Georg Lukacs

[khlib]

I have been reading "History and Class Consciousness" by Lukacs, and I was wondering why so many leftists have a poor opinion of him. Is it just because he denounced Stalinism?

[RED DAVE]

I have been reading "History and Class Consciousness" by Lukacs, and I was wondering why so many leftists have a poor opinion of him. Is it just because he denounced Stalinism?Well, if you're a Stalinist, that's a good reason. However, for the rest of us, it's due to the inconsistencies of his politics through the years. Basically, for non-Stalinists, he was something of a Stalinist, albeit an inconsistent and ambiguous one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Lukacs

All that being said, HaCC is a good read.

RED DAVE

[RED DAVE]

Download History and Class Consciousness

http://sharebee.com/99abc05f

RED DAVE

[S.Artesian]

Actually, I think the book itself is a horrible "recuperation" of Marxism into philosophical categories.

It's one thing to explain the "link" between Marx and Hegel. It's quite another thing to not recognize the radical extraction and regrounding of the entire subject-- which is human history-- that Marx achieves through his analysis of the social labor process and through his critique of political economy.

It's something else again to ignore the regrounding by Marx in Capital and elsewhere before and after Capital of notions of alienation etc as commerical practices involving exchange, and to ignore thereby the breakthrough Marx initiates in his Introduction to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right continues with his studies of the class struggles in France, and crowns with his "economic" manuscripts on capital--that breakthrough being historical materialism.

For those who want an introduction to the relation of Hegel's dialectic to Marx's work I think you're much better off reading Marcuse's Reason and Revolution, warts and all.

FWIW

Of course, it's been 40 years since I read HaCC, so what I remember most clearly is my dislike for it, and not any of the points I thought were valid.

[Mr. Natural]

The controversy surrounding Lukacs, as I understand it, has to do with his denial of a "dialectics of nature" in History and Class Consciousness (1923). This denial and Lukacs' aversion to natural science then became holy writ for effete Western Marxism. Lukacs wrote of dialectics: "It is of the first importance to realize that the method is limited here to the realms of history and society. The misunderstandings that arise from Engels' account of dialectics can be put down to the fact that Engels--following Hegel's mistaken lead--extended the method to apply also to nature."

But Marx and Engels defined dialectics as "the science of the general laws of the motion and development of nature, human society, and thought." (emphasis mine; Anti-Duhring)

However, Western Marxists, apparently in reaction to Stalinism and Stalin's vulgar "diamat," came to oppose a natural, scientific dialectic and adopted Lukacs as their champion.

Lukacs, though, was a conscientious Marxist who came to regret his early rejection of the developing natural science and a natural dialectic. In a 1938 essay, he referred to History and Class Consciousness as "reactionary by virtue of its idealism, its faulty interpretation of reflection, its denial of the dialectics of nature." (emphasis mine)

I like Lukacs a lot, and I LOVE natural dialectics. We all have errors in our thinking, but few of us correct them. Lukacs was a conscientious Marxist who, despite difficult times and places, maintained a radical, questioning mind throughout his life. I admire his character, despite the damage his epigones have done to the development of a viable natural dialectic.

The book I have found to be of great value in understanding the history of dialectics and in sorting out the various dialecticians and anti-dialecticians is Helena Sheehan's Marxism and the Philosophy of Science (1983).

[S.Artesian]

"Natural, scientific dialectic" whether such a thing exists or not, has nothing to do with Marx's critique of Hegel, his critique of political economy, his identification of the social organization of labor as the nexus of the contradictions of capital. That's maybe one of the few things Lukacs got right.

The guy had the spine, the moral courage of a jellyfish, and his hyper-philosophical attempt at the recuperation of Marxism in HaCC, like his later "renunciation" of that work and pledge of allegiance to the fSU, are different facets of the same weakness.

What Lukacs never apprehends [apprehension being a function of social praxis, social critique] is the self-emancipation of the workers; the actual class struggle; the real embodiment of the conflict between labor and the conditions of labor.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I have been reading "History and Class Consciousness" by Lukacs, and I was wondering why so many leftists have a poor opinion of him. Is it just because he denounced Stalinism?

He also denounced Orthodox Marxism. That's the bigger basis for having a poor opinion of his junk "philosophy."

[Imposter Marxist]

Hes a real cool cat.

[Mr. Natural]

S.Artesian, I don't want a fight. A discussion, though, would be excellent. I have a minimal acquaintance with Lukacs, by the way. Almost all of it has to do with his dismissal of the idea of a natural dialectic. Lukacs was an important historical character who spent much of his life in the eyes of various storms, though. Is there a really good book on this?

Now to my point. You wrote: "'Natural, scientific dialectic' whether such a thing exists or not, has nothing to do with Marx's criticism of Hegel, his critique of political economy, his identification of the social organization of labor as the nexus of the contradictions of capitalism. That's maybe one of the few things Lukacs got right."

I gotta disagree. My take on this is that Marx encountered and engaged Hegel's philosophy of internal relations and dialectic, turned Hegel right side up, and thereby developed historical materialism and most if not all of his major concepts.

Hegel enabled Marx to grasp life and society as organic, systemic process. Marx then rooted his dialectic in natural, material relations and organization. That these dialectical relations are now confirmed by the new sciences of the organizational relations of life and the cosmos should be of the greatest significance to a left that cannot get organized.

The early Lukacs and most Western Marxists insist that the materialist dialectic applies solely to history and society. Marcuse and the Frankfurt School are in this camp. But this stance divorces humanity from nature and opposes Marx and Engels.

My source for Marx's and Marxism's roots in the Hegelian philosophy of internal relations and its abstraction process is Bertell Ollman. Have you read him? He is the revolutionary pioneer in this matter. Prior to reading Ollman's Dance of the Dialectic (2003), I had experienced the materialist dialectic as a rather useless muddle, but Ollman's half-dozen works bring the dialectic to the life Marx found in it.

The new sciences I relentlessly promote then confirm and give body to the materialist dialectic. Marx and Engels jumped all over the first of these "new sciences," evolution, and avidly followed other scientific developments.

