The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx by Shlomo Avineri; Cambridge 1965. (Paperback edition 1970, 15/-)
In the history of Marxism's intellectual productions two trends are discernible. Marx himself left an extraordinarily complex legacy, in the study of which it was only too easy to fall back on one-sided simplifications. On the one hand we have had those who, taking Marx's stress on science to be the main point, interpreted him from a positivistic standpoint; and, on the other, those who took seriously his acknowledged debt to Hegel.
Undoubtedly the dominant trend has been the former, expounded ad nauseam by all the bone~headed orthodox of the second and third Internat ionals. The best Marxists, however, have always known better than this. Indeed it was Lenin himself who realised how far off the track Marxism had gone when he recorded in his notebooks: "It is impossible completely to understand Marx's Capital, and especially its first chapter, without having thoroughly studied and understood the whole of Hegel's Logic. Consequently half a century later none of the Marxists understood Marx!!" (1)
At that time, as also when Lukacs produced the neo-Hegelian Marxism of History and Class~Consciousness, Marx's early works and manuscripts, which confirm this judgment, were not generally available. The merit of * Dr. Avineri's recent work is that it takes fully into account for the first time in English such early manuscripts as the 1843 Critique of Hegel.
Avineri's book has been attacked in New Left Reyiew by a reviewer working from the positivistic, sciemtistio, standpoint. (2). Doubtless the over-enthusiasm of some neo-Hegelian interpretations of Marxism need correction - but not by going back to the theoretical poverty characteristic of positivism, albeit in Althusserian dress. Perhaps we may digress on this theme before discussing Avineri's work.
The NLR review starts by desoribing the difference between the two views as follows. On the one hand Marxism “was understood as a science of society (historical naterialism), whose object was the socio-economic formation". On the other, the neo-Hegelians make the basis of Marxism “the concepts of praxis, alienation, proletariat as universal class and
historical subject, class-consciousness, etc.
We have no particular quarrel with this account but draw different conclusions. The NIR reviewer charges, without evidence, that the neo- Hegelian interpretation can "relapse into spontaneism." (3). This is : simply the converse of the charge launched, with much justice, by Iukacs and Marcuse against the positivist version, of fatalism and quictisn. This latter charge can be substantiated a priori by pointing out that positivism removes man-as-subject from the arena and shifts responsibility for establishing socialism from the party and class to disembodied
‘historical forces'. Gramsci percipiently explains this "fatalist aroma" by the subordinate character of the social strata whose consciousness it is, and allows it may be valuable psychologically as long as there is
present at the same time a real activity, but denounces it when made into & reflexive philosophy by intellectuals.
It is thus quite baffling to find the statement that "the work of the Marxist cadre in mobiliaing the masses and wielding political power to effect social transformation, is compatible only with 'scientistic* Marxism." (4). The exact opposite is true. However often these two things co-exist in practice they are theoretically inconsistent. If Marxism is just a sub-division of natural science there is no place, not only for the cadre but for any self-conscious activity at all, since the revolution will surely dawn at the appointed hour, independent of the cadre, just like an eclipse,
‘The truth is that only if one makes praxis a fundamental concept and subordinates the scientific analysis of social formations to this, does the activity of the cadre in bringing the proletariat to the consciousness of its tasks, make sense. The canpletely undialeoctical character of the scientistic interpretation is shown by the way it can give the cadre's activity no connection with ‘objective analysis’ cther than.the purely external, instrumental, one. The origin of the cadre is quite unexplained on this view. The dialectical view sees the cadre as internal to the process (Cf. Thesis 3 On Feuerbach)
What the 'scientistio’ view does essentially is to turn Marxism into just another ‘interpretation of the world’ ~ which may then be used, if it cares, for some extrinsic reason, by a cadre to 'change' the world, in spite of the fact that this is incompatible with the assumptions behind a positivist interpretation. This farrago is the casiest thing in the world for any bourgeois critic to kmook down. (5)
In any case the 'scientistic' interpretation is incompatible with the theses of historical materialism itself, with its stress on the olassbased nature of all ideology. In spite of its stress on materialism, at the level of the status of theory, it is fundamentally idealist. Just as bourgeois sociology does not deal with its own role, so the 'scientistic' interpretation makes claims to absolute objectivity, not undorstanding itself as grounded in a specific historical period, class struggle etc.
