By RAFAEL PADIAL*
Considerations on Ricardo Musse's book
1.
Last year, Unicamp Publishing House launched the collection “Marxismo 21” (directed by Armando Boito Jr.) Trajectories of European Marxism. The author, Ricardo Musse, is a professor in the Department of Sociology at USP and a renowned scholar of the Marxist tradition. The book is the result of decades of theoretical elaboration, from his doctoral thesis (1998), through his post-doctoral degree (2012) and culminating in the author's most recent articles.
Trajectories of European Marxism should be welcomed as a book that shifts the axis of debate. By sidelining simplifications or dogmatic (“party”) truths, we are directed to the underlying problems of the self-proclaimed Marxist tradition. Emphasis is given, above all, to the internal and interrelated debates of the German and Russian currents of European Marxism, from the last quarter of the 19th century to the first half of the 20th.
The scope is not surprising: after the defeat of the Paris Commune (1871), it was in a contradictory and rich German-Russian interrelation that this specific “intellectual lineage” emerged, developed and became rich. Fundamental theoretical debates were closely linked to major historical events, such as the blatant trade union and electoral growth of German social democracy at the end of the 1905th century (which brought to the fore the question of the conquest of power through parliamentary means), the Russian Revolution of 1917, the October Revolution of 1919, the dilemmas of the German Revolution of 23-XNUMX and the rise of Nazism and Stalinism.
The scope of the book is thus broad, but Ricardo Musse, far from providing a mere panoramic view, offers us a conceptual/philosophical reflection on the key moments of the “self-understanding” of the movement that inherited Marx.
2.
The book is structured into four chapters that maintain a consistent organic relationship (but still show the marks of their different constitutions). The first two – “Dialectics as a Discourse of Method” and “Science or Philosophy?” – present a more abstract or conceptual presentation of a general hypothesis: the creation of so-called Marxism revolves around the attempt to find a methodological foundation for Marx’s work and, in this effort, it swings sometimes towards “science” (treated as empirical and positive knowledge) and sometimes towards “philosophy” (conceived as general and totalizing knowledge that would provide a theoretical basis for revolutionary action).
The following two chapters – “From Friedrich Engels to Rosa Luxemburg” and “From György Lukács to Max Horkeimer” –, the most voluminous in the book, not only reinforce the above hypothesis but also paint it in detail, presenting its main debates and reconstructing the general historical plot. To all this is added, at the end, an “Excursus” on Western Marxism, apparently extra-lexical (like an appendix), but which serves as a conclusion.
More than that, the “excursus” gives the book a new meaning. In the end, it becomes clear that the author aims to do two things at the same time with the work: to expose the moments of “self-understanding of Marxism” and – in the very act of doing so – to discredit the thesis, supported by Perry Anderson, of the existence of a current called “Western Marxism”.
3.
The first chapter is anchored by Lukács' famous statement, in History and class consciousness, regarding the method as a criterion of “orthodox Marxism”. However, Ricardo Musse immediately warns, the primacy of the method in the search for orthodoxy would not be a characteristic of the Hungarian revolutionary’s thought, but rather something established earlier, by Friedrich Engels – “the first Marxist”. From him, it would have spread to various authors of the so-called Second International. He is correct: it was Engels who first systematized methodologically – even if verbally against his will – what was later called “Marxism”.
In his clash with Eugen Dühring, Friedrich Engels literally sought a “positive” exposition of “Marx’s” theory and argued for the existence of a dialectic in nature. The natural sciences, together with the knowledge he sought to substantiate, would overthrow metaphysics and formal logic. Engels, taking up a young Hegelian cliché, argued that it would be necessary to distance Hegel’s metaphysical system and maintain its “dialectical core.”[I] By this expression, the revolutionary understood a series of hypothetical laws of motion of all matter, which would be reflected in consciousness and would thus be apprehended by dialectical thinking. For Engels, “dialectics” would operate in the field of epistemology (“the [materialist] proof of the pudding is in the eating”, states the German in a famous introduction to From utopian to scientific socialism).
