hungarian Communist, György Lukács, is fundamentally committed to the basic tents of Soviet dialectical materialism (diamat).

i. Lukács & Western Marxism

In 1922, Lukács published History and Class Consciousness, which begins with his famous (1919) Lukaks’ ”What is Orthodox Marxism” in 1919. It begins, ”This question, simple as it is, has been the focus of much discussion in both proletarian and bourgeois circles. But among intellectuals it has gradually become fashionable to greet any profession of faith in Marxism with ironical disdain.” (Lukács 2023 [1922], p. 47). After WW 1, great disunity prevailed among socialists on the question of Marxism. In his essay, he provides the following answer. First, “Materialist dialectic is a revolutionary dialectic.”(Lukács 2023 [1922], p. 48). Drawing on Marx’ Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Lukács sets out to explain how ”theory becomes a material force when it grips the masses” ((Lukács 2023 [1922], p. 48, n 1.) Marx’s GOAL remains: the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. The means, how- ever, are transformed. Lukács argues that the means is the dialectic, whereas Marx before contended that the dialectic is the means used to create revolutionary knowledge. It is a subtle but profound misread- ing, because of what it entails for our understanding of knowledge. In Marx, critique produces the knowledge which can produces revolution- ary knowledge for the masses and thus material revolution. In Lukács, philosophical critique becomes revolutionary practice itself. He de- scribe why this is true and how this can happen. He states, “The premise of dialectical materialism is, we recall: ’It is not men’s consciousness

that determines their existence, but on the contrary, their social existence that determines their consciousness.’” (Lukács 2023 [1922], p. 63). Dialectical philosophy, for Lukács, is merged and conflated with the social consciousness of the proletariat. Lukaks Marxist method merges epistemology and revolutionary struggle:

For, the Marxist method, the dialectical materialist knowledge of reality, can arise only from the point of view of a class, from the point of view of the struggle of the proletariat. To abandon this point of view is to move away from historical materialism, just as to adopt it leads directly into the thick of the struggle of the proletariat. (Lukács 2023 [1922], p. 65)

What stands in the way of the dialectical-method qua class struggle is the scientific interpretation of Marx, which seeks to produce knowledge on the epistemological grounds of bourgeoise science. As he states:

If the purely ideological constructions of the Hegelians proved unequal to the task of understanding historical events, the Marxists have revealed a comparable inability to understand either the connections of the so-called ‘ideologi- cal’ forms of society and their economic base or the economy itself as a totality and as social reality. (Lukács 2023 [1922], p. 75)

Lukács’ main target of criticism is the German Socialist Party reformists, who had abandoned revolutionary socialism, and argued for that Marx could be accommodated to state and colonial capitalism. He also has his critical eye on Austrian Marxism. Such ”Machism” will only have two final results: either modern functionalism, which provides an unjustifiable naturalization (reification) of the status quo – it seeks only the unity of the whole – or modern economic science, which reifies the status quo into the very categories of nature itself, thus creating the ideology of ”immortal capitalism.” It is a critique of causality in sci- ence and natural history. In functionalism and economics, the ”class struggle evaporates,” impossible to recover on the grounds of capitalist science itself. Only the individual and the society remains. For Lukács, historical materialism (in Marx a theory within the framework of natural history) becomes a tool of philosophy. This, of course, inverts Marx’s own process. As a tool, it provides the perspective (vantage-point) from which Marx and Engles achieve the goal of the Young Hegelians: to ”settle accounts with all mythologies.” (62).43 The final account was the mythology of ”the Absolute spirit,” which Lukács believes achieves its true, materiality totality in the society attained by communist revolution.

