7. It is worthwhile to highlight the nuances in Marx theoretical
synthesis. In emphasising the importance of consciousness and communication, he
does not discount the reality of regularities and laws underlying social life.
Marx often points out that social institutions, especially the market in
bourgeois society, possess law-like necessity. Institutional arrangements have
a logic of their own that resists human intentions; social action is not
transparent and individual actions do not always bring about the intended
results. Human beings do not create ex
nihilo like God but within the bounds of given historical conditions and
objectively imposed historical tasks.
Marxs says in For a Ruthless
Criticism of Everything Existing;
‘ mankind begins no
new work, but consciously accomplishes its old work’ (P15).
8. A truly practical theory must communicate an adequate sense of self-awareness to the social agent whose condition and aspirations it expresses. In other words, this theory does not, like philosophy, address itself to each and every subject: its subject and its object are the same. Critical theory is addressed to the collective social actors who have the historical potential to radically transform the fundamental structural contradiction in modern society. In short, the condition of the proletariat is the object of Marx’s critical theory and the proletariat is also the subject to whom the theory is addressed as a form of self-enlightenment. The theory expresses and explains the misery and the oppression of their living conditions. It therefore takes up the position of those who do not find their affirmation in the existing social organization; it claims to locate the reason and the causes for their misery and prescribe, at least, the negative conditions for its elimination. By pointing to the subjective forces capable of such a social transformation, by enlightening this agent about itself and the practical necessities of its own lived situation, the theory transforms these agents and posits them as subjects, as agents of radical change. Theory both explains the agent’s real situation and clarifies their consciousness of it.
9. This double relation to its object - as an explanation and as communication/self-interpretation - means that Marx’s critical theory imposes on itself a twin condition of adequacy. First, it must be able to show that the existing social arrangement does not meet the demands and needs it creates, how it engenders a dynamic subjective power compelled by its own structural disadvantage to abolish existing arrangements. Secondly, this theory must find its subject: if it fails in this communicative task, it also fails in its aim. In defining itself in this active role, critical theory becomes a really practical theory aimed at enlightening and clarifying its object (the proletariat) about itself. No longer above practice or external to the situation it describes, critical theory purports to play an active role in changing the practical situation. It throws its weight on the historical scales in an effort to resolve the crisis situation. This requires the revolutionary transformation of existing social arrangements in favour of a new socialist society.
10. This general understanding of theory as critical theory does not fully emerge until the Paris Manuscripts. However, Marx had been focused on the theory/praxis problem for some time. Already in his 1843 letter to Arnold Ruge, he had formulated the idea of the historically immanent role of theory as a self-clarification to the actors of their historical situation without nominating the proletariat as its addressee:
We do not say to the world: “Stop fighting: your struggle is of no account. We want to shout the true slogan of the struggle at you.” We only show the world what it is fighting for, and consciousness is something that the world must acquire, like it or not.
The reform of consciousness consists only in enabling the world to clarity its consciousness, in waking from its dream about itself, in explaining to it the meaning of its own actions. (Tucker 15).
Marx writes these words before he had come into contact with the proletariat, socialist politics and before having performed a scientific analysis of the bourgeois economy. It might be suggested that Marx’s nomination of the proletariat to an emancipatory historical role was not originally a scientific judgement at all, but an ethical and theoretical inspiration. Somebody like Alvin Gouldner has argued that the Marxist theory is less an expression of the consciousness of working class than of the alienated intellectuals. I will leave it to you to think about this!
11. However, if we look at Marx’s life at this time it seems like a fairly organic product of his own personal unification of theory and praxis. After resigning his editorship of the Rheinische Zeitung, he immigrated to Paris. This adventure led him to entirely new areas of theory. His critique of philosophy and journalism led from philosophy to the French historians and political economy. In these later efforts, Engel and Hess assisted in enlarging the theoretical tradition that he then submitted to critique. In France he also came into contact with socialism. The newly emergent industrial proletariat had already given rise to a considerable body of socialist literature. Workers were already aware of the defects of the bourgeois system and their representatives were expressing and explaining their refusal to accept the miserable conditions and servitude. Collective misery and spontaneous protest gave rise to socialism. Marx now incorporates this doctrine into his synthetic theory of revolution.