Thus, this well-cut diamond (the supposed “core” of dialectics), strengthened by the new knowledge of the sciences of its time, would presumably put an end to philosophy. There would no longer be a need for a “metaphysical knowledge” superior to the others and socialism would express itself scientifically, like the newly discovered laws of nature.[ii]
The movement of the first chapter itself, however, brings counterpositions to Engels. Emphasis is given to the criticism found in History and class consciousness, from 1923, by György Lukács. By having scientism as a basis, Engels, according to Lukács, would have neglected the practical essence of revolutionary theory. For György Lukács, Friedrich Engels, based on the objectivism of the “laws” of natural sciences, would have extirpated the “subjective” (partisan-revolutionary) determinations of dialectics and provided the basis for an objectivist conception of politics; he would have thus prepared the ground for the idea that the victory of the proletariat would be the result of a more or less natural and necessary movement, an inevitable accumulation of forces.
On the contrary, for György Lukács, it would be necessary to raise the proletariat to the position of subject and object of knowledge at the same time. This critique was in its own way part of a trend that had been more or less silently engraved on German soil in the previous years, but which, thanks to the revolutionary impulse of 1917, shone into the light of day.[iii]
Expanding on the same theme, György Lukács argues that Engels' interpretation of dialectics ended up reaffirming the reification of the categories of political economy. In this sense, the Hungarian placed himself alongside other interpreters who emphasized the notion of social form and fetishism in Marx's work, in an effort to interpret it differently from (and seek to surpass) the social-democratic tradition.[iv]
The second chapter deals with the aforementioned pendulum swings of “Marxism” – the identity crisis that sometimes places it on the side of science and sometimes on the side of philosophy. In fact – and Ricardo Musse shows it well –, in this regard, Engels’ positions are also discussed more than Marx’s. The book Anti-Duhring and the brochure Ludwig Feuerbach and the end of classical German philosophy were responsible for setting the tone of the issue.
Ricardo Musse is perceptive in pointing out that the interpretation of the later Engels gave rise to the idea – still current today – that “Marx’s materialism” would be the “overcoming” of Hegel’s idealism and a “refinement” of Feuerbach’s materialism. The author is correct in stating that Engels has a condescending attitude towards Feuerbach, which is not consistent with what Marx (and Engels himself) did in 1846.[v]
Previously an adversary to be fought, Feuerbach was reconfigured – and thus entered the tradition of interpretation – as a “necessary moment” of “Marx’s materialism”. This explains, in fact, why Engels, in the 1892 preface to From utopian to scientific socialism, reproduced pages and pages of praise made by Marx, at the end of 1844, to the French materialism of the XNUMXth century and to the English empiricism. Friedich Engels recovered philosophical positions to which Karl Marx never returned.
In my view, Engels's "materialism", which formed the basis of an important interpretative tradition, is halfway between the French materialism recorded by Marx in 1844 and his critique of Feuerbach in the famous 11 Theses of 1845 – but it differs from what resulted from German Ideology, especially in 1846. Or rather, Engels seeks to operate a synthesis between all these elements (including the German Ideology) that is not found in Marx after 1846. Hence the amalgamation of reflex theory, gnosiology, the thesis of the end of philosophy, scientific-positivist empiricism and “conception of history”. All this was later given the name “historical materialism” and “dialectical materialism” or – why not? – “Marxism”.
Given the conceptual weaknesses of this amalgam, later authors tended to interpret “Marxism” in different ways, depending on the historical and local circumstances. Hence G. Plekhanov sought to understand the universe as an organic totality, arguing that the laws of nature should be sought in matter. Hence Karl Kautsky mixed “historical materialism” and Darwinism. Hence Vladimir Lenin defended materialism as a theory of reflection and as epistemology (in his Materialism and Empiricism), leaning towards philosophy.
Hence Rudolf Hilferding, in his studies on the critique of political economy, turned “Marxism” back to science and distanced it from political ideals. Hence Eduard Bernstein distanced himself from dialectics and attempted to reconstruct Marxism as a “science,” but based (paradoxically) on Kant. All these moments would denote, according to Ricardo Musse, “the pendulum oscillation characteristic of the self-understanding of Marxism in the Second International.”[vi]
4.
From the third chapter we highlight what became known as “the first crisis of Marxism” or “the revisionist quarrel”, which took place at the end of the 19th century around the work of Eduard Bernstein. Ricardo Musse dwells on it at length, given its obvious importance (Bernstein was none other than Engels’ secretary, his executor of the will, one of the main theoreticians of social democracy; responsible, together with Karl Kautsky, for the approval of “Marxism” as the official doctrine of the Second International).
