Source: International Socialist Review, April 1906 issue, Vol. VI, No. 10.
Transcription and Markup: Bill Wright for marxists.org, April, 2023.
What is Marxism? Is it what Marx himself, and those who accept his fundamental statements, say it is, or is it what some who call themselves Marxists, but who pick out at random from the Marxian structure what suits them, say it is?
This seems to become one of the great issues in the development of scientific socialism, which we must meet sooner or later. We might as well take the bull by the horns before it gets any farther.
We must not only keep continually in mind, in what respect Marxism and eclecticism differ, but we must also realize that only one of these can be the logical historical guiding star of the international Socialist Party.
I say “party” advisedly. I know very well that the Socialist Movement is larger than the Socialist Party. No one can pretend to get the “Movement” in line with Marxian thought. So long as the movement stays outside of the party, it constitutes a host of sympathizers, who may or may not be Marxians. They may have many reasons for staying out of the party which we must respect. But at any rate, they have no direct influence on the development of the party, least of all its intellectual development. They do not lead, they follow the party.
So much for the “Movement”. But the party is the directing element of the historical process in present society. It at least can and must have a definite course to steer, if it would be the consciously directing force of social evolution. It must be united on this course and steer it with the unanimous consent and co-operation of the overwhelming majority of its members. Otherwise it will be dashed against the rocks of historical failure, and the social process will drift into other channels than those, of proletarian emancipation from class rule.
Of course, I do not think for a moment that this eventuality can ever take place. If the Marxian method is reliable — and I have the scientific conviction that it is — then the great majority of the members of the Socialist Party must always be class-conscious proletarians, and this must insure inevitably the predominance of Marxian thought in the Socialist Party.
Nevertheless, the growth of eclecticism may seriously interfere with the normal development of the proletarian majority into clear Marxian thinkers.
There is a great deal of unclearness in our ranks as to what constitutes Marxism, what is its relation to the Darwinian theory of natural selection, to the theory of evolution in general, and to the theory of understanding formulated by Josef Dietzgen as the keystone of the proletarian conception of the universe.
The Marxian theories of surplus-value, of the class-struggle, of historical materialism, and Josef Dietzgen’s theory of understanding, are inseparable. They dovetail into one another and form one connected line of reasoning, which clearly reflects the historical process. Tear out any of these links, and you break the continuity of Marxian thought and lose the thread of historical development.
The materialist conception of history is the logical fundament of Marxism. Marx, Engels, and Dietzgen arrived at its conception by way of philosophical materialism. Once Marx had recognized that “the mode of production of the material requirements of life determines the general character of the social, political, and spiritual life,” and that the transformation of the mode of production was the cause of social revolutions, the theory of class-struggles was the inevitable corollary. And in order to find the compelling motive of the productive process, Marx analyzed this process, found that capitalist production was carried on solely for the sake of profit, and that this profit consisted overwhelmingly of surplus-products stolen from the laborer in the process of production. Therefore the interests of the laborer and the capitalists are diametrically opposed, therefore the class-struggle of the proletariat against the capitalist class, therefore a political revolution as the result of the industrial revolution, therefore proletarian thought is antagonistic to bourgeois thought. But if economic conditions shape the thought of men so forcibly as to compel them to a definite line of political action, then it must be shown that the whole human soul life is indeed nothing but a response to material stimuli, and not only to economic stimuli, but to all stimuli coming from the social, terrestrial, and cosmic environment. Josef Dietzgen’s theory of understanding does that. Thus Marx-Engels and Dietzgen join hands as philosophical materialists. But class-struggles in human society, thus brought about by material stimuli on human brains, are but a human portion of the struggle for existence, which runs through the whole of the universe. This leads inevitably to an acceptance of the general theory of evolution. So it is evident that not only the three fundamental theories of Marx and Engels dovetail into one another and into Dietzgen’s theory of theory of natural selection and the Spencerian theory of universal evolution.