12. Although German economic backwardness meant that the proletariat there was relatively underdeveloped, German thinkers had noted the social problems of a significant segment of property less, pauperised individuals. Hegel had spoken of der Pöbel as a structural problem of modern civil society. This rabble was a destabilising element in society who, because they lacked means, could not participate in the personal autonomy that signified the ‘progress’ of bourgeois civil society. In this sense, der Pöbel was a deficient subject. However it was really the conservative critics of unrestrained bourgeois development who drew particular attention to the potential seriousness of this socio-structural problem. In 1842 the historian Karl Von Stein published Socialism and Communism in Contemporary France. Stein viewed the proletariat as the world historical force.
Lecture 4: Marx’s Critical Theory: Version One
1. Last time I gave a general account of Marx’s understanding of critical theory and I now want to suggest that this understanding was a constant of his theoretical work and the perspective that transforms his various theoretical contributions into a unified whole. However, I don’t want to give the impression that, in my view, in a long career Marx’s ideas about theory never changed. Indeed, it is hard to think of a major thinker whose views did not change significantly over time and Marx is no exception. In the 20th century there have tended to be two main schools of thought on Marx’s development. I have already mentioned Lukacs revolutionary interpretation that rediscovered the Hegelian Marx. This reading tended to emphasize a continuity thesis: that is, that these early works, however much Marx’s views were latter modified, are genuinely Marxist and that the philosophical problematic of alienation is constant in Marx’s theoretical works, even the late works like Capital. Against this is the more orthodox reading, which argues for discontinuity: that Marx moved from philosophy to science. On this view the early writings are at worst juvenilia, or at best pre-Marxist. The most theoretically sophisticated of the discontinuity theorists was the French Marxist Louis Althusser. He maintained that Marx achieved a radical “epistemological break” between the early humanist, philosophical writings and his genuinely scientific works. Althusser initially locates this break in 1845/6, however, he then noticed residues of the humanist Marx even in Capital. He was finally compelled into the almost untenable stance of maintaining that only a very few, relatively minor, works of Marx like the Critique of the Gotha Programme were truly Marxist. Today I don’t want to enter into this now long dead debate. However, it does bear on the issue of Marx’s relation to critical theory. If Althusser is right, then the mature Marx is not a critical theorist in the sense I have outlined so far. However, I will maintain that the concept of critical theory so far outlined is a theoretical constant in Marx’s thinking. However, this does not mean that his view of critical theory itself did not change over time. I will argue for a view of Marx first put forward by George Markus who was associated with Lukacs late in his life and who taught here for 20 years up to 1998. He maintained that there are various versions of critical theory in Marx and we will look at the first two of these. I will concentrate on these two versions because they largely substantiate the understanding of Marx that runs through the works of Lukacs, Horkheimer, Adorno and Habermas that has become associated with the concept of critical theory.
2. In what sense can we speak of versions of critical theory in Marx? In the previous weeks we saw that critical theory connotes much more than allegiance to specific theoretical positions like a negative attitude to capitalism, or allegiance to the proletariat or a practical materialism. More important than these is (a) a critique of all philosophies as ideological on the grounds that they reproduce rather than change the world and, more positively, which conceives itself (b) as immanent theory, a theory that designates the forces within reality itself pointing to, and struggling towards, the radical transformation of bourgeois society. For such a theory, society is not simply an object of investigation to be described and explained but also a subject who can be assisted to a more enlightened self-consciousness or its own radical needs through the cognitive, communicative content of the theory. But despite the continuity of this conception of critical theory in Marx, his views nevertheless underwent significant changes: these concern not just particular theoretical theses—like his views on the immiseration of the proletariat (which he initially accepts but later rejects)—but also in the way that the critical theory itself can be realised both theoretically and practically. More specifically, these changes concern:
a) Methodology. By this I mean the varying interrelationship between analytico-theoretical and critical-practical aspects and with this changes in the various weightings of philosophy and economics.
b) Unity of theory and practice. Differing conceptions of how theory was to be linked to the working class movement, and different arguments for the role of the proletariat and political strategies suggested by them.
c) The aim of revolutionary action. By this I mean differing conceptions of socialist society: specifically of the nature of that society, relation between freedom and necessity and the character of the related activities.
