Marxism, p.5
Marxism, page 5
The terms used by Marx take their meaning from his general philosophic framework. The "economic" structure of society, for example, does not refer to relations among commodities, interest rates, international trade balances, or money flows. These non-human phenomena are the superficial "appearances" of the economy. The underlying reality—the inner "essence"—are the human relations growing out of a particular way of organizing the people and technology of a given time and place for the purposes of production. In Marx's words: "Economic categories are only the theoretical expressions, the abstractions of the social relations of production." These "social relations" are the table of organization of people in production. They depend on technology—the "productive forces" of the time and place. In Marx's terminology: "Social relations are closely bound up with productive forces."[200] They are nevertheless, conceptually distinct:
Machinery is no more an economic category than the bullock that drags the plow. The modern workshop, which depends on the application of machinery, is a social production relation, an economic category.[201]
It is the people and their relationships that make the workshop an economic category in Marx's sense. Slavery is a different economic category, because it is a different set of human relations.[202] Marx said:
What is a Negro slave? A man of the black race. The one explanation is as good as the other.
A Negro is a Negro. He becomes a slave in certain relations. A cotton-spinning jenny is a machine for spinning cotton. It becomes capital only in certain relations. Torn from these relations it is no more capital than gold itself is money or sugar the price of sugar.[203]
Causation
As expressed by Marx in Critique of Political Economy, the materialist theory of history might seem to imply one-way causation from the economic "foundation" to the legal and political "superstructure." But such a mechanistic concoeption is not in fact a part of the Marxian theory of history, for elsewhere Marx and Engels say that "circumstances make men just as much as men make circumstances,"[204] implying reciprocal interactions rather than one-way causation. Engels' later writings and letters make this even more clear. For example, "once an historic element has been brought into the world by other elements, ultimately by economic facts, it also reacts in its turn and may react on its environment and even on its own causes."[205] Engels depicts this not as a difference between himself and Marx but as a difference between earlier and later stages of their lives:
Marx and I are ourselves partly to blame for the fact that younger writers sometimes lay more stress on the economic side than is due to it. We had to emphasize this main principle in opposition to our adversaries, who denied it, and we had not always the time, the place or the opportunity to allow other elements involved in the interaction to come into their rights. But when it was a case of presenting a section of history, that is, of a practical application, the thing was different...[206]
The historical writings of Marx and Engels—The Eighteenth Brumaire, The Civil War in France, The Origin of the Family, etc.—contain no one-way causation from economic foundation to political superstructure.[207] Engels was clearly correct on dialectical conception of reciprocal interaction rather than one-way causation underlying his work and Marx's. He was, however, perhaps overly generous to Marx, whose tendency toward epigrammatic expressions produced formulations that appear to be one-way causation, not only in his early discussions in the Poverty of Philosophy in 1847 but even in Capital, twenty years later.
In the earlier book, Marx said that "the handmill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist."[208] In Capital, Marx referred to "my view that each special mode of production and the social relations corresponding to it, in short, that the economic structure of society, is the real basis on which the juridical and political superstructure is raised, and to which definite social forms of thought correspond..."[209] If read literally, these words suggest one-way causation and an explanation of given states of being rather than of transformations. But that is clearly inconsistent with both Marx's and Engels' own treatment of history and with the dialectical conception of reciprocal interaction. These words are perhaps best read as examples of Marx's achievement of brevity through epigrams—and of the dangers of misunderstanding inherent in that writing style. Yet, ironically, it is Engels who is blamed for "mechanistic" thinking by critics who claim to see a substantive difference between the two men.[210]
The Marxian theory of history did not attempt to explain the law and politics of a given era as deriving solely from the economic relations of that era. That would be explaining isolated states of being as if each era were hermetically sealed and began from nothing, rather than from the preceding era. What the Marxian theory attempted to explain were the changes from one era to another—the social transformations or "development" in dialectical terms. As Marx said in his Critique of Political Economy:
At a certain stage of their development, the material forces of production in society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or—what is but a legal expression for the same thing—with the property relations within which they had been at work before. From forms of development of the forces of production these relations turn into their fetters. Then comes the period of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations the distinctions should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic—in short ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out.[211]
Engels' in Anti-Duhring, written in close consultation with Marx, presents a very similar picture:
