Early English Materialism

[p030] Early English Materialism scientific and philosophical development to which we have referred. The experience of the working class by itself can produce only ‘trade union consciousness’; and this trade union consciousness, Lenin insists, is bourgeois consciousness. It accepts the framework of the bourgeois social order. And it accepts it in the given ideological and political forms of the particular society. Thus the English labour move- ment is dominated by bureaucratic, ‘labour- aristocratic’ and middle-class strata whose out- look is precisely that of English bourgeois society. So long as the organized working class remains under the domination of these strata (represented by reformism, Fabianism, Stalinism, varieties of radicalism, etc.) it has bourgeois consciousness, however strong or militant its trade union organ- ization. The fight for Socialist consciousness The analysis of the fabric of bourgeois ideology, and of the historical character of its formation and development in Britain, is important for the central Struggle in Britain: to make the break, in conflict, from trade union (bourgeois) consciousness to socialist (Marxist) consciousness. The grip of middle-class agencies on the socialist and working- class movement in Britain is an indispensable pillar of the domination of the ruling class; its founda- tion-stone is the trade union bureaucracy, which must at all costs confine the organized strength of the working class’s trade unions within the frame- work of bourgeois legality and bourgeois conscious- ness. Socialist consciousness has to be deliberately fought for and developed on Marxist foundations, in continuous battle with these ‘national’ bour- geois forms of consciousness: the revolutionary working-class party has the purpose of training and welding together from the working class (and those intellectuals who join it) the force which develops this socialist consciousness. The daily paper and press of the revolutionary party has exactly this purpose and no other. There is no such thing as ‘working-class culture’ developed out of the daily life of the working class under capitalist domination. The idea of such a culture is a myth of the petty bourgeoisie, who wish precisely for the working class to stay where it is. Everything depends on the conscious elaboration of the alter- native Marxist world outlook, the incorporation and analysis of every social development of every new working-class experience, and particularly the experience of its conscious vanguard, from the standpoint of Marxism. ‘Without revolutionary theory, no revolutionary movement’ (Lenin, What Is To Be Done?). Trade union (bourgeois) consciousness in Britain has its roots deep in the history of the English bourgeoisie. Marxism has until now not estab- lished a sufficiently strong basis in sections of the working class to be able to challenge the hold of the individualistic and empiricist outlook of the bourgeoisie which came to full power in the 17th century. Trotskyism and the daily Trotskyist news- 123 fr 2 2 '

[p031] paper are now able to begin this struggle on a conscious theoretical base for the first time since Marx’s intervention in the British section of the First International. The purpose of this article is not to give the outline history of the establishment of the bour- geois order and its forms of class domination— that is a task which must be undertaken jointly by Marxists in Britain—but to consider one remark- able contribution by a bourgeois scholar, not a Marxist but a liberal political philosopher influ- enced by Marxism, C. B. Macpherson. This Cana- dian academic published a book in 1962, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke. (Since then he has developed his liberal ideas in New Worlds of Democracy, 1967, a view of the development of ‘democracy’ in more recent history and in the contemporary world.) Macpherson had anticipated this work in a paper of 1954, where he ‘suggested that English political thought from the 17th to the 19th cen- turies had an underlying unity which deserved notice. I called the unifying assumption “‘possessive individualism” and suggested that the central difficulties of liberal-democratic thought from John Stuart Mill to the present might be better under- stood if they were seen to have been set by the persistence and deeprootedness of that assumption.’ (Quoted in Macpherson 1962 p. vii.) According to Macpherson’s analysis, then, the ‘democratic’ and individualistic political theory, which in various forms has reigned supreme in Britain since the 17th century, works on certain assumptions which have to be unearthed in order to understand the origin, development and con- tradictions of this theory. These assumptions amount to the acceptance of what Macpherson calls modern ‘market society’, i.e., capitalist society. It follows from Macpherson’s argument that the principles of ‘democratic’ bourgeois poli- tical theory are not timeless truths of universal validity, but are limited to a particular set of historical conditions, those of the capitalist epoch, beginning in the 17th century and ending in our own. A liberal view of the capitalist social order It is clear at the start (and we explain below in detail) that Macpherson’s interpretation is close to Marxism in certain ways. It challenges the fundamental assumption of bourgeois ideology, viz., that the capitalist social order we know is ‘natural’, conforms to ‘human nature’, and works according to the highest, absolute values, human Tights, etc. But it is of great interest for Marxists © that Macpherson remains politically a liberal reformist and not a revolutionary, even after his own detailed analysis. This cannot be explained simply by noting that academics in Canada, as elsewhere, are isloated from the working class. More fundamental questions are involved. Marxists can learn a great deal from Macpherson’s book; but above all, they must ask the question: ‘What is there in Macpherson’s analysis that allows him to 124 draw “‘liberal’”’ conclusions?’ If this question can be answered, it may give some valuable indications to resolving the major questions with which we began. Until now, middle-class groups advocating socialism have in Britain served only as an assist- ance to the conservative bureaucracy and aristo- cracy of labour. They have seen ‘socialism’ as an extension of radicalism or ‘liberal’ democracy, not as the product of revolutionary theory and of the modern proletariat and the anarchy of capitalist production. Consequently the consciousness of the organized workers has remained at the level of trade union consciousness, not challenging any of the assumptions laid down by the whole ideological superstructure of capitalism. In Macpherson we see even the most advanced middle-class theo- rizing, even to the point of using much of Marx’s analysis, still unable to break this barrier. If this limit to bourgeois thought can be demonstrated we shall get a clearer view of where the kernel of the question is, see more exactly on what point of the development of theory we must concentrate in the building of the revolutionary movement in Britain. The essence can only be brought out if we give a fairly lengthy summary of parts of Mac- Pherson’s case in The Political theory of Possessive Individualism. At various points we indicate the Closeness or indebtedness of Macpherson’s con- clusions to those of Marx on the same questions, and at others the decisive differences. The base of Liberal- democratic theory The individualism upon which liberal-democratic theory is based begins with Hobbes, writing in the 1640s and 1650s ,ji.e., during the English bourgeois revolution. Hobbes aimed to throw aside all traditional notions and assumptions about Tights, justice, etc. and to deduce political rights and obligations from the essential characteristics — and needs of individuals. In different forms, this individualism permeates all . bourgeois political thought. But within it is another assumption: it is not just a question of assuming the individual’s well-being to be the aim and purpose of the social order; bourgeois theory assumes a possessive individual, the proprietor, indépendently of. any- thing bestowed upon him by society, or his person and his capacities, and it is this property which assures his freedom. Hobbes and the bourgeois political philosophers who followed. him explained ‘civil society’, the bourgeois order, as the result of the coming together of men with these charac- teristics and interests. Macpherson shows that the real process was the reverse. ‘The relation .of ownership, having become for more and more men the critically important relation determining their actual freedom and actual prospect of realizing their full potentialities, was read back into the nature of the individual. . . . Political society becomes a calculated device for the pro- tection of this property and for the maintenance of an orderly relation of exchange.’ (p. 3.) Clearly, Macpherson assumes the ideology (in this case, bourgeois political theory) to be a reflec- Fourth International Spring 1972

[p032] tion of the economic structure of society, and follows Marx at this point in showing that the consciousness is an ‘inverted one’ in that it turns upside down the actual relationship. Macpherson’s book shows that these possessive assumptions lay behind the political theories of radicals like the Levellers as well as of Hobbes and the theorists who followed him. A ‘materialist’ view of the nature of man In rejecting all past assumptions about political, natural or divine right, Hobbes based himself upon a materialist view of the nature of man. He tried to introduce into his thinking the latest conquests of scientific thought, i.e., the physics and beginnings of scientific method of Galileo. From the under- standing of man as an individual which this gave him, he deduced the nature of society. ‘The stand- point of the old materialism [i.e., of the material- ism of thinkers like Hobbes, C.S.] is that of the isolated individual in civil society’ (Theses on Feuerbach). Marxism, dialectical materialism, is a qualitatively different world outlook, adopting the stsndpoint of ‘socialized humanity’. What was Hobbes’ theory of the nature of the human individual? Previous philosophers con- sidered man’s behaviour as the result of qualities bestowed or rules imposed upon him by God, so that political behaviour must be judged by the moral law given from God. Hobbes assumed instead that ‘...men are self-moving systems of matter which equally seek to maintain their own motion’ (Macpherson). From this Hobbes thought equal rights in society flowed logically. He argued further that