The continuity thesis on Marx’s development gains a great deal of its immediate plausibility from the fact that from 1844 Marx worked on a critique of political economy that remained incomplete. Despite the many incidental pieces, like his journalism or various programmes like The Communist Manifesto, the great bulk of Marx’s oeuvre are drafts for his critique of political economy that was continuously revised and, of which, only the first book—Capital (1867)-- was published by Marx. However, beyond this overarching sense of continuity, there are significance differences in the various manuscripts and versions in the key dimensions mentioned above. I will now begin to look more closely at the first version of this critique.
Critical Theory: Version One (Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844)
3. What we today know as The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 were drafts for a book for which Marx was contracted in Feb 1845 Critique of Politics and Political Economy. A large part of these manuscripts are lost but it is worthwhile to devote a little time to reconstructing Marx’s purpose in these drafts. They constitute the first recognisable and coherent version of his new critical theory. Much of this initial version, as I’ve suggested will be abandoned or transformed but some of the central ideas remain an essential core in Marx’s later versions of critical theory.
4. It appears that Marx wanted to write a work in three parts: economics, philosophical critique of capitalism (theory of alienation) and a philosophical critique of Hegel (opposing his theory of alienation to Hegel’s).
a. Analysis of Political Economy
His analysis begins in three sections connected to the revenue sources of political economy: Wages of labour, Profits of Capital, Rent of Land. Within this structure, he outlines the economic basis of existence of the three classes associated with these revenue forms. Marx simply excerpted the political economists, mainly Adam Smith, and then adds his own commentary and analysis of what the political economists are saying. Marx does not attempt to develop his own theory of political economy even when he notes problems in the theories he is analysing. Rather he uses Smith and the others to argue for conclusions radically opposed to those presented on the basis of some of the same facts and arguments.
5. Marx general analysis is now well known. The interests of capitalists and the interests of the majority in society are radically opposed. In short, bourgeois society polarises between wealth and poverty. But this is nothing new. What makes it historically unique is that this polarisation becomes even more extreme despite rapidly increasing material wealth. The ranks of the capitalists are increasingly depleted while the ranks of those without property continue to swell. This increase also does not exclude new levels of dehumanisation but even appears to systematically encourage them. On the basis of the views put forward by the political economists, Marx maintains that even in progressive economies wage labour is deadly for workers; work is arduous, mechanised and meaningless and competition between workers reduces wages to the level of bare subsistence. The worker is nothing more than a factor of production, a commodity whose treatment is determined not with regard to his/her humanity but by extra-human economic laws that pay it no whatsoever regard. Despite that fact that the workers are the ultimate producers of all social wealth, they also share in none of its benefits. (Marx/Engels Collected Works Vol 3, P. 270)
“On the basis of political economy itself, in its own words, we have shown the worker sinks to the level of a commodity and becomes indeed the most wretched of commodities; that the wretchedness of the worker is in inverse proportion to the power and magnitude of his production; that the necessary result of competition is the accumulation of wealth in a few hands, and thus the restoration of monopoly in a more terrible form; and that finally the distinction between capitalist and land rentier, like that between the tiller of the soil and the factory worker, disappears and that the whole of society must fall apart into the two classes—the property owners and the propertyless workers”.
6. What is Marx’s theoretical method? Initially Marx seems to accept bourgeois political economy as a correct theory of capitalist society despite the internal contradictions amongst its individual theorists. In the totality of these contradictions, these theories simply describe the dynamic but contradictory empirical reality of capitalism. Political economy is the true science of capitalism: it reveals the essence of this social arrangement. It treats the capitalist economy and its related forms as a closed system, which obeys its own necessary logic and laws. The logic and telos of this system is determined by capital accumulation and is totally unconcerned with extra-economical considerations. From this perspective, the worker can only be a factor of production, a means. The needs, talents and human potentialities of the worker are irrelevant to a science concerned only with profit. The logic and aim of this economic system is irrational in the sense of being completely opposed to the general interests of the great majority of individuals in this society. The obvious conclusion to be drawn is that all purely economic theories are false. In assuming that a closed, purely economic system can be rational, they express a bourgeois ideology. They take the interests of the bourgeois class to be a universal rather than a partial interests. The idea of developing a critical political economy would be non-sense because the very standpoint of political economy excludes consideration of those factors that best illustrate its falsity. Therefore, Marx proposes an extra-economic, critique of political economy employing the philosophical concept of alienation. Only a philosophical critique can locate itself beyond the standpoint of political economy and actually confront this science with the real human needs, which it ideologically suppresses.
