The New Left

This essay is still incomplete. CMKP would appreciate your comments in this regard

Going through the introductory textbook of International Relations written by Bayles and Smith, I felt like I was going through a shopping mall, a veritable super-market of theories. The nice paper, pretty boxes, and pretty pictures were laid out for me like a mega-sale display before holiday shopping. As I was walking through the aisles/pages of this supermarket/book, I thought “naturally they must all support capitalism. I mean is it possible that I should be able to get an appropriate theory to fight imperialism from the main textbook of the capitalist West for International Relations?” Imagine my surprise then when I read the label “Marxist Theories of International Relations.” I jumped at the opportunity and when I read the words “The chapter argues that no analysis of globalization is complete without an input from Marxist theory” I was thrilled. Could it be? Was it to be true? An alternative to imperialism and capitalism in the central imperialist text on International Relations?

But my hopes were soon dashed when I realized that it was, for lack of a better word, an emasculated and totally distorted Marxism. Regarding Marxism-Leninism they had written “…the disappearance of the Soviet Union, has encouraged an appreciation of Marx’s work less encumbered by the baggage of Marxism-Leninism as a state ideology.” In the next couple of lines the book points to the utter “non-Marxian ideas” of the vanguard party, democratic centralism, and the command economy (the latter is a famous slur for a socialist planned economy). That is the end of that. Marxism-Leninism, which has dominated twentieth century thought and politics, did not even deserve an argument. The authors choose to simply ignore this “subversive” doctrine lest some foolish utopian radical, such as myself, get any seditious ideas in his/her head about revolution. And we marched on to four neatly packaged theories of Marxism. They were:

So I would like to devote some space for thinking through these ideas and understanding how and why they end up in the principle textbook of a subject dominated by imperialist writing such as International Relations.

Gramscianism

The book tells me Gramsci was the founder of the Italian Communist Party. No mention is made of the equally important and influential Bordiga, neither of Gramsci’s early flirtations with right-opportunism. But perhaps it is too much to expect that the authors would go into the real communist party history that demonstrate further complexions in Gramsci’s character and damage his repute as a “Marxist” theoretician. Contrary to the indifference with which Marx’s work was greeted by the bourgeois academic world (there was a total “conspiracy of silence”), Gramsci’s work is celebrated and touted to be a great revolutionary creative addition to Marxism. Well paid academics in the US and UK such as Robert Cox helped to popularize Gramsci’s ideas. In 1926 Gramsci was jailed by the fascists (along with all the other communist leaders including Bordiga who died in jail), and from there he wrote the Prison Notebooks. The main question he asks is, “why has revolution not occurred in Western Europe?” The answer, he says, has to do with hegemony.

To put it simply, Gramsci says that the masses are taken in by bourgeois ideas. Workers themselves consent to the bourgeois ideas of civil society. Communist Parties (Leninists and specially Stalinists) have taken the dichotomy of base vs. superstructure too seriously. They have to understand that the relationship between the two is dialectical, not deterministic. This is why the Communist Parties have not been able to counteract hegemonic ideas. Gramsci believes that since the masses have been taken in by hegemonic ideas, what we have to do is create a counter-hegemonic bloc in civil-society.

What a heap of dung! And this entire theory is what the fuss is all about? Lets take this theory apart one by one.

First, the masses and bourgeois ideas! Of course, the masses were taken in by bourgeois ideas. There is nothing new or novel in this notion at all. Marx talked about the “dominant ideas of the times being the ideas of the dominant class.” Millions of people, all over Europe, were taken in by glib propaganda of Fascism in the 1930’s (just like millions are taken in by the glib propaganda of the USA today). There is nothing novel that Gramsci has added to Marxism in this regard. [Note: I would like to stress that it is a commonly known fact that the European proletariat historically, especially those hardened in struggle, was not susceptible to fascist propaganda. They resisted till the last.] The entire job of the communist party is to break “false consciousness” and create “class-consciousness”. This is the ABC of Marxism. Why are academics asserting that something new and creative has been added to Marxism?