if men are self-moving and self- directing systems of matter, then, following Galileo, the continued motion of each of them is equally necessary for their existence. Given:con- sciousness, the individuals in society would: sub- ject themselves to those moral rules of the social order which served to allow this necessary motion to continue, i.e., those rules which make sure motion does not stop, and which prevent collisions. At first sight, says Macpherson, this argument seems to flow logically from the natural-science premises about individuals as self-moving systems of matter. But Hobbes’ conclusion actually brings in another assumption. For the social-moral rules to become necessary, in his argument, we must assume that the free play of the interest of each separable individual is opposed to that of others at certain points. This ‘equality of insecurity’, and of equal subordination to objective (market) stan- dards is an assumption based on the characteristics of a ‘market’, i.e., possessive, competitive society, and does not flow from the nature of individuals. Thus Macpherson’s ‘logical’ analysis, concerned here to show the relation between philosophical mechanical materialism and bourgeois political theory, fully confirms Marx’s early insight: ‘The standpoint of the old materialism is that of the isolated individual in civil society.’ (Theses on Feuerbach.) Hobbes’ work reads as if he deduces the social Early English Materialism order from the characteristics of man, with certain pre-existing psychological characteristics. But in fact he brings in assumptions about men seeking power over others and needing to have this limited. - Hobbes assumed these particular historical features of man to be ‘natural’ and ‘human’ (i.e., material), because ‘civil’ society had made them such all- pervading and everyday matters. The pre-social ‘state of nature’ which Hobbes refers to in his analysis is therefore not the description of men as they were (or might be) before civilized society, but rather: ‘The state of nature is the hypothetical condition in which men as they are now, with natures formed by living in civilized society, would necessarily find themselves if there were no common power to overawe them all’ (Macpherson, p. 19). The ‘sovereign’ is ‘necessary not because of any- thing in the nature of individual man as a self- moving system of matter but only the basis of certain social systems. (Here we need Marx.) The limit of the old materialism was clearly demon- strated then. It could explain a minimum about the existence of individual men as material objects. But, once brought into the explanation of men in their real relations in society and history, it had to be buttressed with unstated assumptions about the society, society considered completely unhistoric- ally and unmaterialistically. The real world of men — was thus left outside of materialism; the ‘active side’ of history, as Marx put it, was left to idealism, where it is considered only abstractly, as pure thought. ‘Mechanical’ materialism and ‘historical’ materialism It was the unhistorical and metaphysical nature of Hobbes’ view which caught him out. He was all the more convinced he had arrived at an objective political theory because he recognized that in fact all values between men are regulated objectively and relatively by a common standard independent of each of them qualitatively and individually—the law of the market. His critics would want to object to a purely individualistic basis for a theory of politics and justice, on the grounds that political and legal principles, by their nature, are supra- individual and objective. Yes, said Hobbes, but this objectivity and standard of value is provided in reality by the market without having to invoke any divine or moral law from outside. The facts are enough. Again we see that this explanation is Satisfactory within the limits of bourgeois (civil) society, i.e., it cannot begin to explain the law and politics of non-bourgeois societies, because it can have no conception of them. (Mechanical materialism must be superseded by historical materialism which, from the standpoint of the revolutionary working class, of humanity ‘socialized’ by capitalism, develops a world outlook based on man as a material force acting on the world through his productive forces and produc- tion relations.) (At this point, let us note: mechanical material- ism, empiricism, which had to be superseded by 125

[p033] Marx’s dialectical, historical materialism, is directly associated with the essential social assumptions of bourgeois society. Those today who in philosophy do not break from mechanical to dialectical materialism will not be able consistently and in a revolutionary way to struggle for the overthrow of bourgeois society.) A direct and consistent thinker If we look in Hobbes’ work for his demonstra- tion of what human nature is like, we find it confirmed that he draws his judgement of this from social behaviour. In his Philosophical Rudi- ments concerning Government and Society (writ- ten in Latin in 1642), Hobbes is on some pages very insistent that he deduces the nature of society from the nature of individual men. But his demon- stration shows the opposite. The following passage is a truly remarkable description of human be- haviour as created by bourgeois relations, showing ‘that ruthless