Marx, An Historical and Critical Study, by Lichtheim

[p021] Marxism: an Historical and Critical Study. By George Lichtheim, Rout- ledge and Kegan Paul, 40s. Marxist theory, which is born of struggle, thrives on polemic and criticism. Well-informed opposition should be welcome to Marxists as helping to clarify our understanding and indicating which aspects of our ideas need further investigation in the light of modern developments. It is indicative of the theoretical backwardness of the British Labour movement that intelligent anti- Marxism in this country is a rarity. H. B. Acton’s The Husion of the Epoch remains an isolated example of. the species. Dr, Leff’s book covers some of the same ground as Professor Acton in his attack on dialectical and historical LABOUR REVIEW—Spring, 1962 materialism. Like Acton, he omits almost all examination of Marx’s analysis of capitalism, which was, after all, his major work. Like other Marx-critics, Leff takes Marxism to pieces before dealing with it. He separates dialectics from materialism, both from history and all three from politics. The dis- membered corpse is then examined aud its death certificate signed. The section on historical material- ism is the best part of the book and has some interesting observations on Popper. Throughout the book, how- ever, Leff implicitly Marxism with its Stalinist caricature. As with so many writers influenced by the ‘New Left’, Dr. Leff suffers from the English disease of eclectic- ism. Breaking with some of the symptoms of Stalinism, these people replace Marxist theory with a thin ideological porridge in which are mixed lumps of psycho-analysis, logical positivism, and something called ‘ humanism’. Professor Tucker’s very American work is a more serious affair. It is mainly devoted to an account of the early writings of Marx. The chapter on the 1844 manuscripts would alone make the book worthwhile. - The ideas of the young Marx are related. to Hegelianism via Feuer- bach and to developed Marxist theory. However, the whole is fitted into an interpretative framework pre- fabricated by Tucker. Marxism is viewed as ‘a system of religious myth. This appears to mean that the concepts of both Hegel and Marx refer to individual psycho- logy. ‘The dialectic may therefore be described as the psychodynamics of Hegelian spirit in its quest to know itself as the Absolute. The conception is fundamentally psycho- logical.’ (p. 58) This interpretation of Hegel is one-sided and distorted, but when applied to Marxism it is nonsensical. Marxism can only be understood as the theory of the proletarian revolu- tionary vanguard. It subsumes the truth of bourgeois culture and science and puts it at the disposal of the working class. Mr. Lichtheim, coming from the background of German and Austrian Social-Democracy, knows that Marx- ist theory cannot be detached from the Marxist movement. He describes the development of Marxism from _ origins identifies. German idealism to the theory of the international socialist movement. However, he also finds a contradic- tion in Marxism between its theory and. its practice. In this he leans heavily on some formulations of Engels in which he discerns the of opportunism. In the chapter on Kautsky he tries to show how this contradiction developed. Lichtheim finds the origins of Stalinism in the concept and practice of the Leninist party. His view of the USSR and its satellites as a new sort of exploiting. society is directly linked with his allegation of the inadequacy of Marxism. He is also convinced that ‘the emergence of new forms of dependence and control, both under corporate control and state-controlled planning, has “sub- lated” the historic antagonism of capital and labour .. .” (p. 392) Lichtheim’s book attacks Marxism in the most ‘useful’ way of the three under review. His approach forces us to see the unity of Marx’s philosophy, politics and sociology. -By denying the adequacy of Marxism to deal with modern problems (without of course indicat- ing an alternative), Lichtheim shows that this. world view only makes sense today as the principle of an international socialist party. Once Lenin’s conception of a disciplined party and Trotsky’s analysis of the Soviet Union are rejected, Marxism falls to pieces. Let us hope that we shall see more books in English attacking Marxism, but let us also hope our opponents will be better armed than hitherto. CS. Revisionism: Essays on the History of Marxist Ideas. Labedz, L. (editor), George Allen and Unwin, 35s. There is a school of anti-Marxist thought which considers that the best antidote to Marxism is the admini- stration, as it were, of homeopathic doses to the educated public in the capitalist countries. The Congress for Cultural Freedom is one of the main exponents of this method and this work is one of its products. Instead of trying to kill Marxism by a conspiracy of silence, reputable scholars are now enlisted to discuss aspects of Marxist thought with some- times pedantic seriousness, as though it were part of a rather lifeless, but

