By ANDRE ITAPARICA*
Commentary on the book by José Crisóstomo de Souza
1.
O reverse of Marx reflects several characteristics of its author, José Crisóstomo de Souza: it is intelligent, insightful, digressive, transgressive and controversial. Not being an expert on Marx, I do not intend to reveal the reverse of his The reverse of Marx, which would be unnecessary, given the translucency of his prose and the author's constant reminder, at various times, of the achievement of his objectives. On the contrary, as a relatively informed reader, I intend to highlight the main lines of the work, its intentions and purposes.
The book consists of a critical reconstruction of Karl Marx's work, which aims to discuss the legacy that historical materialism has left for the reflection and political practice of our current moment. In this sense, it is a settling of accounts not only with a Marxist tradition but also with the avatars of this tradition, such as critical theory and post-structuralist identity politics. Critical of these tendencies, our author carries out, at the same time, his own program of academic research and intellectual intervention, from a point of view characterized as “practical-productive materialist”, abbreviated in the expression “pragmatic poetics”.
This is the name of a research group led by Crisóstomo de Souza, whose guidelines are found in the collective book Philosophy, action, creation: Pragmatic poetics in movement (EDUFBA), organized by him. His particular proposal consists of an association of the democratic and emancipatory character of pragmatism/neopragmatism with an emphasis on the historical-social dimension of Hegel and the materialist aspect of Marx (production paradigm), subtracting from the latter, however, their metaphysical presuppositions and conclusions.
In general terms, the platform of pragmatic poetics follows contemporary trends of an anti-metaphysical, anti-foundationalist, contextualist and anti-mentalist philosophy, but, instead of highlighting a linguistically mediated intersubjectivity, it recovers, from Hegel and Marx, the dimension of a materially mediated social interaction, in which human actions are understood within a dynamic in which human dealings with objects are a two-way street, since not only do men posit their objects but they are also affected and posited by them.
In this sense, the proposal of pragmatic poetics, with its praise of practical-sensitive activity, would be a superior alternative to Jürgen Habermas' theory of communicative action and the various strands of post-structuralism precisely because it is not centered on language but rather on embodied action.
In short: in the context of the project of a pragmatic poetics, The reverse of Marx seeks to point to the metaphysical, religious and even mystical assumptions that, according to the author, remained, surreptitiously, in Marx's work, contrary to what is usually considered, in order to then point to a more productive, creative and effectively emancipating use of Karl Marx.
2.
According to the “official history”, Marx would have abandoned, in his last phase, the metaphysical remains of the idea of a Gattungswesen (generic essence) human of Feuerbachian origin, replacing this metaphysics with a materialist political economy, focused on the real relations of production that determine society, that is, a scientific theory free from a normative point of view.
Contrary to this narrative, Crisóstomo de Souza describes in detail, in the first chapters of the book, through the analysis of the texts and a refined reading of the metaphors used by Marx, how he not only did not abandon the metaphysical idea of an essence of a communal nature but took it to paroxysm, through the proposal of a teleologically oriented communism that would represent the only effective way to unite human existence with its communal essence, in the form of a mystical body.
In this interpretation, classical German philosophy, which originated from theology, did not shed its central features, not even in the form of a materially rooted dialectical science. According to our author, Marx follows this path by conceiving revolutionary politics as a substitute for religion, transformed into “the science of real men and historical development” (p. 168).
Where, however, would be the problem of historical materialism having this origin? Wasn't the purpose of the Young Hegelians, the group to which Marx belongs, precisely to provide a secular and emancipatory interpretation of justifiable ideals that until then had motivated religious thought, such as the idea of equality, community and human fulfillment?
For Crisóstomo de Souza, the problem of historical materialism would not be precisely in its religious origin (which would be a genetic fallacy), but in the heavily metaphysical burden it brings with it and in the deleterious consequences not only for theory but also for political practice, not only in the past, as we saw tragically in the construction of real socialism, such as the hypostasis of the State, the domination of a bureaucratic elite and the denial of individuality, but also in the present, whether in the form of a pessimistic and immobilizing critical theory, or in a moralistic conception of inequalities in the theory and politics of identity movements.
3.
To understand how this origin can be found in Marx, it is necessary to understand the three aspects in which his philosophy remained dependent on metaphysical assumptions. For Crisóstomo de Souza, these are the ontological, epistemological and normative aspects.
From an ontological point of view, Marx would still remain a substantialist, essentialist and dualist; from an epistemological point of view, he would remain a mentalist, representationist and correspondentist, issues more fully developed in his article “A World of Our Own”[1] from a normative point of view, it would have commitments to a historical-transcendental essentialism: it would see the implementation of communism as a form of categorical imperative, a principle of action that would, at the same time, complete the consummation and realization of the ideals of Christianity.
Thus, Crisóstomo de Souza's critique of Marx is not limited, as is customary, to determinism, teleology and dogmatism, but extends to the totality of his metaphysical matrix inherited from the post-Hegelians' attempt to overcome religion. As a consequence, we see dualisms remaining, such as the distinction between the human essence to be realized and its existence as imperfect and split, as well as the idea of reality as a Spinozian substance, in which individuals only effectively exist as part of this unique substance, and finally the separation of an illusory world and a real world reached and understood only by reason.