clarity of observation and objectivity which made Hobbes too direct and consistent a thinker for the bourgeois of the 1688 settlement later in the century; for that the more flexible Locke was more suitable. Human behaviour as created by bourgeois relations How, by what advice, men do meet, will be best known by observing those things which they do when they are met. For if they meet for traffic, it is plain every man regards not his fellow, but his business: if to discharge some office, a certain market-friendship is begotten, which hath more of jealousy in it than true love, and whence factions sometimes may arise, but goo will never: if for pleasure, and recreation of mind, every man is wont to please himself most with those things which stir up laughter, whence he may (according to the nature of that which is ridiculous) by com- parison of another man’s defects and _ infirmities, pass the more current in his own opinion: and although this be sometimes innocent and without offence, yet it is manifest they are not so much delighted with the society, as their own vain glory. But for the most part, in these kinds of meetings, we wound the absent; their whole life, sayings. actions are examined, judged, condemned; nay, it is very rare, but some present receive a fling before they part, so as his reason was not ill. who was wont always at parting to go out last. And these are indeed the true delights of society, unto which we are carried by nature, that is, by those passions which are incident to all creatures. . . . So clear is it by experience to all men who a little more narrowly consider human affairs, that all free congress ariseth either from mutual poverty, or from vain glory, whence the parties met, endeavour to carry with them either some benefit. or to leave behind them that same eUdoxtety some esteem and honour with those, with whom they have been conversant. The same is also collected by reason out of definitions themselves, of will. good, honour, profitable.’ (Quoted in Macpherson, pp. 26-27.) 126 What Hobbes is describing here is the indivi- dualistic ‘human nature’ formed by bourgeois society, in which all social relations and values are distorted to the individual’s false consciousness of his own independence and the augmentation of his possessions, including his own person and reputation. Hobbes showed at length in the later ‘Leviathan’, writing about ‘valuing and honouring’, that social status and the relative values of men were not an outgrowth of any individual, natural or God-given qualities, but of the objective mutual economic relations between men. Thus: ‘The Value, or Worth of a man, is as of all other things his Price; that is to say, so much as would be given for the use of his Power; and therefore is not absolute; but a thing dependent on the need and judgement of another... . And as in other things, so in men, not the seller but the buyer determines the Price. For let a man (as most men do) rate themselves at the highest Value they can; yet their true Value is no more than it is estimated by others.’ (Quoted in Macpherson, p. 37.) It is obvious that Hobbes accepts as ‘a fact’ the rule of the market in deciding the relative worth of men and their products. When he talks about ‘power’ he assumes without question that it is bought and sold on the market. He considers power always as something acquired in exploitation- relationships of superiority or command over other men and never as the power acquired by men due to their association with other men in the struggle to transform nature. In noting this point, Mac- pherson undoubtedly has in mind Marx’s Capital, in which the universality of the value-form under capitalism is contrasted with the relations of production in primitive society, feudalism and socialism, where the social relations are more ‘transparent’. A breakdown of possessive market society In all these as in other matters he considers, Macpherson borrows from the Marxist position, and his detailed demonstration of Hobbes’ argu- ment and assumptions deepens our understanding. He has filled out Marx’s aphorism that material- ism of the old type adopts the standpoint of the isolated individual in civil society. But now we come to a peculiar stage in the argument. Having shown that Hobbes is constantly making unstated assumptions about the ‘market’ character of society, and can conceive of men only as products of such a society, Macpherson sets down (pp. 46 ff) his ‘model’ of ‘developed (or possessive) market society’ (i.e., capitalist society) as contrasted with other world societies (‘customary or static society’, ‘simple market society’). His pur- pose is to show that only this ‘developed market society’ corresponds to all Hobbes’ assumptions. In this he is undoubtedly correct. ‘By possessive market society,’ says Macpherson, ‘I mean one in which, in contrast to a society based on custom and status, there is no authoritative allocation of work or rewards, and in which, in contrast to a society of independent producers, who exchange only their products in the market, there is a market in labour as well as in products. Fourth International Spring 1972 BIER eRe TAT