It is alleged by the Gramscites that the Marxist-Leninist parties failed because they did not think of this problem of the superstructure. Some have extended this argument to stress that the Soviet Union collapsed because of the rigid Stalinist interpretation of Marxism that failed to understand the complex relationship between base and superstructure. [Note: Mao Tse Tung correctly pointed out that it was Modern Revisionism, and not “Stalinism”, that was leading to the restoration of capitalism in the USSR].

We see that this assertion is being made to introduce the concept of a counter-hegemonic bloc. This counter-hegemonic bloc is the answer to the problem of countering bourgeois ideology and hegemonic ideas. What about the role of the Communist Party? Most Gramscites have chosen to simply ignore that question.

Gramsci’s notion of fighting bourgeois culture is correct. The problem is that he has not posed the next question, “What sort of culture should we replace it with?” Historically it turns out that Gramsci was very interested in maintaining his ties with various petty-bourgeois artists, writers, actors and so on (who in my view were moving further away from Marxism), and ideologically justifying their “experiments with new forms of art” as counter-hegemonic cultural practices. No Marxist-Leninist has, or should have, a problem with artists “experimenting” with “new forms of art”. Artists should have all the freedom to try their ideas. What all Marxist-Leninists should have a problem with is when a theorist begins to suggest, or when his followers begin to stress in his name, that these new forms of art are in and of themselves revolutionary. In other words, new forms of art cannot defeat capitalism; only a well-disciplined party can defeat capitalism. Gramscites interest in culture takes them far away from the direct and more important questions of building a party.

Furthermore, the question of counter-hegemonic bloc is left open and totally abstract. In other words, the notion of fighting bourgeois culture with counter-hegemonic culture is sufficiently broad to allow for any anti-bourgeois culture to come under the general rubric of Marxism. Why are you playing music the other way around – I’m building a counter-hegemonic bloc. Why are you smoking pot? – I’m building a counter-hegemonic block. What is the meaning of this dadaism, surrealism, post-structuralism, post-feminism, post-marxism, anarchism, free love or free sexism, sleeping-in till 4 in the eveningism… they are all counter-hegemonic blocs. One should give the subjective factor the utmost importance in the development of a revolutionary struggle, but I fail to see how this type of culture helps us achieve our purpose. This is the most benign type of “rebellion” and “subversion”. The type that upsets no bourgeois and invites no real hostility. It is excellent for campus radicals who like to run naked across campus to “liberate” them selves.

So to turn the attention to the original question one more time, “What sort of culture should we replace bourgeois culture with?” We must change bourgeois culture into proletarian culture. This is not the culture of philistine petty bourgeois “culturalist”. It is the militant culture of class struggle, of iron discipline and centralization, of unity of will and command, of monolithic unity in the face of the enemy. No wishy washy song and dance will do. Let no one be fooled! The Pakistani ruling class will drown the communists in a blood bath if we are not fierce and united. Proletarian culture is not the sentimentalist culture of the petty bourgeois (which is exactly what is sneaked in as a counter-hegemonic bloc). Proletarian culture must master science, the principles of scientific leadership, and even the principles of political and military struggle. It is not the workers who are stupid and mislead by bourgeois civil society. They are a thousand times more militant and class-conscious than the intellectuals; The bourgeois and petty bourgeois intellectuals are mislead in thinking that the workers need dancing and music before they can learn revolution.

Furthermore, we must not be so foolish as to believe that anything that goes against capitalism is good for us. For example, the petty bourgeois hates the bourgeoisie. Should we then adopt their critique of bourgeois society? The open-ended ideas of a counter-hegemonic bloc suggest just that. We could then adopt the standpoint of Punjabi Nationalism to counter bourgeois Urdu Nationalism. Surely, the Punjabi chauvinists are counter-hegemonic. Of course, they are counter-hegemonic. They are even against the very creation of “Pakistan”. But they are against the creation of Pakistan because they are tied to the Sikh bourgeoisie across the border and are pining for a united Punjab. What about the Mohajir especially in the Punjab. Most of the left intellectuals in Pakistan are from U.P. and hate “Pakistan”. Surely they are counter-hegemonic. But they are counter-hegemonic because they are still tied to the India bourgeoisie that admittedly gives them more “academic freedom”. Indeed, the very problem with the Marxist movement in Pakistan has been that though many Marxists are opposed to the Pakistani bourgeoisie, they are unable to formulate or connect with a proletarian struggle (MKP and Major Ishaq being the only exception). A Punjabi counter-hegemony is useless to us because it only instills in the workers a national identity.