Instead of explaining Eduard Bernstein’s “revisionism” as something unexpected in the midst of the straight path of “orthodoxy,” the book clarifies that it is a logical development of the theoretical and practical ambivalences contained long before within social democracy. To better understand this, Ricardo Musse also provides a detailed analysis of the positions of the “orthodox” Kautsky. In an explanatory line perhaps close to that presented later by Karl Korsch.[vii], Bernstein and Kautsky are portrayed as incarnations of the ambiguity characteristic of the Second International, almost Siamese twins.
Thus, to a large extent, Bernsteinian revisionism would be contained in the dichotomous logic expressed, for example, in the Erfurt Program (written by Kautsky and Bernstein), famous for establishing the opposition between “minimum program” and “maximum program” in party strategy. This programmatic non-dialectic would have led to both pragmatism and revolutionary discourse – and both would complement each other.
Although Rosa Luxemburg first stood out for her criticism of Bernstein, the first moment of her production is not described as responsible for a new chapter in the “self-understanding of Marxism”. It is true that Reform or revolution? brilliantly dismantles Bernstein's theses (especially thanks to the Polish woman's training in economics), but the general method underlying her argument still seems hostage to the dichotomies of the Second International (in fact, the same can be said of Lenin's productions in the period, no less influenced by Kautsky).
It is as if the content desired by Rosa Luxemburg could not find a better form of expression. Only with the impetus of the Russian Revolution of 1905 would the revolutionary have been able to give initial form to a new thought. Ricardo Musse reconstructs the controversies within German social democracy regarding the instrument of the “general strike” (as a programmatic item) and the spontaneous movement of the masses. By incorporating these two elements – general strike and spontaneity – into her political thinking, Rosa Luxemburg would have inverted the positions that, since Engels’ famous “testament”, had guided social democracy.
The minimum, she said, was often the maximum and vice versa; democratic reforms were achieved as a by-product of revolutionary action; a month's spontaneous revolutionary action taught more about Marxism than decades of party propaganda, etc. With Rosa Luxemburg and her “I am an angel who died at the age of 18” Marxism would seek to be thought of as a revolutionary movement and, thus, was brought closer to Marx's formulations during the 1848 revolution. The antinomies of social democracy – so well expressed in Erfurt Program –, even though they had not yet undergone a totally consistent theoretical overcoming, they were beginning to explode.
This path gained more and more expression with the impact of the second Russian revolution (1917), the establishment of the power of the soviets and the consequent formation of the communist parties. The debate on overcoming the social-democratic program was thus placed on a new level. This is what the fourth chapter deals with. History and class consciousness, by Lukács, and Marxism and philosophy, by Korsch (both from 1923), would be good examples of this process, since they thought of Marxism as a non-dichotomous totality and as a practical-revolutionary movement of the proletariat. It is the move away from the interpretation of Marxism as a conception of the world (Worldview).
However, by recovering Hegel, incorporating the category of “totality” and constituting revolutionary orthodoxy in methodological terms, György Lukács once again interpreted Marxism as a discourse of method; he fell into the “bad infinity” or circularity established by Engelsian assumptions. Karl Korsch, in turn, by leaning Marxism towards philosophy, reinforced the “pendulum oscillation” arising from the author’s elaborations. Anti-Duhring. To make matters worse, Korsch was condescending towards Engels, not considering him responsible for the philosophical conceptions of the Second International (in fact, distancing himself from Lukács in this regard).[viii]
Ricardo Musse highlights interesting excerpts from Karl Korsch’s work. For him, a new stage of the Marxist movement – the “third stage” – was opening up.[ix] Our attention was drawn to the findings produced by the German in the text called “Anticrítica”, from 1930, published as an introduction to a new edition of Marxism and philosophy. The fact that he wrote seven years after the first publication of this work and in the midst of the consolidation of the Stalinist phenomenon allowed him to draw interesting conclusions. The first is that the condemnation of Marxism and philosophy quality History and class consciousness, en bloc, in 1924, both at a social-democratic congress and at the V Congress of the Communist International, revealed “the communion of ideas and doctrine between the two main currents of Marxism at the time”.