[p034] If a single criterion of the possessive market society is wanted it is that man’s labour is a commodity, i.e., that a man’s energy and skill are his own, yet are regarded not as integral parts of his personality, but as possessions, the use and disposal of which he is free to hand over to others for a price. It is to emphasize this characteristic of the fully market society that I have called it the possessive market society. Possessive market society also implies that where labour has become a market commodity, market relations so shape or permeate all social relations that it may properly be called a market society, not merely a market economy.’ ‘A fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work’ There is an inconsistency in Macpherson’s own presentation which is quite remarkable. For one who has obviously some acquaintance with Marx’s work, he makes an elementary ‘mistake’. Although from time to time he talks about man’s ‘capacity to labour’ being bought and sold as a commodity, he most often refers to labour as a commodity and fails to distinguish between labour and labour- power. Now here we are at the nub of the ques- tion. Marx ‘negated’ bourgeois political economy because his theory reflected scientifically the position of the proletariat, which is created by the fact that it must sell its labour-power. Marx therefore had to reject the bourgeois theory that wages were the price of labour, and that profit and rent were the rewards of capital and land for their Participation in production. He went so far as to say that the most basic illusion of capitalist society was to see wages as the reward for labour, instead of as the price of labour-power. And this is, in quintessential form, the difference between trade union consciousness (bourgeois consciousness be- cause it accepts the bourgeois view of the labourer as free possessor and seller of his property — ‘labour’—in a free market, with its accompanying equality before the law and political democracy! Trade unions will fight for ‘a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work’!) and socialist consciousness. This socialist consciousness starts from the scientific understanding that the worker sells labour-power at its value, and that all revenues arise out of the surplus-value, the difference between wages and the value added by labour. Labour is the sole source of new value. The working class as a class must overthrow the social system of capital- ism, to create the conditions in which the ‘asso- . ciated producers confront nature, instead of con- ditions where each individual enters social pro- duction through an act of sale. Macpherson says however: ‘If a single criterion of the possessive market; society is wanted it is that man’s labour is a com- modity, i.e., that a man’s energy and skill are his own, yet are regarded not as integral parts of his personality but as possessions, the use and disposal of which he is free to hand over to others-at a price.’ Now, for Macpherson’s own purposés of analys- ing the implicit assumptions of bourgeois political Eariy English Materialism philosophy, this definition remains of great value. Its stress on the ‘possessiveness’ of the individual- ism involved, and on the alienability of men’s powers, pinpoints the things he needs for his analysis. But his analysis will not see within bourgeois society that force, the working class, which must overthrow the social basis of Hobbes’ assumptions. That movement of the working class, said Marx, is the real ‘criticism’ of capitalism and its ideology, to which he gave theoretical ex- pression in Capital. That Macpherson has not grasped this very essence of Marx’s theory emerges very clearly from his own explanation of his ‘model of the possessive market society’: ‘The concept of possessive market society is neither a novel nor an arbitrary construction. It is clearly similar to the concepts of bourgeois or capitalist society used by Marx, Weber, Sombart, and others, who have made the existence of a market in labour a criterion of capitalism, and like their concepts it is intended to be a model or ideal type to which modern (i.e., post-feudal) European societies have approximated. It’ differs from theirs chiefly in that it does not require any particular theory of the origin or development of such society. It is not concerned about the primacy or relative importance of various factors such as Marx’s primary accumulation, Weber’s rational capital accounting, or Sombart’s. spirit of enter- prise. It does not require acceptance of the whole of any of these contentious theories. And it may claim the positive merit of drawing attention directly to two essential features of such society, the pre-eminence of market relations and the treat- ment of labour as an alienable possession.’ (Macpherson, pp. 48-49.) The most ‘contentious’ point of all Marx of course writes about labour-power as a commodity and not about labour as a commodity. Had Macpherson understood Capital he would have known that this is the most ‘contentious’ point of all! On this point turns the existence of the proletariat as an exploited, propertyless class, and not as individuals confronting other in- dividuals on a free market. This class cannot be explained except by understanding the historical process by which it was rendered propertyless and the social wealth was concentrated as capital in the hands of the bourgeoisie —the process of primitive accumulation. Outside of these historical considerations, the capitalist system and its rela- tions cannot be understood except as a fixed system, just as Hobbes and then the classical political economists saw it. Macpherson is not a Marxist, but a ‘political philosopher’. He sees his business as the analysis and explanation of political ideas, their contradic- tions, their hidden assumptions. However deep this takes him in clarifying the internal structure of the thought of bourgeois thinkers like Hobbes and Locke, he remains trapped, as they were, in the 127

