TOWARD A CRITICAL MARXISM


                               by

                       George Katsiaficus

                   San Diego State University

                           April, 1979




No. 42      
     Distributed as part of the Red Feather Institute
Transforming Sociology Series.  The Red Feather Institute, 8085
Essex, Weidman, Michigan, 48893.



                    TOWARD A CRITICAL MARXISM



     Since the October revolution in 1917, Marxism in the Soviet
Union has been transformed from a means for liberation and
subversion of the established reality into an instrument of
domination and justification for the new social order.  In the
aftermath of 1917, the quantitative proliferation of the
Communist Parties throughout the world under the leadership of
the Comintern resulted in the qualitative reduction and
standardization of what was the theory and practice of the
European socialist movement.  By developing a critique of
orthodox Marxism as it exists, I hope to contribute to a critical
Marxism useful in the transformation of social reality.

Philosophical Foundations.  What unites the various categories of
Orthodox Marxism in the modern world is a reduction of Marxism
from a synthesis of rationalistic philosophy and empirical
science to a scientific naturalism independent of human will and
imagination.  Following in the footsteps of Engels, modern
orthodoxy considers natural reality to be the ultimate touchstone
upon which the facticity of the dialectical method can be
evaluated.  Stalin claimed:

     "Nature is the test of dialectics ... the materialist world
     outlook is simply the conception of nature as it is, without
     any reservations." (NOTE 1)

     Given only this empirical foundation, the humanistic
critique of the established reality, an essential element of
revolutionary Marxism is lost.  A dialectical Marxism worthy of
its name is. rooted both in the internal development of
philosophy as well as in the empirical foundations of natural
science. (NOTE 2)  By posing the "'existence of nature as it is,"
orthodox Marxism fails to comprehend the mental activity required
in the construction of facticity--the epistemological
problematic--and instead asserts the rules of natural science as
the only methodology useful for the study of social reality.

     The rules of natural science, such as those used by Marx in
Capital to exhibit some of the necessary laws which operate
'Within the capitalist system, have a validity rooted in the
structures of capitalism.  But the moment of truth in such a
methodology reaches its limit when the focus of investigation
becomes the human transformation of the totality of the existing
system, Orthodox Marxism insists that:

          "...the science of the history of society despite all
          the complexity of the phenomena of social life, can
          become as precise a science as, let us say, biology,
          and capable of making use.of the laws of development of
          society for practical purposes. (NOTE 3)

     This variety of "'scientific" Marxism fails to differentiate
between the naturally-given realities of biology and the humanly
constructed nature of the social world.  However, a better
reading of Marx is found here:

     "The distinction 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. (NOTE 4)

     But even in the writings of Marx, there are elements which
may be said to have been preconditions for the hegemony of
positivism within contemporary marxist orthodoxy.  In Critical
Theory of Society, Albrecht Wellmer critiques Marx's approval of
the comparison made by some between the phenomena of economic
life as analyzed in Capital to the history of biological
evolution as analyzed by Darwin.  Marx's disciples, particularly
Engels, admiringly referred to Capital as following in the
scientific tradition of Copernicus and Galileo.  More recently,
Althusser has referred to this analysis of Engels as "'pages of
extraordinary theoretical profundity."

     Within the writings of Marx, the roots of the scientific 
reduction can be traced to his conception of the self-
constitution of the human species as taking place only within the
sphere of material production.  This presupposition excludes
important aspects of human existence from consideration and
furthermore, the fetishization of work, not its quantitative
reduction or qualitative transformation, has become the position
of dogmatic Leftist theory.  Generally speaking, the Left in the
U.S. today romanticizes the working class and point of production
organizing at the same time as the women's liberation movement,
Third World movements, the student movement, and community
organizing are blasted as "petit bourgeois."

     Revolutionary praxis is a second dimension by which the
human species has shaped ourselves.  Habermas calls for a
reinterpretation of the dialectic through the self-conscious
integration of revolutionary praxis into our philosophical self-
understanding:

     "if the idea of the self-constitution of the human species
     in natural history is to combine both self-generation
     through productive activity and self-formation through
     critical revolutionary activity, then the concept of
     synthesis must also incorporate a second dimension."
     (NOTE 5)

     In calling for an integration of revolutionary activity into
the notion of species-constitution, Habermas reinterprets the
necessity of philosophical practice:

     "Philosophy is preserved in science as critique.  A social
     theory that puts forth the claim to be a self-reflection of
     the history of the species cannot simply negate philosophy. 
     Rather, the heritage of philosophy issues in the critique of
     ideology, a mode of thought that determines the method of
     scientific analysis itself." (NOTE 6)

     Any science of society which follows in the positivistic
tradition of fetishizing objective knowledge as the only goal of
science only reconfirms what absolute idealism had already
accomplished--the elimination of epistemology in favor of
unchanging universal knowledge--but this time in favor of the
ideology of technocratic science, not the dogma of religion.