Regarding this general situation, Korsch stated in 1930: “In this fundamental debate on the direction of contemporary Marxism, previously announced by innumerable signals and now open, we will find, as far as the decisive questions are concerned […], on the one hand, the old Marxist orthodoxy of Kautsky and the new orthodoxy of Russian or ‘Leninist’ Marxism, and, on the other, all the critical and advanced tendencies of the theory of the contemporary workers’ movement.”[X]
Karl Korsch saw in Vladimir Lenin's dualism – orthodoxy in philosophy, to the Kautsky and Plekhanov; (revolutionary) heterodoxy in practice, as The State and the Revolution – the basis for the later distortion of his thought by his epigones. Korsch recalls that Lenin followed Kautsky in the idea that socialism does not arise spontaneously in the working class, but externally, being “introduced into it by intellectuals” from the bourgeoisie; and that in matters of philosophy he was a faithful disciple of Plekhanov.
While making a reservation, Korsch states that the work Materialism and Empiricism Lenin's work would be pragmatic in scope, focused on concrete issues of party orientation; and only later would its epigones have transformed it into a philosophical source of all knowledge and truth. After this relative defense of Lenin, Korsch launches serious attacks on his aforementioned work; he argues that it is wrong to conceive – as the Bolshevik leader did – that “what prevails in bourgeois science is idealism”. On the contrary, according to Korsch, the dominant tendency “in philosophy, in the natural sciences and in the human sciences of the bourgeoisie is not an idealist conception, but something that is inspired by a naturalist materialist conception”.[xi]
Lenin is accused of making a mistaken “inversion” of Hegel (raising “matter” to the position of Spirit in the position of “absolute”) and thus constructing an erroneous opposition between materialism and idealism. “Lenin’s materialism […] takes the confrontation between materialism and idealism back to a level of historical development prior to that reached by German philosophy from Kant to Hegel.”[xii]
Lenin and his “materialism of being” would have unilaterally transported dialectics to the object (nature and history) and, therefore, would describe knowledge as a simple passive reflection and reproduction of objective being in subjective consciousness. In this way, philosophy would return to the gnosiological problem of the relations between subject and object of knowledge. And he concludes by stating that by regressing to a point prior to Hegel, the “Russian trend” would have “imitated the French materialism of the 18th century”.[xiii]
Karl Korsch's argument against Materialism and Empiricism seems to us, to say the least, thought-provoking. It is surprising, however, that he does not turn his arrows against Friedrich Engels, after all the latter's final philosophical production is the basis (along with that of Plekhanov and J. Dietzgen) of the work written in 1909 by Lenin.
5.
It is difficult not to consider that the intellectual efforts of Lukács and Korsch – along with others from the period, already noted – were creating something new, but were aborted by the complex situation of the 1920s and 1930s, especially by the rise of Stalinism and fascism. Rich concepts were left to develop and gaps to be filled. Starting from this situation, Ricardo Musse leads us to the final part of the fourth chapter, which deals with the theoretical production of Max Horkheimer at the head of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research (the “Frankfurt School”).
In a long analysis of the article “Traditional theory and critical theory”, from 1937, Ricardo Musse presents us with Max Horkheimer’s conception as derived from the situation in which the working class would no longer be on the scene. In the USSR, it would be crushed by Stalinism; in Italy and Germany, defeated by Nazi-fascism; in the USA, integrated through consumption and fetishized under the New Deal.
How can Marxism continue in a period of counterrevolution on all fronts? Max Horkheimer would have been forced to express himself in a coded way (the very name “critical theory” would be a code name for “Marxism”) and would have focused his efforts on saving the “intellectual tradition.” It is the “hibernation of Marxism in theory, appropriate for the moment and justifiable in the face of the circumstances.”[xiv]
With “critical theory,” the proletariat, ceasing to be the subject of history, would become the object of intellectual analysis. It would not be a question of renouncing the “proletariat perspective,” but of developing a theory that does not rely on the support of the proletariat and, if necessary, can think against the proletariat, can “oppose the proletariat’s true interests to the proletariat itself.”[xv] An entire research program was outlined (and carried out) by the Frankfurt School, seeking to synthesize contributions from various fields of knowledge. Efforts from Marxism, psychoanalysis, analyses of family/patriarchal structures, reflections on authoritarian forms of the State, etc. were invoked to draw up a general framework.