[p035] vice of accepting capitalist society as a natural system, not as one which is abolished, its pro- gressive conquests carried forward, by the prole- tarian revolution. This is because he does not break from the theory of knowledge of bourgeois philosophy. For him, thought (his own thought) is the sole instrument for exposing the contradictions of the bourgeois world outlook. To go beyond ex- planation to actually changing the world, that is the step to dialectical materialism, which can develop only through the struggle of the working class to overthrow capitalism. Marx’s theory of value is the scientific expression of the role of the class not just as an exploited class, but as a revolutionary one. Macpherson’s work and its limitations illustrate that there is an indissoluble connection between three things: the illusion that the worker sells his labour, not his labour power, which is the basic idea of trade union consciousness; the con- templative, non-dialectical character of empiricist (mechanical materialist) thinking, which Macpher- son shares with Hobbes: and bourgeois liberalism. In future articles we take up some aspects of the history of philosophy, from the mechanical materialism of the English philosophers of the 17th ce?tury up to the origins of Marxism. BETRAYED WHAT IS THE . SOVIET UNION TROTSKY a O L— —_ O T £1.50 62}p—cioth Paperback Paperback 75p NEW PARK PUBLICATIONS LTD. _ 186a CLAPHAM HIGH STREET, LONDON, S.W.4 128 Fourtn International Spring 1972 my f£ ££ ; wr 4a, ££ g*” ary x ~~ ~~

[p036] vice of accepting capitalist society as a natural system, not as one which is abolished, its pro- gressive conquests carried forward, by the prole- tarian revolution. This is because he does not break from the theory of knowledge of bourgeois philosophy. For him, thought (his own thought) is the sole instrument for exposing the contradictions of the bourgeois world outlook. To go beyond ex- planation to actually changing the world, that is the step to dialectical materialism, which can develop only through the struggle of the working class to overthrow capitalism. Marx’s theory of value is the scientific expression of the role of the class not just as an exploited class, but as a revolutionary one. Macpherson’s work and its limitations illustrate that there is an indissoluble connection between three things: the illusion that the worker sells his labour, not his labour power, which is the basic idea of trade union consciousness; the con- templative, non-dialectical character of empiricist (mechanical materialist) thinking, which Macpher- son shares with Hobbes: and bourgeois liberalism. In future articles we take up some aspects of the history of philosophy, from the mechanical materialism of the English philosophers of the 17th cevtury up to the origins of Marxism. BETRAYED WHAT IS THE SOVIET UNION TROTSKY £1.50 62}p—cioth Paperback FENCE OF XISM Paperback 75p Mi NEW PARK PUBLICATIONS LTD... 186a CLAPHAM HIGH STREET, LONDON, S.W.4 128 Fourtn International Spring 1972 eit ~~» ~~

[p037] 90° = % YO>- , ¥ > ; - eruk -rubeshov }~ Owe “Kielce Opator % > tonatspoly KK 4 elce \ - ‘i Sandonmury q 4 Andregy’ \, pen Stashor I . we! Babe Ljptos:! Presiov ‘\ nan sf Epertes) nee > LowTat qetofpina Uzok hey Bygrrice ; % 7 = v's rene b eats ae t Iszobva; ; 4 (I Latorey7 f FX SMunbuc$G AR mp“ Dolhe™ Pof't Beregsxas* Kor Oy Sig lv : Aknasugal ’ . S| — 5 Zi {knasug \ Omri) \ c oF . Z ; a r 5 Ay oa OOO > a, 94 ery ren — Hajdubgsxormey : 7 o! iF, Sejm a p=} \ Galen: a Wea. <a ap N ‘i : mR } hh Tiszafiired } Wechs ell”. u Jiaéezoerény we néteoster: ; Gir —_ 4 / ie. pa ie i Karezag. : _srildgyaemlyo| f 2 a Zalau SzomAahieh . : teiram —-Miatijexdllas / lor -adea ‘ » 3 {N Szamosu} Nagykaris iw, Mit eane, 7: A $arbog ind $0 skeasneta ss ay bis 7 4 <f Gromtae NV. l ] ; a i ; aqya alo : e rate dy dre , fy PR £ roma mee dlegyheg “Lt ot aa Kalo bangs? Pale _Békéscsabay, 2 a: _ ~ — ty © “ite Sxonghas - _ F ¢ Aw yveniye lia ehervil vin vvitica ets Bae Nast : Dali a ia a Journal NN era : wa \ 5 ‘ pom ichigzabanya \ 153 ae 1 Palanka aur X 1 E . ¥ ovarey in SD yrta ¢ bntali OW} “ae = Sa6" Orayvita Por 4 radiseni ( Tar a Ruma, Vers €zx7) Bela Criswa, ' ¢ . ( ip Weer \? oF, es iP (Serato ancevo epuzxjas (< Bros cent, ‘ 2, ; es ovOlen Turns ‘Ys Splice Rieti \e { d j Pr bravitza vrsore Sé verun \2 \ Tesanj Tuzla Pe Serene rt ladove Grchaia—~ N Zepe “ ararevac \ \ Svar ald -dPalanka Yaw B { : vari 4a iko Pal@aka \$ BrzayYaian <9 seh Xt }O \ Ss n Mbaileovees 4 \ Bi \ Jatceh Trarnilk€ 2 Valj evo, 1 y elika Plana Prahovo ; Gra : \ < \ a ; ~ , - : : . Re jievat? _ Sah k fA 2 NS Mrangyelovatz _2vilainat Negotin Radu +5 a Tess hh newus a Pa? ™ IFanatwuhitz7n Girla Mare

[p038] —y volen , 1% PRozharg . aR MAltsohl! e JR