These assumptions, says the author, are the basis of concepts such as alienation, reification, commodity fetish, ideology as false consciousness, etc. In practical terms, these concepts will produce ideas that will be at the root of the deficiencies of contemporary left-wing projects, such as the vision of an intellectual elite as defining the real consciousness of individuals, the idealization of a pre-capitalist world, immobilization in the absence of presupposed conditions for action, and the critique of liberal democracy as an ideological and illusory construct.
These conceptions are a “reverse side” of Marx in both senses of the word: the opposite of what he hoped to construct as a theory and as a political practice and, at the same time, a consequence of the invisible side of his historical materialism.
Of the problems presented, the normative one seems, for our author, to have been most decisively harmful to the theory and political practice of our days: the duty of human realization through the criterion of a generic, metaphysical and transcendent essence would be the origin of the deficiencies of critical theory and identity politics of post-structuralist origin, which are, more than Marx, the main adversaries of Crisóstomo de Souza.
After all, for him, one can take advantage of something from Marx to construct his practical-sensitive materialist point of view, while critical theory , Theodor Adorno and post-structuralism , Michel Foucault are entirely discarded as possibilities for an emancipatory politics. It is important to clarify, finally, how the metaphysical, theological and mystical baggage smuggled in by Marx, of the human as a generic community essence, would result in what is presented as a pessimistic and negative critique of capitalist society of the so-called Frankfurt School and in an anti-humanist, anti-subjectivist and anti-normative point of view of post-structuralism.
4.
I consider here that there are two central points to this critique by Crisóstomo de Souza. Firstly, the normative aspect of Marx's philosophy, which is both concealed and exposed: the duty to criticize and transform society through communism, although not expressed, presupposes a series of values that are considered superior, such as equality and non-exploitation, and negatively evaluates the division of labor and private property.
So far, so good. The biggest problem is that this would be based on an essentialist understanding of what man should be. According to Crisóstomo de Souza, this humanism, based on “the most virtuous human attributes”, “ended up being almost everything for the later Critical Theory, known as Frankfurtian” (p. 241). In the same way, the attribution of ideological to any thought that is not in accordance with this human idealization is taken as an inheritance received from critical theory.
For Crisóstomo de Souza, finally, Marx achieved the feat of convincing his readers that what is “morally prescribed” is “materially inscribed” in a reality that only a Theory above common consciousness is capable of revealing (p. 247). Since this generic essence is intrinsically communitarian and averse to the atomistic individualism of the modern liberal world, for our author, this anti-modernism is the fuel of Frankfurtian pessimism and the identitarian devotion to every tribal, natural and non-Western social organization.
Post-structuralist criticism, in turn, would be the linguistic substitute for the metaphysical dualism between the real (production relations) and the false (ideology), as infrastructure and superstructure, which already promotes the idea of a determining structure independent of the individuality of empirical subjects.
In Michel Foucault, Crisóstomo de Souza's privileged nemesis, this presents itself as the unveiling of power relations, the anti-humanism inherent in structuralism and the fragmentation of the class struggle as a struggle between identity minorities (as a proliferation of small proletariats), all determined by oppressor-oppressed relations, even if capillary, but ultimately formatted by oppressive norms originating from the structures of modernity, through Kuhnian-Canguilhemian intuitions translated into a Kantian vocabulary of the conditions of possibility understood linguistically (discursively).
All this may seem like a vulgate of critical theory and post-structuralism. To this objection, our author responds that it may even be a vulgate, but with a basis in the original. Like all caricatures, it would be merely an exaggeration of the most striking features. Not that Crisóstomo de Souza does not recognize some positive balance of these endeavors, especially in critical theory, whose most scathing objection seems to apply more to the first generation of the Frankfurt School, which would later experience more promising developments.
In any case, critical theory and post-structuralism are not for him the best solutions for an emancipatory political theory and actions, especially in the context of Brazil, a semi-peripheral country in the global south with enormous challenges to face, which can only really be achieved by a non-colonized theory, which knows how to extract from social, international and Brazilian theory, what is effectively still conceptually fruitful and politically transformative.
All this makes it clear how O reverse of Marx should not be understood merely as a specialized and erudite discussion of the author of The capital – which it also is – but as a theoretical and political position that seeks to represent an alternative to the proposals currently presented in the progressive field. Thus, this book, particularly in its most controversial theses, must be understood in the broader context of the program of pragmatic poetics, which has its own critique of liberalism and the impasses of the left, as well as its proposals, such as the elaboration of a material notion of citizenship and the adoption of institutional constructionism.
This propositional background, which animates the criticisms expressed in The reverse of Marx, has been emphatically defended by Crisóstomo de Souza through various means, whether academic works or public interventions.
*André Itaparica is a professor of philosophy at the University of Reconcavo Baiano (UFRB).
Reference
Jose Crisostomo de Souza. The Other Side of Marx: Philosophical Conversations for a Philosophy with a Future. Humanities Workshop, 2024, 276 pages. [https://amzn.to/3X1Hevw]
Note
[1] See Cognition, v. 12, no. 2, 2015.
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