This interpretation with its contemplative attitude to the world _ reduces Marxism to the status of any other interpretation - it ‘just ‘happens' to be correct whereas others ere wrong. But surely the peculiar nature of Marxism is that it is a theory which explains itself, and guar~antees its truth relative to bourgeois theory, by expressing in theoretical terms the practice - past and future ~ of a definite class engaged on a conerete historical’ struggle. It grounds its claim to be truer than bourgeois theory on the fact that the interests it expresses sre not those of a small ruling group but of the immense majority of mankind ~ hence ideologicall distortion is minimised. The test of its truth is not the mechanically observed correspondense of the theory and its object but the success of the practical transformation which the theoratical moment both explains and facilitates.
——_—
(Turning now to the review proper); Dr. Avineri justifies the production of his book by the need to divorce the debate about Marx "from explicit or implied political objectives." (6) It is all the more interesting then that the defects of his work do not flow fram lack of scholarship but precisely from the effect of an implicit political objective - in this case that of saving Marx from Lenin. Parts of this work very definitely have the objective of debunking Leninism by contesting its claim to be Marxist. This involves a "double distortion" ~ either of Lenin or Marx according to.convenience. Mainly it takes the form of reducing Lenin to a ‘Jacobin' conspirator and turning Marx into a gradualist by misusing the notion of “aufhebung". Since no evidence whatsoever is given for the distortions of Lenin which creep in mainly in asides we shall not concern ourselves with them but concentrate on saving Marx from Aévineri. The politi-~ cal objective of this will be to block the escape route by which many concede Marx's genius while avoiding his revolutionary conclusions.
It needs to be said at the outset that what we have here is by no means & hack job but a sincere scholarly production. with many passages that are well worth study. It is perhaps all the more significant that when Dr. Avineri's scholarship does break down it is on a matter of no less political consequence than that of the place of proletarian dictatorship in Marx's thought. We may clear this up first.
In discussing the closing paragraphs of the second chapter of the Communist Manifesto Avineri says that. not only does Marx not use the term dictatorship of the proletariat in this context but that "he does not use the term more than two or three times in his life, and then always in what is basically a private communication." (7). The said communications are Critique of the Gotha Programme and the letter to teydemeyer of 5th March 1952. What Dr, Avineri does not say is that in the latter epistle Marx describes the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ as one of his three unique discoveries. It would indeed be extraordinary if he had kept this discovery & personal secret! ,
To begin with although it is true that the Manifesto does not include the phrase there is a pretty good paraphrase of its content in such expressions as “raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class", "its political supremacy", “the producers organised as the ruling cless", "despotic inroads on the rights of property". As Lenin says (in State and Revolution), these formulae are still abstract, but that the content is class dictatorship is clear enough.
Certainly Bakunin in his Statism and Anarchism (1873) reads it this way in his polemic against the theory of “revolutionary dictatorship", He quotes the Manifesto and says that the Marxists admit this means dictator~ ship but console themselves that it will be temporary. (8)
However if Avineri wants chapter and versé for a public statement it is to be found in The Class Struggies in France published in 1850 and to be found in the standard 1962 edition of the Selected Works. Here we Pind the slogan; "Overthrow of the bourgeoisie! Dictatorship of the working class!" (9). Even more clearly: "This socialism is the declaration of the permanence of the revolution, the class dictatorship of the proletariat as
the necessary trancition point to tho abolition of class distinctions generally. evoe” (10) *.