The Ideology of Scientific Marxism.  In the modern world where
the technocratic ideology permits the rule of experts and
elites,'is it surprising that a justification for the reduction
of Marxism from the philosophy of the proletariat to the science
of the Party is done in the name of science? The dominant
ideology of the modern world, in contrast to the era in which
Marx articulated his revolutionary philosophy, is technocratic
materialism, not religious idealism.  The elites of today, whose
hegemony depends on the docility of their followers, rely on
people remaining convinced of their own incapability to think and
act properly without the presence of experts.

     Within the Communist Parties, a strata of high priests of 
Marxism has been created to interpret the needs of "the
revolution" for the members of the Party as well as for the
working class.  Under the conditions of monopoly capitalism, the
reduction of Marxian theory to a set of rigid categories has
resulted in the standardization of thought common to the
sectarian Left in the United States.  Under similar conditions in
France, but with a more conscious base among the working class,
the reification of Marxism is an important explanatory reason for
the Community Party's antipathy toward the popular movement of
May 1968, whose constituency and visions were not and are not
comprehensible from within the myopic world view of "scientific"
Marxism.

     The "scientific" treatment of Marxism may be seen as a
reinterpretation of Marx from within the dominant ideology of
modern corporate capitalism.  A failure to break with the
mentality of mass society has resulted in a fetishized treatment
of Marx and Lenin.  These "great men" of history have been turned
into commodities by the savants of Orthodoxy.  In the United
States, each sect resembles a collective Capitalist struggling to
reap as much profit (cadre) from the mass movement as possible,
each selling their version of "the real thing." The house dogma
which members freely recite is more in the tradition of a
catechism than a questioning and critique of the established
reality. in few groups do activists learn to think about
important issues as a process of open scientific investigation. 
Instead the answers (and the questions) are provided by "higher-
ups." Such standardization of thought parallels, not negates, the
dominant ideology
of our society.  The chart below summarizes these conflicting
views:
                      [Chart 1 about here]

Back to Marx.  It should be said here that Marx never tired of
criticizing what he called "crude Communism" for not centering on
the human essence, the human subject of social reality, but
operating in a world of things.  The discovery of the Economic
and Philosophic Manuscripts in 1930 gave impetus to a
revolutionary transformation of the conceptual framework within
which orthodox Marxism continues to operate today.  In the early
work of Marx, and in his last work, Capital, political economy is
derived from philosophical concepts.  The crucial breakthrough
made by Marx was the transformation of economic fact into human
factors.

     Capital was never defined as a thing by Marx.  On the
contrary, At every point in the development of his scientific
theory, he unmasked what had been regarded as the property of the
capitalist as stored-up dead labor, as "objectified labor, i.e.,
labor which is present in space." (NOTE 7)  Even the exchange
value of Nature was seen by Marx as contingent upon the embodied
human 'Labor required to extract raw materials from their natural
state.  Orthodox Marxism makes economic facts out of human
relationships.

     By transforming the dialectical method of Marx into a
universally applicable system of "base-superstructure," orthodox
Marxism elevates its truth to a new metaphysic.  Reality is
poured into a bottle of static "scientific" propositions,
reducing knowledge from a living human praxis to a dead
conformity with the dictates of the formalistic model.

     But while not a single of the basic dialectical concepts has
     been revised or rejected in Soviet Marxism, the function of
     the dialectic itself has undergone a significant change; it
     has been transformed from a mode of critical thought into a
     universal 'world outlook' and universal method with rigidly
     fixed rules and regulations, and this transformation
     destroys the dialectic more thoroughly than any revision ...
     The first step in this direction was made by Engels in his
     Dialectics of Nature...." (NOTE 8)

     It is not simply the formalistic methodology of Orthodoxy
but the content of its imposed forms which are called into
question by a critical social science.  The language itself-that
is, the words "base" and "superstructure"--belie a simplicity of
analysis which, within the methodology of universally valid
scientific knowledge, destroys in advance of its possibility the
transformation of the qualities of human beings and of
collectively constructed reality.  Especially in the modern world
where the state plays an increasing role in the economy, it is
increasingly difficult to accept the vulgar dichotomy of base and
superstructure.

     It is within this framework that Orthodox Marxism can be
seen as predicated on a metaphysical, trans-historical idealism. 
As Luckacs observed in History and Class Consciousness, what is
common to all bourgeois system of analysis is the inability to
formulate the categories of the present as other than eternal
ones. modern orthodoxy is predicated on a negation of the power
of human reason and imagination as being ideological and
unscientific.  Parallel to the effects of sociological
positivism, reality is thereby reduced to what exists as it is,
and the definition of the totality of human existence excludes
the possibility--indeed the necessity--of the qualitative
transformation of the categories of social reality.