So what has happened to current Marxists and Marxism? The left almost universally avoids the organizational science that Marx and Engels would surely have engaged and brought into revolutionary praxis. I attribute this most depressing reality to capitalism's global (hence entropic) triumph. The human mind and social criticism have settled into a de-energized stasis of sorts.

In any case, it seems obvious to me that a paralyzed left desperately needs to engage the new science(s) of organization and the natural, materialist dialectic of "nature, human society, and thought" that Marx and Engels saw.

My red-green best.

[S.Artesian]

S.Artesian, I don't want a fight. A discussion, though, would be excellent.

That's cool. Certainly worth a discussion, certainly not the make or break issue in class struggle.



I have a minimal acquaintance with Lukacs, by the way. Almost all of it has to do with his dismissal of the idea of a natural dialectic. Lukacs was an important historical character who spent much of his life in the eyes of various storms, though. Is there a really good book on this?
I actually don't know. There used to be this philosophical magazine called Telos that was very big on Lukacs. Don't know if back issues are available on line, but there might be some information there.



Now to my point. You wrote: "'Natural, scientific dialectic' whether such a thing exists or not, has nothing to do with Marx's criticism of Hegel, his critique of political economy, his identification of the social organization of labor as the nexus of the contradictions of capitalism. That's maybe one of the few things Lukacs got right."

I gotta disagree. My take on this is that Marx encountered and engaged Hegel's philosophy of internal relations and dialectic, turned Hegel right side up, and thereby developed historical materialism and most if not all of his major concepts.

Hegel enabled Marx to grasp life and society as organic, systemic process. Marx then rooted his dialectic in natural, material relations and organization. That these dialectical relations are now confirmed by the new sciences of the organizational relations of life and the cosmos should be of the greatest significance to a left that cannot get organized.Marx certainly turned Hegel "right side up," extracted the rational kernel, but certainly not, IMO, by rooting his dialectic in "natural relations and organization." For Marx, there is no such thing as "natural relations and organization" when it comes to human beings and human labor. Humans are species-being; labor is always a social process.

Marx is no Feuerbach, no advocate of "nature" as the basis for the condition of human life. Marx explicitly points out how minor, but essential, Feuerbach is in comparison to Hegel as a thinker, and as an influence on Marx's own work.

Marx's breakthrough is twofold: 1) Hegel is attempting to present a history, a logical exposition of human beings making themselves at home in the world. However, since Hegel is German, and since Germans only experience the real, material world as developed by other as thought. as consciousness, Hegel is giving us an abstract, estranged representation of that process 2) human beings exist in nature, but only through the mediation of nature by and through the social labor process. So the appropriation of nature by labor is not just the appropriation of nature by the labor process, it is simultaneously the appropriation of the products of that labor by society. It is simultaneously, in its mediation, the conflict between labor and the conditions of labor-- i.e. labor and property, between classes.





The early Lukacs and most Western Marxists insist that the materialist dialectic applies solely to history and society. Marcuse and the Frankfurt School are in this camp. But this stance divorces humanity from nature and opposes Marx and Engels.

What Lukacs and Marcuse hold is that [I]Marx's dialectic applies only to history and society. Marx's dialectic is a product, a product of the labor process of social beings. Marx's dialecticis not the result of large and small forces in the universe, tectonic plates, big bangs, or the influence of cosmic radiation on amino acids. "History" and "nature" have no telos, no purpose, but human labor does, which is the satisfaction of, and enhancement of, human needs.


My source for Marx's and Marxism's roots in the Hegelian philosophy of internal relations and its abstraction process is Bertell Ollman. Have you read him? He is the revolutionary pioneer in this matter. Prior to reading Ollman's Dance of the Dialectic (2003), I had experienced the materialist dialectic as a rather useless muddle, but Ollman's half-dozen works bring the dialectic to the life Marx found in it.
Read his earlier works years ago, and I thought then he missed the boat on what Marx was doing. Haven't read him since.


The new sciences I relentlessly promote then confirm and give body to the materialist dialectic. Marx and Engels jumped all over the first of these "new sciences," evolution, and avidly followed other scientific developments.
Maybe they do. Maybe they don't. I don't know.



So what has happened to current Marxists and Marxism? The left almost universally avoids the organizational science that Marx and Engels would surely have engaged and brought into revolutionary praxis. I attribute this most depressing reality to capitalism's global (hence entropic) triumph. The human mind and social criticism have settled into a de-energized stasis of sorts.

That, [the inadequacY of the left} not an "ideological problem" of "avoiding" "science" of not understanding the "dialectic of nature." That's a concrete problem of class struggle, having everything to do with capitalism, the former Soviet Union, the results of WW2, etc. etc.


In any case, it seems obvious to me that a paralyzed left desperately needs to engage the new science(s) of organization and the natural, materialist dialectic of "nature, human society, and thought" that Marx and Engels saw.
Disagree. Marxism is not a weltanschauung. It is the concrete critique of the accumulation of capital, the production of value,--and it is the exploration of the conditions inherent in that accumulation and production that lead to the breakdown and overthrow of both, the class struggle.

[Mr. Natural]

S.Artesian, I really appreciate your conscientious, detailed reply. I'm a red-green revolutionary old fart who discovered there was a RevLeft six months ago and consequently was forced to get a computer. I am still only able to use my beast in rudimentary ways, e.g., I can't transfer quotes or edit.

I have many other deficiencies, but I believe I bring a deeply radical "green" to RevLeft that needs to be engaged, explored, and developed. This "green" is even more radical than the "red" (Marxism): it represents the new sciences that work with the underlying organization of living material systems on Earth. Life and people are self-organizing, material systems, and social systems and revolutionary processes, too, must be organized in the pattern of life.

I believe that the materialist dialectic and communism as Marx and Engels understood them are organized as natural systems. They are organized in the same general pattern by which matter self-organized (autocatalyzed) into primitive cells and established the life process on Earth billions of years ago. Hegel, Marx, and Engels (despite his disclaimer) were men of genius who created philosophical concepts that science now confirms.

As counterintuitive as it seems, life's astoundingly diverse forms arise from the same, universal pattern of organization, and this organizational pattern by which matter comes to life must now be learned and consciously applied to the design of human social systems. Are we not life?

