Helmut Fleischer Marxism History I Translated by Hric Mosbacber r v HARPER TORCHBOOKS Harp of' 6* Row, Pzzbl!5be1'f New York, E1/af25¢on, San Fmncjfco, London A hardcover edition. was Host published in 1969 by Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main under the title, Afarxif tnzzf and Gestbichte. It was published in Great Britain in 1973 and is here reprinted by arrangement with Allen Lane The Penquin Press, MARXISM AND HISTORY. Copyright 1969 by Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main. Translation copyright © 1975 by Eric Mosbacher. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address Harper 8: Row, Publishers, Inc., 10 East 53d Street, New York,N.Y. 10022. Published simultaneously in Canada by Fitzhenry & \X/hiteside Limited, Toronto, First HARPER TORCHBOOK eiiition published 1973. STRNDARD ROOR NUMBER: 06451787-X (PAPERBACK) STANDARD BOOK NUMBER: 06-156156-4 (HARDCOVER ) \ Contents Preface 7 I Approaches to a Marxist Theory of History I I 2 The Driving Forces of History 38 3 The Totality of the Historical Process 64 4 Historical Necessity 107 5 The Marxist View of History and the Historical Present I28 Notes 142. Index I 55 Preface Trying to define the position of Marxist philosophy, particu- larly the Marxist philosophy of history that is to be discussed here, means entering a highly controversial Held. In view of the diversity of the theoretical and practical work of its founders, who did not devote the whole of their lives to the development of a philosophical system, and the multiformity of later forms of 'Marxism', clarity in the matter is not SO easily attained. Nevertheless it should be possible by means of systematic interpretation and systematic evaluation to arrive at a closer definition, and in particular to rule out certain things that are certainly not Marist. The present work is intended to be a contribution to this task. It is not intended to cover the whole ground, but to be merely a systematic survey presenting a number of corrections and refutations - some of them categoric cal, others more hypothetical in nature. The choice of subject and the selection of texts quoted was to a large extent dictated by a critical look at current interpretations of Marxism. My original intention was merely to draw up an interim balance- sheet of the state of the discussion of Marxist philosophy in the German-speaking world (ten years after that drawn up in 1957 by ]. Habermas), but I then decided on a greater concentration of subject-matter. The present study forms part of the very intensive eiiorts being made at the present time to reconstruct Marxist philosophy as a humanist-emancipatory philosophy of practice. The attempt that is made here to establish history as a dimension of human practice is intended to contrast in particular with two develop- - ments of the Marxist concept of history which based on different approaches to the problem by the founders of Marxism s Marxirvz and History - have hitherto dominated debate on the subject. From one of - - these the early writings of 1844 a general anthropological definition of the meaning of history has been deduced; history is presented as a process directed towards man's becoming fully man in the whole wealth of his being, harmoniously united with his like and with a nature that has been humanized, though by way of the negativity of 'alienation'. The other, based on the Critique of Po/iiical Evonofty, has given rise to a highly material and sober view of history as a process of correlative develop~ rent of productive forces and productive relations governed by the objective laws of a logic of social relations uninfluenced by human intentions. This latter view of history has become dominant in the historical materialism of the Soviet school, and with its logic of structures and processes sometimes reaches - such a degree of abstraction that it is possible to say of it as - Marx said of Hobbes that materialism has here become 'anti- humani It is in reaction against this anti-humanism that the 'young and 'humanist' Marx has been resurrected, but human- ism tends to lead easily to sentimentalization and theoretical aberration and to end up in sterile talk about alienation and Man's nature'. The Theses on Feuerbach and other writings of 1845-6 on the materialist view of history put forward a view of historical 'practice' that is both self-critically directed against the earlier ideas of 1844 and sets critical limits to the later references to the laws underlying historical processes. We are faced here, not just with a provisional formulation of what Marx stated in 'classical' form in his Critique 0f Po!ii*ica! Bcon0wy, but with one of the foundations of Marxist historical thought. There is justification for seeking a better understanding of due 'later' and 'mature' Marx from the study of the 'young' Marx, but one should not solely and excessively concentrate on the author of the Parer Manuscripts of 1844, but take into account above all the Marx and Engels of the criticism of Feuerbach. The first of the five chapters is concerned with examining what Marx and Engels wrote on the theory of history. This, in - the author's view, yields three different approaches to the meaning of history as a whole, the way it works in practice, and its underlying laws. The next three chapters are more specifically concerned with the problems arising from these approaches, Preface 9 In the one dealing with its 'driving forces' we have above all to explain the concept of history as practice, ldstory-making activity and its subjective centre. The chapter on the totality of the historical process is devoted to the question of the general meaning of history, which was very prominent on Marx's and Engels's horizon in 1844, though it then receded from their Held of vision without ever completely disappearing from it. In the chapter on historical necessity we discuss some of the key prob- lems that arise from attempting to organize history into an obje ctive logical system. The last chapter discusses very selectively some problems of the Marxist interpretation of con- temporary history. One Approaches to a Marxist Theory of History From the very beginning 'history' has been a key word in - Marxist philosophy in the sense that a great deal is locked up in it; so much so that trying to dock it has become one of the hazards of the modern history of ideas. Even after a whole century of interpretation and system-building, our picture of Marx's and the Marxist theory is a very uncertain one. Wfhen one considers on the one hand, for instance, K. R. Popper's reconstruction of Marxist 'historicisln' and on the other the ideas of the contemporary advocates of a 'Marxist humanism', it is clear that there could hardly be greater disagreement than that which has arisen from this attempt to draw conclusions from a fragmentary series of texts. The nature of the texts themselves is one of the doings that makes for such divergence. They are without exception frag- menrary, they belong to different phases of their authors' development, and often enough definite aspects of their views are emphasized for polemical purposes. All this has become so topical, however, only because Marx's work has stimulated the enthusiasm and the hatred of the political parties as has hardly anything else in our century. A distinctive feature of most interpretations is the great self- confidence with which unequivocal and categorical statements are made about the Marxist theory of history, often based on quotations that of-fer die flimsiest foundation. Many, for in- stance, have no hesitation in seeing the essence of the theory in a handy phrase coined by one of Marx's reviewers. The polemically accentuated phraseology of the Marxist classics has given critics many opportunities to pin down Marx in extreme and surprising positions. Even where he has been