Moving now to the book as a whole, the early chapters are the best with good material on Feuerbach's transformational method, the proletariat as universal class, alionation, and consciousness. The distortions of the later chapters and the flaw in the book as a whole are due to difficulties arising from the complexities of the dialectical concept of sufhebung which pertains to the nature of dialectical transitions. In understanding this untranslatable term one has to do justice both to the ndion of abolition - break - leap and also to that of preservation and continuity. Avineri is one of those who give too much weight to the latter side and almost achieves the incredible feat, for a dialectician, of turning into a gradualist (q.v. the discussion of the Manifesto below.)
Avineri takes his cue from Marx's early writings in which the demand for the aufhebung of the State is put forward, and such terms aa ‘true demooracy' and ‘universal suffrage’ are mentioned in this connection. In his early chapters Avineri argues correctly that by talking of ‘true democracy’ Marx by no means aligns himself with the usual variety of radical demoorat; because this new society was to be based on “man's communist essence" with the abolition of private property and the state. (11) However the later. chapters leave the reader geminely puzzled as to what fvineri does mean by the aufhebung of the State. The treatment still seems far too Hegelian in that sometimes he does seem to believe that the State could have a real rather than illusory, universality in content.({12) Purthermore although Avineri correctly denies the existence of a sharp opposition between a 'young' Marx.and a ‘mature one', it should nevertheless be clear to any student that Marx's career represented a development in which the terms of his problematic changed. Thus although Marx did concentrate his attention at first on the difficulties of realising the Hegelian postulate about the universality of the State it by no means follows that the later work produced an answer to that same question. The turn towards political economy marked the realisation by Marx that a dif- ' ferent question was needed. The problem of the State then becomes a ' ‘Secondary one within the transformed problematic. The unreality attending the later chapters of Avineri's work flow from his failure to relocate the problem in this way. Instead he picks out bits and pieces from the mature Marx in an attempt to show how to answer the early formulations of Marx's problematic. The central tenet is that "universal suffrage" constitutes the aufhebung of the State. Here (peges 202-220) the most extreordinary nonsense is produced. He gets into a terrible tangle trying to reconcile this alleged universality with Marx's clear position that the transition to socialism is the work of the proletariat imposing its will against that of the old ruling class. He also has trouble differentiating it from the parliamentarism Marx attacks. For example he is reduced to arguing (on p. 210) that parliamentarism for Marx was the limited suffrage of property qualifications. He forgets here On the Jewish Question with ils trenchant oritique of American states in which "the non~owner comes to legislate for the omer of property."
The petit-bourgeois utopianism inherent in his position comes out
nowhere more clearly than in the pathetic remonstrance: "The abolition of universal suffrage in a revolutionary situation, according to Marx, means reversion to a partial, illusory universalism with one segment of society declaring itself the voice of all society. For Marx such 4 pars pro toto, bourgeois or, for that matter, Leninist, would never be able to Carry out the universal postulates inherent in the state, and abolish the state."(13)
The authority claimed for this is not given. However if we do want to discover the’ position of universal suffrage in a revolutionary situation “acoording to Marx" let us consult: The Class Struggles in France:
"Universal suffrage had fulfilled its mission. The majority of the people has passed through the school of development, which is all that universal suffrage oan serve for in 4a revolutionary period. It had to be set aside by a revolution or by the reaction.”
On the question of the transition to socialism Avineri seizes on the programme outlined in the Manifesto (in spite of the fact that the authors in the 1872 Preface said that some parts of the Manifesto were defective and especially "no special stress" is to be laid on these measures.) He points out that it does not include nationalisation of industry as such. From this fact he draws the extraordinary conclusion that the aim is to "slowly case private industry out...- not through one-sided political means, but by gradually creating the economic conditions which will make the further existence of private industry unviable." (1,) This is a nonsense because even if slow, these measures are quite definitely political (abolition of inheritance, tax reforms etc.) and are quite certainly one-sided in relation to the social situation since this political attack on a class socially still in power will raise contradictions to an extreme - further developments cannot possibly be “peaceful and orderly" as Avineri otaims.(15) On the contrary a violent esation would ensue which would make necessary the "further inroads" Marxs mentions (though it must be admitted that the paragraph in the Manifesto introducing the programme is vague and anbiguous on the question of the perspective opened up by such changes.)