Well, we won't be living much longer under capitalism. Capitalism's organization acts as a cancer to life's organization. Life generates an ecological surplus (profit) to maintain its communities, while capitalism tears human and natural community apart to manufacture its runaway, malignant profit. Global capitalism is end game capitalism, and the human species is about to be cashed in.

S.Artesian, I'm saying that life is created by and composed of self-organizing, material systems, and that people are self-organizing material systems who must consciously organize their lives in life's pattern and haven't known how. Our vaunted consciousness sees the things of life but misses their organization, and this is a big, big problem.

Now to your much-appreciated comments. You highlighted my "Marx then rooted his dialectic in natural, material relations and organization." I didn't mean to imply here that Marx consciously rooted his dialectic in natural organizational relations, but meant this was the unintended result when he internalized Hegelian concepts as his organic worldview. The Hegelian philosophy of internal relations (world as internally related whole), its abstraction process, and the dialectic turned right side up are all scientifically valid concepts that uncannily reflect living, systemic process and relations.

And yes, labor is a social process, but socio-economic process is life's process: it is the being and doing of life. A cell "labors" to maintain its being, and people must learn to consciously labor and live in the cell's (life's) pattern, which is "communist." An ecosystem is a differentiated whole in which a near-infinite variety of life forms maintain their individual and species selves as they form and maintain their ecosystemic whole. Cells and ecosystems are communist formations. Life is communist.

Once more with feeling: the "social labor process" to which you often refer needs to be organized in the patten of life. It must be organized in the pattern by which matter comes to life on Earth and makes its living.

So the history Hegel presented of "human beings making themselves at home in the world" and the forms in which he presented it constituted, unbeknownst to him, the real, organic, living, systemic process of life. Hegel's "history" closely resembles the organized anatomy of an animal.

You wrote, "Marx's dialectic is not the result of large and small forces in the universe ..." I agree: Marx's dialectic models the organization of life on Earth. And life does have a purpose: self-maintenance and self-preservation. Life must maintain its dynamic life process.

As for class struggle, it has yet to be effectively organized. For that matter, what is the modern proletariat? Is the left saddled with old, unworkable concepts of working class? Is there a "new proletariat" waiting to be recognized that must organize the revolutionary process?

I also believe Marxism is a Weltanschauung. The materialist dialectic addresses "nature, human society, and thought." This encompasses much, and a red-green Marxism is certainly a worldview for me.

Finally, I have taken this thread offtrack. In atonement, I offer a Lukacs quote I just came across: "Stalin was a great tactician ... Unfortunately, he was not a Marxist."

My red-green best.

[S.Artesian]

Finally, I have taken this thread offtrack. In atonement, I offer a Lukacs quote I just came across: "Stalin was a great tactician ... Unfortunately, he was not a Marxist."

And that sums up the weakness of Lukacs' Marxism-- "evaluating" on the basis of "tactics" rather than on the class relations, the material social relations that surround the tactics, the "greatness" [or lack thereof, that determine the history the course of revolution. Lukacs in short never got that, not because he didn't abide by "dialectics of nature"-- after all Stalin claimed he did-- all sorts of people claimed they did-- but because he never apprehended that the materialism in Marx's historical materialism was a social product.

As for your view of the natural science underpinning human, social life-- your argument appears to me to be simply another iteration of an argument that is more akin to socio-biology than Marxism, although a much more benign socio-biology than we usually get.

Look, human beings are made up of atoms. Does that mean human history is explained by the laws that govern the behaviors of atoms? Of course not.

Ink is made up of chemicals. Is the music that a composer writes with a pen subject to the laws of chemistry?

IMO, it would be quite beneficial for everyone to go back and really look at Marx's coming to grips with Hegel, particularly in his Introduction to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right.

Things that are definitely not part of Marx's extraction of a "rational" dialectic, his regrounding of dialectic as a product of human activity:

1. philosophy
2. weltanschauung
3. epistemology [theory of knowledge]
4. human history as the product of natural forces

It is the specificity of Marx's critique that gives it its great historical, and staying, power.

my redder than red best.

[Mr. Natural]

S.Artesian, Thanks for your considerate and well-considered response. I salute your red. But red needs green to "go." And green needs red to ripen into praxis. Red and green are a natural unity.

My quest is definitely to bring green, natural, scientific organization to a left that definitely has been unable to organize. Humans are natural beings who must learn to think, organize, and live naturally. Life has an organization in which various parts come together in a common (communist) system and purpose, and the organization of life includes natural revolutionary processes such as emergences, phase transitions, and bifurcation points.

Is this "sociobiological"? I don't see why the term wouldn't apply, but this sure as hell isn't Social Darwinian. Marx and Engels enthusiastically greeted evolutionary theory as the natural expression of historical materialism, but they denounced what they saw as evolution's "Malthusian" reproduction of hostile, bourgeois relations.

I found the Lukacs quote, "Stalin was a great tactician ... Unfortunately, he was not a Marxist," to be interesting but "soft," like the "spine of a jellyfish" (your phrase). As a companion to Stalin being un-Marxist, Lukacs might have mentioned Stalin was a sociopathic thug who mass-murdered his comrades and communism. Lukacs, himself, was lucky ??? to have escaped the purges; many of his personal acquaintances and comrades didn't.

I just re-read the Introduction to the "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, which contains many memorable quotations. I see this work as a political statement investigating social-political-economic realities and the appropriate revolutionary response, and my supposition is that the Hegelian dialectic, turned on its head, informed most if not all of the concepts and processes Marx presents.

Bertell Ollman's Dance of the Dialectic reveals that the Hegelian philosophy of internal relations and its many components constitute a sort of organic, living mental system with which Marx investigated life and society. I consider this to be a Weltanschauung of sorts.

As for atoms, the deep universe and its atoms tell me that all of existence has organization, pattern, and process. We humans, then, are "children" of this universe. The universe and its atoms have self-organized into life on Earth, and it is the level of life and its organization that I engage with the new science.