This is the actual condition of the matter. Its result is materialist monism as a conception of the universe, with the class-conscious proletariat as the historical champion of this universal monist science. For I shall presently show that there is no other consistent monism but proletarian monism. Marxism is an inseparable part of this science, and its three fundamental postulates — the production of surplus-value by exploited wage-workers, social evolution through class-struggles, and the materialist conception of history — make this science strictly a proletarian one, so long as the modern class-struggle will rage. Of course, to the extent that the evolution toward socialism continues, this monist science will gradually become the accepted guide of a greater and greater portion of mankind, until the inauguration of the co-operative commonwealth of the world will make materialist monism the light of this world and replace theological religions and metaphysical ethics.
Marxism is uncompromisingly opposed to all that is bourgeois, or capitalistic. Marx and Engels bristled up at the mere suspicion that anything which they said or did was in any way suggestive of bourgeois antecedents. And this aversion on their part was not a mere reaction against the narrow hatred of the bourgeois for the proletarian, but the scientific understanding that all proletarian thought is necessarily and irreconcilably opposed to all bourgeois life.
On the other hand, some of our eclectic comrades are as reluctant to acknowledge and proclaim the existence of this chasm between proletarian and bourgeois thought, as a class conscious proletarian is naturally eager for an emphatic declaration of this fact. I am not speaking here of those comrades, who join the socialist party or movement for sentimental or other reasons which are anything but an acceptance of Marxism. Of course, I combat the metaphysical idealism of these comrades. But these, at least, do not claim to be Marxians. They are frankly opposed to Marxism and want to shift the entire socialist movement to a new idealist foundation. They are really harmless, because there is no danger of their ever being taken seriously by the class-conscious proletariat. When I speak of eclecticism, I refer to those comrades who call themselves Marxians, or scientific socialists, yet reject most of the fundamental demands of Marxism as conceived by Marx and Engels.
We have seen two illustrations of this tendency quite recently in the International Socialist Review for October, 1905. Comrade Marcus Hitch there declares that the “gist of Marxism” consists for him in the “political doctrine” of Marx, but that he does not agree with the founder of scientific socialism so far as materialism and economics are concerned. In other words, according to Marx, the gist of Marxism consists of the philosophical, economic, and political conclusions resulting from the Marxian theories. But according to comrade Hitch, the gist of Marxism consists in what Hitch chooses to pick out of the Marxian thought. Not enough with this eclectic procedure, comrade Hitch adds a touch of genuine humor to his statements by the serio-comic appeal that the attention devoted by some socialists to Marxian economics and philosophy, with which he does not agree, may not cause “the political doctrine of Marx to become obscured,” with which he agrees. His warning is addressed to the wrong quarter. He should rather be solicitous, lest those, who like himself pick out from the Marxian doctrine what suits their esoteric taste, might obscure, not only the economic and philosophical theories of Marx, but also his political “doctrine.” There is little danger that those who accept all of Marx’s theories will permit any of them to become obscured.
In the same number, comrade Henry Bergen declares that “the materialist conception of history has no necessary connection with philosophical materialism”; that he is not quite sure whether Marx and Engels were philosophical materialists, since the “authorities” disagree on this point; that even if they were, it was their own private affair, “a thing quite apart from their theory of history, which, like the theory of evolution with which it stands in such intimate relation, is concerned with matters dynamic, not statical”; that the majority of the problems discussed by Dietzgen, for instance his theory of understanding, “have no exclusive bearing on socialism, and have been discussed in much the same manner by philosophers who were not socialists.”