Whether or no Lukács theology is correct, it is not what Marx and Engles themselves said. To argue that this is Rosa Luxemburg’s approach – ”the literary-historical approach of Rosa Luxemburg” is a misrepresentation of her own essential economic work. (75). But he does capture the point behind her economics, the critique of the socialist reformists in the SPD and their capitulation to imperialist capitalism, which de- mands that accumulation be treated as natural, ethical, and progressive. When Lukaks states, “Economic fatalism and the reformation of socialism through ethics are intimately connected” (78), he diagnoses the cultural malaise of modernity, captured best in the works of Kafka. In the following passage, he outlines the two possibilities that reamain fir an individual who has been forced to accept the economic fatalism of capitalist ideology:

Within such a world only two possible modes of action com- mend themselves and they are both apparent rather than real ways of actively changing the world. Firstly, there is the exploitation for particular human ends (as in technology, for example) of the fatalistically accepted and immutable laws which are seen in the manner we have already described. Secondly, there is action directed wholly inwards. This is the attempt to change the world at its only remaining free point, namely man himself (ethics). (Lukács 2023 [1922], p. 78)

These two paths mark the starting point of academic Marxism in Western Europe and the United States. Lukács, it should be remembered, argued that we should not take this path. We should unite emancipatory philosophy – at its heart the critique of capitalism’s alienation and fragmentation of our collective unity to be realized in the revolution- ary overthrow of capitalism – with the struggle of the proletariat. His own life, which came to experience disillusion of with the totality of the Soviet Union’s dialectical materialism, embodies the material his- tory that left professional scholars with the economic determinism and capitalist irrationality he declared the enemy of Marxist emancipation. In the philosophy of Max Horkheimer and the Frankfurt school we see what Marxism becomes when it is takes the second path.

1.2 Max Horkheimer & German Critical Theory

The Institute of Social Research (Institut für Sozialforschung), was founded by Felx Weil in 1924. Weil, a wealthy Marxist who had previously been the benefactor of the ”First Marxist Work- week” (Erste Marxistische Arbeitswoche), a conference for Marxist intellectuals begun in 1923 which included Lukács, Adorno, and Karl August Wittfogel, supported Max Horkheimer to become the director of the Institute in 1931. For the occassion, Horkheimer provided the speech, “The Present Situation of Social Philosophy and the Tasks of an Institute for Social Research,” considered by many to be the found- ing document of critical theory. Social philosophy, in Horkeheimer’s view, seeks to study ”the fate of humans not as mere individuals, how- ever, but as members of a community. It is thus above all concerned with phenomena that can only be understood in the context of human social life.” Above all, ”social philosophy is confronted with the yearning for a new interpretation of a life trapped in its individual striving for happiness. It appears as part of those philosophical and religious ef- forts to submerge hopeless individual existence into the bosom or – to speak with Sombart – the “gilded background” [Goldgrund] of meaningful totalities.” Critical theory, then, is Lukács’ “second path.”

There are two problems that face this new challenge: positivism and the world view, scienticism and metaphysics. The first is a continua- tion of Lukács critique of capitalist rationality. The second is a critique of Lukács own conflation of philosophy with the proletariat struggle. Thus, in many ways critical theory is an attempt to redefine the con- cept of revolutionary totality in the new terms of social unity, which accepts the economic fatalism of capitalist domination. Thus, not only does vulgar materialism and positivism become the object of critique, so too does the totality of the world view (the ideology) of dialectial materialism. As Horkheimer writes, ”Now it is precisely in this dilemma of social philosophy – this inability to speak of its object, namely the cultural life of humanity, other than in ideological [weltanschaulich], sectarian, and confessional terms, the inclination to see in the social theories of Auguste Comte, Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Max Scheler differences in articles of faith rather than differences in true, false, or at least problematic theories – it is in this dilemma that we find the difficulty that must be overcome.” How can we transcend out ’world view’ ? How does professional scholarship do the labor of social re- search? It is a question that profoundly transformed the practice of education. Horkheimer in hopeful, even boastful: ”I have heeded the call to lead this research institute mindful of this opportunity, which is equally important for philosophy and empirical research, and not in order to make the investigation of facts into an ancilla philosophiae.” He states triumphantly:

The question of the connection between the economic life of society, the psychical development of individuals, and the changes in the realm of culture in the narrower sense (to which belong not only the so-called intellectual elements, such as science, art, and religion, but also law, customs, fashion, public opinion, sports, leisure activities, lifestyle, etc.). The project of investigating the relations between these three processes is nothing but a reformulation on the basis of the new problem constellation, consistent with the methods at our disposal and with the level of our knowledge – of the old question concerning the connection of particular existence and universal Reason, of reality and Idea, of life and Spirit.

Furthermore, the trope of vulgar Marxist materialism is repeated: the idea ”that the economy as material being is the only true reality,” that ”the psyche of human beings, personality as well as law, art, and philosophy, are to be completely derived from the economy, or mere reflections of the economy. This would be an abstractly and thus badly understood Marx.” The argument originally used to critique the capitulation of German socialism to capitalism is no used in order to defend the necessary capitulation to capitalism, even to serve as a binary within which to simultaneously critique dialectical materialism as both ideological world view and non-objective.

The purpose and method of criticial theory is finally stated in the clear- est terms. This, Horkheimer tells us, is the precise point:

The matter is different if one puts the question more precisely: which connections can be demonstrated between the economic role of a specific social group in a specific era in specific countries, the transformation of the psychic structure of its individual members, and the ideas and institutions as a whole that influence them and that they created? Then the possibility of the introduction of real research work comes into view, and these are to be taken up in the Institute. Initially, we want to apply them to a particularly significant and salient social group, namely to the skilled crafts- people and white collar workers in Germany, and then subsequently to the same strata in the other highly developed European countries.

By 1933, Hitler forced the the Institute into exile. In 1933, the Frankfurt school of critical theory came to New York, where it in turn faced the material contradictions inherent in continuing Marxist work within capitalist fatalism, or what Weber called the steel jacket. Whereas Lukaks critiqued socialist reform in order to defend the Russian revolution and Soviet Russia, Horkheimer and his colleagues (Adorno, Marcuse, and Benjamin) would try to critique the structures of capitalist ideology in the name of a revolutionary consciousness. The new social philosophy would achieve this through the study of the skilled worker, the unseen masses.

Let us pause to review what has been used and what has been trans- formed. The (1-2) goal is no longer proletariat revolution via the unification of dialectical materialism and the revolutionary force of the masses (Lukaks ’totality’). Horkheimer retains Lukaks’ removal of Marx’s scientific theories (3). But, the also critiques Lukaks’ conflation the goal and epistemology of Marxism as equal, has created an ideological ”world view.” Critical theory then transforms Lukaks ’totality’ into a new ideal: social totality. It is not political, instead it is epistemological. Thus one could say that they merely remove the goal of the proletariat revolution of capitalism, and this is fundamentally how they saw the issue themselves.

The work of the Institute took place in New York after 1933. In these years, young scholars in America like M.I. Finley worked for the insti- tute and developed the framework of social history and ciritical theory that became ’cutting edge’ in the 1950s. Because of its dominant influ- ence in the making of modern university research it is diffuclt to dis- cern its foundational relationship to Marxism. There are two reasons for this. First, the politics of the Institute were anti-fascist and Marxist. As an institution which connectected international Marxists and social- ists around the world, including figures such as Einstein, Sartre, Karl Polanyi, Lukaks, Franz Boas, and many more, it served as a nexus for supporters of international communism and soviet Russia under Stalin. After Lenin’s death in 1924, Trotsky’s exile in 1927 (and ultimate assasination in 1940), the Great Terror of Stalinism (1936-1938) and the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact (1939), the treaty of non-agression between Stalin and Hitler, many intellectuals associated directly or indirectly with the Institute were either vocal supporters for or secret collaborators with Stalin’s Soviet Union. This is a period of intellectual history we have not been ready to openly face, especially because of how central many of these intellectuals were to foundation of academic schools of research. To confront Stalinism seriously would demand a review of the intellectual history of figures as diverse as Sarte and Boas, M.I. Finely and Adorno, Lukaks and Karl Polanyi. Most supported Stalin after these events, many until 1947 or even 1952 when he died.