And rather than discuss the ink (chemical system) a composer uses to write music, I'd rather look at the living composer and musical processes and systems. A composer is a living system who weaves notes into chordal systems and chords into a musical composition--a system. Thus a composer organizes many parts into a song-whole, and if the composer is good, the song will "come alive" to its listeners. And isn't music resonant of the vibrations (sounds) and rhythms of the universe?

I also see Marx's "rationalizing" of the Hegelian dialectic as turning it on its head to ground it in material (natural) relations. This isn't a "regrounding of dialectic as a product of human activity," but a grouonding of human socio-economic activity in material, dialectical relations.

As for the four points you raised regarding Marx's dialectic, I do disagree with the first two: that philosophy and a worldview aren't attendant to the Marxist materialist dialectic. I believe Marx had a well-developed philosophy and Weltanschauung that emerged from his dialectical understanding of life and society.

A side note: I was introduced to Marxism in 1968 when I began auditing the classes of Richard Lichtman at UC-Berkeley. Lichtman would soon be denied tenure by the philosophy department, which was loaded with language freaks who claimed, in rejecting Lichtman, that "Marxism is not a philosophy."

I agree with point 3: that Marx did not have a dialectically based epistemology. Marx, however, did understand that consciousness, hence knowledge, was rooted in and is a product of natural organization.

As for point 4, I agree Marx didn't see "human history as the product of natural forces." Marx wanted to make history natural (communist), and saw extant history as the unnatural product of alien socio-economic systems.

In red-green summation, life has an organization, and people are natural beings who must organize and produce their lives naturally. This is communism, and the new sciences reveal the organization of communism and communist revolution.

My scarlet-chartreuse best.

[Sasha]

I'm sure I'm not the only person who expected this thread to be about starwars and indiana jones....:o

[Mr. Natural]

Psycho, You are a moderate moderator. My "starwars" presentations have received much nastier rejections. But is the new science "starwars"? What did I write that cannot be scientifically verified?

I read up on your political tendencies, Psycho, and I believe, my "starwars" presentations aside, that we are close politically.

People, as is the rest of life, are self-organized material systems, and I believe the future of the human species rides on gaining the ability to consciously organize into the living relations the rest of life employs. Life has an organization, and this is the manner in which we must organize and live.

Doing this, though, will require a paradigm shift of sorts in human consciousness. Organizational relations tend to be a mind-blind mystery to the human species.

I've been trying to get red to look at green for a dozen years. I "know" this is the path to a human future--communism--and I know that I will be rebuffed at almost every turn.

Nevertheless, I'm a red-green revolutionary and I'm relentless. I have a "jones"--but not an Indiana Jones--for revolution.

My newscientific-Marxist best.

[Sasha]

Euh, I just meant I'm a dyslectic and read the thread title as George Lucas (the movie director) instead of Georg Lukacs. Nothing more

[RedTrackWorker]

The controversy surrounding Lukacs, as I understand it, has to do with his denial of a "dialectics of nature" in History and Class Consciousness (1923).

It's now known that this "denial" was misinterpreted as his work Tailism and the Dialectic was discovered which was a defense of HCC against the Stalinist attackers (which he shortly joined), which explains: "Of course society arose from nature, nature and its laws existed prior to society, dialectic must have existed in nature in order for dialectic to exist in society. However, without the mediation provided by new social dialectical forms, neither knowledge of nature or of society would be
knowable."

I think his work represented, along with Korsch (http://www.marxists.org/archive/korsch/1923/marxism-philosophy.htm), an important attempt at working through the philosophical side of the degeneration of Marxism associated with the Second International. I cannot comment on HCC and its limitations (though an obvious one is the beginning point that Marxism is a method and the content/specifics are not key) but the limitation of his work on Lenin (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/1924/lenin/index.htm) is clear (but still well worth reading I think) and the key weakness is to see the merits of Leninism as due to Lenin's "genius" rather than that Lenin "personified the experience and the perspicacity of the most active section of the proletariat" (as Trotsky says--but an essay explaining this process doesn't exist that I know of).

And I don't think that weakness is unrelated to the relative ease with which Lukacs turned into a Stalinist and never supported the Left Opposition (even though he agreed with Trotsky versus the Stalinists on why the Hungarian Revolution failed--another find from Tailism and the Dialectic).

[S.Artesian]

"Of course society arose from nature, nature and its laws existed prior to society, dialectic must have existed in nature in order for dialectic to exist in society. However, without the mediation provided by new social dialectical forms, neither knowledge of nature or of society would be
knowable."

No better example of how little Lukacs really grasped of Marx's "extraction of the rational kernel." Marx is recuperated into philosophy and epistemology.

There is no "philosophical side" of Marxism to degenerate. Period. To classify HCC or Korsh's work as an antidote to the "philosophical degeneration of Marxism" is to reproduce the disease in the supposed treatment.

[Mr. Natural]

RedTrackWorker, S.Artesian,

My project is to bring revolutionary organization to modern Marxism. Well, we all need a good hobby, don't we? My intent is to add a single, revolution-enabling word to Marx's and Engels' definition of dialectics in Aanti-Duhring: dialectics is the "science of the general laws of the organization, motion, and development of nature, human society, and thought."

RTW, thanks for that excellent Lukacs quotation. I knew of Tailism, but hadn't read it. And thanks for the links to Korsch and Lenin. I read Korsch and will also tackle Lukacs on Lenin.

RTW, Lukacs may have retracted his denial of a dialectics of nature, but most Western Marxists continue to hold to Lukacs' old position as sacred dogma, despite its obvious separation of humanity from nature. Most Western Marxists, as did Korsch, confine the dialectic to an examination of history and society, and I suppose most of them continue to rather mechanically think of the dialectic in terms of Engels' 3 or 4 "laws."

RTW, I'll guess you have noticed that Western Marxism is sterile and stagnant. This because it has variously ignored, dismissed, and crapped upon the Hegelian philosophy of internal relations (world as internally related whole) and its dialectical organization--the organic view of life and society as systemic process that brought Marx's and Engels' minds and Marxism to life.

My brain is exploding in righteous Marxist indignation and frustration. Western Marxism divorces humanity from nature and material, natural organizational relations--the relations the materialist dialectic reveals. This cannot be right, and modern Marxism cannot get organized. Marxism is paralyzed in theory and practice in our end game era.

