From marx to lukács

This chapter has shown that Marx’s early metacritique of philosophy is in fact a critique of objectivism and formalism, both in politics and more generally in the theory of rationality. These ideas directly influence later Marxist theory, notably the Frankfurt School. In Chapter 4, I will show that Lukács’s early Marxist philosophy is also deeply influenced by Marx’s, even though the Manuscripts were still unpublished at the time of the composition of History and Class Consciousness. Insofar as the theory presented in the Manuscripts is concerned, this influence is therefore indirect, mediated by Marx’s Capital. It is precisely because Lukács studied Capital to find in it the basis of a metacritique of formal rationality that he was able to reconstruct and extend its philosophical dimension in a manner paralleling Marx’s own early work.

Marx arrived at the study of the economy not merely through a change in interests, but through a philosophical argumentation in the course of which he demonstrated that economics is the science of alienation. It charts the original and basic alienation from which its philosophical forms are derived. Although Marx later abandoned the philosophy of praxis of his early works, the trace of this original discovery of the economy is preserved in his later ones. This trace appears most clearly in the continuing metacritical approach.

Capital criticizes formalistic abstractions by bringing them into relation to the social substratum from which they were originally derived. It is true that in Capital these are no longer philosophical abstractions but economic ones; however, Marx treats these latter in the same way he had treated the former in the Manuscripts. The social contradictions he discovers are, in effect, philosophical antinomies reconstructed in a domain where they can be resolved through social action. The “secret” of Capital, its frequent obscurities, the “coquetting” with Hegel, the significance Marx attached to it as the basis of a theory of socialist revolution, all this testifies to his fidelity to the original metacritical method. Thus Capital is more than a scientific work on economics; it is also a chapter in the history of philosophy.

However, given its economic focus, Capital cannot adequately formulate and resolve the philosophical problems that it implicitly addresses. This leaves a gap between the critique of capitalism and the socialist solution that is often filled by making pseudoscientific and determinist claims for the economic theory. Whatever Marx himself may have said along these lines on occasion, Marxist economics establishes no causal connection between capitalism and socialism. As I will explain in Chapter 4, socialist revolution and the transition to a socialist society involve a type of cultural change that cannot be theorized on the model of those processes of “natural history” to which the mature Marx once compared them. On the contrary, Marx’s early metacritique of philosophy comes much closer to anticipating the cultural approach that can alone connect the economic theory of capitalism with socialism.

This was Lukács’s great insight: the discovery that the critique of formal rationality implicit in Marx’s economic works is the key to developing a theory of revolution. Lukács thus based his argument on a work that responded only implicitly, methodologically, to his own preoccupations. He made this implicit dimension of Marxism explicit by reconstructing its metacritical premises. Then, generalizing Marx’s concepts, Lukács reformulated the philosophical implications of the economic theory as the basis of a theory of revolution. To accomplish this, Lukács had to supply the missing moment in the metacritique at the basis of Marxist economics, the moment in which philosophy itself operates with the historicized philosophical concepts to resolve simultaneously both historical and philosophical problems. In taking this step beyond Marx, Lukács developed an original philosophy of praxis. But before turning to it, I need to discuss further the problem of nature in the early Marx. This problem, which first appears in Marx’s Manuscripts, is central to philosophy of praxis in all its forms.

 

1 John Locke, “An Essay Concerning the True Origin, Extent and End of Civil Government,” in Social Contract, ed. E. Barker (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), 133.

2 Ibid., 15.

3 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “The Social Contract,” in Barker, ed., Social Contract, 175.

4 Karl Marx, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction,” in Karl Marx: Early Writings, trans. and ed. T. B. Bottomore (London: C. A. Watts, 1963), 52.

5 Ibid.

6 Herbert Marcuse, “Philosophy and Critical Theory,” in Negations: Essays in Critical Theory, trans. J. Shapiro (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), 137.

7 Karl Marx, “Letter to Ruge,” in Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, trans. and ed. L. Easton and K. Guddat (New York: Doubleday, 1967), 213.

8 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Du Contrat Social (Paris: Gonthier, 1962), 247, my translation. Barker’s edition has the tendentiously incorrect “to obey the law laid down by society is to be free.” Cf. Social Contract, 186. For more on the relation of Rousseau and Kant, see Ernst Cassirer, Rousseau, Kant and Goethe (New York: Harper and Row, 1963).

9 Cf. Jeffrie G. Murphy, Kant: The Philosophy of Right (London: Macmillan, 1970), Chapter III.

10 Marx, “On the Jewish Question,” in Karl Marx: Early Writings, 13.

11 Marx, “Letter to Ruge,” 213.

12 Marx, “On the Jewish Question,” 30.

13 Ibid., 30.

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid.

16 HCC, 160.

17 This critique is basic to understanding the Marxian conception of socialism and socialist politics. It shows that Marx was at least aware of the type of problems raised by conservative critics such as Leo Strauss or J. L. Talmon, who see in Marxism simply another version of Jacobin voluntarism. For more on Marx’s approach, see especially his early essay, “Critical Notes on ‘The King of Prussia and Social Reform.’” in Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society.

18 Marx, “On the Jewish Question,” 30.

19 HCC, 126.

20 Marx, “On the Jewish Question,” 31.

21 Lucien Goldmann, “Philosophie et sociologie dans l’oeuvre du jeune Marx: Contribution à l’étude du problème,” in Marxisme et Sciences Humaines (Paris: Gallimard, 1970), 148.

22 Marx, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction,” in Karl Marx: Early Writings, 53.

23 Ibid., 52.

24 Ibid., 58.

25 Ibid., 59.

26 HCC, 2.

27 Marx, “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction,” 54.

28 Marx, “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts,” 203.

29 Ibid. Jean Hyppolite has written a defense of Hegel in response to such criticisms. See “Aliénation et objectivation,” in Jean Hyppolite, Etudes sur Marx et Hegel (Paris: Marcel Rivière, 1965). For a response to Hyppolite, see István Mészáros, Marx’s Theory of Alienation (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), 242–5.

30 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Holy Family, or Critique of Critical Criticism, trans. R. Dixon and C. Dutte (Moscow: Progress, 1975), 70.

31 Marx, “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts,” 204.

32 Ibid., 201.

33 Ibid., 203.

34 Herbert Marcuse, “New Sources on the Foundations of Historical Materialism,” in Heideggerian Marxism, ed. R. Wolin and J. Abromeit (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2005), 100.

35 Marx, “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts,” 206.

36 Michel Henry, Marx: A Philosophy of Human Reality, trans. K. McLaughlin (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1998), 72–3.

37 Bertell Ollman, Alienation: Marx’s Conception of Man in Capitalist Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 81.

38 Marx, “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts,” 207.

39 Marx, “Money and Alienated Man,” in Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, 273.

40 Marx, “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts,” 189.

41 Ibid., 126–7.

42 Ibid., 208.

43 Ibid., 160–1.

44 Ibid., 208.

45 Ibid., 160–1.

46 Ibid., 157.

47 Ibid., 130.

48 The phrase is, of course, Hegel’s. See, Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952), 12.

49 Marx, “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts,” 162. That the concept of reason is truly at issue in Marx seems to me to be a necessary implication of his discussion of the reform of the sciences. Cf. Ibid., 163–4.