[p039] IN THE previous article, tried to follow Lukacs’ development up to his joining the Hungarian Communist Party. This was marked essentially by a bookish assimilation of theories and social problems, and consequently by a separation of theory and practice, and a very distant attitude to the working class in general. These fundamental traits of the young Lukacs will continue to mark him. In the Hunganan revolution of 1918-1979 This revolution imprinted a new orientation on the life and thought of Lukacs, although beneath his new ‘communist’ skin he retained the main characteristics formed previously in the school of ‘posthumous abortions of classical German philo- sophy’. At the end of October 1918, revoution broke out in Hungary. But, because it had only a social- democratic party which joined the government led by the liberal bourgeoisie, the working class was unable to take power. Lukacs, rejecting Bolshevism for reasons of bourgeois morality, remained at first in the ranks of the so-called progressive intellectuals. With his friend Karl Mannheim, he joined the National Council, supreme organ of bourgeois power, on October 29. This intelligent- sia’s position on a whole series of political prob- lems still churned along in the wake of the bour- geoisie. Thus, for example, on the national question it stood on the bourgeoisie’s ‘defencist’ policy in the name of the territorial integrity of the old Hungary. But before the revolution, particularly since October 1917, a more and more intense struggle had developed for the founding of a revolutionary party, against reformist social-democracy. It grew enormously from the first days of the revolution, uniting those left-wing socialists breaking from Social-Democracy. The most important anti- militarist youth and the group that had joined the Bolshevik Party in the 1917 Revolution came back in November. After several more or less isolated attempts, the founding of the Hungarian Com- munist Party was proclaimed on November 23, 1918. It was this struggle for the building of an organized vanguard of the proletariat that deter- mined the process of political differentiation within the progressive intellectuals. This powerful current towards a revolutionary party, expressing the revo-- lutionary shift in the working class, also swept Lukacs into the new party. Just a few weeks after condemning Bolshevism, Lukacs joined that party 130 which, by applying the Bolsheviks’ tactics, was rapidly winning the leadership of important num- bers of workers. Tension mounted between the working masses and the government. The revolu- tion moved forward. Terrified, the bourgeoisie counter-attacked on a world scale. In January, the assassination of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Lieb- knecht marked the determination of capital to check the development of the revolution, what- ever the cost. On February 20, 1919, helped as in Germany by social-democracy, the Hungarian bour- - geoisie itself unleashed an offensive. After a cam- paign of provocations it banned the Communist Party and arrested its Central Committee members. But such were the conditions in the young, scarcely formed and inexperienced party that the intellec- tual Lukacs, only yesterday still an anti-communist, was elected to the second central, committee, which was elected at once. He published the first leaflet announcing the. formation of the second central committee, and _ which ought to have given clear directives to the masses. To characterize this leaflet, we need only point out that it contained no call for struggle, set out no perspective, nor even less a form of action against the government and the ban on the party. Terribly abstract, it was ; impregnated with declarations as follows: ‘Great poets, the real judges of the human spirit, have often shown of what men are capable to liberate themselves from the torments of a guilty conscience; how they immerse themselves in the inextricable tangle of lies that they offer to them- selves and to others, how they founder in the swamp of the most terrible crimes in order to silence the rebukes of a bad conscience. If people succeed in convincing themselves that what they hate, because it embodies their own bad conscience, does not represent the principle in which that con- science is embodied; if they succeed in convincing themselves that it is something quite different, that its own betrayal and cowardice is but a legitimate defence against the wickedness of the other, then, Fourth International, Spring 1972

[p040] IN THE previous article, tried to follow Lukacs’ development up to his joining the Hungarian Communist Party. This was marked essentially by a bookish assimilation of theories and social problems, and consequently by a separation of theory and practice, and a very distant attitude to the working class in general. These fundamental traits of the young Lukacs will continue to mark him. In the Hungarian revolution of 1918-1979 This revolution imprinted a new orientation on the life and thought of Lukacs, although beneath his new ‘communist’ skin he retained the main characteristics formed previously in the school of ‘posthumous abortions of classical German philo- sophy’. At the end of October 1918, revoution broke out in Hungary. But, because it had only a social- democratic party which joined the government led by the liberal bourgeoisie, the working class was unable to take power. Lukacs, rejecting Bolshevism for reasons of bourgeois morality, remained at first in the