Dammit, it's way past time for Marxism to become revolutionary again, and the only way this can happen is for us to learn to organize in the pattern of life--the pattern(s) the materialist dialectic reveals and by which matter self-organizes to come to life on Earth.

The new "green" sciences of life reveal the inner workings of living material systems such as people and social systems. So far, though, I've encountered but two other persons who have even touched upon these sciences at RevLeft. This current "Marxist" rejection of science is an apostasy that has Marx's and Engels' heads exploding in their graves.

RedTrackWorker, have you read either Helena Sheehan's Marxism and the Philosophy of Science (1985) or Bertell Ollman's Dance of the Dialectic (2003)? These works were revelations to me and radicalized my understanding of dialectics.

S.Artesian, I can't figure out why you and so many others insist Marxism is not a philosophy or Weltanschauung. Isn't this hand-me-down dogma? Here is what Marx wrote on this matter on the last page of the "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right: Introduction" that you referenced: "Just as philosophy finds its material weapons in the proletariat, so the proletariat finds its intellectual weapons in philosophy ....The emancipation of Germany will be the emancipation of man. Philosophy is the head of this emancipation and the proletariat is its heart. Philosophy can only be realized by the abolition of the proletariat, and the proletariat can only be abolished by the realization of philosophy."

And here is Helena Sheehan on Marxism as Weltanschauung, page 6 of Marxism and the Philosophy of Science. "From the beginning, the Marxist tradition bravely set itself the task of elaborating the philosophical implications of the sciences of its times with a view to working out a scientific Weltanschauung adequate for its epoch. Engels's antipositivist materialism was an extraordinarily impressive achievement ....Contending paths involved explicit renunciation of Engels's enterprise of striving for a comprehensive world view grounded in science and in continuity with the history of philosophy. There have been, for example, the Soviet mechanists who believed that science could do very well without philosophy, as well as Marxists of the neo-Hegelian variety who have tended to think that philosophy should keep its distance from science."

It is my conviction that the wholesale paralysis of the left lies in its dismissal of Marx's and Engels' roots in a natural, materialist dialectic and the new sciences that confirm and inform it.

My red-green, revolutionary best.

[S.Artesian]

S.Artesian, I can't figure out why you and so many others insist Marxism is not a philosophy or Weltanschauung. Isn't this hand-me-down dogma? Here is what Marx wrote on this matter on the last page of the "Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right: Introduction" that you referenced: "Just as philosophy finds its material weapons in the proletariat, so the proletariat finds its intellectual weapons in philosophy ....The emancipation of Germany will be the emancipation of man. Philosophy is the head of this emancipation and the proletariat is its heart. Philosophy can only be realized by the abolition of the proletariat, and the proletariat can only be abolished by the realization of philosophy."

Yep, that's what he says in 1843 when Marx is settling accounts with the limits of Hegel's analysis, the limits of critical speculative philosophy. You don't mind that we allow a little material development to the individual as well as the society do you? By 1845, as Marx has already turned from the critique of critical philosophers to the critique of political economy, he has made a not subtle, not tentative shift and change.

We're way beyond The Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right when we encounter Theses on Feuerbach. And what is the fulcrum that Marx uses for his lever? Not dialectics of nature, not a new "world outlook." It is nothing other than the assertion that human beings reproduce themselves socially through their relations of production, through their sensuous, practical activity-- the labor process.

That's 1. And in thesis 2? Marx disposes of epistemology in a sentence. In thesis 3, Marx reestablishes criticism but not as a philosophy, a mode of thought, but rather revolutionary activity.

The next 4 theses put an end to the "passive materialism" that reproduces the separation of human beings from the conditions of their own material reproduction via the labor process.

Theses 8,9, 10 essentially dispose of Feuerbach, showing that Feuerbach at his best is somewhat worse than Hegel at his worst, at the limit of his "idealist dialectic." In fact, IMO, it's theses 9 &10 where Marx makes his final assessment of Hegel-- as Hegel's attempt in the philosophy of right is precisely to overcome that gap, that separation of individuals and civil society; that separation into individuals in a civil society. That the attempt fails, and necessarily, doesn't diminish the importance of what Hegel had attempted, the importance of the failure.

And at the end.. we get the beginning of historical materialism. The apprehension, as a practical activity, of the world through the necessity of revolution.

If anything counts as an "intellectual weapon" of the proletariat, it's historical materialism, not "philosophy" or a "dialectic of nature."

In truth at the end of the Theses.. we've moved from the proletariat being abolished by the realization of philosophy, to the proletariat realizing itself as human through the abolition of the social conditions of labor, through the abolition of wage-labor, thus emancipating itself and all of the society from the condition of being the proletariat.

That's quite a change, and an advance from "philosophy can only be realized by the abolition of the proletariat."

As for what has Marx's and Engels' heads exploding in their graves-- get a grip. They're dead. Nothing about the current state of Marxism has the slightest impact on their physical state. If the social patriotism of the social democrats in WW 1, and if the later destruction of the workers' revolution in Russia and revolutionary struggles across the globe by the so-called official communist parties didn't rouse them from their graves, nothing's going to do it.

Time to get a grip on the revolutionary tool Marx actually provided-- historical materialism.

[Veovis]

Hes a real cool cat.

Yea, I liked his Star Wars movies.

(OK, sorry! I'm leaving now...)

[Mr. Natural]

S.Artesian, Thanks for your post. You are making me work, and I'm having a brain-drained day, perhaps a result of all those exploding heads from yesterday.

Your thorough examination of the "Theses on Feuerbach" sent me scurrying to review them, but I'm going to limit my comments to what I see as our basic disagreement(s). We agree on much, but I believe our differences are radical, for they lie in the area that I believe can bring Marxism to life and place socialist revolution on our agenda.