Truly, things are scattered around pretty loosely in comrade Bergen’s head! So, the historical materialism of Marx and Engels is intimately related with the theory of evolution, yet there is no necessary connection, in his opinion, between these theories and philosophical materialism and Dietzgen’s theory of understanding. I wish comrade Bergen would point out how these things can logically and scientifically be disconnected! Here is a task for which church and state would be glad to honor and worship him, if he could succeed in establishing his claims! His statement that as soon as “materialism is rounded off into a philosophical ‘system’ — monistic, pluralistic, or otherwise — it at once becomes saturated, so to speak, with metaphysical elements ([Ernst] Haeckel’s Riddle of the Universe is a good example) and forfeits all rights to be taken seriously as a philosophy,” is very good so far as Haeckel is concerned, but does not apply to Dietzgen. Neither Marx nor Dietzgen have ever founded a system. On the contrary, both have strenuously objected to being saddled with any such merits. Their claim is solely that they discovered a universal “method” which does away for once and all with all philosophical “systems.” Comrade Bergen must know this, and yet he claims that Dietzgen has discussed philosophical problems in much the same manner as philosophers who were not socialists. He might as well claim that Marx has discussed economic questions in much the same way as Adam Smith, Ricardo, or Proudhon.
If Comrade Bergen is in doubt whether Marx and Engels were philosophical materialists, let him read “The Holy Family,” “Anti-Dühring,” “Feuerbach,” and Engels’s introduction to “Socialism, Utopian and Scientific.” There he can see what Marx and Engels themselves said they were. Never mind the disagreeing “authorities.”
They were philosophical materialists, according to their own confession. And this philosophical materialism is no more their private affair, than their historical materialism. With the same justification, comrade Bergen might claim that their theory of value was their own private affair, or that the ideas laid down in the “Communist Manifesto” were their own private affair. I wish comrade Bergen would explain, how one can be an idealist, and yet believe in the materialist conception of history, or vice versa. Or how one can be a believer in historical materialism, and yet reject the inductive method of scientific materialism in the discussion of philosophical problems. Or how a theory which is intimately related to the theory of evolution can be a thing apart from philosophical materialism. If he can prove that this can logically and historically be made to harmonize, then I am willing to admit that philosophical materialism and historical materialism are not based on the same fundamental conceptions.
One of the most conspicuous of this class of eclectics is comrade Ernest Belfort Bax, of England. In his Outlooks From The New Standpoint, and in his discussion of historical materialism with Kautsky, in the Neue Zeit, he makes unsuccessful attempts to read into the materialist conception of history something which neither Marx, nor Engels, nor Kautsky, intended to convey by it, and demonstrate that this Marxian method does not explain all historical phenomena, especially in case they are intellectual phenomena. At least I take it that he is criticizing the Marxian method, and not some other. But about that later. I am not going to dwell on this discussion. It may be read in the original. I merely wish to state emphatically that such a conditional acceptance of the materialist conception of history is its virtual repudiation. For if the materialist conception of history does not suffice to explain all phenomena of social evolution, then some of them must be explained by a method which is not materialist, and which can therefore be only an idealist method. But this is an irreconcilable contradiction. It is no wonder, then, that comrade Bax has nothing but sneers for Dietzgen’s theory of understanding and especially resents the idea that it should claim to be a proletarian theory, saying that he would rather study Haeckel than Dietzgen, when he wants to learn anything about materialist monism. We shall presently see that this takes him still farther away from Marxism.
Is Haeckel really such an unbiased scientist that a proletarian may be excused for following him rather than Dietzgen? If he is, then Bax may find a good many followers. If he is not, then the class-conscious proletariat will prefer to follow Dietzgen rather than Haeckel and Bax.
Let us first take issue with Bax. Historical materialism is the logical application of the method of modern philosophical materialism to social evolution. It looks upon man as a being which is for the present the last product of natural selection in the development of animal life on earth, the outcome of an interaction between the cosmic, terrestrial, and social environment. This social environment has been created out of the natural environment by means of the human brain function, a function which philosophical materialism regards as a product of universal evolution, the same as man himself, and which historical materialism declares to be prominently influenced by changes in the economic conditions. This is the Marxian conception, elaborated by Dietzgen, and explicitly endorsed by both Marx and Engels. Any random selection of any of these essential elements, and the repudiation of the others is not Marxism, much less the gist of Marxism.