7. From this argument, Marx argues that critique has two essential tasks.
a. Firstly, to show the necessary interconnection between wealth and poverty. This means to show how the disparate economic phenomena of capitalist society form a closely integrated and interconnected system; a system, which nevertheless, has certain historical presuppositions making it historically transient.
b. Critique must locate the place of this system in the whole of human development. This amounts to designating the meaning at the present system of bourgeois economic relations in human history.
8. At this early stage in his development, Marx was ill equipped to achieve this first aim of critique in a completely satisfactory manner. He lacks the conceptual armoury to theorise the character of bourgeois society as a self-reproducing totality. He lacks a concept of social totality, of forces and relations of production. Having only recently commenced the study of political economy, coming from an essentially philosophical training, Marx uses a philosophical method to perform the task he sets himself. Taking over the phenomenological method familiar from Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, he attempts to deduce all the interconnections between the categories of bourgeois economy out of the innermost characteristics and activity of the producing individuals: the workers.
i) He takes as his point of departure the historically specific relation of the representative individual to the world of objects. Thus Marx focuses his attention on the relationship between the worker and his products in capitalist society. It is important to emphasis here that Marx makes production not distribution or consumption the centrepiece of his analysis. This shows his concerns differ radically from the political economists who concentrate on the latter. The key to this emphasis is that the analysis of production leads beyond the sphere of pure economic analysis. It implies a critique of the limitations imposed by the purely economic model. Marx’s essential point is to argue that through the workers very appropriation of nature, through their transformation of the world of objects, they become alienated and enslaved to a world of their own creation. In other words, the worker becomes a commodity. It is worthwhile to note here that Marx transforms what was, for the whole tradition of German Idealism, primarily a relation of theory or consciousness to the world of appearances into the practico-material relation of the representative individual to the sphere of objectivity. So material production becomes the paradigm for his understanding of human development. This emphasis on culture as a product of material practices takes over and transforms the Hegelian notion of reality as primarily a spiritual process, of changing forms of self-consciousness into a material process based on human practical activity.
ii) Marx explains the alienated subject/object relation between the worker and his objects in terms of the immanent character of alienated labour itself. He shows the necessary interconnections between all the disparate economic phenomena and relations of capitalist society as a system. In other words, he derives private property from the alienation of labour. He views private property and alienation as mutually conditioning. The free activity of the worker is transformed from a potential means of life and humanisation into a vehicle of dehumanisation and even death. This transformation is, in its turn, bound up with the historically specific relations that regulate production in this society. However, it is important to recognise that the concept of alienation is a construct of philosophical critique. This concept signifies a critical perspective on the system of bourgeois categories that transforms both the objects of the worker’s activity, and even the activity itself, into the property of another. Private property is the legal institutional condition of this historically specific form that manifests itself in real practical life in the institution of wage labour.
“Thus through estranged labour man not only creates his relationship to the object and to the act of production as to the powers that are alien and hostile to him; he also creates the relationship in which other men stand to his production and to his product, and the relationship in which he stands to these other men”. (Collected Works Vol 3 p.279)
Marx goes on to make the point that every category of political economy is only a particular and developed expression of these two fundamental elements.
iii). Marx’s final step is to argue that the emancipation of society from this private property represents a universal human emancipation. All contemporary human servitude is just a modification of the relation of the worker to production. Marx here takes the first step towards fulfilling the second task he had set his critique. To locate the significance of the bourgeois system in human development and designate its overall anthropological meaning. The first notebook soon breaks off before the argument is complete. Marx does not present a theory of the concrete overcoming of this society. Nevertheless, he has already intimated that the present bears within it the key to universal emancipation. This means that the epoch of alienation can be situated within the course of human development and seen as necessarily rooted in the nature of that development. It is in this context that Marx later presents his conception of socialist society as universal emancipation.
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