You opened with: "Yep, that's what he says in 1843 when Marx is settling accounts with the limits of Hegel's analysis, the limits of critical speculative philosophy. You don't mind that we allow a little material development to the individual as well as the society do you? by 1845, as Marx has already turned from the critique of critical philosophers to the critique of political economy, he has made a not subtle, not tentative shift and change.
"We're way beyond The Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right when we encounter Theses on Feuerbach. And what is the fulcrum that Marx uses for his lever? Not dialectics of nature, not a new 'world outlook'. It is nothing other than the assertion that human beings reproduce themselves socially through their relations of production, through their sensuous, practical activity--the labor process."

SA, it is my firm conviction, gained from my readings and understanding of Marx's relation to things Hegelian, that Marx internalized Hegel's philosophy of internal relations and dialectic, turned Hegel on his head to root him in Feuerbachian materiality, and developed his subsequent concepts and works from this conceptual vantage point.

This is our first disagreement. I find Hegelian dialectical relations and concepts became an integral component of Marx's mind, and that he understood nature, human society, thought, revolution, and communism dialectically--as living, systemic process.

This first disagreement then points to the second. Hegelian dialectical relations stood on their feet, and the materialist, dialectical comprehension of life and society Marx and Engels developed, have now been scientifically verified. They are the actual relations of life, although their many moving "parts" need to be assembled into a workable "body."

The new sciences of organizational relations can bring the materialist dialectic and communism to life. They can put the science into scientific socialism.

Hegel, Marx, and Engels and the dialectic they developed present us with an example of philosophy anticipating a science that then confirms the philosophy. It is the genius of these three men to have accomplished this. However, their dialectics viewed life and society in their motion and development as systemic processes, and did not engage the all-important organization underlying all of this.

Life is organized. How? What is this organization? It will be the organization of all living systems, including human social systems. It is the organization of historical materialism and the labor process--dialectical concepts. It is the organization of communism and revolution. So how is life organized?

So my two points are: Marx mentally internalized Heglian dialectics and they informed all of his social constructs; the new sciences organize dialectical relations and reveal life's universal pattern of organization.

And so now it's time to engage these new sciences and come to life in the pattern of life, which is "communist." It's time to repair Marx's and Engels' exploded heads.

My red-green best.

[S.Artesian]

S.Artesian, Thanks for your post. You are making me work, and I'm having a brain-drained day, perhaps a result of all those exploding heads from yesterday.

Your thorough examination of the "Theses on Feuerbach" sent me scurrying to review them, but I'm going to limit my comments to what I see as our basic disagreement(s). We agree on much, but I believe our differences are radical, for they lie in the area that I believe can bring Marxism to life and place socialist revolution on our agenda.

You opened with: "Yep, that's what he says in 1843 when Marx is settling accounts with the limits of Hegel's analysis, the limits of critical speculative philosophy. You don't mind that we allow a little material development to the individual as well as the society do you? by 1845, as Marx has already turned from the critique of critical philosophers to the critique of political economy, he has made a not subtle, not tentative shift and change.
"We're way beyond The Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right when we encounter Theses on Feuerbach. And what is the fulcrum that Marx uses for his lever? Not dialectics of nature, not a new 'world outlook'. It is nothing other than the assertion that human beings reproduce themselves socially through their relations of production, through their sensuous, practical activity--the labor process."

SA, it is my firm conviction, gained from my readings and understanding of Marx's relation to things Hegelian, that Marx internalized Hegel's philosophy of internal relations and dialectic, turned Hegel on his head to root him in Feuerbachian materiality, and developed his subsequent concepts and works from this conceptual vantage point.

Marx does not "root" Hegel in Feuerbach's materiality. He, Marx, extracts the rational kernel from Hegel, locating the movement of human beings toward fulfillment in the the labor process rather than in "self-consciousness" becoming conscious of "self." Feuerbach has to be "crossed over" as Marx remarks, and overcome. This is what Marx means when he is referring to the "one-sidedness" of pre-existing materialism


This is our first disagreement. I find Hegelian dialectical relations and concepts became an integral component of Marx's mind, and that he understood nature, human society, thought, revolution, and communism dialectically--as living, systemic process.

Whatever and however he understood anything is not the issue. How and what he analyzed are the issue. Marx begins that undertaking with the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, not with a critique of Hegel's philosophy of nature, nor with Hegel's philosophy of music, art, literature. Hegel's POR is, for Marx, the acme, and the failure, of Hegel's philosophy.

Marx moves directly from that to the critique of political economy, as indeed he must after running up against the limits of Hegel's notion of civil society and state.


This first disagreement then points to the second. Hegelian dialectical relations stood on their feet, and the materialist, dialectical comprehension of life and society Marx and Engels developed, have now been scientifically verified. They are the actual relations of life, although their many moving "parts" need to be assembled into a workable "body."


The dialectical relation that is stood on its feet is the relation between labor and the conditions of labor-- classes; between means and relations of production; between property and living labor. Everything that Hegel explores in Science of Logic Marx demonstrates in the substance of value production.


The new sciences of organizational relations can bring the materialist dialectic and communism to life. They can put the science into scientific socialism.

You think? I think not. I think that the only thing that can bring communism to life is the proletariat overthrowing the relations of capital; the encapsulation of production by value.

What brought Marx to his analysis of capitalism and the immanent tendency for its overthrow, which is exactly what his "project" is? What brought him to that materialist dialectic and to communism was..........capitalism. Get it? Capitalism and its living breathing mode of appropriation. Capitalism and of course, class struggle of the proletariat within capitalism. The revolutions of 1848, the failed revolutions of 1848 and Marx's critique thereof play a material, essential role.


Hegel, Marx, and Engels and the dialectic they developed present us with an example of philosophy anticipating a science that then confirms the philosophy. It is the genius of these three men to have accomplished this. However, their dialectics viewed life and society in their motion and development as systemic processes, and did not engage the all-important organization underlying all of this.


It's not a philosophy at all, just as human society is not a product of philosophy. It's a product of class struggle. Marx isn't anticipating any science, any physics or chemistry, that will confirm that the emancipation of human beings requires the emancipation of labor which means the abolition of the organization of capital as accumulated wage-labor. He's demonstrating that from the getgo, or at least the getgo after his critique of Hegel.


Life is organized. How? What is this organization? It will be the organization of all living systems, including human social systems. It is the organization of historical materialism and the labor process--dialectical concepts. It is the organization of communism and revolution. So how is life organized?