This shows at the first glance that neither Marx nor Engels have ever claimed that human thought life is exclusively evolved out of the economic environment. They claim merely that the general trend of human thought is predominantly influenced by economic conditions. Yet Bax intimates that the materialist conception of history, or, as he calls it, the economic interpretation of history, attempts to “evolve the manysidedness of human life out of one of its factors.” And he comes to the startling conclusion that the materialist conception of history, beg pardon, the economic interpretation of history, as a method of historical research, “presupposes in an advanced society an inequality of economic conditions, the existence of classes, or, in other words, the private holding of property.” That is to say, the economic interpretation of history, according to Bax, cannot be used to explain the scope of thought life in primitive societies, or in the co-operative commonwealth. One is dumbfounded on reading such an assertion, when one remembers that it is precisely the economic interpretation of history which in the hands of Marx, Engels, and Lewis H. Morgan revealed the nature of primitive societies, demonstrated the origin of class societies, and gave a forecast of social evolution toward socialism.
I wish Comrade Bax would tell us clearly just what is the essential difference, in his opinion, between the economic interpretation of history and the materialist conception of history, and who is, according to him, the author of the economic interpretation of history. At present there is a decided vagueness in all his criticisms, for no one can exactly tell against whom or what these criticisms are directed. I wish he would tell us plainly whether he is criticising the Marxian materialist conception of history, especially its application by Marx and Engels themselves, whether he is merely criticising the extreme application of Marx’s theory by some of his impossibilist followers, or whether the “economic interpretation of history” of which he speaks is something entirely different from the Marxian materialist conception of history. I know that others, for instance Enrico Ferri, prefer the term economic determinism and use it synonymously with historical materialism. But I don’t know whether Comrade Bax regards these terms as identical, and I for one should like to know “where I am at” when I am reading the Baxian writings.
If his criticisms are aimed at the materialist conception of history as originated and applied by Marx and Engels,— and a good many passages of his writings certainly read as though they were so directed — then he completely misinterprets the purpose and bearing of that theory. That he does not apply it logically, is amply proved by some of his writings. And for this reason we need not wonder that he takes exception, in a more recent issue of Neue Zeit, to Dietzgen’s proletarian philosophy. A man who can explain a part of history by idealist, and another part by materialist methods,[b] will find nothing strange in explaining the function of a proletarian brain partly by bourgeois and partly by proletarian methods, or perhaps entirely by bourgeois methods.
Haeckel’s monism, which Bax prefers to the proletarian monism of Josef Dietzgen, is not a consistent monism. Proletarian monism takes into account all “the manysided factors of human life,” while Haeckel’s monism tries to exclude from a scientific analysis of this life the historical claims of the proletarian factor. While Bax vaguely accuses some one — I don’t know whom — of applying the “economic interpretation of history” too narrowly, Haeckel does not apply it at all. No sooner is Haeckel asked to go to the logical conclusion of his so-called monism and apply the idea of natural selection to the class-struggle, than he ceases to be an unbiased monist and feels himself as one of the “noblest and best,” a member of the ruling class. He operates brilliantly with the materialist conception of animal history in general, but declines to have anything to do with the materialist conception of the history of the human animal in particular. The ridiculous inconsistency of this sort of “monism” has never come home to him. Yet in spite of this fact, Bax would rather accept Haeckel’s unclear bourgeois monism than the clear proletarian monism of Dietzgen. But so long as Haeckel does not realize that a materialist monist must be a historical materialist, just so long does his monism remain imperfect. And so long as Bax ignores this fact, he can still learn a whole lot from Dietzgen.