Another conclusion Avineri draws from this list of measures involves a quite crucial misinterpretation of Marx's theory of the state. He says: "By applying this policy the proletarian state will be the first. state in history to.use political power for universal and not partial ends. This programme thus realises the Hegelian postulate about the universality of the state. Dialectically, the state that would really carry out its universal potential must end with communism and consequently with its own abolition, since "public power will lose its political character'. The ultimate realisation of the Hegelian idea of the state as universal power implies according to Marx, that, once the state is truly universal, it ceases to exist as a differentiated organism.” (16
First of all this interpretation nisses out that the measures are admitted by Marx to be "despotic" i.e. within the existing dialectical contradiction they are partial measures of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. Even though the eventual result is the abolition of class distinctions it remains true that the state power is never properly universal and thus does not realise any Hegelian postulate to that effect.
The peouliss dialectical transcendence involved in the proletariat's rule is that while wielding state power in their own interests they lay down conditions which lead to the creation of a classless society, i.e. _ tho transition is not one in which the proletariat "becomes the absolute aside of society, for it is victorious only by abolishing itself and its opposite. Then both the proletariat and the opposite which conditions it, private property, disappear." (17)
Marx himself has already replied to Avineri's interpretation in advance in the very paragraph of the Manifesto ° Following the list of measures so it could hardly be missed.
"When, in the course of social evolution, class distinctions have disappeared, and when all the work of production has been concentrated into the hands of the associated producers, public authority will lose its political character. Strictly speaking, political power is the. organised use of force by one class in order to keep another class in subjection. | When the proletariat, in the course of its fight against the bourgeoisie, necessarily consolidates itself into a class, by means of a revalution — makes itself the ruling class, and-as such forcibly sweeps away the old system of production - it therewith sweeps away the system upon which class conflicts depend, makes an end of classes, and thus abolishes its own rule as a Class."
It is made absolutely clear in this passage that the transitional regime is one in which one class uses force to subjugate another. This must put paid to any interpretation which conceives of it as realising the Hegelian postulate about the universality of the State. A State which was truly universei in form and content would not need force to hold down one section of its citizens. That this must be so no doubt accounts for the lame attempts Avineri makes to argue that force by the revolution is undesirable and indeed unnecessary, (e.g. p. 218) This passage also, makes clear that public authority does not lose its political character until communism has been achieved - until then we have rule by one class over another while it "forcibly sweeps away the old system of production." This is quite incompatible with Avineri's claim that the state carrying out its universal potential must end with communism.
Avineri's crucial mistake is to stay within the Hegelian problematic defined in terms of the “state as universal power". Briefly, Hegel. held that the family represented a one-sided universality in which the individual did not distinguish himself as such; civil society (i.e. the generalisation of private property) represented a one~sided particularity; the synthesis in the modern state was supposed to reconcile individual aspirations within a@ universal order regulated by rational laws and morality. Avineri mis-— interprets Marx's early critique of Hegel in so far as he seams to think that oll Morx added was the understanding that "once the state is truly universel it ceases to exist as a differentiated organism." He takes this - to be a practical programme - hence all the materiel he produces on suffrage, foree and other problems of transition interpreted from this standpoint.
In fact Marx's critique was much more negative and resulted in a switch to a new problematic in which the crucial questions were not posed in terms
of the state at all. Marx's true position was that the state sould not be made truly universal just because it necessarily existed as an organism differentiated fram, and standing over against, civil society.