[p022] en BOOK REVIEWS still interesting, intellectual game. The misconceptions about Marx’s own thought and the catalogue of his errors have now hardened into a system which is transmitted through the ranks of the academic world without the need for most of those who join in the discussion to make a first-hand examination of their source. Much of what passes for the views of Marx is in fact distilled from tthe programmatic pronounce- ments of sundry ‘ Marxists’, from pre-1914 German Social Democrats to post-22nd Congress Khrushchevites. After all, it is open to any one to claim the title of ‘ Marxist’? and the struggle for Marx’s legacy was going on even before his death. In this light the very use of the term ‘revisionism’ carries a fatal note of ambiguity. Rightly given, at first, to those who departed from the essence of Marx’s teaching from within an avowedly Marxist move- ment and constructed an alien theory and guide to action, the term, in recent years, has been used, as in this volume, with ever-greater lack of discrimination. The enlightened anti- Marxists of Survey and other journals sponsored by the Congress of Cul- tural Freedom grant the Stalinists and Khrushchevites the signal honour of representing the mainstream of Marxism, as they themselves claim. While opposites meet on this point, then,. all other trends deriving from Marxism are broadly labelled as ‘revisionist’, regardless of whether they have any connection with the Revisionism of Bernstein, or indeed, whether, apart from deviation from ~ the prevailing Kremlin orthodoxy, they have any other common basis than a self-made claim to derive from Marx. In fact, what we have in this volume is a number of academic studies, partly historical and descrip- tive, partly theoretical, dealing with past and contemporary thinkers in the idiom of ,Marxism. Some are too brief to be much more than factual outlines which give little real insight into the theoretical contribu- tion made by their subjects. For example, the section on Trotsky deals only with the early development of the theory of Permanent Revolution, and not very competently at that. Professor North writes interestingly enough about the career of .M. N. Roy, but only when he was a. trusted executant of Comintern policy; if he made his own contribution to that policy his theoretical work was scarcely profound, The sections on Georg Lukacs and Ernst Bloch are more strictly studies of ideas and it is the middle section of the book which most adequately lives up to its sub-title. Since Stalinism is in this book equated. with orthodoxy, however, the point needs to be made that it was, in fact, the most banal and devastating of all the revision- isms, which cast a. blight on most efforts made to develop Marxist methodology and theory in line with changing objective conditions and the advances of human thought. The stifling of all the original thinking offered by men like Lukacs and the reduction of ‘orthodox’ theorists to the role of cringing ideologists of the ruling power was profoundly. anti- Marxist in purpose and method. It .was from this purported ‘Marxism’ that large numbers of members of the Communist Party broke inconspicuously over the years and in a wave after 1956. In fact, only the Left Opposition and _ its theoretical continuators worked prac- tically, and as a movement, in the real tradition of Marx and Engels. The ‘independent’ Marxists — gener- ally neglected in this work—here and there. produced a work of merit. Other trends, such as the. Bordigists, pursued a shadowy existence. For most intellectuals, however, the Stalinists were taken to be the genuine Marxists; the revulsion from Stalin’s crimes and methods did incredible harm to the standing of Marxist thought in the capitalist world. Many of the latter-day ‘revisionists’ have beeen unable to throw off the incubus of Stalinism or to find a road back to Marxism, which they still see through the distorting glass provided by Kremlin orthodoxy. Not a self- conscious ‘revision’ of Marxism, but active and creative work in the line of Marx is the great need of today. - T.K. Labour politics