In conclusion, the notion of counter-hegemony is deliberately posed in such an open-ended manner as to allow every petty-bourgeois and bourgeois prejudice or opposition to the central values of capitalism to be touted as a revolutionary Marxist act. This will dissipate our forces and strength and prevent the one thing we need to concentrate our energies most upon, in fact, the entire future of the movement depends on this: the building of a Leninist party.

It is then not at all a coincidence that Gramscian ideas are a central text in International Relations. Gramscian ideas are sufficiently revolutionary sounding and also sufficiently vague that they serve the purpose for which they are intended: a mild critique of capitalism without the necessary revolutionary conclusions of Leninism. It is not a coincidence that Gramscian thinking is counter-posed to Leninism.

Critical Theory : The Frankfurt School of Thought

The twin sister of Gramscian thinking is the Frankfurt School. The former started in Italy, the latter in Germany. They are both the products of the same environment, follow the same trajectory of success and failure, use interchangeable terms, come to nearly the same kind of conclusions, and as I will show the product of the petty bourgeois intellectualism. Although this one is a little more complicated because we are not dealing with the work of a single author but of a so-called school of thought.

The Frankfurt School was set up in 1923 but its theorists came to the US during the Nazi era. Its first generation writers were mainly Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse. Among its second generation writers is the famous Jurgen Habermas lauded as The intellectual of the New Left.

The school dropped the terms Materialism and Marxism and took the name Critical Theory when they entered US colleges (where it principally became popular, especially in sociology). This step made it possible for C.T to enter the US academy easily and subsequently most of their works were published from these institutions (the works of Marcuse for example was published by the Rockerfeller Research Foundation). There is still a controversy over whether the switchover was an act of opportunism.

Critical vs. Traditional Theory

Critical Theorists claim that Marx was a “critical theorist”. They claim that Engels and Lenin (whom they totally ignore as a theorist) destroyed the original revolutionary essence of Marxism. They counter-pose the earlier Marx to the later Marx. They argue that the central aim of Marxism is not to show that economic base is the motor of historical growth. [Note: the echo with Gramsci is very familiar here]. Marx was above all interested in how society reproduced itself. In a word, they argue that Marx’s model is a model of “social reproduction” (note: but not necessarily of the “reproduction of the relations of production” as Marx argued in Das Capital. How anyone can separate “reproduction of the relations of production” from economics is beyond me, but anyhow). Horkheimer wrote in 1937 in an article entitled Traditional and Critical Theory:

“The basic dividing line between traditional and critical theory in Horkheimer’s conception is determined by whether the theory assists in the process of social reproduction, or whether, on the contrary, it is subversive of it.” (Pg. 85)

Thus, we see that any theorist who helps the process of “reproduction” is a traditional theorist and anyone who works to subvert “reproduction” is a critical theorist. [Note: there is an echo of this in Gramscianism as Traditional Intellectual and Organic Intellectual]. Further, Horkhiemer said a C.T is “the theoretician whose only concern is to accelerate a development which should lead to a society without exploitation.” However, he added that this road to a society without exploitation was indeterminate.

Classical Idealism: Kant, Aristotle, Plato

Reduction of Politics to Philosophy

“But in this society, the situation of the proletariat does not provide any guarantee of correct knowledge, either… the differentiation of its social structure which is fostered from above, and the opposition between personal and class interests which is only overcome at the best of times, prevents this consciousness from acquiring immediate validity.”