The evident fact is that the biological work of Haeckel, the historical work of Marx and Engels, and the philosophical work of Dietzgen are equally necessary for the formulation of a consistent monism. In the last analysis, monism requires the co-operation of all human sciences, each science being but a link in the division of labor between specialists. And it would be just as inconsistent on our part to reject Haeckel’s splendid biological contribution to monism, as it is on the part of Bax to belittle Dietzgen’s very essential philosophical contribution.
The most essential difference between proletarian and bourgeois monism lies deeper than Bax suspects. All that is Marxian rests on the revolutionary method which is opposed to the old symptomatic, or reform, method of bourgeois politics and science. This revolutionary method is the expression of the scientific understanding, that only a fundamental removal of bourgeois society can cure the evils of that society. This is what distinguishes Marxian economics and politics from bourgeois economics and politics. This is what distinguishes the proletarian (positive) school of criminology from the classic bourgeois school of criminology. This is what makes any science proletarian as distinguished from bourgeois science.
Since Dietzgen’s theory of understanding is an integral part of Marxism, according to the testimony of Marx and Engels themselves, it must likewise differ by this revolutionary method from bourgeois theories of understanding. And it does. It expresses the revolutionary fact that the human mind — meaning the mind of mankind, not that of a handful of thinkers — cannot come to its normal development, cannot become conscious of the means by which its mission on earth and in the universe is to be fulfilled, until bourgeois society is abolished. This fact makes of Dietzgen’s theory of understanding, and the proletarian monism following from it, a revolutionary theory, which is as much opposed to Haeckel’s bourgeois monism as socialism is to capitalism.
It is this fact, furthermore, which stamps all philosophy, other than proletarian, as metaphysical, in other words, as unscientific. No less a man than Kant, the bourgeois philosopher, declared that metaphysics can never be a science. Now, philosophy does not lose its metaphysical garments and become a science, until it adopts the conclusions of Dietzgen’s theory of understanding, until it realizes that the development of the human mind as a part of universal evolution is inseparably connected with the proletarian revolution. But Haeckel’s monism, being a bourgeois monism, will never admit or understand this, and therefore it remains metaphysical and imperfect as a science. Proletarian monism, on the other hand, is a consistent and perfect science of natural development and excludes the last vestiges of metaphysics.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. The proof of science (including scientific philosophy) is in the testimony of historical evolution. The Marxian theories stand vindicated by fifty years of proletarian development. And with the advance of the proletarian revolution, the necessity and scientific truth of Dietzgen’s theory of understanding stand out in ever bolder relief.
When bourgeois schools will teach proletarian revolution and admit proletarian teachers on the same terms as bourgeois teachers, then it will be time enough to admit that the thinkers of the ruling class are unbiased scientists. Until then I shall prefer to trust proletarian science. For my part, I am not afraid of losing the ground from under my feet, if I do not continually seek for points of contact with bourgeois thought. The historical development takes good care, through the presence of ruling classes, that we do not get away from bourgeois ideas. And it is not in the least necessary that some of our good comrades should be everlastingly adulterating our clear proletarian bugle calls by their hybridization of bourgeois and proletarian ideas. Instead of weakening and confusing our movement by their semi-bourgeois meandering, they had better help us to beat a few new ideas into the dull bourgeois brains.
At any rate, I rely on a majority of class-conscious and thoroughly revolutionary proletarians as the only trustworthy bulwark against the corrosive effect of an eclecticism, which, if it is not an echo of bourgeois dreams, is certainly permeated by the mist of metaphysics and is too vague and vacillating to point the way unerringly to the culminating point of the proletarian revolution.
Ernest Untermann.
[a] The title of this article alternately appears as “Marxism or Eclecticism.” on the first page, “Marxism and Eclecticism.” on the page headers, and finally “Marxism or Electionism?” in the index (almost certainly an error). For this online edition I have taken the first page title and added a question mark.
[b] The original text reads “A man who can explain a part of history by materialist, and another part by materialist methods”. Corrected as an apparent error.
Last updated on 9 April 2023