That's not the question that Marx engages. The question is how are human relations to other human beings determined? What is the driver of human history?



So my two points are: Marx mentally internalized Heglian dialectics and they informed all of his social constructs; the new sciences organize dialectical relations and reveal life's universal pattern of organization.


All you're saying is that Marx studied Hegel. No argument. The issue is how, why, and what propelled him to not be "an Hegelian," to move beyond Hegel?



And so now it's time to engage these new sciences and come to life in the pattern of life, which is "communist." It's time to repair Marx's and Engels' exploded heads.

My red-green best.

Have at it there, comrade. The trick is not to narrate, but to demonstrate.

And what do those "new sciences" tell us about capitalism, class struggle, rates of accumulation, the role of fixed assets, etc. etc. etc. -- all that stuff that is...ummh.... actually what Marx explored.

[Mr. Natural]

S.Artesian, I appreciate the comradely wasy in which you engage this discussion and the effort you put into it. I believe we're spinning our wheels now, though. I am attempting to present a brand-new approach to revolution and to bring life to a moribund materialist dialectic, while you are representing (very well) a line of thought adopted by most Marxists that I believe opposes life's organization and Marx's and Engels' understanding and use of the materialist dialectic and therefore cannot succeed.

Here is an example of this impasse. You write, "Marx does not 'root' Hegel in Feuerbach's materiality," while I believe Marx synthesized Hegelian idealism with Feuerbachian materialism and thereby overcame the "one-sidedness" of both men.

Here's an idea. I composed a summary of my red-green Marxism today that I like a lot and posted it in the Politics Form: "NewScientist: Revealed ..." This post replies to an article in which complex systems theorists mathematically engage and reveal capitalism's global concentration of power. Of course, Marxists have known capitalism is inherently monopolistic for 150 years, but ...

Would you consider giving this post a look? It addresses the themes of our discussion from a different angle, and I consider it to be an excellent statement of my overall red-green obsessions.

P.S. Where did Lukacs go on this thread? Our bad. I've been trying to find a good book on him (Telos won't do) and there apparently is none. But what a fascinating historical and intellectual figure he is!

My red-green best.

[S.Artesian]

Sure, I'll look at it. Where did Lukacs go? Have to say, IMO and IMO only, he's hardly the "titan" that people make him out to be. Second rate interpreter of Marx, not actually a Marxist himself.

Short version? Kind of nowhere. The same place he went in life.

[Mr. Natural]

S.Artesian, I thought I did a good job on that post in the Politics Forum presenting a brief outline of the sort of red-green Marxism that Marx and Engels were developing. Then I offered three easy reads that open the new sciences of organization to Marxist consideration and praxis.

I suppose you noticed there were a half-dozen posts after mine, and that none commented on my red-green presentation. Deja vu, deja vu, etc...

I'm not on an ego trip. Nevertheless, twelve years of mostly silent rejections of all I say or write has made me more, not less, engaged. I know the left is completely stuck, and I'm a dedicated Marxist who knows he has some answers. I may be ineffective, but I am relentless.

But where have radical, revolutionary minds and spirit gone? Is the world really going to end, "not with a bang, but a whimper"? Where is the radical content and organizing process at OWS? Damn! And deja vu.

I learn much at RevLeft. I already knew, though, that Marxists had become passive historiographers recycling dogma, and that it would be difficult to find revolutionary minds open to the green sciences of organization. Still, I am shocked that RevLefters are so closed to organizational science. This is so un-Marxist!

So red won't touch green, and green shuns red. As a Marxist living systems theorist, I attribute our degraded intellects and spirit to the triumph of capitalism. Capitalism is a global system that creates its parts, as systems do, and its "parts" include our socio-economic and informational institutions and the people formed within this capitalist ecosystem.

My relentless best.

[S.Artesian]

Well Mr. Natural, I read your post in the New Scientist thread-- and here's your central claim:


Let's get this right. Life generates a sustainable surplus (ecological profit) through its processes of photosynthesis and natural selection. This natural "profit" provides the energy necessary for nature to maintain its communites and keep the life process going.

What does that mean "life generates a sustainable surplus"? That's not science. I don't think the concept of "surplus" even has relevance outside the human, social, domain. What? There's a surplus of trees? Life can create a surplus of flowers? What meaning does surplus have in natural systems?

There are levels of resources abundant enough to sustain certain growth in other areas of a natural system that depends on those resources. In turn those other areas may feedback into the generation of resources through their actions [i.e. fertilizing the soil]. But surplus? That's not surplus.

If you are intending to claim that the sun is an exhaustible, or practically-speaking, inexhaustible source of energy for the sustenance of all carbon based life-- well OK, but that sure doesn't mean it's generating surplus, as that energy has to be transformed, accumulated, directed to accomplish that expansion. So once again we're right back to the appropriation of nature by human, social labor.

And there's another element-- the old "energy is conserved" issue. What you are posing, IMO, is simply the reverse of the old entropy argument that says eventually we run out; eventually the universe suffers from heat death. To which I can only say, to them and to you, yeah but so what? Is that the determining characteristic [heat death or infinite supplies of radiant energy] of human, social existence?

The answer is clearly, "no." To both.

[Mr. Natural]

S.Artesian, Thanks for looking at my Politics post.

I'm trying to present a revolutionary paradigm shift in consciousness to RevLefters that is in accord with Marxism and enables praxis. That this is a paradigm shift is a recent conclusion of mine that is backed up by the nature of consciousness. Human perception does not see organization. We perceive things whose critical organization is hidden, and learning to "see," understand, and apply life's organization to human social organization will constitute a necessary revolution in human consciousness. People must learn to create and live the natural, ecological, communal relations the rest of life automatically enjoys.

Isn't it true that the "things" of life have an organization we cannot see, and that learning to "see" organization will therefore constitute a major paradigm shift in consciousness? And isn't it true--if a paradigm shift in consciousness is involved--that even Marxists will be initially highly resistant to developing the required red-green mind?