Horkheimer and Adorno = The concordance between the mind of man and the nature of things that he had in mind is patriarchal

Rationalization and Riefication

In History and Class-Consciousness Georg Lukacs argued that the economic writings of Marx had been overemphasized. The main thrust of Marx’s work lay in the dialectic of the fetishism of commodities and the reification of the commodities. People related to each other not in terms of who they were but in terms of what they owned. They related to each other not directly but through the material things they owned. The fact that no one seemed to notice was a process of reification (legitimization). Lukacs argued that he was bringing the Hegel back into Marx.

Karl Korsch attacked “Science” as a mode of rationalization. Korsch was bringing the Weber back into Marx. Max Weber = Judaeo-Christian tradition = instrumental rationality, control and calculation

Immutable scientific laws of society were the expression of of a world in which human relations had become things beyond human control, seperation of sciences destroys the totality and historicity of human existence. Science destroyed the revolutionary essence of Marxism. Impartial science breaks the unity of theory and practice of Marxism.

Dialectics of Enlightenment Horkheimer = science as an instrument of domination

“What men want to learn from nature is how to use it in order wholly to dominate it and other men. Enlightenment behaves towards things as a dictator towards men. He knows them in so far as he can manipulate them.”

Critical theory = unnecessary to have a structure that is logical or systematic.

Response to Fascism

Karl Popper = The Open Society and its Enemies; fascism = irrationalism a revolt against reason

Georg Lukacs = The Destruction of Reason = Fascism = triumph of manipulative rationality

Fascism is the self-destruction of liberal enlightenment = main reason is natural sciences and empiricist counter part in epistemology.

In fact, C.T has more in common with other theories of sociology and philosophy than it does with Marxism. With three writers in particular: Hegel, Kant, and Weber. In fact, George Lukacs and Karl Korsch had already written about the central ideas in C.T

Everything hinges on whether the theory really is linked to the relevant struggle, and that presupposes two things: first, that critical theory of society recognizes the full dialectical nature of the fundamental struggles, and second that the theory is mediated to those involved in them in a practical way. Merely showing the necessity of contradictions and making them conscious is not enough; a real revolutionary theory involves a theory of organization and political action. What is needed is a practical-critical theory. And precisely this is lacking in the Frankfurt School’s conception.[1]

Even though the critical position emerges out of the structure of society, it is not concerned, either in its conscious intentions or in its objective significance, that anything within this structure function more efficiently. Rather, the categories of efficiency, utility, suitability, the values ‘productive’ and ‘valuable,’ in their meaning for the status quo, are themselves regarded by the critical theoretician as dubious; they are by no means extra-scientific premises to be taken for granted.[2]

Materialism is the recognition of ‘objects in themselves,’ or outside the mind; ideas and sensations are copies or images of those objects. The opposite doctrine (idealism) claims that these objects do not exist ‘without the mind’; objects are ‘combinations of sensations.’[3]

The naively metaphysical standpoint of sound bourgeois common sense considers thought independent of being and defines truth as the correspondaence of thought to an object that is external to it and “mirrored” by it.[4]

Lenin regards the transition from Hegel’s idealist dialectic to Marx and Engels dialectical materialism as nothing more than an exchange: the idealist outlook that lies at the basis of Hegel’s dialectical method is replaced by a new philosophical outlook that is no longer ‘idealist’ but ‘materialist.’ He seems to be unaware that such a ‘materialist inversion’ of Hegel’s idealist philosophy involves at the most a merely terminological change whereby the Absolute instead of being called ‘Spirit’ is called ‘Matter.’[5]

the crude materialist theory of knowledge now being promulgated “drags the whole debate between materialism and idealism back to a historical stage which German idealism from Kant to Hegel had already surpassed.

Soviet Marxism, materialism and empirio-criticism “replaced the dialectical notion of truth by a primitive naturalistic realism, which has become canonical in Soviet Marxism.”[6]

The Soviet Union merely changed the economic base. But they did not realize that merely changing the economic base does not change ideology and does not change social relations. This was an example of the undialectical approach of Marxism-Leninism. This theory does not recognize that changing the economic base, i.e. changing the forms of property, that is, changing from private property to socialist property, is itself a enormous transformation in terms of social relations. After all what else is property but the legal expression of a social relation. How stupid then to say, yes they changed the property relations but did not change social relations.

