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Essay
News & Letters, April 2001
Beyond materialism, beyond post-Marx Marxism
by Fred Bustillo
Raya Dunayevskaya's PHILOSOPHY AND REVOLUTION: FROM HEGEL TO SARTRE AND
FROM MARX TO MAO provides a rigorous examination of why Hegelian philosophy
supplies the working class with the framework through which it can develop
answers to the persistent confusion and distortions of post-Marx Marxism.
To understand Marx's dialectics one has to go to its roots, which lie in
Hegelian philosophy. Part One, "Why Hegel? Why Now?" indicates that to
fully comprehend the concrete issues found in Parts Two and Three of the
book one must be clear on the abstract disputes about the significance of
the Hegelian dialectic. However, Dunayevskaya insists throughout her book
that questions of class, political power, and political economy must be
accorded a dominant position in understanding the present questions that
PHILOSOPHY AND REVOLUTION must answer as the working class experiences
self-movement, self-activity, and self-development.
The first chapter on the relevance of Hegelian philosophy discloses that
it is not really idealism vs. materialism in antagonistic struggle which
characterized the dialectic of Marx's CAPITAL, but a unity of both,
Hegelian dialectics and Marx's materialism. It is not because of fortuitous
circumstances that the dialectical method originated in its most developed
form in Hegelian philosophy, which one can define as objective idealism.
WHY SO MANY FAILED REVOLUTIONS?
For me PHILOSOPHY AND REVOLUTION is important not only for the immediacy of
its subject matter, but also because it exposes the inexcusable distortions
and perversions of Marxism by the Soviet bloc. It does so by reaffirming
Marxism as the genuine philosophy of liberation, freed of encumbrances
originating in post-Marx Marxism. Reading PHILOSOPHY AND REVOLUTION
supplies me with the basis for a new stage of cognition of the class
struggle and the self-development of the working class.
It is beyond dispute that the distortions and perversions of the Soviet
bloc created conditions for aborted revolutions throughout the Third World,
as disclosed by Dunayevskaya throughout Part Three in dealing with the
African Revolutions and the East European revolts. Dunayevskaya
unequivocally demonstrates in PHILOSOPHY AND REVOLUTION that all Stalinist
political currents prevalent in Africa, Asia, Latin America, as well as the
industrialized world, were and are counter-revolutionary political
tendencies that can lead only to state-capitalism.
The Left here and throughout the world now has a book that constitutes a
quantum leap forward in our ability to understand the philosophic and
political reasons behind so many aborted revolutions, commencing with the
October 1917 Revolution in Russia and ending with the most recent debacle
in Congo.
This book also illustrates the necessity of a philosophy that continuously
recreates the dialectics of liberation--which brings me to the question of
Lenin's philosophic ambivalence.
WHAT WENT WRONG IN RUSSIA?
When Lenin wrote (in 1903) that the working class in Russia was unable to
transcend trade union consciousness, he was undoubtedly referring to
"moments" of a totality. The working class can and does become docile for
numerous reasons during its development, but at other times it is able to
become the most militant class in society--as ascertained by events in
Seattle and recently in Mexico City.
For a long time I had perceived the Mexican working class as docile. But
Mexican working-class solidarity demanding the release of workers,
students, and intellectuals arrested in Seattle and the release of the
Black revolutionary targeted for murder by the state, Mumia Abu-Jamal--as
reported by Ron Brokmeyer in the January-February 2000 issue of NEWS &
LETTERS--proves the contrary.
Lenin's statements between 1908 and 1915 confining the Russian working
class to trade union consciousness was not meant to be construed as a
universal or to even reflect correctly the self-development of the
proletariat after 1917 and during the creation of the soviets. Only by
assuming absolute control over production and seizing political power can
the proletariat become the dominant class in society in a permanent sense.
In the Russian Revolution of 1917 a revolutionary political party first
seized state power, and subsequently attempted to create conditions for the
working class to move to center stage. But it occurred only in a limited
sense. The political and economic gains secured by the working class were
not permanent but merely abstract gains which could be taken away by
someone like Stalin.
Lenin's universal--that production and the state must be run by the whole
population "to a man"--was not complete, since despite the party's seizure
of power, there was nothing concrete binding the working class to the means
of production in a permanent sense. Its control over production could be
and was taken away by the state.
If the proletariat had assumed collective ownership of the means of
production through the soviets during or after the seizure of state
power--or exercised some other means of absolute control over production so
that it could not be taken away without armed struggle by the Party or some
other state organ--any organization assuming the role of executive committee
would have no choice but to represent the class controlling production.
That is, the relationship of theory to practice becomes less difficult to
work out once the working class exercises absolute control over production
in the fashion of the Paris Commune of 1871.
No class in history has been lifted by a political party or a similar
organization into the position of being a ruling class in the transition
from one mode of production to another. On the contrary, the
nationalization of major industry and the elimination of some of the
personifications of capital by a vanguard party has become the material
basis for most aborted working-class revolutions.
LENIN'S PHILOSOPHIC DUALITY
I agree with Dunayevskaya's finding that Lenin's failure to prepare his
PHILOSOPHIC NOTEBOOKS of 1914-15 for publication reflects a philosophic
ambivalence at a bare minimum. Moreover, his giving the green light to
reprinting previous books like MATERIALISM AND EMPIRIO-CRITICISM and other
works written from the standpoint of Feuerbachian materialism--Lenin urged
students of political economy to study the vulgar materialism of Plekhanov
even after he gained a new revolutionary understanding of the unity of
materialism and idealism--appears to create an absolute contradiction. This
could have been easily resolved by way of a simple introduction warning the
reader of the undialectical pitfalls of vulgar materialism that contributed
to the collapse of established Marxism and the slaughter of German Social
Democracy in 1914.