...the ultimate causes of all social changes and political revolutions ought to be sought, not in the minds of men, in their increasing insight into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the mode of production and exchange; they are to be sought not in the philosophy but in the economic of the epoch concerned. The growing realization that existing social institutions are irrational and unjust, that reason has become nonsense and good deeds a scourge is only a sign that changes have been taking place quietly in the methods of production and forms of exchange with which the social order, adapted to previous economic conditions, is no longer in accord. This also involves that the means through which the abuses that have been revealed can be gotten rid f must likewise be present in more or less developed form, in the altered conditions of productions. These means are not to be invented by the mind, but discovered by means of the mind in the existing facts of production.[212]
In short, it is the "solution" that creates the "problem." As history unfolds, men face in each epoch a set of constrained options, based ultimately on the existing state of technology. With new technological developments, the original social arrangements, which may have been optimal for the prior set of options, are no longer optimal. Historically, a problem or conflict now arises between those wedded to the existing set of social relations and those who see the new possibilities presented by technological changes. What was "right" before is no longer right. For Marx as well as Engels, the solution creates the problem:
Therefore, mankind always takes up only such problems as it can solve, since, looking at the matter more closely, we will always find that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions necessary for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation.[213]
As Marx wrote to a friend:
Men never relinquish what they have won, but this does not mean that they never relinquish the social form in which they have acquired certain productive forces. On the contrary, in order that they may not be deprived of the result attained, and forfeit the fruits of civilization, they are obliged, from the moment when the form of their commerce no longer corresponds to the productive forces acquired, to change all their traditional social forms.[214]
In short, according to Marx: "With the acquisition of new productive facilities, men change their mode of production and with the mode of production all the economic relations which are merely the necessary relations of this particular mode of production."[215]
Just how do historic social transformations take place, and what is the role of ideas and ideologies in these transformations? That is a large subject in itself.
Ideas and Ideologies
The Marxian epigrams about "superstructure" and "base" sketch bold conclusions without specifying the process by which these events unfold. That process is one in which human beings form ideas under the influence of circumstances (materialism) and then such ideas compel them to change the circumstances (dialectical interaction with the source of the ideas). As Engels said, "everything that sets men acting must find its way through their brains"[216] and "nothing happens without a conscious purpose, without an intended aim."[217] But, contrary to such mechanistic materialists as Holbach in the eighteenth century—and contrary to the interpretations of modern critics[218]—Engels did not regard ideas as mere predetermined responses to external stimuli. Human ideas were seen by Engels as a complex blend of the most varied concerns with "external objects, partly ideal motives, ambition, 'enthusiasm for truth and justice,' personal hatred, or even purely individual whims of all kinds."[219] Marx likewise saw the subjectively felt motivations as including "old memories, personal enmities, antipathies, convictions, articles of faith and principle."[220] There is free will, according to Engels, but history is not simply the carrying out of these freely willed intentions:
That which is willed happens but rarely; in the majority of instances the numerous desired ends cross and conflict with one another, or these ends themselves are from the outset incapable of realization, or the means of attaining them are insufficient. Thus the conflicts of innumerable individual wills and individual actions in the domain of history produce a state of affairs entirely analogous to that prevailing in the realm of unconscious nature. The ends of the actions are intended, but the results which actually follow from these actions are not intended, or when they do seem to correspond to the end intended they ultimately have consequences quite other than those intended.[221]
In short, "what each individual wills is obstructed by everyone else, and what emerges is something that no one willed."[222] Theory attempts to predict results—"what emerges"—not intentions. Intentions may therefore be regarded as largely accidental and yet the results show a pattern with a certain element of necessity. From this perspective, "it is not a question so much of the motives of single individuals, however eminent, as of those motives which set in motion great masses, whole peoples, and again whole classes of people in each people; and this, too, not momentarily, for the transient flaring up of a straw fire which quickly dies down, but for a lasting action resulting in a great historical transformation."[223]
None of this implies a rationalistic, much less economically motivated, set of ideas behind historic transformations. The theory of Charles A. Beard—who claimed that the Constitution of the United States reflected the economic self—interest of its writers—is far removed from the theory of Karl Marx, though the two have often been confused in the interpretive literature. Marx dismissed a similar theory of history in his own day as "facile anecdote-mongering and the attribution of all great events to petty and mean causes."[224] Marx saw a logic in the patter of historical events, but did not impute this logic to the agents involved in these events, or to those who bring about historical transformations. Marx cautioned that "we must not form the narrow-minded notion that the petty bourgeoisie, on principle, wishes to enforce an egoist class interest."[225]