The ‘given’ is not, in this case, something that exists generally and independently of theory. Rather, it is mediated through the conceptual whole in which such statements function. This does not, however, deny that the reality aimed at by the theory is fully substantial, that is, that it exists independently of the consciousness of the theoretician.[7]

A major component of ‘traditional theory’ was regarded as ‘positivism’. Of course, positivism had played a in the revolutionary rise of capitalism; as Marcuse stresses, positivism’s ‘appeal to the facts then amounted to a direct attack on the religious and metaphysical conceptions that were the ideological support of the ancien regime.’ But by the second half of the last century, this definition of science was proving, as Horkheimer outlines, to restrict scientific activty to the ‘registration, classification, and generalisation of appearances, without regard to any differentiation of the essential and inessential.’

Horkheimer was convinced that neo-metaphysics, for example Max Scheler’s anthropology, was anti-‘traditional’ in that it was concerned to relate anew to a whole series of objects that had come to be regarded as ‘unscientific.’ Metaphysics, noted Horkheimer could, in this form, be a ‘lesser evil’ than the ‘neutrality’ of the natural sciences and their ‘traditional theory’. Whereas ‘critical theory of society’ perceives a positive content in metaphysics, positivism regards the latter as nonsense. …In contrast to Lenin’s polemics against Hume and Berkley, Horkheimer endeavours to show that historical materialism did draw on, though critically, the great philosophical refutation of naïve materialism.

Positivism, it is charged, sees only the particular and in the realm of society thus sees only the individual and the relations between individuals; all is exhausted by facts. That there are facts that can be ascertained by means of analytical science, philosophy does not dispute. But philosophy posits against these facts more or less constructively, more or less in its own philosophizing, ideas, essences, totalities, independent spheres of objective spirit, units of meaning, spirit of peoples that it considers to be “more original” or even “genuine” elements of being. The discovery of certain unprovable metaphysical presuppositions within positivism is taken by philodophy as constituting lawful ground for raising the metaphysical stakes. So it happens that against the school of Vilfredo Pareto, for example—a school that, because of its positivistic understanding of reality, has to deny the existence of class, nation, humanity—various standpoints, from which these entities are posited, are offered as a “different world view,” a “different metaphysics,” or a “different consciousness,” without ever maing a binding committment possible. There are, one might say, different conceptions of reality, which make it possible to investigate what kin of genesis they had, to which sensibility of life and to which social group they belong, without providing an objectively grounded priority.

In the 1920’s a new criticism of materialism developed within the Marxist movement. In his famous book History and Class-Consciousness Georg Lukacs argued that Soviet Marxism had overemphasised the economic writings of Marx and neglected the central dialectic of alienation, fetishism, & reification. He claimed that he was bringing Hegel back into Marxism. Similarly, Karl Korsch in Marxism and Philosophy attacked the ‘scientific’ foundations of Marxism by arguing that science was merely “a mode of instrumental rationalisation” and only a form of control & calculation. Korsch was bringing Weber to Marxism.

Later in the 1930’s this critique was further developed by the Frankfurt School of Social Research whose contemporary exponent is Jurgen Habermas. Today this critique finds wide currency in the left-wing intelligentsia of the West. I will refer to this intellectual tendency, that can be traced all the way back to the young Hegelians and perhaps even further, as the New-Left.

“Soviet Totalitarianism”, the New-Left argues, was not only the product of the specific historical conditions of Russia (as the Trotskyites maintain), but also the product of the unfolding of a mechanistic and deterministic distortion of Marxism. In a word, Soviet totalitarianism was the logical product of rational instrumental positivist social engineering by a small technocratic elite informed by a deterministic and mechanistic interpretation of materialism. The New-Left has counter-posed Soviet adulterated deterministic Marxism to the true humane Marxism. Marx’s early works, and not Capital, are the New-Bible of the New-Left. They swear that Engels delivered the kiss of Judas to Marxism. In particular, Engels and later Lenin took the dichotomy of base and superstructure too seriously, exaggerated the role of the economic base and paid insufficient attention to the role of ideas and ideology. As a result the dialectical relationship between the two was undermined in theory leading to totalitarianism in practice. This created a teleology view of history based on economic determinism that undermined the role of human agency and distorted Marx’s work. The New-Left proponents of the above criticism claim to speak in the name of genuine Marxism, dialectical, Hegelian, humane, and New-Marxism.