Lenin wrote extensively between 1914 and 1923; in those years he published
IMPERIALISM, STATE AND REVOLUTION, and other writings associated with the
National Question. In them he used Marx's dialectical method and the new
understanding he acquired from Hegel. Nonetheless, Lenin chose not to make
public the new stage of cognition acquired from his studies of Hegelian
philosophy. He failed to tell Russian revolutionaries and those throughout
the world that none of the Marxists had completely understood Marx's
dialectics of liberation and could therefore rightly be deemed as vulgar
materialists.
I also agree with Dunayevskaya's view that Lenin's reasons for keeping his
PHILOSOPHIC NOTEBOOKS to himself lie "deep in the recesses of time between
the years 1915 and 1923, the revolution, the counterrevolution," the fact
that the most esteemed theoretician of the Party did not understand
dialectics--Bukharin. There were too many seemingly insurmountable
political, economic, and social contradictions for one man to struggle
against and resolve. At the same time, the PHILOSOPHIC NOTEBOOKS clearly
contain incomplete and undeveloped conclusions, notations, obscure
markings, jottings difficult to discern, and other elements suggesting the
necessity of further development and completion instead of publication.
Lenin's discovery of the Hegelian dialectic presented a monumental task for
him during a very critical and inopportune time frame. The task of
unraveling the theoretical and practical errors of post-Marx Marxists,
including himself, was too awesome for Lenin to act upon between 1915 and
1923. With the Bolsheviks still trying to consolidate their political power
over the revolution, and with bureaucratic tendencies beginning to emerge
within the Party, the flames of defeat were fanned.
Despite his domination over the Party, Lenin was walking on very thin ice
during these years. The timing of an attempt to establish that all
post-Marx Marxists had not fully understood the dialectics of Marx was
inappropriate in those years and certainly counterproductive--even though he
took numerous concrete steps such as by trying to get the editors of UNDER
THE BANNER OF MARXISM to work out a new and firm theoretical ground.
Though Lenin expressly asked them to systematically study Hegelian Logic,
he was approaching the subject matter very cautiously, probably because the
majority of the Bolsheviks not only did not understand dialectics, but also
considered idealism and materialism as two hostile antagonistic
philosophical camps. To publish his PHILOSOPHIC NOTEBOOKS during that time
frame was to endanger the revolution. Hence the philosophic ambivalence
perhaps might have been grounded in the nature of a turbulent period as
"moments" of a totality.
Historically, post-Marx Marxism is a distorted stage in the development of
a philosophy of liberation leading to Marxist-Humanism. In other words, the
negative aspects of post-Marx Marxism, which included Leninism, is a
proximate cause of the development of Marxist-Humanism as the philosophy of
liberation. One was not possible without the development of the other as a
qualitative new stage of cognition of the class struggle.
BEYOND MATERIALISM
Lenin's misreading of Hegel--as discussed in the Introduction to the
Morningside edition of PHILOSOPHY AND REVOLUTION--centers on the difference
between the sections of 'The Idea of Cognition" and "The Absolute Idea" in
Hegel's SCIENCE OF LOGIC and SMALLER LOGIC. Lenin concluded his
PHILOSOPHIC NOTEBOOKS by saying that the last paragraph of the SCIENCE OF
LOGIC--where Hegel discusses the "free release" of the Idea--was
"unimportant." He preferred instead the conclusion of the SMALLER LOGIC,
where Hegel ends on "go forth freely as Nature," because it's emphasis
seems to be on the concrete, on practice.
To vulgar materialists, under all conditions and circumstances the concrete
is the real and the ideal is merely a photocopy of reality. The residue of
this notion prevented Lenin from making a complete and total transition
from the old Lenin to a new Lenin armed with the Hegelian dialectic that
emphasizes the concrete and the abstract on an equal footing--even though
one aspect of the dialectic might play the dominant role at any given time.
That is, Lenin's misreading of Hegel on key elements and his preference for
that concluding paragraph in the SMALLER LOGIC is due to a fixed and
undialectical bias and prejudice characteristic of all vulgar materialists.
He alleged that the concrete (practice) is always higher than theory, as
opposed to seeing both aspects as a dialectical relationship.
In a word, Lenin's Hegelianism lacked the moment of the theoretical idea
in viewing subjective cognition as always subordinate to social practice.
It appears that this is connected to his ignoring the negation of the
negation as a fundamental law of dialectics. This oversight contributed
significantly to the distortions and vulgarizations characterized by
post-Marx Marxism. He, like the Bolsheviks, stopped short at the first
negation.
Lenin was at best an incomplete Marxist who did not fully stand on Marx's
philosophic ground. His incompleteness derived from his vulgar materialist
background. Even after 1914, after having studied the Hegelian dialectic,
he failed to completely embrace absolute negativity as new beginning.
Dunayevskaya appears to assume that Lenin's error in misreading Hegel was
due to concrete factors, that is, because Lenin had not suffered through
the distortions and perversions of Stalinism. On the contrary, it seems to
me that his dismissal of the subjective aspect of the dialectic as "not
important" is the primary reason he misread Hegel. In declaring that
practice was higher than theory, Lenin did not consider the theoretical
dimension of the dialectic as on an equal basis with the concrete
dimension. Therein lies the source of his error.
The element of incompleteness runs throughout Lenin's theory and practice.
A partial success cannot possibly lead to revolution in permanence. Therein
lies the primary lesson of the October Revolution, which renders Lenin even
more relevant than ever.
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