The economic element in the Marxian theory of history is not a subjective preoccupation with economic self-interest by individuals or classes. Rather, it is the economic relations—that is, the human relations growing out of production—shape the conflicting perceptions that lead to historical struggles and social transformations. A revolutionary class—whether the bourgeoisie under feudalism or the proletariat under capitalism—achieves that status by "undertaking the general emancipation of society."[226] Narrow self-interest would impede rather than promote such historic tasks. Marx saw France as more revolutionary than Germany precisely because political idealism was considered more prevalent in France.[227] Revolution, as depicted by Marx, was anything but a rationalistic process:
Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living. And just when they seem engaged in revolutionizing themselves and things, in creating something that has never yet existed, precisely in such periods of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service and borrow from them names, of world history in this time-honoured disguise and this borrowed language.[228]
Marx's theory of history was based on a principle later applied in physics by Einstein—that the position of the observer is an integral part of the data. The "economic structure" of society puts each class in a different position to observe and experience what is unfolding. Therefore, the "conception of eternal justice... varies not only with time and place, but also with the persons concerned."[229] A "selfish misconception" may cause the dominant class to ideologically eternalize existing social relations.[230] But conversely, those classes who either experience the special pains created by these social relations or who experience the new options and opportunities emerging despite the constraints of existing society, will more vividly perceive the advantages of change. In short, a rising class may think of its ideas for restructuring society as "the only rational, universally valid ones."[231] Were it purely a direct clash of opposed self-interest, perceived as such, some mutual accommodation could be worked out. But if each class perceives the situation ideologically—as a clash of fundamental principles and ideals, with the fate of society as a whole hanging in the balance—then the stage is set for a revolutionary fight to the finish.
But because the agents themselves are subjectively motivated by ideology does not mean that observers and analysts must accept ideology as the essence of the struggle:
Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he thinks of himself, so can we not judge of such a period of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary this consciousness must rather be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between the social forces of production and the relations of production.[232]
Marx and Engels made a fundamental contribution to historical thinking with this distinction between subjective motivations of historical actors and the transforming factors underlying the observable course of events:
Whilst in ordinary life every shopkeeper is very well able to distinguish between what someone professes to be and what he really is, our historians have not yet won even this trivial insight. They take every epoch at its word and believe everything it says and imagines about itself as true.[233]
To accept what the historical actors say and believe as the actual cause of historical events in a given epoch is to "share the illusion of that epoch."[234] Thus, though ancient Greece and Rome may have been preoccupied with political philosophy and the Middle Ages with religion, "the Middle Ages could not live on Catholicism, nor the Ancient world on politics."[235] Both had first to earn a living, and the particular way that they organized to do that—"the mode in which they gained their livelihood"[236]—was their economic structure and the key element in their history, as seen by Marx. Engels repeated this theme in his speech at the graveside of Marx—provoking later critics to make yet another claim that he misunderstood his collaborator.[237] In Engels' words:
...Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple fact, hitherto concealed by an overgrowth of ideology, that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, art, science, religion, etc.; that therefore the production of the immediate means of subsistence and consequently the degree of economic development obtained by a given people or during a given epoch form the foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions, art, and even the ideas on religion, of the people concerned have been evolved...[238]
This not only repeated Marx's emphasis on "the mode in which they gained their livelihood"[239] but made clear that how history evolved was the subject being explained. That is, the economic structure of a given era was not intended to explain the state of being of that era but rather the changes from the preceding era. As Engels said elsewhere, the "economy creates nothing absolutely new (a novo), but it determines the way in which the existing material of thought is altered and further developed."[240] What Marx called the "tradition of all the dead generations"[241] continues to have an effect at the moment of revolutionary crisis. The United States, therefore, "without any feudal past" has in Engels' words, nevertheless "taken over from England a whole store of ideology from feudal times, such as the English common law, religion, and sectarianism."[242] The capitalist economic system, for example, does not create a completely capitalist superstructure of ideas and institutions, according to Marx, for there are "traditional influences, influences not arising from the womb of bourgeois society itself."[243] Engels declared that "in all ideological domains tradition forms a great conservative force," but the transformations which this material undergoes spring from class relations, that is to saw, out of the economic relations of the people who execute these transformations."[244]