There are several levels at which one can challenge this criticism of scientific socialism. One can ask, was the Soviet Union really “totalitarian”? Was the doctrine materialism responsible for the alleged totalitarianism? Did the Soviets subscribe to materialism and economic determinism in theory and practice? So on and so forth. Although all these questions need to be answered, they are not the focus of this paper.

The focus of this paper is to flesh out Marx’s materialism and show that the above critique is unfounded. I will show that the critique confuses two interrelated questions: the question of the relation between matter and thought, and the question of the relation between material conditions and ideas.

Owing to the form and content of The Holy Family and Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx and Engels were increasingly associated with Feuerbach’s materialism by the mid 1840’s. Stirner’s book, the Ego and the its Own compelled Marx and Engels to elaborate their disagreements with Feuerbach materialism and Stirner’s anorcho-existentialism. The Theses on Feuerbach and The German Ideology constituted a break from the Left-Hegelians and arguably the best elaboration of Marx and Engels’ materialism. Therefore, I will concentrate on these two works to prove my thesis.

A note of caution needs to be added in relation to the above thesis. The author is not asserting that a concept should be accepted or rejected on the basis of whether it was developed by Marx. Such a view would transform Marxism into theology. If the author’s thesis is held to be correct by the reader, this would imply that the critique of the New-Left would now stand on independent ground in relation to Marxism. Implicit in the above thesis is the understanding that the New-Left critique has disingenuously exploited the goodwill of Marxism.

A frequent logical error is committed when the answer to two separate questions are confused and put together. Such is the fate of nearly all discussion on Marx’s materialism. Two interrelated questions are often confused: First, what is the relationship between matter and thought? Second, what is the relationship between material conditions and ideas? For example, Erich Fromm says

Marx—like Hegel—looks at an object in its movement, in its becoming, and not as a static ‘object,’ which can be explained by discovering the physical ‘cause’ of it. In contrast to Hegel, Marx studies man and history by beginning with the real man and the economic and social conditions under which he must live, and not primarily with his ideas. Marx was as far from bourgeois materialism as he was from Hegel’s idealism—hence he could rightly say that his philosophy is neither idealism nor materialism but a synthesis: humanism and naturalism.[8]

In this passage, Erich Fromm has created the impression that materialism is the study of “static” material conditions and idealism is the study of the “movement” of ideas. Therefore, Marx method is a midway point between the two. This is a result of confusing the relation between matter and thought with the relation between material conditions and ideas. The former is an epistemological question, whereas the latter is a methodological question.

Materialism is an epistemology. It is the understanding that an objective world exists independent of thought. Materialism is therefore, the recognition of ‘objects in themselves’ and outside the mind. Ideas and sensations are copies and images of those objects. Similarly, idealism is also an epistemology. It is the understanding that objects do not exist ‘without the mind’ and that objects are merely ‘combinations of sensations’.

The precursor of the New-Left Karl Korsh sarcastically wrote that “The naively metaphysical standpoint of sound bourgeois common sense considers thought independent of being and defines truth as the correspondence of thought to an object that is external to it and “mirrored” by it.”[9]

Yet, in his Thesis on Feuerbach Marx argues that, “Man must prove the truth, i.e. the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking in practice.” Similarly, in the German Ideology Marx proceeds in an equally shameless manner that “The premises from which we begin are… the real individuals, their activity and the material conditions under which they live… These premises can thus be verified in a purely empirical way.” (Mcclelland, 176)

In a word, “truth” is the same as “reality” and both can be proved only by practice. Similarly, not only do “real” individuals, their “activity”, and “material conditions” exist before and independent of one’s analysis, one’s analysis can verify these factors in a purely “empirical way”. What else can we call this except blatant “metaphysical” “bourgeois materialism” to borrow phrases from Karl Korsh and Erich Fromm.