In order to prove this it is in order to ask what conditions would have to be realised in order to overcome the illusory nature of the universality possessed by the state and conclude that their realisation would involve its disappearance altogether but it is a big mistake to read this immanent critique as a practical programme and conclude that communiam is to be realised through the aufhebung of the state,
The switch by Marx to a new perspective occurs as early as the 1843 Introduction to the Critigue of Hegel's Philosophy of Right Here Marx retains the Hegelian category of ‘universality’ but introduces the question of class in order to give the term a new context. Instead of trying to produce a political form which would incarnate .an abstract ‘universalit Marx points to the concrete material (as opposed to political=spiritual sal) existence of the classes with their particular possessions and interests, and identifies the proletariat as the class to whom no particular wrong but "wrong in general" is done. Being at the sharp end of all: the contradictions in society it is the element of total negativity in the situation. It has no particular wrong to redress but can only liberate itself by a universal restructuring of society which will remove all class limitations and inequalities. It is not the “aufhebung" of the state through its becoming concretely universal that Marx demands, rather he turns to the question of how to accomplish the “aufhebung” of the proletariat, and concludes that out of the practical necessities of its peculiar position as a class “in, but not of, civil society" it will accomplish its own transcendence by abolishing itself as a class throvgh a total restructuring of the conditions determinping it as such. (However it is equally clear that the first phase of this dialectical development is one in which it is in irreconcilable struggle with the existing ruling class.)
The problem of the state comes out in the wash. If the classes go then the institutions of class rule go too ~ whether it be the. old bureaucratic police machine or the organisation of the armed majority for "forcibly" sweeping away the old system. To reduce the argument to a formula - Avineri thinks the state disappears when it becomes universal: Marx argues it disappears when society has become universal i.c. classless, but while it exists it is always "the organised use of forcé by one class in order to keep another class in subjection",
The argument is not merely a semantic ome because it leads to differing attitudes to transitional problems such as suffrage, force etc.
It is however, very confusing besides all the talk about “making the state a truly universal organ", to find that Avineri keeps up a running Campaign against "politios" - starting from Marx's critique of the French Revolution, in his early work, as "merely political". His point here seems to be that it is no use declaring universal brotherhood from above (i.e. politically) - one must wait until conditions are ripe through the internal development of the economy etc. This would be 0.K. except that Avineri often seems to fall into the trap of hoping for a ‘merely social!
x
revolution without any horrid political action, especially the use of force. ("One can summarise Marx's position by saying that for Marx physical power will either fail or prove to be superfluous « By itself physical power achieves nothing."(18) )
One cannot do better here than quote Marx at the end of The Poverty of Philosophy: "War or death; a bloody fight, or extinction. Such is the unavoidable alternativel" (19)
Another place where Avineri charges Leninists with belief in the omnipotence of politics is on the vexed question of the uniqueness of pro~ letarian revolution in relation to socio-economic conditions. He draws on Lange's version of it. (20). The situation of the proletariat seems to be . unique because it has no existing socio-economic base to predicate a struggle for power on (unlike the bourgeoisie who possessed wealth and culture). Thus they have to construct socialist economio relations after taking power, whereas the bourgeoisie was able to develop capitalist relations of production a good way within the old system. The bourgeois revolution really consisted in one oppressing class displacing another in the political-legal sphere and consecrating as dominant a system of produc-~ ' tive relations which was already displacing the old.
Avineri does not believe the socialist revolution in fact differs from previous ones in this respect and calls in Marx's remarks about the emergence of joint-stock companies and co-ops to prove that political power "does not create the new structures realised".
Once again Avineri's gradualist streak has got the better of him - a careful reading of the texts shows that a difference still remains because although the joint~stock companies show that the situation is ripe for socialist ownership proper they are themselves still firmly within the eategory of the private property system and cannot grow over into the new one given a favourable political climate - they have to be revolutionised - while Marx saw the co-ops as exemplars rather than a base for growing over into the new systen.
Marx expresses this dialectically by saying that the stock company "ig the abolition (Aufhebung) of the capitalist mode of production within. the capitalist mode of production itself, and hence a self-dissolving contradiction..." (21)
It is clear that here we have a contradiction within the system of production and this does nothing to alleviate the situation of the proletariat in the face of people who no longer perform any essential function whatsoever but. are “parasites in the shape of promciors, speculators and simply nominal directors; a whole system of swindling and cheating by means of corporation promotion, stook insurance, and stock speculation." (22) The solution to this absurd contradiction still requires the major transition to socialism via expropriation, the condition of which is proletarian state power.