I'm saying, as did Marx and Engels, that we are natural beings who have been living under a processive series of alien socio-economic systems that have culminated in end game capitalism. Then I'm saying further, as Marx and Engels could not, that the new sciences of the organization, patterns, and processes of life show how nature's "economy" functions, and that this is the manner in which humanity must organize its economies and live.

How does the rest of life live? Life is created by and composed of living systems: self-organizing, integrated wholes that are dynamically interdependent--"economically" interdependent--with other living systems and their physical environment. This is life's pattern. There is no separate life, and the organized, dynamic interrelatedness of life's systems keeps them and the life process going.

Well, S.Artesian (and Jose Gracchus), wouldn't a communist society be created by and composed of self-organizing individuals who are closely connected with other such persons and their physical environment? The definition of communism--"an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all"--is also the definition of a living system, which is an internally self-organized community that develops and lives in communal relations with the rest of life. Marx and Engels were men of genius whose communism reproduces the relations of life.

So why do Marxists invariably reject the revelations of the new science when Marx and Engels aimed for a scientific socialism? Part of the problem is that capitalism destroys communal relations and communication, and a compartmentalization of social institutions and splitting of society occurs. Thus red and green are split and the many tendencies at RevLeft fight each other much better than they confront capitalism.

The major problem, though, seems to be that paradigm shift. The human mind does not readily engage the organizational relations the new sciences reveal.

Here's what I mean by "life generates a sustainable surplus," and this is most definitely science. My statement referred to the processes of photosynthesis and natural selection, which constitute nature's "economic system." All of nature can be seen as an "economic system" that generates the surplus energy (ecological "profit") necessary to maintain the life process and its communities.

That energy ("profit") is generated by the process of photosynthesis is clear. Plants take the sun's energy and produce organic compounds the rest of us can eat. Photosynthesis generates a sustainable, ecological surplus (profit) of energy.

The phenomenon of natural selection then generates quantities of organisms that are eaten (surplus energy), form essential living relations with others (multi-celled organisms, ant colonies, "parasites"), and reproduce and evolve. Here is another living, systemic process that "goes to work and generates a profit" and thereby maintains living systems and the life process.

Call it scientific metaphor, but living systems and the life process are economic systems.

Doesn't a cat "appropriate" a mouse through its labor? Isn't that "economic"? Don't people appropriate and manipulate various living and physical materials as they produce their lives?

Capitalism stands in deadly contrast to life's economic systems. Capitalism's runaway surplus (profit) is taken from but not fully returned to life. It is not employed to create and maintain human and natural community, but to manufacture a runaway deficit (profit), and we have now reached the end of the process of capitalism and of the human species if we don't wake up.

The gist of all of this is that we are naturally communist beings who must learn to live naturally, and that the new sciences reveal the organization that enables the rest of life to create and maintain communal relations.

How about picking up one of those books I recommended and taking a look? The new sciences can't bring Marxism to the life Marx and Engels sought if their descendants insist on remaining stuck in very old places.

Toward the end of his life, Engels remarked that he and Marx had "sown dragons but reaped fleas." I'm so tired of being a fucking flea ...

My red-green best.

[S.Artesian]

Doesn't a cat "appropriate" a mouse through its labor? Isn't that "economic"? Don't people appropriate and manipulate various living and physical materials as they produce their lives?

In a word, no. That is not "economic." It's not economy. It's not surplus. It's not an example of a "pardigm shift."

The cat doesn't create the mouse. The cat doesn't reproduce the conditions of "mouse-ness" so to speak. And the cat isn't creating any "surplus energy" by eating the mouse. The cat expends energy, captures, the mouse, and converts the mouse's energy into its own.

BTW You are hardly providing any critique of Lukacs in your theorizing. Sorry to say, but you're making Lukacs look better than he is.

No... we're not "naturally communist." We are socially communist. This isn't the left-wing version of the right wing's argument about human nature, and the market being the "natural condition" of human beings.

I'm not stuck in any old place. I'm not stuck period. Neither is history.

[Mr. Natural]

S.Artesian, I'm not necessarily ending our conversation, but I don't know where we can go from here. I say "yes," you say "no"; you say "yes"...

Lukacs has been ignored in our recent posts, but we took off from where he had "recanted" his dismissal of a possible dialectics of nature, realizing that this splits humanity from nature, a position that opposes Marx and Engels. Communism is natural. I say "yes," you say "no."

You don't see that a cat catching a mouse is "earning its living," and that this is "economic." I say "yes," you say "no."

And history is most definitely stuck within a capitalism that is about to end human history. I see an impending Orwellian 1984 scenario for the US, and it is almost here.

And life has a "communist" organization--a naturally communist organization that human beings must recognize and honor in our socioeconomic systems.

And learning to "see" life's critical organizational relations--relations to which our perception is blind--will constitute a paradigm shift for the human species. It will also constitute a human renaissance in which we heal our split consciousness and realize our human nature.

I don't know where we might go from here, but I do want to note once more my appreciation of the comradely manner in which you stoutly disagreed with much of what I wrote, and I'm looking forward to running into you in other threads.

My red-green best.

[S.Artesian]

We don't go anywhere from here by discussing this. If you think you have some analysis or insight into capitalism that can explain what's happening, why, and what and where the immanent impulse to revolution is, then by all means go for it.

But if you're trying to tell me that 1) Lukacs great flaw, weakness etc. was that he was "un-Marxist" in his rejection of the dialectic of nature, then, quite frankly you cannot and will not be able to show or explain how HCC breaksdown and fails to "follow" the transformation, the breakthrough, Marx made in his critique; in his elaboration of historical materialism 2) you have a new paradigm that will rescue Marxism from all those who "misunderstand" it and are incapable of "restoring" it to its "revolutionary import"-- then in reality you're doing what Lukacs tried to do, but from a different "naturalist" perspective, and I don't think it's going to work out too well.

[Elsa]

I like Lukacs' works about literature. His essays on Balzac and Goethe, his analysis of epic novels, his knowledge of German literature are impressive. He manages to interpret Thomas Mann like if Buddenbrooks or Der Zauberberg had been a work of "unconscious" socialist.

Can't say much about his political/philosophical writings, unfortunately (as I'm a sort of political newbie)