     "In a society whose totality was determined by its economic
     relations to the extent that the uncontrolled economy
     controlled all human relations, even the non-economic was
     contained in the economy.  It appears, that, if and when
     this control is removed, the rational organization of
     society toward which critical theory is oriented is more
     than a new form of economic regulation.  The difference lies
     in the decisive factor, precisely the one that makes society
     rational--the subordination of the economy to the
     individuals' needs.  The transformation of society
     eliminates the original relation of substructure and
     superstructure." (NOTE 9)

     The "absolute knowledge" of Orthodox Marxism is predicated
on methodological presuppositions including the formal logic of
natural science.  By making Marxism into an abstract scheme
universally applicable through the Communist Parties of the
world, the living subjects of the concrete history of human
society-the "little people" (as well as the dialectical logic of
Marx which-conceived human beings as the creators of their social
reality)--are destroyed, buried beneath the rule of
bureaucratically organized science.  Orthodox Marxism regards the
workings of things--whether the economic base or the reified
superstructures--as determining the consciousness and praxis of
human beings.  By calling for a reintegration of philosophical
concerns within Marxism, critical Marxism, in theory at least,
prepares the ground for a popular reconstruction of reality, By
negating philosophy, Orthodox Marxism fails to strengthen
liberatory mass movements, and in practice, as we have seen in
recent years, seeks to crush them.

     Philosophy provided the basis for Marx's theory and
practice.  Orthodox Marxism misses the dynamics of society and
revolution in their human essence by rejecting the rationalistic
foundations, of Marxism.  The class struggle, proletarian
revolution, and freedom are retained but as metaphysical truths. 
The "scientific" method of orthodoxy has become a static shell of
empty logic universally applicable yet increasingly irrelevant to
the liberation of human beings. in a period where the working
class has become contained within the consumer society of the
"free world" and where the ideology of the Party has become a
means of justifying the bureaucratic control in "'socialist"
societies, critical theory has examined each development from the
perspective of the unfreedom of the modern world, and the
potential of a qualitative step forward for human beings through
the popular transformation of history.  According to Marcuse:

     "Critical theory's interest in the liberation of mankind
     binds it to certain ancient truths.  It is at one with
     philosophy in maintaining that human beings can be more than
     a manipulable subject in the production process of class
     society.  To the extent that philosophy has nevertheless
     made its peace with man's [sic] determination by economic
     conditions, it has allied itself with repression." (NOTE 10)

     Critical theory in the modern world has been defined by its
philosophical and historical critique of theory and reality,
capitalist and socialist." in so doing, it has helped preserve
the possibility of a real "leap into freedom" at a time when even
the notion of human liberation has been in danger of scientific
reduction. it has preserved the possibility of a critical
Marxism.


                             CHART 1

ORTHODOX MARXISM (including ALTHUSSER) the world view of the mass
and their masters


1. Essence and appearance not distinguished: things (structures)
not human beings.

2. Great Men of History; powerlessness of ordinary people like
you and I.

3. No morality--'scientific objectivity

4. Inability to transcend the dominant forms of comprehending
reality: categories of the past seen as eternal (biologically,
theologically or socially necessary).  Base/superstructure; only
the past/present; only material needs (security).

5. Fragmentation: inability to comprehend individual phenomena,
to understand connectedness, or to see the totality.

5a. Individualism/atomization.


TWO-DIMENSIONAL MARXISM the world view of the revolutionary
(collective) subject in the U.S.

1. Essence and appearance distinguished: human beings at the
center of analysis.  Humans seen as creators of social life or
wealth.

2.  Human classes, races, sexes and individuals as makers of
history.  Power of the people.

3. Human morality--philosophical science.

4.  Consciousness of historical conditions give freedom to expand
forms and content of social life.  The only necessity is change;
past/present/future;
human needs as a whole.

5. Universality begins with the totality and embraces
individuality.

5a. Collectivity--real individuality.


                              NOTES

1.  J. Stalin, Dialectical and Historical Materialism
(International Publishers, 1940), pp. 9,15.

2.  H. Lefebre, Dialectical Materialism (Grossman Publishers,
1968).

3.  J. Stalin, op. cit., p. 20.

4.  K. Marx, Critique of Political Economy (Charles Kerr, 1904),
pp. 10-13.

5.  J. Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interest (Beacon Press,
1971), p. 55.

6.  Marx, Ibid, p. 63.

7.  K. Marx, Grundrisse (Vintage Books, 1973), p. 272.

8.  H. Marcuse, Soviet Marxism (Vintage Books, 1961), pp. 122-
123.

9.  H. Marcuse, Negations (Beacon Press, 1968), p. 144.

10. Marcuse, Negations, op. cit., p. 153.