Marx compares stock companies to co-ops as follows: "The capitalist stock companies, as much as the co-operative factories should be considered as transitional forms from the capitalist mode of production to the assoc-
iated one, with the only distinction that the antagonism is resolved negatively in the one and positively in the other." (23) So the coops appear as more of a breakthrough because here the contradiction is resolved a "positively" and the parasites are got rid of. Indeed in Marx's day there were many who saw in the spread of co-operative production the mode of transition to socialism. Marx however was always more cautious and saw ‘ them mainly as proof that capitalists were not necessary rather than basing on them a main perspective of socialist strategy. Even in the up-beat Inaugural Address he accurately diagnosed their fate: ".,..Co-operative labour if kept within the narrow circle of the efforts of private workmen, will never be able to arrest the growth in geometrical progression of monopoly, to free the masses, nor even perceptibly to lighten the burden » of their miseries...To save the industrious masses, co-operative labours ought to be developed to national dimensions, and consequently, to be fostered by national means." | :
Of course no such fostering took place and lack of capital extinguished ali efforts, except the retail side. In retrospect it can be seen that co-operative factories could only exist in the early days of capitalism before the huge growth of monopoly capital. Monopoly capital has only recently spread into retail organisation and it is cbvious that no new co-op retail organisation could start now - while the existing organisation is not exactly the most noticable force for socialism. Even as exemplars co-operatives suffer from the fact that under a capitalist regime, without the support of planned social production, they can do little to "lighten the burden."
It is clear then that although co-operatives anticipate a new social regime Marx saw the actual process of transition as based upon the revolution within the capitalist sector. Avineri is perfectly correct to draw attention to these passages which stress the element of continuity involved in the taking over of a material base, the negations of capitalism within capitalism, etc., but it is still true that significant differences remain between the proletariats' situation end that of previous classes and these do put a high premium upon its political understanding and will - that this be 'Leninism' notwithstanding.
D. Avineri finally discloses his hand in the Epilogue in which he blames Marx.for "endowing the present generation with eschatological ~ significance" and overlooking the possibility of "the combination of his ° philosophical and historical theory with the Jacobin tradition of merely subjectivist revolutionary action; Leninism embodied such a combination".(24) However these points are made too briefly and vapourously to be worth. s serious analysis so I have preferred to pick up some of the more detailed points above. In sum we have a book which at first sight looks promising - at its strongest the best exegesis of many Marxian themes in imglish - but finally turns out to have irritatingly perverse aspects.
Bibliography and Notes
V.l. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 38, p. 180. P.L.P.H. Moscow 1961. David Fernbach, Avineri's view of Marx, New Left Review 56.
see H.B. Acton, The Iliusion of the Epoch; conclusion. . Also see Sartre, Materialisa and Revclution in Novak ed, Existentialism and Marxism S$, Avineri, The Sociel & Political Thought of Karl Marx p. vii. ibid. p. 20k.
G.P. Maximoff ed. The Political Philosophy of Bakunin. Pt. 3 Chap. hee Karl Marx, Selected Works p. 162. F.L.P.H. Moscow 1962. | ibid. ps 223.
Avineri-op.cit. ps 3h. 12. ibid. pp 206-209. 13. ibid. p. 212 ibid. p. 206. 15. ibid. p. 206. 16. ibid. pe 206-207
Marx & Engels, The Holy Family Ch. 4. .
Avineri op. cit. p. 218
Translation taken from The Communist Manifesto Ed. D. Ryazanoff, explanatory notes p. 133. Russell & Russell, New York 1963. : Avineri op. cit. p. 181
Karl Merx Capital Vol IfI p. 427-9 and ibid. p. 178.
ibid. 23, Werx, Capital p. 431. 2h» Avineri, op.cit. pe 258