By carrying out this research program, Horkheimer, however, inverted the conceptions previously presented by Lukács and Korsch. This is how Ricardo Musse concludes the fourth chapter: “With this [Horkheimer] provokes a new inflection in the self-understanding of this doctrine. Unable to conceive of it as a 'theory of revolution', Horkheimer ends up transforming it into an 'intellectual tradition'”.[xvi]
The final “Excursus” deals with the “construction of Western Marxism.” The author’s main point of contention is the thesis established by Perry Anderson, according to whom Lukács, Korsch, and Antonio Gramsci were the pioneers of a current that could be called “Western Marxism,” responsible for a rupture between theory and practice in Marxism. “Western Marxism,” as Perry Anderson understood it (in Musse’s words), “would have promoted a return to the strain of bourgeois culture, gradually shifting its center of interest from economic and political issues to philosophical matters.”[xvii].
From the founding fathers of this current, it would have spread to individuals such as Horkheimer, H. Marcuse, Walter Benjamin, Galvano Della Volpe, Henri Lefebvre, Theodor Adorno, Jean-Paul Sartre, Lucien Goldmann, Louis Althusser, Lucio Coletti, etc.
For Ricardo Musse, however, the concept of “Western Marxism” lacks credibility, is shaped according to the interests of each interpreter and, therefore, limits the study of the works of different subjects. This is also what he states: “The term ‘Western Marxism’ has never been capable of a univocal determination. Each author composes the main characteristics of the object in his own way, sometimes altering the set of components, sometimes the temporal or geographical scope of the concept. Overly concerned with delimiting constants and defining traits, few have paid attention to the enigma of its foundation, despite the unexpected unanimity when it comes to drawing up the list of pioneers.”[xviii]
Ricardo Musse is correct. The term “Western Marxism” came from Korsch’s work, particularly his aforementioned “Anticritica” of 1930. However, in this text Korsch refers more often to “Western communism” and less often (but as synonyms) to “Western Marxism”. As is evident, Korsch’s “Western communism”, of Luxembourgist origin, which considered Marxism as the key to the theory of revolution and had great influence on the German Communist Party, could in little or no way be associated with something that “returns to the philosophical lineage of the bourgeoisie”, as Anderson wanted.
Ricardo Musse touches on a key point: how to group together people who are averse to party struggle – Horkheimer, Goldmann and Adorno – and important political leaders, such as Lukács, Gramsci and Korsch? Anderson, although not ignoring the problem, skirts around it and does not offer a satisfactory answer. In fact, as Ricardo Musse explains, “Western Marxism” is a concept that encompasses authors other than those Perry Anderson considered canonical.
Having criticized Anderson's thesis, Ricardo Musse dedicates his analysis to the conception of two other thinkers who, following him but with different arguments and purposes, sought to support the existence of “Western Marxism”. These are Martin Jay and Göran Therborn, who, for Ricardo Musse, resulted in contradictions similar to those of Perry Anderson. Thus, according to the author of the book under review, the concept of “Western Marxism” would not have stood the test of history, since in the pens of its greatest defenders it did not fail to shine with contradictions.
Just by demonstrating the contradictions of the concept of “Western Marxism”, Ricardo Musse’s book would already be necessary. But, more than that, because such demonstration is based on a broad study of the “Marxist” tradition, Trajectories of European Marxism is expressed as mandatory for scholars of the subject.
*Rafael de Almeida Padial it's din philosophy from Unicamp. Author of On Marx's transition to communism (Mall) [https://amzn.to/3UJqyHi]
Reference
Ricardo Musse. Trajectories of European Marxism. Campinas, Editora Unicamp, 2023, 220 pages. [https://amzn.to/3R7K8wt]
Notes
[I] Musse is correct in stating that this is a Young Hegelian theme. In the same sense, in On Marx's passage to communism, I seek to show how this theme appeared as early as 1841, in The Trumpet of Judgment Day, by Bruno Bauer.
[ii] As Musse rightly explains, the theme of the “end of philosophy” is founded in Hegel (in the relationship between the effective and the real) and occupied the Young Hegelians for a long time. The paradigm used by Engels here seems to me to be that of the famous “11th thesis.” To Feuerbach, written by Marx in the first half of 1845. As I tried to show in chapter 11 of my book (cited above), the content of this thesis of Marx was expressed concomitantly by Moses Heß, in his significantly titled pamphlet The last philosophers, who also sought (unsuccessfully) to settle scores with Ludwig Feuerbach.