ranks of the so-called progressive intellectuals. With his friend Karl Mannheim, he joined the National Council, supreme organ of bourgeois power, on October 29. This intelligent- sia’s position on a whole series of political prob- lems still churned along in the wake of the bour- geoisie. Thus, for example, on the national question it stood on the bourgeoisie’s ‘defencist’ policy in the name of the territorial integrity of the old Hungary. But before the revolution, particularly since October 1917, a more and more intense struggle had developed for the founding of a revolutionary party, against reformist social-democracy. It grew enormously from the first days of the revolution, uniting those left-wing socialists breaking from Social-Democracy. The most important anti- militarist youth and the group that had joined the Bolshevik Party in the 1917 Revolution came back in November. After several more or less isolated attempts, the founding of the Hungarian Com- munist Party was proclaimed on November 23, 1918. It was this struggle for the building of an organized vanguard of the proletariat that deter- mined the process of political differentiation within the progressive intellectuals. This powerful current towards a revolutionary party, expressing the revo-- lutionary shift in the working class, also swept Lukacs into the new party. Just a few weeks after condemning Bolshevism, Lukacs joined that party 130 which, by applying the Bolsheviks’ tactics, was rapidly winning the leadership of important num- bers of workers. Tension mounted between the working masses and the government. The revolu- tion moved forward. Terrified, the bourgeoisie counter-attacked on a world scale. In January, the assassination of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Lieb- knecht marked the determination of capital to check the development of the revolution, what- ever the cost. On February 20, 1919, helped as in Germany by social-democracy, the Hungarian bour- geoisie itself unleashed an offensive. After a cam- paign of provocations it banned the Communist Party and arrested its Central Committee members. But such were the conditions in the young, scarcely formed and inexperienced party that the intellec- tual Lukacs, only yesterday still an anti-communist, was elected to the second central committee, which was elected at once. He published the first leaflet announcing the. formation of the second central committee, and which ought to have given clear directives to the masses. To characterize this leaflet, we need only point out that it contained no call for struggle, set out no perspective, nor even less a form of action against the government and the ban on the party. Terribly abstract, it was ; impregnated with declarations as follows: ‘Great poets, the real judges of the human spirit, have often shown of what men are capable to liberate themselves from the torments of a guilty conscience; how they immerse themselves in the inextricable tangle of lies that they offer to them- selves and to others, how they founder in the swamp of the most terrible crimes in order to silence the rebukes of a bad conscience. If people succeed in convincing themselves that what they hate, because it embodies their own bad conscience, does not represent the principle in which that con- science is embodied; if they succeed in convincing themselves that it is something quite different, that its own betrayal and cowardice is but a legitimate defence against the wickedness of the other, then, Fourth International, Spring 1972

[p041] Lenin’s telegram of congratulation to the Revolutionary Governing Council of the Hungarian Council Republic on apparently, the aim is achieved. But only in appear- ance, for a few short minutes. Because truth cannot be driven from the world ... What human strength can accomplish in history is no more than the attainment of consciousness of the necessity of world history. It is that necessity that we have recognized . . . Against that, everything is futile; truth is on the march, and witch-hunts against those who announce it will only accelerate its arrival.’ [Quoted by Tibor Madju: The Bourgeois Democratic Revolution in Hungary, 1918, Budapest 1968, p. 317. I must stress that the translation of this pamphlet is exact !—B.N.] And so on in this mumbo-jumbo. The revolu- tion is in danger; Lukacs, whose elastic conscience will later lead him to support and justify Stalin’s crimes, has only one thought; to assert his petty- bourgeois, intellectual state of mind in a hopeless search for norms of an abstract morality. From this example, militants can draw up an exact idea of the abyss which was always to separate Lukacs from the labour movement. Thus, it is easily understandable that the growth of the party in the revolution and the assertion of its influence were not due to the work of such a ‘leader’, but to that of the members and other leaders of the party, who led the struggle, at that time, along the line of Bolshevism. As for the ‘leader’ Lukacs, he was obsessed with moral problems. But with this difference; as a member of the party, he voses his ethical problems from the standpoint of ‘pure’ communism, but at the same time as problems of the ‘individual’. During the revolution, his main preoccupation consisted of publishing a pamphlet, Tactics and Ethics in which, among other things, he writes: