A Rational Critique of Marxism and
Communism - XI
(Selections from the book:
Reason, Romanticism and Revolution:
M. N. Roy)
1.
“Marx and Engels took over from Hegel much more than “the
revolutionary side of his philosophy”. The dialectic process of history can
never be independent of the dynamics of thought. Therefore, the founders of
dialectical Materialism inherited from Hegel a considerable element of Idealism
together with the dialectical method. The feat of having reversed Hegelian
dialectics so as to manufacture Materialism out of Idealism was a figment of
imagination. As a matter of fact, there is little of essential difference
between Hegel’s idealistic conception of the evolutionary process of history
and the Marxist doctrine of historical determinism. Hegel’s philosophy of
history was essentially humanist. The dynamic concept of the Idea in dialectic
relation to nature and history showed the escape out of the vicious circle of
metaphysical speculations, and provided a basis for action with high ideals,
for participation in the affairs of the secular world with the object of
remaking it, and with the conviction that the thinking man had the power to do
so”. (Pages: 376, 377)
2.
“Rational Idealism, as distinct from theology and
teleology, was logically bound to culminate in materialist monism; similarly,
materialist philosophy must include recognition of the objective reality of
ideas, with their own dynamics, if it is not to degenerate into vulgarity, or
relapse into Newtonian natural philosophy, which makes room even for an
anthropomorphic God”.(Page: 377)
3.
“The philosophical foundation of Marxism (dialectical
Materialism) was laid in the years preceding the publication of the communist Manifesto. During that period
Marx, ably seconded by Engels, carried on a bitter controversy with the Young
Hegelians and the philosophical Radicals who called themselves “German
Socialists” – all disciples of Feuerbach. In that controversy, which has become
an integral part of the Marxist system, its founders defended Hegel against all
his pupils who represented the materialistic and naturalist tendencies in his system
against his mystic Idealism.
The implication of Hegel’s memorable reference to the
French Revolution as the first effort of man to be guided by reason (*) was put
in plain language by Heine. All the Hegelian Radicals – Young Hegelians and
German Socialists – enthusiastically hailed the poet’s discovery of revolutionary
implication of their master’s teachings. Heine declared: If we can weaken
people’s faith in religions and traditions, we will make Germany a political force.”
The spirit of the Renaissance at last challenged the deep-rooted influence of
the Reformation in Germany. David Strauss, Feuerbach, the Baur brothers, Moses
Hess. Gutzkow, Mundt, Karl Gruen, Czolbe and a whole host of radical thinkers
followed Hegel’s lead.
In the earlier years of his career until he chose to
assume the role of the prophet of an inevitable revolution, Marx also belonged
to that distinguished company. In those early days, he believed that an
industrially and politically backward country like Germany in the middle of the
nineteenth century could contribute nothing to the advance of European
civilization except a philosophical understanding of human aspirations and
historical processes, Yet, later on, he bitterly attacked the German Socialists
exactly for holding this view.”(Pages: 384, 385)
4.
“It was Feuerbach who first revolted against Hegelian
idealism and blazed a new trail. He is generally recognized in the history of
philosophy as the pioneer of the nineteenth century materialist revival. David Strauss
shares the honour with him. Feuerbach was the first to reject the Hegelian
conception of the dialectical process of history as the self- realisation of
the Absolute Idea. Searching for the origin of idea, which undoubtedly was the
motive power of history, Feuerbach located it in social anthropology. He came
to the conclusion that physical nature preceded spirit; that thought was
determined by being, “I do not generate the object from the thought, but the
thought from the object’ and I hold that alone to be an object which has an
existence beyond one’s own brain.” Feuerbach’s Philosophy of the Future, therefore, came to be known as
dialectical Materialism as against the dialectical Idealism of Hegel.
Though recognized as the founder of dialectical
Materialism, Feuerbach would be more correctly described as an expounder of
sensationalism of the eighteenth century tradition. He broadened the basis of
sensibility by placing man in the context of nature as its integral part. In
other words, he revived Humanism, and found the incentive in the Hegelian
system. “The new philosophy makes man, including nature as the basis of man,
the one universal and highest object of philosophy.” (Pages: 386, 387)
5.
“Marx’s criticism of Feuerbach and his followers, as
recorded in the unpublished manuscript now issued with the title “German Ideology”, is very fragmentary
and incoherent. His only bias, at that time, (between 1844 and 1848), was to
prove that Hegel was great and Karl Marx his only prophet; to deny that
Socialism required any philosophical justification; and to disprove that there
was any historical connection between the French Enlightenment and the post-Hegelian
philosophical Radicalism.
That is how Marx began his ideological war. His completely
negative attitude to the positive outcome of the Hegelian era is remarkable
because it betrays a woeful lack of historical sense. His failure to grasp the
historical significance of the religious mode of thought is also surprising.
Because of that defect in his historical sense, Marx was unable to appreciate
the importance of religious criticism. Religion provided the moral sanction for
the continuation of the political and social status quo. To undermine its authority, therefore, was a
revolutionary act of fundamental significance. The Young Hegelians did that.
But Marx failed to appreciate the revolutionary significance of their bold
attack on religious tradition and ecclesiastical orthodoxy. He scornfully dismissed
their endeavour, which was a precondition for the revolt against the
established order incited by Marx in the Communist Manifesto. “The entire body
of German philosophical criticism from Strauss to Striner is confined to
criticism of religious conceptions.” [Karl Max, German Ideology] Undoubtedly,
it was so, and therein lies the importance of the intellectual efforts of the
Hegelian Radicals. In the tradition of the Renaissance, they raised the
standard of a philosophical revolution, which was to create the ideological
preconditions for political and social revolution. But Marx did not really believe
that man was the maker of his destiny; his view of history and social evolution
was essentially teleological, fatalistic. Therefore, he combated Feurbach’s
Humanism disseminated by his followers who called themselves “true Socialists”,
and developed by a succession of brilliant scientists.” (Pages: 389, 390)
6.
“To fight philosophical Radicalism which approached the
problems of political revolutions and social reconstruction from the humanist
point of view, Marx was compelled to defend his French and English forerunners
of Socialism, whom he later on ridiculed as utopians.”(Page: 391)
7.
“Marx rejected Feuerbach’s humanist Materialism on the
ground that it regarded man as an isolated individual. The criticism was
entirely uncalled for. “The individual man by himself does not contain the
nature of man in himself, either in himself as a moral or as a thinking being.
The nature of man is contained only in the community, in the unity of man with
man. Isolation is finiteness and limitation; community is freedom and
finality.”[Feuerbach, Philosophie der Zukunft]. This is clear enough to prove
that Feuerbach’s Humanism did not deny the necessity of organization; but being
the logical outcome of man’s age long struggle for freedom, it would not
subordinate the sovereign individual, the creator of the civilized society, to
his creation, to an imaginary collective ego of the community. While Feuerbach
really went further than Hegel, Marx took over his organic conception of
society, which denies the possibility of individual freedom.”(Pages : 391, 392)
8.
“The essence of religion is primitive rationalism; man
creates gods as hypotheses for an explanation of natural phenomena. Because man
is rational by nature, rationalism is the essence of man. To have discovered
this real essence of man was a great advance in the struggle for freedom. The
aggregate of social relations presupposes existence of individuals, who entered
into relation. They did that because of their essence of rationality; obsessed
with the Hegelian organic conception of society, Marx ignored the self-evident
truth that society is an association of individuals. That obsession led him to
take society as simply given, as if by Providence, and regard social relations
as the ultimate reality. Social relations result from the activities of
individuals constituting the society. Being human creations, they can be
altered by man. Human will and human action are the primary factors of social
existence.” (Page: 392)
9.
“In its formative stage, Marxism was a defence of Hegelian
Idealism as against the materialist naturalism which the Young Hegelians and
the philosophical Radicals deduced from the system of the Master. The
fascination for dialectics drove youthful Marx to reject the scientific
naturalism of the eighteenth century as mechanical and unhistorical. The
implication of his criticism was that the Enlightenment did not take a
fatalistic view of history, but recognized the creative role of man.”(Page:
393)
10.
“In his controversy with the Young Hegelians and the
followers of Feuerbach, Marx allowed no place to mental activity in the process
of social evolution; indeed not even in the process of development of man
himself. “Man can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion,
or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from
animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence – a step
which is conditioned by their physical organization.” [Karl Max, German
Ideology]. The brain indeed is a part of the physical organization; and
sensation and perception can be explained as physical functions. But conceptual
thought is a purely mental phenomenon, and it distinguishes the most primitive
man from the highest animal. The discovery of fire might have been an
accidental physical act without any thought. But subsequent application of fire
for the purposes of the most primitive human existence presupposes mental
activity. Therefore, even a nodding acquaintance with anthropology should not
permit the assertion quoted above.” (Page : 393)
11.
“On the authority of Hegelian Idealism, (#) Marx denied
that there was anything stable in human nature, and asserted that human nature
is the ensemble of social relations. “The eighteenth century idea of human
nature was defective; traditionally, it was deduced from the doctrine of
Natural Law; scientifically, it was based upon pre-Darwinian biology, which
still believed in unchanging species, and the classical dictum natura non facet saltus. Marx not only rejected it, but also
combated Darwinian gradualism, which contradicted his theory of revolution. The
rejection of the eighteenth century belief in human nature thus was not brought
about by a greater biological knowledge, but on the authority of Hegelian
idealism.
Marx found in Hegelian dialectics philosophical support
for his theory of revolution. Therefore, dialectics became his sole criterion
for judging all other philosophies; and dialectics is admittedly an idealistic
conception. Revolutions are not brought about by men; they take place of
necessity, that is to say, are predetermined. The dialectical Materialism of
Marx, therefore, is Materialist only in name; dialectics being its cornerstone,
it is essentially an idealistic system. No wonder that it disowned the heritage
of the eighteenth century scientific naturalism and fought against the humanist
Materialism of Feuerbach and his followers.”(Pages : 394, 395)
12.
“Man, according to Marx, being a physical organization,
his relation to matter is the relation of one material entity to other material
entities. Where does consciousness and intelligence appear in the interaction
of dead matter? In other words, what makes man different from a lump of dead
matter? Begging all these crucial questions, which materialism must answer to
be convincing, Marx simply takes man for granted as an elementary undefinable,
as the “personification” of the Hegelian Absolute Idea.”(Page : 395)
13.
“The “economic man”, whose appearance coincides with the
production of his means of subsistence, may be nothing more than the ensemble
of social relations. But the human species has a much older history, which
vanishes in the background of the process of subhuman biological evolution.
Marx entirely ignored that entire process of the becoming of man before he
entered into social relations. Consequently, Marx knows nothing of the human
nature which underlies the ensemble of social relations, and induces men to
enter into those relations.
That substratum of human nature is stable; otherwise the
world of men could not be differentiated from the world of animals, ruled by
the laws of the jungle. That rock bottom of human nature antedates the economic
and political organization of society. The origin of mind is tobe traced in his
physical and biological history. In that sense mental activities are determined
in the earlier stages by physical existence and thereafter by social
conditions. But the becoming of man involves the parallel process of mental and
physical activities. The relation between the two is not that of causality, but
of priority. From primitive consciousness mind evolves in the context of a
biological organism. The latter being an organization of matter, the priority
of being must be conceded to matter.
1.
(*) “For the first time since the sun appeared in the
heavens, and the planets began to revolve around it, man took up his stand as
thinking animal and began to base his view of the world on reason” (Hegel).
“As a student, he shared with Schelling a highly critical
attitude towards the political and ecclesiastical lassitude of his country and
subscribed to the doctrine of liberty and reason. There is a story that after
the battle of Jena, the two young enthusiasts, Schelling and Hegel, one morning
went out to the neighbouring forest and danced around a “tree of liberty” which
they had planted there”.(Pp-374, Pp-375, RRR)
2.
(#) “There is nothing which is not an intermediate
position between being and non-being.” (Hegel). (Pp-398, RRR)
(to be
continued)
Reason
Romanticism and Revolution
M.N.Roy
Ajanta
Books International,
L
– UB, Jawahar Nagar,
Bungalow
Road
Delhi
- 110007