[iii] This is the position held mainly by Rosa Luxemburg, which is found in Engels' “political testament” (1895 preface to Class struggles in France, Marx) the basis for the reformist action of German social democracy. On this subject, it is worth seeing his founding speech of the German Communist Party, on December 31, 1918. Lukács, in his 1923 work, seeks, among other things, to provide support philosophical to what Rosa Luxemburg had exposed politically.
[iv] This is the case, for example, of the important Essays on Marx's Theory of Value, by Isaak Rubin, published in the same year as History and class consciousness (1923), as well as General theory of law and Marxism, by E. Pachukanis, published in 1924. Later we will also touch on another fundamental work from 1923, Marxism and philosophy, by Karl Korsch. To close the series of pivotal works from that same year, let us remember that it was in it that the first more detailed analysis of Soviet bureaucracy came to light: The new course, by Leon Trotsky. What happened is that, thanks to the impetus provided by the Russian Revolution of October 1917, and thanks to the profound discussions on strategy and tactics that it triggered (given the difficulties of expanding the Russian Revolution and carrying out the revolution on German soil), communist theory was refined and placed on a new level. It was above all the German and Russian communists who were responsible for carrying out this task. Part of this intellectual effervescence can also be found in the debates on strategy and tactics of the Russian and German delegations, within the framework of the Third and Fourth Congresses of the Third International.
[v] For example, it is worth looking at the important “theses” on Feuerbach written by Marx and Engels sometime between January and March 1846 (i.e., these are not the famous 11 theses To Feuerbach written by Marx in the first half of 1845). In the theses of 1846, letter E states that Feuerbach's philosophy is reactionary and affirms the existing capitalist order. Here is an excerpt: “[Feuerbach's essentialist philosophy is] A beautiful eulogy to the existing. […] Be happy as a coal mine porter from the age of seven, working fourteen hours a day, alone, in the dark, because such a being is your essence [Essence]. Likewise [working as] piecer a saltfactor [spinning machine]. It is in its 'essence' [Essence] to submit to a branch of work”. Cf. MARX, K. & ENGELS, F., The German Ideology, In MEW, vol. 3, Berlin: Dietz, 1978, p. 542.
[vi] MUSSE, Richard. Trajectories of European Marxism. Campinas: Ed. Unicamp, 2023, p. 54.
[vii] KORSCH, Karl, “The Passing of Marxian Orthodoxy” (1937), available digitally at https://www.marxists.org/archive/korsch/1937/marxian-orthodoxy.htm.
[viii] In the footnote to his “Anticritique” (preface from 1930 to Marxism and Philosophy), Korsch counters Communist Party critics who argued that “I would have stressed […] a essential difference between Engels' ideas and Marx's”. And it continues: “Marxism and Philosophy does not sympathize with the partiality with which Lukács and Révai treated the ideas of Marx and Engels as entirely divergent opinions.” Cf. KORSCH, K., “Anticriticism”, in idem, Marxism and Philosophy. Rio de Janeiro: EDUERJ, 2008, note 29, p. 115.
[ix] In a certain schematism sometimes interpreted in an unfortunate (not to say biased) way, Korsch defended the existence of three stages in the development of Marxism: a first, centered on the revolution of 1848, which conceived of Marxism as a revolutionary mass movement; another, which developed in the second half of the 1917th century, determined by the concepts of Kautsky, Bernstein and Plekhanov; and the third, which emerged at the beginning of the XNUMXth century and emerged with the Russian revolution of XNUMX.
[X] KORSCH, Karl, Marxism and Philosophy, “anti-criticism”, apoud MUSSE, Ricardo, Trajectories of European Marxism, op. cit.., P. 161.
[xi] Idem, P. 163.
[xii] Idem, P. 164.
[xiii] Idem, P. 165.
[xiv] MUSSE, R., Trajectories…, op. quoted, p. 166.
[xv] Idem, P. 179.
[xvi] Idem, P. 182.
[xvii] Idem, P. 190.
[xviii] Idem, P. 192.
the earth is round there is thanks to our readers and supporters.
Help us keep this idea going.
CONTRIBUTE