it is necessary in order to understand how Marx’s ideas were transformed in this period. For Marxists, this means that we must confront uncomfortable facts which undermine many of the facile narratives that have been used to justify academic Marxism in the 20th century. Above all, the ideas developed in this period were created within a milieu that largely supported Stalin and were shaped by Stalinist Marxism. The struggle to cover this history and participation in the wake of World War 2 led to much of the incoherence in radical thought that continues today. In ”Traditional and Critical Theory” Horkheimer provides a more expansive philosophical view of critical theory, and explains its interpretation of Marxism. The Stanford Encyclopedia offers the following summation of this influential work:

So the overarching point of the essay can be summarized fairly succinctly; it describes a form of “traditional” theory that follows Descartes’ methodology, examines the weak- nesses of such theory, and then opposes to traditional theory a superior Marxian “critical” theory. The critique of traditional theory largely follows the earlier critique of the sciences and positivism, and in this sense is a summation. Again, the fact that the sciences do not recognize their presence in a broader social framework is emphasized. Traditional the- ory misses the fact that that “bringing hypotheses to bear on facts is an activity that goes on, ultimately, not in the sa- vant’s head but in industry” (p. 196). “Savant” is the derisive term Horkheimer uses throughout the text to refer to the traditional theorist, and the savant does not recognize that the economic (and thus currently capitalist) structure of society shapes scientific work. The savant further misses the suffering caused by that social structure, and the fact that science is complicit in this oppression. Critical theorizing, on the other hand, is “a human activity which has society it-self for its object” (p. 206); it overcomes the blindness of the savant by openly and purposely examining the way in which theory is immersed in a particular historical and social set- ting, and it seeks to critique that social setting for emancipatory effect. This relies on a form of immanent critique, tied to the suffering of the oppressed; the theorist must seize on the meaning of the experience of the oppressed and develop it into a coherent critique of existing society. To this end Horkheimer notes that if the critical theorist’s “presentation of societal contradictions is not merely an expression of the concrete historical situation but also a force within it to stimulate change, then [the critical theorist’s] real function emerges” (p. 215).

The influential works of Horkheimer, Adorno, and Benjamin went on to study the suffering of the masses. Above all they sought to under- stand how to ameliorate the suffering caused by the fragmentation and alienation of reason under capitalism. In doing so, they turned to the analysis of Freudian psychology and Husserel’s phenomenology. Like Merleau-Ponty, they perceived Marxism as an intellectual praxis of psychic care, which they believed could be capable of revealing the contradictions embodied in capitalist domination. They stepped into the space where Lukas had merged proletariat revolution and the dialectic, leaving the ”dead wood” of his economic materialism theories behind. In this space they paradoxically resurrected the production of knowl- edge, which was now exclusively professional academic knowledge. In doing so, they created a series of paradoxes, most of which consumed their own works in the end. First, they critiqued knowledge production itsel on the grounds of its ”Grand Narrative” and ”Logical Positivism,” critiquing both the revolutionary dialectical materialism of Lukaks and Stalinism, but also the capitalist historicism and enlightenment sci- ence of Dilthey and Descartes. The obvious paradox was discovered by structuralism and post-structuralism in turn. From what vantage- point is Horkheimer’s (or any professional member of the intellectual class) knowledge not ideology? This obvious paradox becomes more and more elusive in the works of these thinkers who eventually fail to determine any difference between Marx’s (or Lukaks’) rational and capitalism’s irrational. Eclipe is perhaps a fitting end to this line of thought. Together, they offer us more and more elusive loci of alienation (scientific categories, the mind, space), and they proceed to move slowly from class consciousness, to rational consciousness, and finally emancipatory consciousness itself – a subjectivity without material location or ideal end. They have become ”savants,” differentiated from those they critiqued on to the extent they choose to value their own subjective awareness within the ”Iron Cage” (stahlhartes Gehäuse).