But this epistemological question has absolutely no relation to the methodological question of the relation between ideas and practice. In other words, it is entirely possible for an analyst to be a consistent materialist and still claim that ideas, independent of material conditions, are the driving force of history. Therefore, the question of the role of ideas in social change is a methodological question not an epistemological question. For example, Frued’s theory in Civilisation and its Discontent is purely based on a materialist epistemology. Similarly, Feuerbach’s materialism is epistemologically similar to Marx’s materialism. However, these forms of materialism are defective according to Marx in that they have not grasped the relationship between ideas and practice.

Marx refers to materialism not just as an epistemology but also as a methodology. On the purely epistemological level Marx has no disagreement with Feuerbach’s materialism. However, on the methodological level Marx takes a step forward from Feuerbach’s materialism.

Marx says “The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of contemplation…” In a word, Feuerbach’s materialism has analysed how certain notions are incorrect (Marx probably has Feuerbachs critique of religion in mind). Marx continues “…but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively”. In a word, Feuerbach has not asked why certain notions are held by society. Feuerbach has not grasped the significance of the “practical-critical activity” that gives rise to ideas.

Marx solves this riddle by asserting that, “All social life is essentially practical. All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice.” Further, Marx elaborates that,

Certainly Feuerbach has a great advantage over the ‘pure’ materialists in that he realises how man too is an ‘object of the senses’ [In a word, Marx acknowledges that Feuerbach is epistemologically a materialist]. But apart from the fact that he only conceives him as an ‘object of the senses’, not as ‘sensuous activity’, because he still remains in the realm of theory and conceives of men not in their given social connection, not under their existing conditions of life, which have made them what they are, he never arrives at the really existing active men…

That is why Marx points out that, “As far as Feuerbach is a materialist he does not deal with history, and as far as he considers history he is not a materialist.” Marx corrects this error of the Feuerbachian materialists who stop short of analysing the interrelation between ideas and the “existing conditions of life”. Marx explains that ideas are “directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life”. Therefore, ideas express relations of domination and exploitation.

The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas; hence of the relationships which make the one class the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance.

Therefore, ideas and practice are conceived as one process not two. Practice is activity in the field of material relations, and ideas are activity in the realm of thought. One presupposes and is a simultaneous precondition for the other. That is why Marx says “The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-changing can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice.”

Despite the “coincidence” of theory and practice, the methodology of Marx begins with the material relations (the economic base) in order to understand and appreciate the role of ideas. Marx argues that ideas cannot be understood in relation to themselves or in relation to each other. Ideas can only be understood in relation to the material conditions, to practice. Otherwise, we would be begin to explain religion in religious terms, morality in moral terms and so on. Marx asserts,

Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life. In the first method of approach the starting-point is consciousness taken as the living individual; in the second method, which conforms to real life, it is the real living individuals themselves, and consciousness is considered solely as their consciousness.

Therefore, the methodology employed by Engels, Lenin, or other orthodox Marxists is entirely in keeping with the methodology developed by Marx in the German Ideology and the Thesis on Feuerbach. The orthodox Marxists have not distorted Marxism.

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[1] Phil Slater, Origin and Significance of the Frankfurt School. Pg. 28

[2] Traditional and Critical Theory, Max Horkhiemer pg. 261.

[3] V.I. Lenin, Materialism and Emprio-Criticism, pg. 14

[4] Marxism and Philosophy, 1923, Karl Korsch. P.62

[5] Marxism and Philosophy, 1923, Karl Korsch. P.115

[6] Herbert Marcuse, Soviet Marxism: a Critical analysis. Pg. 123.

[7] The Latest Attacks on Metaphysicis, Max Horkheimer, pg. 38

[8] Erich Fromm Marx’s Concept of Man, New York, pg. 11

[9] Marxism and Philosophy, 1923, Karl Korsch. P.62